Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Social Justice Warriors

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They’re appropriately named, “angry, vicious people who want to eliminate disagreement.”

Ultimately, they want to eliminate more than just that.

[Afternoon update]

Here’s an example: Hey, remember that First Amendment?

I touch on these other assaults on free speech to provide a context for Hillary Clinton’s foray into the battle to shut people up (a procedure, it is worth noting, that is often a harbinger of a battle to lock people up). The constitutional amendment that Hillary Clinton told the world she would consider would be directed against the Supreme Court decision in the case of Citizens United. “We need to fix our dysfunctional political system,” quoth Hillary, “and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment.”

Free speech for me, not for thee.

[Update a few minutes later]

Women ejected from a conference to protect (beta, or perhaps even omega) men. This whole notion of “safe spaces” is culturally insane. What happens to these delicate flowers when they have to go out in the real world? But these people have to politicize every freaking thing. They are totalitarians.

Administrative, Technology and Society, Weird

Ubuntu

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Partly out of interest, and partly because there don’t seem to be any yum packages for Kerbal, I decided to load it on a spare SSD (not using grub, I just go into the BIOS and decide which drive I want to boot). I set up an account. It didn’t ask me to create a password for root, just a personal account. I try to ‘su -i’ and it asks me for a password. I use the one I created for my personal account. Nope.

Way to go, guys.

Business, Mathematics, Technology and Society

Windows Install Problem

14 Comments

I’m trying to repair a Windows 7 installation with a Windows 8.1 DVD. I’ve configured the BIOS for Windows 8 mode, and I’m booting from the UEFI-DVD option. It dumps me into the EFI shell. I switch to fs3 (the drive name). I see BOOTX64.EFI on the drive, but when I run it from shell, it gives a screen saying to hit any key to install. I do that, and it dumps me back into the shell. Anyone have any idea what’s going on, or how to diagnose?

[Update a few minutes later]

Huh. Never mind. For some reason, now it’s working.

Now, next question. I selected the option to “repair the PC.” But it says that the drive where Windows is installed is “locked,” and I have to “unlock” it. What the hell does that mean?

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, I followed these instructions. After firing it back up, it’s back to it’s old trick of dumping me back into the EFI shell when I try to run bootx64.exe. Guess I’ll give it a few minutes and try again.

[Update a while later]

OK, separate (but related subject). Has anyone ever experienced a computer that kills flash drives? I just tried to copy an updated BIOS on to one. It didn’t work. When I put it back into the (Fedora) laptop that I’d downloaded it too, it can no longer see the drive. My Fedora desktop has done this as well, to the point that I’m afraid to put USB drives in it.

[Update a while later]

OK, this is weird. It turns out that the machine that’s destroying the flash drives is the one that I’m trying to flash the BIOS on. They’re OK when they leave linux, and get bricked when I plug them into the other machine, without even an OS running.

[Update a while later]

OK, it appears that the front USB port on the machine is killing the drives. The rear ones seem to be OK. Guess I’ll just tape them over.

[Update Saturday afternoon]

Still can’t figure out why I can’t boot Windows from the installation DVD. Anyone have any ideas?

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!