Month: October 2016

Guild Wars 2 – NPCs Can Heal You

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Muhahahaha….. Happy Halloween. And this is actually pretty scary. I don’t know if this is a recent change or if this has been there for some time. In the past when I’ve been doing a story quest, which is an instance, and it fails, then I get a message “Do you want to leave the instance or retry from a checkpoint.” I usually pick check point, and in some of the Heart of Thorns [HoT] story quests, it actually doesn’t take you back, it just rezzes you out of the way and you get back in the fight without losing any ground on the story. For example, all the mobs that have been killed are still dead. But tonight, I was taking a new toon into the HoT story and I saw something new and got some pictures of it. This is Spooky, so in honor of Halloween, here’s the story. Continue reading “Guild Wars 2 – NPCs Can Heal You”

Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns is More Fun

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Ok. I admit it. Heart of Thorns is fun. I was frustrated when I first started playing it because as you start out you die frequently. But I’m not sure whether it’s just me learning to play more effectively or Arena Net balancing the game a little, but it’s more fun now.

I’ve stayed away from HoT for a while. I’ve been just doing map completions on my Alts and Halloween, which is fun too. But I do have a goal of completing the Revenant Mistward Armor. That seemed out of reach a while ago, but I’m very close with only one piece to go, the coat. I don’t need the scrim [head piece] since I have that skin from creating my Revenant. Continue reading “Guild Wars 2 – Heart of Thorns is More Fun”

RowHammer – Exploit for PCs and Smartphones

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Uh… No. We are not talking about rows of hammers. Or smashing your computer with a hammer. Over the past two years a new exploit has been discovered that is based on modifying memory by specific patterns of access. Hammering – high speed access – of some  rows of memory can affect the contents of other rows. Specifically by flipping some bits in other rows of memory.

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Lots of Modern DRAM has this problem

As it turns out, this problem occurs in lots of modern DRAM, including PCs, and now we know, some smart phones. Continue reading “RowHammer – Exploit for PCs and Smartphones”

Our Simulation – A Taxonomy

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There is much recent discussion about our living in a simulation:

I have studied the subject of whether or not we are living in a simulation for quite some time in a number of ways and I have never seen someone classify all the possibilities for those possible simulations. So here goes. If you need background on this idea, I’ll provide some links at the bottom of this paper.

Alternative Title: Living in a Simulation? – Let Me Count the Ways

First of All
First of all we need to talk about some generalities. These are properties of our simulation or the outer simulation, and the possible properties of our current simulation. Continue reading “Our Simulation – A Taxonomy”

Linux Mint 18.2 – Printer Sharing Problems

Notice that this is posted on 2017 Oct 6 – Back dated to keep it off the first page of my blog.

I found these instructions on ITZGeek.com for how to set up printer sharing on Linux Mint. Seems recent – Jan 2016.

I’m trying to share a HP Color Laser printer connected to a Windows 10 system to my Linux Mint 18.2 system so I can print from the LM system. It fails. Printer sharing works fine to this printer from other Win 10 systems on the network. Here is how the printer is set up on the Win 10 system:

Here are screenshots for attempting to set up and use the printer from a newly installed / updated Linux Mint 18.2 system:

Run the Config Printer app
Printer Config App
Printer appears
Not a duplex printer – leave unchecked
Looks good
Asking to print test page
Test page submitted.
Notice error – unable to locate printer.
Errors mean anything?
More errors here.

 

So in spite of the config dialog finding the printer, and apparently getting the driver,  any attempt to use the printer is unable to locate the printer.

A year or more ago, perhaps with LM 18.0, I tried to use the HP website to find sharing methods. They were very arcane, required compiling software and ultimately didn’t work. Looks like things have come a long way since then. The printer is found and the printer drivers apparently load correctly. Do we have a clue about why the Unable to Connect error is occurring?

Thanks, ww

This information was posted to Linux Mint Blog, but no responses so far. I’ll submit a bug referring to this post.

Additional information posted 6 Oct 2017

I copied a file from the Linux system to the Windows system where the printer lives and printed it there. Worked fine of course.

But then about 1/2 an hour later, the printer test page – you remember the one I tried to print about 11 hours ago? Well it came out. So I tried to print something else. Brought up an image and chose print from the menu. Then clicked preview, which apparently made a pdf from the image viewer of the image. Then I printed the PDF. Now notifications are popping up every few seconds saying “Printer Error <printer name here> ‘connecting to device’. But nothing is happening.

So it looks like printer support is DOA. Almost there, but not quite. Unless you want to wait 11 hours for your pages?

I have done some searches and can’t find a way to see the print queue or cancel a failed or failing print job.
Some stuff from 2011 / 2012 says something about an applet in the notification area, but there’s nothing showing, except the blinking notification which only lasts a couple of seconds before disappearing. Is there a printer queue or status app? Some way to cancel a print job that’s stuck? What if the printer fell off a cliff and will never answer?

Using the Troubleshooting feature of CUPS the server produced the fallowing Troubleshoot.txt file:

ZIP File of Troubleshoot.txt and terminal text produced by trouble shoot function

I see, it’s called Printers.

So system-config-printer is actually called Printers in the menus and if you select “View Print Queue” or use Ctrl-F you see the jobs. And you can cancel them. So that old post that wanted to use a terminal has a better solution. The program is not just for Configuring printers but for managing printers and their queues. Good to know. And completely overlooked in the pages that got me here.

Printer still doesn’t work, but at least I can cancel the job that was causing a failed notification every 2 sec.

end as of 7 Oct 2017