quick workaround for: "Not a com32r image" when booting from USB stick on ubuntu.

[Note: The best solution is to just boot into windows and use unetbootin to make the USB.]


I've been trying to install a bunch of PC's to drive a bunch of CNC machines. Linux, as expected, manages to mess things up. When booting from a USB stick I get "Not a com32r image". The hack below seems to work:

After some fiddling around with the syslinux config files and still not getting it to boot properly, I found a deceptively simple workaround for this: Just type "help" on the BOOT prompt, and when you get the help menu, just hit enter. The system will now boot!

Confirmed that this also works for me when booting a USB stick created by 10.10's USB creator.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mint-84/trying-to-boot-linux-mint-9-from-usb-flash-drive-vesamenu-c32-not-a-com32r-image-829397/

Not the only greek problem, but it can't help

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n23/james-meek/diary

Politis once looked into opening a restaurant with music. He found that the regulations insisted on one permit if he had a band with three stringed instruments, and another, completely different, for a band with four.

"You do not make the poor rich by making the rich poor."

Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NEWSHOUR.

go team.

While there are many reasons for these troubling trends, the state cannot ignore the role its policies have played in the economic decline. For seven consecutive years, executives polled by Chief Executive magazine have ranked California as having the worst business environment in the country. In a 2011 survey of its members by CalRecovery, a California coalition of businesses and industries based in the state, 84% of about 400 executives and owners who responded said that if they weren't already here, they wouldn't consider starting up in the state, while 64% said that the main reason they stayed in California was that it was tough to relocate their particular kind of business. In a recent op-ed, Andrew Puzder, chief executive of Carpinteria-based CKE Restaurants, which manages 3,000 eateries around the country, called California "the most business-unfriendly state we operate in."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cox-malanga-california-business-20111114,0,1011551.story

How to boot thinkpad X1 from USB.

1. Format USB stick so it has a bootable ISO image (linux has various ways to do this; I used usb-creator-gtk for no particular reason other than it was already on my machine).
2. Power cycle.
3. Hold down F12.  The initial screen says to hold down the "blue botton" which doesn't exist.
4. Select the USB stick from the bootable options.
5. Press return.

Of course, like many things to do w/ linux and installation these days, this just doesn't work (at least for me).  I keep hitting "(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live file system" which is a known bug.  

So, now the google searching begins.  


Looks like it's a USB 3.0 issue.  The most expedient fix is to check for other USB connections on the laptop.  The one on the left side of the x1 seems to do the trick.

famous filmmakers direct super bowl

Pretty damn funny:http://slatev.com/player.html?id=64790979001

hat tip: MR

evil eye

Mistaken IDs are far and away the leading cause of wrongful convictions in the United States. Nearly three out of every four prisoners who have been released after being exonerated by DNA evidence had an eyewitness identifying them.

Guy on hunting trip falsely ID'd by highschool alumni as at a nightclub 100s of miles away beating another guy to death. Since exonerated, but got lucky:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/witnesses-to-beating-dead-wrong-about-man-charged-219392.html

More Richard Epstein

On what is jacked about the health care bill.  I'm not a lawyer, but this guy is a badass:

           http://fora.tv/2009/09/17/Richard_Epstein_Breaking_Down_Healthcare_Reform#fullprogram

Various quotes, but here's one: "I want decentralized engineering: that's the only thing I want because I am convinced that no one is super smart and you want a number of runs at this thing so you are much more likely to come up with one that's going to work"

More wide ranging:
             http://fora.tv/2009/03/23/Uncommon_Knowledge_Richard_Epstein


"Would you give him tenure?"
"NO!  NO!  Nono."

On the presidency:

"The fundamental mistake of his entire world view is that he treats contracts as devices for exploitation; he doesn't treat them as devices for mutual gain and he assumes that redistribution can take place without any negative impact on production.  And if you live in that kind of fairy land..."

John Yoo on his new book on youtube

Sharp guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deh05-KtKqw

"We certainly haven't gotten a lot of intelligence from operatives we have arrested and put on trial in our federal courts."

Interesting cross-exam before the above: Yoo vs Richard Epstein:                                         http://fora.tv/2006/10/29/Uncommon_Knowledge_Richard_Epstein_John_Yoo

Kasparov on computer chess

Interesting article.  On the surprising results of ubiquitous grandmaster level programs:

There have been many unintended consequences, both positive and negative, of the rapid proliferation of powerful chess software. Kids love computers and take to them naturally, so it's no surprise that the same is true of the combination of chess and computers. With the introduction of super-powerful software it became possible for a youngster to have a top- level opponent at home instead of need ing a professional trainer from an early age. Countries with little by way of chess tradition and few available coaches can now produce prodigies. I am in fact coaching one of them this year, nineteen-year-old Magnus Carlsen, from Norway, where relatively little chess is played.

The heavy use of computer analysis has pushed the game itself in new directions. The machine doesn't care about style or patterns or hundreds of years of established theory. It counts up the values of the chess pieces, analyzes a few billion moves, and counts them up again. (A computer translates each piece and each positional factor into a value in order to reduce the game to numbers it can crunch.) It is entirely free of prejudice and doctrine and this has contributed to the development of players who are almost as free of dogma as the machines with which they train. Increasingly, a move isn't good or bad because it looks that way or because it hasn't been done that way before. It's simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't. Although we still require a strong measure of intuition and logic to play well, humans today are starting to play more like computers.

More at:  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592

Hat tip, Marginal Revolution.

man bites dog: suing debt collection agencies.

High bit: if they say they can garnish wages or take your house, then you can get an easy $3500 settlement, at least in TX.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2010-01-21/news/better-off-deadbeat-craig-cunningham-has-a-simple-solution-for-getting-bill-collectors-off-his-back-he-sues-them/1

good eDit interview

One of the best glitch dj's alive: http://www.koldcast.tv/video/edit

Articulate & gets it done.

Well, that's a good attitude

I don't follow football (and not just b/c I don't have a TV), but this seems like a good, low-drama view of the world:

For the first time, Brady confirmed he has been playing with a broken bone this season.

A league source told the Globe Brady has a broken finger on his right hand. The injury is believed to have happened in early December.

“I’m feeling really good now. I’m feeling really good,’’ Brady told WEEI. “Everyone breaks bones over the course of the year. I’m feeling pretty good. This is the best I’ve felt in a while.’’

 http://www.boston.com/sports/football/patriots/articles/2010/01/05/brady_fully_aware_of_backup_plan/

Zing

Are you saying the citizens of Berkeley are Communists, reminiscent of those on the dark side of the Iron Curtain?
There are probably more Communists in Berkeley than any other town in America, but I think of them more as lovers of Birkenstocks than Marx.

--- John Yoo on the constant protests by the vapid at Berkeley. Actually is a pretty funny guy: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03fob-q4-t.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

#1 ranked chess player is 19

I've not followed chess in a long time, other than Fischer's japes and Kasparov's opera, so totally missed this the fact that the #1 ranked player is 19. Interesting (albeit old) interview here when he was 13: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1614

photobucket must die

I cannot believe these slimy scumbags.

Their brilliant moneymaking scheme: if you upload more than some threshold of byte then --- rather than block further uploads for some amount of time --- they turn off *all* your photos unless you pay extortion money ("go pro!") to get them to release them.

Further, while paying, each time you click some option they will silently tick a "please set up recurrent billing!" box to try to parasite away more funds.

I cannot wait until this collection of inbred suits gets wiped off the planet.

Yet more evidence that JFK knew how to party

Gives new meaning to "never get off the boat" (from TMZ):

The french and boundary issues

Innocently reading an economics blog  ("marginal revolution"  http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2009/12/assorted-links-23.html) one clicks on the second link down and gets:  http://www.hotdollfordog.com/

If you have a tough constitution and vile humor, watch the video.  They use "audacious" and "stability" in ways that one would never imagine.  Only $400EU!

Good writeup: CA vs TX

Simple strategy: spend less, get more. http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_california.html

Hat tip: MR.

The best takedown of any movie, ever.

This can't possibly work, but does: Some amateur guy put together a 70 minutes long(!) destruction on "phantom menace" a  movie I've never seen (and hope you never do either).  It's really really good.  Very concrete and self-contained so you need not ever (ever) get close to that which it hates on.  

http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/12/17/watch-this-70-minute-video-review-of-star-wars-the-phantom-menace/