Having problems setting up your external hard drive with your Mac? A search for answers to "the underlying task reported failure on exit" leads one on a wild Google chase through useless Apple support documents, unnecessary Terminal command lines that return "bad super block: magic number wrong," and complicated Unix forum threads. It's enough to drive one mad, but the solution is surprisingly simple.

Note: this piece originally ran earlier this week at the Community or Die labor technology blog - for an audience of union leaders and union technology staff people.

ArsTechnica, one of my favorite tech news sites, has been reporting for some months now that the much-hyped One Laptop Per Child project has fallen on hard times. This is interesting news for labor techies ... although a little background is in order to explain why.