[linux] Wubi and the 'no disk' issue

This evening I wanted to try Wubi at home. I already gave it a try earlier on my office computer, and it had failed with a strange error: "No disk" message box displaying "Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf7c 4 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c"

Same thing happened at home. I was quite disapointed and searched for this error on Google. The problem is explained here.

It turns out my Dell screen has a card reader. This card reader creates drive letters with nothing attached to them (until a card is inserted that is). This disturbs the Wubi installation script.

There are several ways around (such as clicking like crazy on 'continue') but instead I looked for a way to remove these 'empty' drive letters. And, I found a nice small tool doing exactly that, among other useful USB drive letter management options: USBDML.

Give it a try, it works like a charm. Now Wubi can install!

[various] market segmentation

Coding horror has an interesting post about market segments. I think it strongly relates to the euro / dollar / ip-based region locks problems I have been confronted with. I especially like this piece of the post:

Sure, don't make us customers think. Unless you want us to think about how much we'd like to pay you, that is.

Exactly :-) I see two possible outcomes for the current 'region segments' imposed by retailers:

1. They disappear
2. We won't be allowed to order oversea anymore, and shop websites will be unaccessible from outside the country
   

Guess what's most likely?