USB Poo

Lets talk about external USB DVD writers. Mo had one and it continually shat itself when using DVD Shrink + Nero. We put it down to it being an older Iomega drive, with USB1.

But no! Yesterday Growler buysa nice shiny dual-layer writin' drive, a big fat external case with USB2, plugs it into his monster computer at work and lo! we have the same problem. SCSI device error. Many coasters. Pretty, shiny, dual-layer coasters. Unhappy Growler.

Research leads to the conclusion that running a DVD writer over USB is terminally b0rked, thanks to incompatabilities between SCSI and Windows USB drivers. Nero seems to be the worst, but other DVD writing software has the same problem sometimes. DVD-R seems to be worse, but +R occasionally has problems.

The solution is Firewire. I swapped my shiny USB2 case for an identical Firewire case and no more problems. Happily buring dual layers at 8x speed.

Now all those DVDs can be safely backed up.

Test, please ignore

Been there, done that...

Two European eco-crusaders are taking their love of nature to the extreme by running a porn site to raise money for the cause. "Everyone must try to create something good using what they have," said Tommy Hol Ellingsen, half of the provocative pair. "We had nothing, just our bodies." The site features hard-core videos of the eco-hippies (and their crunchy companions) getting nasty in a Norwegian clear-cut and other locales. But it also dishes out raw facts about environmental destruction. And talk about going green -- the couple has raised almost $100,000 by selling site memberships. Now the problem is finding nonprofit groups who aren't spooked by the money's illicit provenance. "What is morality when people are destroying the world?" asks Ellingsen, who calls some green groups "too boring."
-- Lewis Wallace


Wired.com