I read a couple days ago on Joel Spolsky’s blog that his company - Fog Creek Software - is giving Free Day Passes to everyone who wants to test their remote assistance tool, Copilot:

This Sunday is Mother’s Day. Why not fix your mom’s computer?
You know: remove the spyware and adware, install Firefox, and make it so that weird toolbar toast doesn’t pop up every 15 seconds.
To make it easy, this Sunday we’re making Fog Creek Copilot absolutely free.
No strings attached. Just go to https://www.copilot.com on Sunday, get a free pass, and we’ll email your mom a link she can click on to download the helper application. It’s really easy.

I’ve just gave it a try, connecting to my Father’s computer at work and it worked pretty well.

The connection was a little slow, but I guess it has to do with the fact that many people are using it today (www. copilot.com loads slowly) and also with my upload speed (256 kbits).

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Aseara am primit o veste neplacuta, aceea ca ieri, 7 mai 2007, marele Octavian Paler a trecut in nefiinta.

A fost un prozator, eseist, un reputat jurnalist si editorialist roman, comentator al fenomenelor politice si culturale romanesti. Mai multe puteti afla de pe pagina Wikipedia dedicata in cinstea sa, aici.

Recunosc, cu rusine, ca nu sunt familiar cu lucrarile maestrului. Dar aveam placerea sa-l ascult in fiecare saptamana pe postul Antena3, la emisiunea “Sinteza Zilei” moderata de Mihai Gadea.

Dl. Paler comenta mai toate aspectele societatii romanesti, atat politica dar si tendintele societatii in materie de cultura, idealuri, etc. Mi-a placut ca a fost un om obiectiv, a fost un aparator al democratiei [a fost persecutat politic pe vremea comunismului], dar mai ales pentru ca era un om care prin ceea ce zicea, indemna la gandire.

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Broken Windows / Linux or some other OS? I’ve faced this problem at least a dozen times. In these situations my best advice is to completely reinstall the OS.

But first you need to…

• recover data
• check your computer for hardware problems

I’ve just returned from my cousin, where a computer crashed. Because there was some important info she needed to recover, she called me before taking the PC to Service. I had 2 posibilities:

1. take the HDD out, physically mount it in another PC, save data and then place it back, or..
2. boot Linux from a Live CD, mount the needed partition, copy data and good bye!

I’ve selected no. 2 and proceeded as following:

• enter BIOS and select the CD-ROM as primary boot device
• boot Linux from live CD (I used Ubuntu 6.06 LTS)
• mount the selected partition using the terminal command
• copy important data either to
  
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