You didn't know this

Man, I haven’t posted here in a while. /c:

Surely, many of you have run into the infamous site ‘experts-exchange.com’ when trying to fix your computer. You know, it’s that one that has all those people who ask tough computer problems (uncanny the way they seem to always be same ones that you run into) , so that file-dweller super-geniuses can scurry into the picture and give them some helpful and informed answers to their (your) problems.

Yeah, too bad you have to set up payware/trial account thing to see any of the answers.

Really?

No, it’s a gyp.

Really. Try it yourself. See how long that webpage is? Yep, just scroll all the way down to the bottom of it to get to any of the stuff that matters. These chumps try to hide their information behind (below) a whole lot of nagverts and ’sitemaps’  to try and get ‘grandma-who-accidentaly-just-broke-the-Yahoos’ to subtract $12+ from her monthly income so that she can see something she could have probably gotten for free.  Apparently, there is such thing as a free (Crippled) account for the site, but you get so much smoke blown in your face that you can’t get to it without looking hard. I know that people have to make a living, but they probably don’t have to stab the computer-illiterate in the back first.

Experts exchange does give solid advice, I can give it that. Unfortunately, it’s presentation makes it hard for regular end-users to find the information. ( Pretty creative gimmick, though. I bet they have sucked the money out of dozens of hapless blockheads. )

Somehow, exp/exch.com doesn’t seem like the website I would want to be stuck alone on a desert island with.

Phisilophical tidbit of the day I

Question: How much would you do to get something free?

Ok, so first of all, let’s start this post off with a promotional link.

This link has been inserted here because if I am one of the first 250 bloggers to talk about it, I will get a free $5 DairyQueen gift card. Am I one of the first 250? probably not. Because once the first blogger posts about it, a few other bloggers will read the post and quickly  dash to their websites to post, and from there, it all goes down faster than a forkbomb on a self-reproducing machine. I might add that I also have  two free ‘wine.woot.com’ car decals and a baby blanket/plush toy set on their way to my house because I filled out an assortment of free online surveys.

I have no idea what I will do with either them once they show up on my front porch. ( But hey, they were free! )

Despite the word ‘free,’ everything comes at the expense of someone, be that the manufacturer or the distributor or the guy who’s dog peed on your rug the other day. But big businesses aren’t just going to start giving away their products free for the taking; people have to make a living somehow. So why does it seem like they are doing just that? They aren’t!

How can they do this and use it to their advantage, then?

Some of the time, they ask you to fill out some kind of product survey. Product surveys use your information to make their product more sellable.( Imagine that! :p )

The internet seems like the perfect place to do this, as  there are so many easily accessible people who want easily accissible (albeit useless ) free stuff. Of course, there are a few problems with this. People who fill out these surveys are usually ‘just here for the beer’ ( ‘just there for the bear’? ) so they could easily fill out a mass random/flamey/flattering or otherwise useless information without giving the company anything they really wanted.

Other times, a company might just give you a product (usually software, I guess?) for your consumption so that maybe t he company will gain mindshare with you and you will buy their products in the future.  This, of course, is useful to them because in a best-case scenario you end up donating to them and buying thier stuff.

Either that or they just go open source and pwn all other competition.

Another case is as linked to in the beginning of the article. By submitting, you gain a small ( To the company, that is ) prize and they get free advertising. (ROFL, I just realised that.  DQ is getting sneaky. )

I suppose a derivative of this is some black hat having you fill out all of your personal data in return for nothing, so that he can sell all of it to some huge annoying advertising company.

All this brings us down to another question: How would a cost-benifit analysis come out w/ this? Do I really need a 100% organic  ‘cute teddy’ plushie with a 1/6 size baby blankie tied to it? What about a decal I would have to peel off of my car every time I hung out with someone decent? ( much less TWO. )

The answer:

Yes, if you’re really really really bored. And fortunately I am.

Browsing better on USB linux persist systemsan

Ok so say you have cracked your head open trying to get a linux distro to persist on your flash drive and finally got it working. Everything works like it’s supposed to, becausie it’s w. It acts like a real (slow) desktop save for a few limitations with the disk.

However: there’s one problem with it: when you browse the internet, it uses a cache folder inside of the usb drive. This is very bad; It writes all of the websites to the ‘disk’, then deletes them when you clear your temporary files. It happens again and again and again until your usbstik is completely worn out and useless.

So it turns out that debian based (all?) distros automatically mount a dynamically-sized temp partition in your RAM on startup. This simply means that the system allocates it’s own piece of space in Computer X’s memory for applications to use. Since it is memory inside of a computer, it can be reused many, many more times than a usb drive’s memory can.

If we set firefox to store it’s temporary data inside of that RAM partition, it will make the life of the usb drive longer and also speed up page rendering.  Fortunately, the process for doing that is fast and easy.

Note: This is not just for usb drives. You can also do this on regular computers.

Ok, enough useless explenation:

Go to firefox in your linuxbox (if you aren’t already in it) and push ctrl+t to make a new tab. In that new tab, type ‘about:config’ in the urlbar.  We really don’t care about firefox’s warranty, since it’s open source. (; Click the button to continue. This brings you to the advanced settings menu for firefox. Right click some place that’s empty and go ‘New>String.’ Call the string ‘browser.cache.disk.parent_directory’ ( Minus quotes, of course. )  Store the data ‘/dev/shm’ (where the temp partition is mounted, usually) in the string, then restart firefox. Now it’s saving its cache in the temp partition. You’re all set!

Cheepie UMPC

O_õ

Click on the link. Clicky Clicky.

Not exactly CHEAP, but it’s a fraction of the price of most of the others of that format out there. For ~$150 more munnies, you can get one with Windoze Hex-Pee on it (B1E) , or alternatively, one with a touchscreen (B1LH) .

Look at the cool ‘ergonomic’ design.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron (save changes) on a USB drive

-= ~(O_o)***THIS GUIDE WAS MADE OBSOLETE BY THE LINKED POST. IT HAS BEEN LEFT UP FOR REFERENCE AND ARCHIVING GO AWAY.***(o_O)~ =-

One of the problems with Operating Systems like Windows is that the
only way you can really make it ‘portable’ to the extent that you can
carry it around in your pocket is if you use something like BartPE,
which is really based as a recovery-suite maker. But that’s different
with Linux. You might now be thinking that a portable Linux operating
system would exist only in a special ‘condensed’ distribution featuring
ugly shoes (no offence) or a catchy theme song.
But if you think about it, USB sticks are the same kind of memory (sort
of) that we use in our regular computers’ hard disks. So why not just
install a full-size ubuntu distro on a USB stick? That’s right; why
not? The answer is this: Because if you do, the USB stick get’s worn
out fast, and stops working after a few boots. So the ppl at Linux came
up with a way of reading and writing changes to the disk when
necessary, and they called it ‘casper persistence’. However, in this
release of Ubuntu (Hardy Heron 8.04) it. doesn’t seem to work for some
reason. So to obtain ‘casper persistence’ you have to get in and fix it
yourself. This guide shows you how to get Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron onto
any portable storage device with 1 gigabyte or more.

Before you
begin the tutorial, it is assumed that you have the following:

–A portable storage device (Like a thumbdrive or something) with 1 gigabyte of space or more.

Recommended over one gigabyte, since the Operating System takes up about 800 megabytes, and you need some room for apps and documents. Be sure to back up everything on it, since you will be hopelessly wiping it all out in the first few steps of the tutorial.

–A computer running Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy heron.

If you don’t run Linux on any of your computers , and don’t plan to, that is OK. Get the VMware Player (free but big download.) And then get the Ubuntu desktop vmware applet *english edition* ( or whatever else you wanna call it. ) at that website. Yeah, I know its a huge download. If you want to save yourself some greif just use the TORRENT file with some torrent manager like U|torrent

–An Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 disk image .iso file.

If you had to follow the above steps, there is no need to downlode it again. Put it in your HOME/*username* directory.

–This file from Ryan Cloke’s Website. Put it on your desktop.

1. Okay, so let’s get started. First you have to set up your computers boot sequence with this guide. You have to move your ‘USB-STORAGE DEVICE’ listing to the top. This will force your computer to look at the USB port for an operating system before it scans the HardDrive for one. This option is not included on some older computers. Sorry. You might try a laptop or something.

2. Now that you are booted to Ubuntu Linux, it’s time to ready your Portable Drive to be able to handle linux. Plug in your memory card and move the ISO file you copied there earlier to the ‘home/*username*’ directory. (Whenever you see ‘*username*’ replace it with your username if you are using ubuntu as your desktop. If you are using VMware, then replace it with the word ‘jars’. The password for the VMware version is ‘jars’ also.

3. Now go to the terminal (Grr. Evil terminal. ) by clicking on the dropdown menu on the top of the screen Applications>Acessories>Terminal.

type: sudo su

Hit enter. You might have to type in your password if you set one.

fdisk -l

//FYI, that’s a lowercase L, not the number 1. Fdisk means Format Disk (It’s just the name of a program; it won’t format your disk.) and the -l means ‘list’

Hit enter…
and you get a list of all of the drives plugged into the computer. Usually your portable one has the smallest numbers and is near the bottom. Look for something like ‘/dev/sdX*’ (X replaced by the corresponding letter and * replaced by a number, if there is one there at all.) Remember it, or even write it down; you will use it a lot throughout the entire tutorial.

I refer to it as *thingyourememberedearler*. It is usually followed by a number. Type in the number also without spaces. It’s not a typo.

4. Now type in

gksudo gparted

/*Takes you into superuser mode (Sudo means ’superuser-do’. It’s made
for terminal applications, and Gksudo is focused more on ones with
‘button click’ GUI user interfaces.) and logs you in as the super user.
Super user has complete admin privleges and is included by default in
ubuntu. After it logs you on it will open up the Gnome Partition
Editor. You don’t have to read the entire wikipedia article on the
link, but it helps to know what you are doing. It is very dangerous to
edit the partitions if you do it carelessly. */

If nothing happens, or the terminal blurts out some kind of error, type

sudo apt-get install gparted

5. A window will pop up called GParted. On the right side of the window you will see a dropdown menu. Open that up and select the one with the text you remembered earlier. It is VERY important that you select the RIGHT ONE. There is a long box below that that represents the single partition on the thumbdrive. Right click on it and select ‘unmount’. If there are any other boxes beside that one, unmount them also. Unless you know that there is more than one Partition (Not gigabyte) on the disk, you have PROBABLY SELECTED THE WRONG LISTING FROM THE DROPDOWN BOX. CHECK AGAIN
IF THERE ARE TWO BOXES. Now click on the box again and then click the delete button near the top of the window.

6. Now you should see one big gray bar that says ‘unallocated’ in the middle. Click on it to select it and then click the ‘new’ button near the top to make a new partition on the disk. Make it a ‘FAT16′ partition with a ‘new size’ of 770 MB. Hit OK and then make another partition using up the rest of the spacewith a ‘ext2′ file system. Right click on the 770 MegaByte one, and click on flags. Check the ‘boot’ selection on the window that pops up and hit ok. That tells the BIOS that the computer can boot to it. After you have done all this, hit apply. These last few steps are very important, so here is a step-by step analysis of what you are going to do in them:

USB-Ubuntu Gparted steps

Numbers change depending on how big your SD card is. Hit apply. After everything is finished exit out of the terminal, which, in turn, will exit gparted.

7. Now that you have a prepared USB drive, you have to prepare the operating system. First you type into
the terminal:

mkdir hardy-usb

//Okay, all that does is make a directory in /*username*/ called hardy-usb.

sudo mkdir /mnt/iso

//Same, only it makes a directory in /mnt called iso

sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso /mnt/iso

//Mounts your ubuntu disk image to /mnt/iso

cd /mnt/iso

//Goes to the /mnt/iso directory you just made. This is also where the disk image is, so there are a whole lot of files there.

cp -rf casper dists install pics pool preseed .disk isolinux/* md5sum.txt README.diskdefines casper/vmlinuz casper/initrd.gz install/mt86plus /home/*username*/hardy-usb/

// o_O That looks really scary, but all it does, really, is copy and paste everything from /mnt/iso into your hardy-usb directory. Just because it preforms a simple task doesn’t mean you can make a mistake in typing it. Best to copy and pate it instead.

cd /home/*username*/hardy-usb/

//Goes to the hardy-usb directory

mv isolinux.cfg syslinux.cfg

// Takes isolinux.cfg and renames it to syslinux.cfg, deleting the syslinux.cfg that’s already there. (if it exists)

sudo gedit syslinux.cfg &

//Opens up the default GNOME text editor: Gedit. It edits the file we previously renamedsyslinux.cfg. The & means that after you close gedit, you will goback to terminal mode. Erase everything in the text editor that pops up. Paste in all of this text:

DEFAULT usblive
GFXBOOT bootlogo
APPEND file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash –
LABEL usblive
menu label ^Start Ubuntu and save changes to USB
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper persistent initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash –
LABEL live
menu label ^Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash –
LABEL live-install
menu label ^Install Ubuntu
kernel vmlinuz
append file=/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper only-ubiquity initrd=initrd.gz quiet splash –
LABEL memtest
menu label Test ^memory
kernel mt86plus
append -
LABEL hd
menu label ^Boot from first hard disk
localboot 0×80
append -
DISPLAY isolinux.txt
TIMEOUT 300
PROMPT 1
F1 f1.txt
F2 f2.txt
F3 f3.txt
F4 f4.txt
F5 f5.txt
F6 f6.txt
F7 f7.txt
F8 f8.txt
F9 f9.txt
F0 f10.txt

Save everything and exit gedit.

8. Open up a new terminal and type in:
gksudo nautilus
//Thanks, Andy Woodhead.

Type in the password if you have to. A file explorer should pop up. Now remember that file that you downloaded from Ryan Cloke’s Website? well in the new explorer that you opened up go to the home/*username*/hardy-usb directory and click and drag the initrd.gz file from the desktop into the explorer to move it. Replace the existing one that was already there, or delete it beforehand.
9. Type:

sudo umount /dev/*thingyourememberedearlier*1
//Unmounts the first partition in the USB drive. The the linux partition.

sudo umount /dev/*thingyouremembmeredearlier*2
//Unmounts the second partition in the USB drive.

sudo mkfs.vfat -F 16 -n UbuntuLive /dev/*thingyourememberedearlier*1
//This formats the linux partition to what we need it to be. You can change ‘UbuntuLive’ with any 9-letter klaus you want the usb drive to be called.

sudo mkfs.ext2 -b 4096 -L casper-rw /dev/*thingyouremembmeredearlier*2
// This formats the memory partition to what we need it to be. Don’t change the ‘casper-rw’. Nuff said.

sudo mkdir /mount/usb
// Makes a directory in /mount called usb

sudo mount /dev/*thingyourememberedearlier*1 /mount/usb
// Mounts your linux partition in the /mount/usb directory you made earlier.

cd /home/*username*/hardy-usb
// (c:

sudo cp -rf .disk * /mount/usb
// Copies EVERYTHING in the hardy-usb directory to the linux partition.

sudo umount /mount/usb
// Unmounts whatever is mounted in /mount/usb.

sudo apt-get install syslinux mtools
// Installs the syslinux mtools packages.

sudo syslinux -f /dev/*thingyourememmberedearlier*1
//Uses syslinux to fix the linux partition one last time.

You are done!!!
Reboot and see how it works!

Based on (but not the same as) a guide by Ryan Cloke.

Comment if you have any problems and I will try and help in any way that I can.

-= ~(O_o)***-=THIS GUIDE WAS MADE OBSOLETE BY THE LINKED POST. IT HAS BEEN LEFT UP FOR REFERENCE AND ARCHIVING. GO AWAY.***(o_O)~  =-

Enthdegree discovers Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is a firefox extention that changes the way some things are displayed using JavaScript. (note; not Java.) It has tons of user-made scripts that handle how firefox handles things. It won’t work on Flash, though. I heard the name a few years ago, but thought that it was illegal or something, so I didn’t look it up or anything.

Some typical greasemonkey scripts include:

• Auto fill forms.
• Alter the formatting of text, borders, graphics, etc. (For example, highlight first-run programs in a TV listing.)
• Remove specific content, such as advertising, popups, even whole sections of a page. (For example, filter specific posters from a message board site.)
• Alter page content and layout beyond what the author considered. (For example, add table headers, floating elements, etc.)
• Add links, buttons, or any other type of HTML element anywhere on the page. (For example, embed Google Reader into Gmail, thus providing an RSS feed option.)
• Enhance the content of pages by correlating information from related pages on the same site, and/or other sites. (For example, show a list of competing retailers’ prices for the same product.)
• Add extended JavaScript behavior to pages. (For example, discover RSS feeds on the current page, displaying them in a floating panel. Let the user save an FLV file from popular video streaming sites such as Google Video, YouTube, and Facebook.)

Quoted from Wikipedia.

The first thing that I thought when I started using it was that ‘people could make malicious scripts to steal information.’ That is true, but the community is trying hard to tell everyone whether scripts are safe or not. The big website for downloading them even lets you look at the code before installing it. If you can determine whether it is safe or not, you should be fine. The community reviews lots of the scripts also, so that’s good.

I have only just started really using it, so the only scripts I have enabeled right now are:

Secure Wiki

Google Secure Pro

YouTube Lyrics

WordPress Comment Ninja

Spambots continue to function more efficently and so does my browser

I continue to get ~900+ spam a day for reasons unknown. Maybe the wordpress staff will do something about it. I still think it’s from the little ‘possibly an announcement’ post.

Atleast ASKIMET catches everything.

Cool wikihow page that I blogged with some code google gave me:

How to Make Firefox Load Pages Faster

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Firefox is cool, and it can be tweaked to load broadband pages extra fast. Here’s how.

Steps

1. Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:network.http.pipelining,network.http.proxy.pipelining,network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
2. Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
3. Alter the entries as follows:
4. Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
5. Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
6. Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to 8. This means it will make 8 requests at once. There is no point setting it higher then 8 as it is capped at 8 max. [The default value for this setting is 4]
7. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
8. If you’re using a broadband connection you’ll load pages MUCH faster now!

Tips

• Alternately, you could install Fasterfox, an extension which does some of this automatically, and makes tuning easier.
• To alter the entries, double-click on the one you wish to alter
• For more information on Firefox Tuning see the Firefox Tuning sticky thread at the independent MozillaZine forums.
• Also the MozillaZine Knowledge Base on Network entries in about:config and what they do.
• You can also run Firefox in your RAM (no reading from the HD means faster Firefox) by following this article.
• If you have problems like slow down, pages not loading or images loading weird, just undo the tweaks in about:config

You can also do this in the Internet explorer browser, In opera an alternative is: go to opera:config and go to performance. Then change the max number of connections to 32

Warnings

• Take note that doing this can actually make certain pages run SLOWER.

Related wikiHows

• How to Change the Language of Pages in Mozilla Firefox

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Make Firefox Load Pages Faster. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Anonymous?

Just how anonymous are YOU?

Geo Web Tool

Seriously, this thing is SCARY. Look at how much they can find out about you using JUST an IP address.
O.o

Active Desktop Tutorial (Or 'Setting a WebPage as your Desktop Background')

ActiveDesktop is something that lets you set a single webpage as a fully functional desktop background. For this set of instructions, I will use the play.clubpenguin website to demonstrate the Flash Capabilities of it. Windows hides a whole lot of cool little features deep within a set of cryptic forms for reasons unknown. One more reason to get linux. (c:

1. Ok, so the first thing that you do is right click anywhere on an empty part of your desktop.
2. Select ‘Properties’ from the dropdown menu, and click on the ‘Desktop’ tab.
3. Hit the big ‘Customize Desktop…’ button near the bottom and go to the ‘Web’ tab.
4. Make a new entry on the big selection box by clicking on the ‘New…’ button.
5. This pops up a little ‘wizard’ thing. Type in ‘play.clubpenguin.com’ or ‘play.clubpenguin.com/load.swf’ if you want it to be fullscreen.
6. After you are done click ‘OK’ .
7. Ok out of anything else if it prompts you until you get back to the ‘Desktop Items’ form.
8. Now select the new entry you just made and click on ‘Properties’.
9. You can check or uncheck ‘Make this page available offline’ here, if you want to. I usually leave that unticked on the laptop because sometimes I’m not at a place with internet connectivity.
10. OK out of everything. The ‘Display Properites’ form should take a lo-o-o-ong time.
11. A little box should pop up on your desktop. If it doesn’t make sure you followed this howto properly.
12. Move your cursor to the top of the box and click on the completed square to maximize it.
13. Now you have your ActiveDesktop! Feel free to fool around with it some. You have to admit, though, that the white ClubPenguin background looks pretty ugly as a desktop background. Let’s change it.
14. Open up Internet Explorer. If it’s not set as your main browser, go Start>All Programs>Acessories>System Tools>Internet Explorer (no add-ons).
15. Wait for the webpage to load and then click on ‘Tools’ on the control toolbar.
16. Click ‘Internet Options’ from the dropdown menu.
17. Click the ‘Accessibility’ button and then tick the ‘Ignore colors specified on webpages’ option.
18. Ok out of that then hit the ‘Colors’ button.
19. Select a pretty dark color for the ‘Background’ color picker, and a very light one for the ‘Text’ one.
20. Now apply all your changes by ‘Ok’-ing and exiting out of everything. Your background should refresh and when it comes back up, it will be the colors you selected!

Note that steps #13-20 change the entire formatting of all of your IE webpages, which means helpfiles, and anything else that uses internet explorer to render will use the colors you selected. Even IE itself will use them, so the background and text color of webpages will have your colors. Just don’t use InternetExplorer. Firefox is way better. :tongue:

EnthDegree gets a Tor server

This means that you can use part of my internet connection as a router through the tor network. However, I have a strict exit policy, which disables you from making my relay as an exit node. That means that if anyone was to use my relay, it would just route them through it to another one, not display onself as me.