Karma is a bitch sometimes

From montieth:  Canadian woman converts to Islam, puts up pro-jihadist website, goes in search of her new idols ... who are now holding her for $2 million ransom and declaring they’ll behead her if they don’t get it by the end of the month.

Oh, the irony.

First Marine F-35 flight

A week old, but I haven’t seen this anywhere else.  Marine Corps News reported last Friday that the first Marine JSF development test pilot, Maj. Joseph “O. D.” Bachmann, flew the F-35A Lightning II for the first time last Friday.

Bachmann said the purpose of the flight was to acquire experience and become comfortable with the aircraft so he can to find any potential flaws or issues that may need correction, especially in the short take-off and vertical landing version of the aircraft.

“Mission: accomplished,” said Bachmann after his first F-35 flight.  “It was amazingly easy to fly.  It was surreal.  It was badass.”

The F-35A is the conventional takeoff and landing version of the F-35, slated to replace the Air Force’s F-16s and A-10s.  The US Marine Corps will be receiving the F-35B STOVL version, which will replace their F/A-18 Hornets, AV-8B Harriers, and EA-6B Prowlers.  The US Navy will be getting the F-35C carrier variant.  In all, it is expected the F-35 will replace 13 aircraft types in the air forces of 11 nations.

An interesting detail:  Word is that only the F-35A will have an internal gun, a General Dynamics GAU-12 25mm rotary cannon with 180 rounds of ammunition.  The Marines and Navy have chosen to delete the internal gun and carry the same gun, with a helical ammunition drum holding 225 rounds, in a stealthy external pod that can be fitted to a dedicated centerline pylon.  In addition to the ability to remove it for missions when it’snot needed, one argument for the pod is that it allows larger ammunition capacity, but either way we’re only talking a couple of seconds of firing time.  I can’t help but suspect the drag of the pod will prove to be a bigger drawback than the extra 45 rounds, and I’ll bet the external pod — when carried — adds nearly as much additional weight over that of the internal gun as is saved by deleting the internal gun.

I thought we learned the lesson of the “no internal gun” idea on the F-4 in Vietnam.  The F-4 went into service without an internal gun, and it quickly became apparent that it was a bad idea, necessitating the hurried development of under-wing 20mm Vulcan gun pods.

Surely even Microsoft can do better.

A little background first.  I like, and have gotten used to, Microsoft’s “Natural” ergonomic keyboards.  I find them more comfortable to use, and I can type faster and longer without incurring wrist or hand pain.

For close to ten years now, I’ve been using this keyboard, the Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro, on both my Windows box and my Linux box.  For my money, it was the best and most comfortable (as well as most robust) of the line.  It used a standard mini-DIN keyboard connector, plus a USB connector for its built-in internal 2-port USB mini-hub.  Despite its extra features, you could plug it into pretty much anything that used a standard mini-DIN keyboard connector, running any OS — Windows, Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD — and it Just Worked.  But they discontinued it in early 2001, probably for cost reasons.  Mine have been getting old and tired, and most of its successors have been worthless junk with strangely mutated key layouts, festooned with arrays of idiot buttons and more “consumer oriented” additional controls than your average TV remote.

So, last year sometime, when I just didn’t have enough keyboard to go around and desperately needed an additional keyboard, I bought one of these, the Natural keyboard 4000.  It proved in most regards to be a reasonably worthy successor.  On the machines I connected it to, running Linux and Solaris x86, it Just Worked.  There were some glitches; I’ve never had so many “key logically stuck on” events on any other keyboard, and the key caps on the first one wore away to illegibility in less than six months of use, probably because rather than being co-injected as most decent keycaps are, the Natural 4000’s keycap legends are simple surface decals.  (To their credit, Microsoft sent me a new one under warranty, no questions asked.  On the downside of that, the replacement’s keycap legends are already beginning to wear off the way the first one’s did.)  But, on balance, I was acceptably happy with it, especially since with a little trial and error, I was able to relabel the worn-blank keycaps on the original one using a white-on-black tape cartridge in a Brother P-Touch labelmaker.  So I had two working keyboards for the price of one.

Then, earlier this week, I tried seriously for the first time to connect the original, now-relabelled keyboard to my Windows box.  I’d tried it once before, and it didn’t work, but at the time I’d written it off as a configuration issue.  But I’d recently found the Microsoft “Intellitype” software CD that came with the replacement keyboard, and decided to try again.

Now, Microsoft keyboard with Microsoft operating system, with Microsoft Update available to download drivers.  You’d think it’d Just Work, right?

You’d be wrong.

I tried first just plugging in the keyboard, making sure USB keyboard support was enabled in vorlon‘s BIOS.  The BIOS recognized the keyboard just fine.  Windows didn’t.  Once I got to the Windows-login point, it didn’t work.  Windows wouldn’t acknowledge that it existed.

I rebooted, reconnected the old Natural Pro, ran the MS software installer, and let Windows reboot, plugging in the new keyboard.  Windows re-detected it as a USB HID device, but it still didn’t work.  I told it to update drivers.  It still didn’t work.

Knowing how poorly Windows copes with hardware changes (“Key press detected!  Windows must now restart!”), I rebooted again, leaving both keyboards connected so I’d be able to log in if Windows still didn’t acknowledge the existence of the new keyboard ... which it didn’t.

I re-installed the software.  It demanded I reboot.  I rebooted.  The new keyboard still didn’t work.  I moved the keyboard to a new USB port, cunningly convincing Windows thereby that it was a brand new and totally different device.  Windows re-detected it, searched for a driver, installed what it assured me was the right driver, and demanded I reboot.  I rebooted.  It still didn’t work.  But this time it did, after re-detecting the keyboard yet again, put a new icon on my desktop for a keyboard control-panel accessory.  I opened up the new control panel to see if the Intellitype software was looking at the right keyboard.  (Yes, I still had both connected.  Note that I wouldn’t have been able to do ANY of this without both keyboards connected.)

Intellitype for the Natural keyboard 4000 was looking at the wrong keyboard, the mini-DIN-connected one that couldn’t possibly be a USB-only Natural 4000. I pointed it at the right keyboard.  The keyboard still didn’t work.

I don’t entirely recall all the steps in this, but eventually I ended up having to reboot the machine no less than six times, four of them forced by installers, to get the keyboard working.

SIX REBOOTS.  To get a Microsoft USB keyboard to work on a Microsoft OS, on a machine whose firmware already supports USB keyboards.  A process that would not have been possible without a working keyboard.  The exact same keyboard Just Worked the moment it was plugged into a Linux or Solaris machine.

What’s wrong with this picture?