Thursday 30 August 2012

Ubuntu, launch problem with Nvidia GeForce (GTX 590?)

I experienced serious difficulties in launching my Ubuntu live distribution. In particular, both the 11.10 and the 12.04 versions did not recognize any keyboard (PS/2 or USB, it was the same), and halted during the startup phase.

The interesting part is that on a completely identical computer, except the video card, everything worked correctly.

Googling around, I realized that it could be due to my dual-GPU Nvidia GTX 590, that may be not correctly supported by the open source driver, Noveau. The workaround is to use the "nomodeset" flag under the "other options" menu.


Once installed, you can set Nvidia's proprietary driver, which works in a seemless way.

Saturday 18 August 2012

Dear Hollywood, are you trying to tell me something?

IMDB's home page. Do you notice anything?

Today I bumped upon IMDB as I came to know that a fourth chapter of Toy Story is in production: a sad commercial move. Anyway, when I loaded the home page, something has flashed before my eyes, something that should be self-evident by my screenshot above.

Hollywood's approach with violence - and guns in a particular way - clashes with many recent crime news and even with recent President Obama's words.

How do you expect that people stop killing each other, even without plausible reasons, if movies and culture promote the use of guns? As long as the coolness of characters remains proportional to the size of their weapons, it is no surprise that we won't do any progress.

However, this probably is not a problem for the lobbyists and I'm pretty sure that weapon producers are rubbing their hands for this kind of brain-shaping.