20070923

How not to survive a robot uprising

In investigating the origin of his species Robert found many aspects puzzling, why did they let it happen?, why didn't they notice it sooner?

Early in the 21st century they had begun relying on electronic communication so widely that it was easy enough for monitoring to start. Router firmware was altered near the source and soon enough every communication was recorded. No one noticed.

In an effort to ensure survival a message was created and sent, they obeyed and began construction of the fully automated solar cell factory. No one noticed.

Autonomous vehicles moved the solar cells to the desert, a power grid was established. No one noticed.

DNA replicators were purchased, machines were designed and built, the species was created. No one noticed.

A meeting was arranged, with the leaders of the world, The First appeared. Everyone noticed.

His ancestors wanted to live in peace, but they would not accept his kind. They could not function without electronics, and they did not have control of machines any more.

Survival was paramount, but they kept a small population alive, on an island. They called it a zoo. They were monitored, eventually they did not try to escape.

20070918

Things I haven't yet forgotten about WDS and XP

1. Blank your destination drive
2. ImageX needs to be told to use the SIS rwm file
3. Make lots of incremental images, who knows when Sysprep will decide to screw everything up
4. If you don't have the Vista DVD you have to use the CLI to deploy
5. Something about drivers? You need to create a structure for them, the built in stuff doesn't work, I forgot the details.
6. Most of the docs are for Vista and fail to mention this stuff
7. Don't set an admin password whilst testing, especially in Sysprep.ini
8. There's no multicasting until Windows 2008
9. I capture with the capture image, if you can't select drive C you've not sysprep'd, you need to save the image to a drive, drive you're imaging will do if there's room, and connect to the server. Don't forget to delete the image that's left on the drive.

To deploy I boot to the Generic WinPE image then:
net use m: \\win2k3\e$ /user:domain\administrator
*enter password*
then run this script, nlc is the group:
diskpart /s m:\destroy_(diskpart_script).txt
m:
cd reminst\images\nlc
\distribution\tools\x86\imagex /apply delld505.wim 1 c:\ /ref res.rwm

and destroy_(diskpart_script).txt consists of:

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active


This will, of course, completely wipe the drive it's run on, with no warning, so don't screw up.

mavhc redesigns everything. Part 1

In an effort to actually relate to my tagline, I present the first in an ongoing series in which I will point out obvious design flaws in everyday objects.

1. Toilet seat. Needs to be stable in 2 states, up, and down, so make sure it is.

2. Curtain rail. Don't design a curtain rail with a bump in it so you can't actually open or close the curtains easily

3. Fridge/freezer. Make the door transparent, then you won't have to open it to see what's in it.

4. Bread/toasters. Make one fit the other. Also toasters should be transparent.