The Internet has gone on strike.

Republicans and other cultural conservatives feared the day the Internet at large and all its nodes would simultaneously collapse… we haven’t seen that happen yet, but we have seen industry collaborators get on the same page politically and take a stand against the war on civil liberties in the form of PIPA and SOPA. Who is supporting this terrible attempt at law-making? Those who don’t know that Intellectual property expires if you don’t maintain or share it, and some folks are trying to legislate their way out of that fact. The rest of us are taking a stand for what we believe is true. Information wants to be free, if you let it… and when you put a price on it, you’re essentially putting a price on your own head. The price of a troll’s head, technically.

@MCHAMMER says STOP! …. HAMMATIME

It’s no longer a secret that Elastic Provisioner, clients, partners, et. al. unanimously oppose legislation which attempts to control that which cannot be controlled… at the expense of the civil liberties which USA and other countries fought so hard for. In “america” we thought we were going to win some kind of war against drugs, but we were on them.. so we made peace with them. Now the war seems to be against online piracy. The same problem exists as before… people want drugs and pirated software, and those people are citizens… so it’s going to be very hard to control their behaviours. In fact, if we’re going to control them we’re all going to have to give up our privacy and innovation… just a little. Is it worth it? not really. The fact is that some people would prefer to make the Internet back into tubes again. I have decided to take a stand against it, and you’ll probably hear about it on twitter if you’re tuned into #STOPSOPA or #NOPIPASF or if you are attending The Silicon Valley PIPA and SOPA protest, brought to you by Hackers and Founders. If you’re taking computing personally, join us!

- Asher Bond

@PPLvPIPA: What sites are taking a stand against online erosion of civil liberties in the form of PIPA and SOPA?

Google, Inc.

WikiMedia / Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales has annouced that Wikipedia is abstaining from normal behaviour on this day of activism… unfortunately not in those words, but his were probably better. What I love about their implementation of the blackout is that their site appears to work normally until you submit a search query or click a topic, then all pages redirect to the blackout page.

The opposing political factions attack our Twitter account

This is from Tony Baldwin (one of my Diaspora friends).

What makes Ubuntu Studio more relateable than other Linux desktop distributions is that Ubuntu Studio allows for direct, realtime process prioritized access to drivers and peripherals. If low latency is your priority, you should download the Ubuntu Studio 10.10 Maverick Meercat DVD and install it. I decided to mirror both distributions of Ubuntu Studio 10.10. If you are running an intel based typical machine, then you should probably download Ubuntu Studio for 32 bit architecture. Else, if you’re running 64 bit architecture (AMD), then download the AMD64 DVD ISO. Be sure to tell your BIOS to boot from your DVD ROM and be aware that the typical installation method will wipe out anything on your boot drive.

Here’s a screenshot of my semi-opaque black terminal over the default Ubuntu Studio desktop graphic:

Ubuntu Studio can be installed on laptops and it can also be deployed as virtual desktop infrastructure using Eucalyptus to distribute and aggregate compute resources for scale. Let me know if you would like to know more.

You can also install it on a Mac. I’m running on a MacBook Pro 3,1. For more info visit:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro

This is Personal Computing with Asher Bond… Where Asher Bond takes computing personally.

Unbelieveably, Netflix is not yet able to provide streaming support… or even unlocked ACCESS for Ubuntu (the most relateable, extensible, and personal computing platform available) due to their arrangements with content providers. How does it work? I’m not sure exactly, but I’m guessing that the Netflix web servers look inside the http headers sent by the customer’s web browser. Compliant, honest web browsers tell the truth about what operating system they run on… but operating systems shouldn’t really matter in a web world, should they? I wonder if there is a good reason why Netflix blocked Ubuntu.

Ahaaaah… Here’s the problem… Linux can’t officially run Silverlight until moonlight is released and Silverlight is required by Netflix. I always wondered what Silverlight did.

About a year ago (roughly Nov 2009) JR Conlin @ Netflix wrote:

…Unfortunately, while there’s no restriction on what platform you can run our API on, there are various restrictions placed upon us by the content providers which limit what platforms we’re able to stream content to… (source: Netflix API Forum)

Don’t believe me? Here’s a screenshot sent in by Evie Ubuntis.

Ubuntu is a free operating system that is freely updated and freely maintained. People can download it, install it, and run it (and other applications inside of it) free of charge… Seems strange that Netflix’ content providers want to pull the plug on Ubuntu. Good luck content providers. Ubuntu, out of the box, is the cat that will continue getting out of the bag. If curiosity kills the cat, it will be happy that cats have nine lives.

I had a support inquiry that lead to this… me writing an imaginary scenario based on my strange imagination:

A Person Computing:

Your new Ubuntu software is worthless and it’s a pain in the )(*@#$&*@# …. I can’t even load Knotfix. No one uses this *&$)(@#$@&#. No wonder no one’s ever heard of it.

A Linux Person Computing:

The web browser detects your operating system and refuses to continue. How does it know? Send me a screenshot of the error.

Time goes by…

A Linux Person Computing:

You have got to be kidding me, you mean they blocked it??? Did Knotfix’s own partner network push Knotfix to block Ubuntu? It can’t be. I must be absurdly missing something. Let me look it up in a Gogul search Mogul. Yeah, according to the Gogul authorities, Ubuntu Persons Computing don’t seem too happy about Knotfix only working with Wondowses and UstabeFreeBSD UX Elite Ultra Wildcat Latest Edition Pro.

A Person Computing:

I hate this Ubuntu stuff… send me back in time when we had Wondowses and everything just worked the same every time… I don’t need you! I can get my fixit-boyfriend who works at the local best-bought geek farm to help me if I use Wondowses. He usually helps me through my auto-updates that I don’t do. Why do you tech guys have to keep updating the efffffing software!?!? If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Anyway Willis the best-bought Wondowses retailer says Ubuntu has interoperability issues. Ubuntu is stupid! No wonder you geeks have so many issues. You back end people are so uninteroperable.

A Linux Person Computing:

If 100% of the fastest computers in the world run Linux, then why should I have to sell it? Don’t you want better, newer, more interoperable, more extensible, more customizable software? Don’t I have something for everyone? Especially if it’s free?

Person Computing:

If it’s so great, then why haven’t I heard of it. I watch TV all the time. If you have something for everyone, then what the efffff does that mean to a non-technical slave-driver like me? Willis the best-bought Wondowses retailer says that Ubuntu has driver problems. Is that because Ubuntu isn’t smart enough to work with my elusive hardware?

A Linux Person Computing:

You don’t want me to go into why you’ve never heard of it. As a side note, the cloud is a pretty volatile computing platform at the moment. Ubuntu works great to power piles and piles of nebulocity that I use to provide infrastructure, platform, and other software services. Ubuntu can virtualize virtually any OS environment. Linux is good enough for the pros and the amateurs, too bad it’s not good enough for you.

Person Computing:

STFU.

A Linux Person Computing:

Of course, let me go back into to my secure shell where I have a better chance at getting some work done.

Person Computing:

Since, obviously you don’t know much about computers, I think I’m going to reinstall Windowses over this Ubuntu mess. I’ll call you for help when I need someone to help me with the re-installation and malware removals.

iWish the iPad had:

1. USB
2. Firewire
3. Ethernet
4. A Camera
5. Multitasking
6. Adobe Flash Support
7. A more powerful OS than the one running on iPhones

Realistically, I don’t think keyboards are obsolete. I was hoping the iPad would be a less expensive alternative to Jazzmutant’s Lemur or Dexter, but… it’s just not happening without the proper inputs and outputs and it’s just not happening without a proper OS.

Trending Tweeters prefer iTampon instead of iPad

There is a lot of hype forming around the iPad, but iWonder how it’s better than a regular hackintosh tablet PC. iThink things will probably improve by the second generation, but iDoubt Apple will be the only one in the market by then.

Updates since iPad Launched in Q1, 2010…

September 28, 2010: Announcing more interoperable tablet computers…

Here’s Research in Motion (RIM) annoucing another potential iPad competitor “PlayBook” a slightly smaller, thinner, lighter weight Tablet excepted to hit the market March 2011. Samsung’s galaxy is supposed to be $200-300. RIM target’s a corporate/government user base for the Playbook, but the price hasn’t been announced yet. I’m guessing it will be more $$ than the Galaxy, but maybe not more than the iPad. but the RIM device should help RIM pick up some revenue that they’re not getting in the smartphone market if they really sell the 6,000,000 Playbooks they expect to. The interesting thing is that… it’s a bit more interoperable. You can plug in [:

I’m more interested to be in the Kno, though. Maybe you’ve heard of it…

Kno Movie from Kno, Inc. on Vimeo.

From the commuter student or bike-riding user perspective, it’s nice not to have to carry as many books.

Formerly: “How To Fix Your Start Menu and Bring Back Task Manager After Antivirus 2008 (or some other virus) removed it”

“Antivirus 2008″ a.k.a “Vista Antivirus 2008″ is actually a virus. When you boot up, it runs all kinds of stuff you don’t want in the background of your computer. One of the worst things it does is disable your ability to stop processes from running in the background.

You know you’re in trouble when you hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE and you get the message:

“Task Manager has been disabled by your Administrator”

LULZ! You can’t even get to your Task manager to stop who knows what from running in the background of your computer. Wow you really got owned this time.

BEFORE YOU START

1. Boot into safe mode with networking and run Symantec’s Norton Antivirus or Avast (if you want a free one) from www.avast.com to make sure the virus isn’t running in the background anymore. You might have to download this from another computer or buy it from the store. Some viruses will even redirect you to their own web site when you try to go to symantec.com, trendmicro.com, etc.
2. Don’t put credit card information into a computer that might have a virus. It’s better to download the trial or buy it in a store.
3. Don’t use shady “virus scanners” like StopZilla or Viruses acting like anti-viruses such as “error cleaner” or “Vista Antivirus 2008″ etc.
4. Make sure that you have the latest update of your virus scanning software. What makes you think it’s gonna find the virus if the software hasn’t been updated for weeks.
5. Vista AntiVirus is probably running on every time your system boots up and it’s probably running as vav.exe. You might want to find and delete that file if your Antivirus program missed it for some reason. It’s probably under C:\Program Files\VAV. You can’t delete it while it’s running, but you can rename it to novav.exe and delete the other files in this folder. When vav.exe can’t find the files, it will crash and you can then delete it. Also delete folders named “Antivirus 2008.”
6. Run Trend Micro’s Hijackthis and remove malicious files from the system boot process. If you aren’t sure if the file is malicous or not, look to see when the file was last modified. If you got the virus recently, then that file may be one of the malicious ones. Look the filename up on google from another computer and see what people are saying about it. Watch out for .dll (especially random letters like c:\WINDOWS\xokvrpwg.dll) and .exe files. Also check for system policies like “DisableRegedit=1″. Viruses often change your desktop using Desktop component 0… file://somedirectory\index.htm. Delete these.
7. Continue with the rest of these instructions once you have scanned your computer and cleaned out the viruses.

Here’s how to fix your Task Manager:

1. Don’t panic. Don’t download any more “error cleaners” or garbage that probably messed up your computer in the first place.
2. Shut down your computer (by force if you have to) and boot it into safe mode.
   (If you don’t know how to get to safe mode, all you have to do is hold down F8 during the boot up process). LOG IN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Don’t see Administrator as an option? Hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE and type Administrator.
3. Once you’re LOGGED IN AS ADMINISTRATOR in SAFE MODE, click “Start”, then go to “Run”… Oh noez.. where’s run? Wow, you sure got owned this time. You can’t even get the run menu up in SAFE MODE. Don’t worry, you still don’t have to scrap everything and do a clean re-installation.
4. Right click the task bar and go to “properties”.
5. Click the “Start Menu” tab.
6. Click the “Customize…” button.
7. Click the “Advanced” tab.
8. In the “Start menu items:” list, go through and click all the buttons that say “Display as a link”.
9. Click “OK” after you are done clicking all the “Display as a link” buttons.
10. Click “OK” again to get out of the “Taskbar and Start Menu Properties”.
11. Now you should have your Start Menu back to normal. Try to find the “run” button. If you can’t see it, it’s probably because you’re in Safe Mode and it’s scrolling off the screen. Don’t panic, just hit the up arrow on your computer once. This should highlight the “shutdown” button. Hit the up arrow on your keyboard again and you will be at “Log Off”. If you don’t see “Log Off”, then you’re not logged in as Administrator and you need to go back to step 1. Hit the up arrow a third time and you will be at “run” (even though you can’t see it). Now hit enter.
12. Now that you have the “run” menu up, type regedit in the “Open” box. and click “OK”.
13. You probably will get a box that pops up saying “Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator” LULZ! You can’t even get to regedit? Wow, you sure got owned this time. Don’t panic.
14. WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL: Go to Start, Run and type gpedit.msc and press ENTER. This should bring up a screen that says “Group Policy”.
15. If that didn’t bring up “Group Policy” then you don’t have Windows XP Professional. I guess that means you’re not really much of a PC professional are you? That’s ok, you aren’t missing much.. you will have to type in this nice long command though:

    REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

    .

16. If you’re at the “Group Policy” screen, Click “User Configuration”, then click “Administrative Templates”, then click “System”. Double-click “Prevent Access to registry editing tools” and set it to “Disabled”.
    Note: If the setting already reads “Not Configured”, set it to “Enabled”, and click “Apply”. Then revert it back to “Disabled”. This ensures that the “DisableRegistryTools” registry value is removed successfully.
    Repeat this step for every item that says “Disable…” or “Prevent Access to…” (for example “Prevent Access to the command prompt”). Repeat this step for the CTRL+ALT+DEL options as well. This is where you can disable the policy of “Remove Task Manager”. When you’re finished, close the “Group Policy” screen.
17. If you still don’t have regedit back, it’s possible that the virus may have put a regedit.com file in your windows directory. Windows chooses to open .com files before it opens .exe files. If you get something different when you run regedit.exe, then you should delete regedit.com from your windows directory. Do a file search for regedit* and see what comes up.

The Problem:
For a long time I have been having a problem where I’ll be watching a Youtube videos, myspace videos, etc. (This is on a Windows XP computer by the way. I’m using Flash 9 and Firefox 2.0.0.14) Everything is fine when I first start my browser, but as I open more and more tabs in Mozilla Firefox things begin to go downhill. Eventually, Flash .SWF movies just simply won’t play for more than a few seconds. When the problem happens, a flash movie begins playing with no sound, then after 2 or 3 or a couple seconds the movie stops playing. I can fast forward it to a later position in the flash movie and it will play for another 2 seconds or so (without sound), but then it stops again. If I close out of Firefox and start it back up from scratch I can watch movies for a while until I open a lot of tabs again.

The Work Around:
It turns out that this problem is some kind of a bug (probably with the Flash 9 plugin for Firefox.) I guess I should probably upgrade to version 10, but I have found that I can work around the problem by closing out of all those extra windows that have extra flash movies in them, then refreshing the page that I’m trying to watch the flash movie on. I guess that works a lot better than closing out of Firefox entirely. If you find a better solution, please comment.

This morning I was bombarded with about 4,000 spam messages. All of these spam messages were relayed through Google Groups. Fortunately, Gmail has an excellent filtering and labelling system that made it easy to report all of these messages as spam very quickly. Here’s how you can fight thousands of spam messages in just a few minutes using your Gmail account:

Step 1
Open a spam message (any spam will do) and click the “show details” link.

Step 2
Click “filter messages from this mailing list”.

Step 3
Go to the “Has the words” box, and change it to listid:.googlegroups.com>". This will tell gmail to match the pattern .googlegroups.com in the listid header.

It should look like this when you’re done. Click the “Next Step” button.

Step 4
Create a new label for google groups. You can call it “google groups”

Step 5
Check the “Skip the Inbox” if you don’t want to see this spam in your inbox.
Be sure that “Apply this label” is checked.
Check the “Also apply this filter…” box so that the filter retroactively works with existing messages.
Click “Create this filter” and you should see all the spam moved from your inbox to your “google groups” label.

Step 6
Here’s how to report the spam:
Navigate to your “google groups” label (there’s a link to it on your left sidebar).
Click “Select All.”
Now just make sure it’s all spam and report it.

You can also select more than one page at a time, but Gmail won’t let you report multiple pages as spam. You can, however, delete multiple pages of email.