[Thu Apr 21 15:48:50 CDT 2016]

Sometimes we just have a bad day.

Incidentally, it's not only top Microsoft execs that didn't see it coming. Here's another interesting article from Vox on how Intel made a huge mistake 10 years ago, when it also failed to see the importance of mobile computing. {link to this entry}

[Sun Apr 17 14:12:48 CDT 2016]

Weekend project. I have a bunch of old computers that are no good anymore. Since I'll be moving to a new apartment soon, I decided it was time to finally get rid of them. However, before donating them (to be scrapped for parts, mainly, since I seriously doubt they can put them to any other good use), it's always a good idea to perform a secure wipe of the data in the hard drives. After all, one never knows what sort of personal data may still be there and what other people might do with the the drives. So, simply download the latest ISO image available for Debian Linux, plug in any old USB flash drive, and image it with the following command:

# dd if=<path_to_Debian_image> of=/dev/sdX

Where "X" obviously corresponds to the drive for your USB flash drive. You may also have to use fdisk, GNU parted or a similar tool to make sure the USB flash drive is bootable. After that, simply reboot the computer using that flash drive, choose from the menu the option to boot i into the live session, log in using "user" as the username and "live" as the password and, from a terminal, run the following command:

$ sudo shred -vfz -n 10 /dev/sdX

Where "X" corresponds this time to your main hard drive.

I downloaded the "standard ISO" of the latest Debian because all I wanted to use was the plain old console. No need of a GUI when you are just going to run a command. Besides, it will also boot faster, and it won't bother you with the configuration of the graphics card or anything. You will find more information and command options in the document titled How To Securely Destroy/Wipe Data On Hard Drives With shred. Be warned that the secure wipe takes a considerable amount of time. So, be patient. {link to this entry}

[Fri Apr 8 16:14:11 CDT 2016]

Here is a very clear description of the concepts of resident and virtual memory. I was asked about it today, and found that that describes it pretty well. Basically, resident memory is the actual physical memory being used by the process, while virtual memory is how much the process thinks it is using, which is larger than the actual amount of resident memory. In general, that is all there is to it. {link to this entry}