The last time I booted from a USB flash drive was back in 2006. Ever since, I keep failing at making live USB bootables.
I tried getting Fedora 17 and 18, Ubuntu, and tons of other distros to boot from USB and never succeeded. I also tried different USB keys. Every single time, I get either kernel panic, or a bunch of meaningless errors when trying to boot.
I am sick of buying CDs and DVDs to be able to boot stuff; I want to be able to use my USB drive.
I've been using this basic command:
sudo dd if=Downloads/myiso.iso of=/dev/myusb bs=1M && sync
EDIT: The reason for my failed attempts seemed to be corrupt hardware. I bought a new memory stick and the issue is gone.