Piratpartiet + The Pirate Bay = sant

Today the Pirate Bay moved its homepage and search engine to the Swedish Pirate Party's servers. This is nothing less than a stroke of genius! Name the court that will support the motion to shut down the Internet access of a political party.

Sudo (make me a sandwitch)

Feeling adventurous (a desire to mess with computers) I decided that now that my spiritual well being is no longer dependent upon my laptop, I could use it for dangerous experiments like dual OS - in short I decided to install Ubuntu, while keeping Win 7.

Unfortunately Ubuntu 10.04 turned out to be less cooperative. In fact, it would not start at all. First I tried with a standard downloaded live-CD. It would not boot properly. I would see a small icon (which I later found out is supposed to be a keyboard) and then only a blank screen. (Back-lighted black is by far a more depressing sight than any concrete wall)

Since I had nothing better to use my pile of CD-R's for I reinstalled it, now at minimum speed - same result. Then I looked around a bit to find an alternative, more traditional installation CD image that could only install the operative system. The installation went fine, but was less successful. At startup I got the same blank screen and it also turned out that I had managed to corrupt my Win 7 beyond saving.

I then proceeded to reinstall Win 7 and ignore my laptop, which had by then fallen out of my good graces. But I felt I had not yet exhausted all possibilities, and Ubuntu was calling for me to give it another chance. So I did.

I installed Ubuntu as a program in windows (a light version that can be given no more than 30 GB of hard drive space), but all I got was the same blank screen. Determined to see this through to the end I downloaded the netbook edition and set up my spare USB-stick with a boot section.

This time I actually got to see a menu, where I could choose to run Ubuntu from the USB-stick or install it. Feeling in no way inclined to mess up my newly reinstalled Win 7 for nothing, I tried the launch option... And got the same old blank screen (which was by now becoming as familiar to my eyes as my desktop background).

It was not until now that I finally resorted to attempt the Google solution. As I should have known from the start, this provided an instant solution to my problem. It turns out that the Ubuntu people have failed at one crucial point; making Ubuntu load a generic driver for old graphics cards for which no driver is included!

When booting from the CD I had to press a key, any key, when that little symbol appeared in the bottom of my screen. Then press F6 and pick the option 'nomodeset'. Then boot. It worked. Seeing that my laptop was indeed capable of running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS I decided to install it.

But in order to boot the OS I had to edit the grub options from the boot menu. The task comprised of simply replacing the words 'quiet' and 'splash' with 'nomodeset' and then booting. The only thing that remained now was to permanently edit the grub settings...

I now encountered my last obstacle. Where to find the Ubuntu equivalent of the command prompt? No guide included this vital (for a n00b like myself) information! Youtube, however, seems to contain the most "for dummies" guides in the world, and here I could finally find out how to open the 'terminal'. Then, for the first time in my life I got to type the words 'sudo' and 'gedit'. The satisfaction I felt when I saved and updated the grub and rebooted to find that it was working was enormous (as is evident from this overly lengthy blog-post about me being a stubborn idiot and refusing to google my problem)!

Ps. Unlike any version of windows I have yet encountered, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS actually included working drivers for my built-in GSM modem Ds.

Marriage!

In response to Rik's comment, but mostly in general excitement: I am not getting married (that would really be a surprise) but my cousin is. Yay!

View

Sitting here in the living room I can look out the window at all the people passing by. Many of them are walking their dogs. There are also many cats. The day before yesterday I saw a guy on jumping stilts. That was cool.

Yesterday I saw a guy in a red T-shirt digging in the lawn, near some small trees. I didn't think much of it at the time, figuring he was planting something. Today, however, there are a bunch of people digging in the lawn. I don't know what they are up to. From here it looks like they are digging trenches, preparing for warfare against one of the apartment houses. Who are they? Why are they digging? What are they digging?

I simply do not know.

Finally!

http://www.socialstyrelsen.se/pressrum/nyhetsarkiv/1livsuppehallande

Virus protection

I've already told some of you about this, but I'm gonna go ahead and repeat myself.
6 am PT on April 21st (this Wednesday) McAfee released an update for their virus protection program, directed primarily at their business clients.

Soon thereafter computers running Windows XP Service Pack 3 started crashing or constantly rebooting. The reason - McAfee had gotten the idea that svchost.exe was a virus. (svchost.exe is a vital process in XP, accounting for much of the processor/memory usage)

According to BBC Intel was basically shut down. CNN reports that ALL of Intel's computers in the US run McAfee.

In Sweden Telia lost about 15.000 computers, and ABB have been affected. Systembolaget had to close 27 stores and many communes were affected. According to a technician at the University of Michigan some 800.000 computers worldwide were rendered useless. If that is true McAfee must truly have a whole lot of customers, since they stated that "We believe that this incident has impacted less than one half of one percent of our enterprise accounts globally".

Today I received this mail:
Klicka här för att se en webbversion av mailet

EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA

DATORKAOS I HELA SVERIGE!

"Halva Telia utslaget. 27 systembolag stängda. Stora problem på ABB, Svenskt Näringsliv och i flera kommuner. Allt resultatet av en dundertabbe när McAfee skickade ut en felaktig uppdatering av sitt virusskydd. Rapporterna om utslagna datorer rasade in efter att uppdateringen skickats ut under onsdagen. Enligt tekniker på University of Michigan drabbades 800 000 datorer globalt." (artikel ur IDG.se, idag den 22 april).


UNDVIK DATASTRUL!
Gör inte en McAfee - Välj F-secure genom Bahnhof för tryggheten!
Nu kan du testa helt gratis i tre månader utan förpliktelser.
Klicka här för att ladda ner F-secure från Bahnhof.

That's what I call excellent marketing!

Var ska vi sova i natt?

Ok, here's the thing. Somehow I have ended up with the most horrible dance version (with electronic voice) of this song. That version I linked you is however (if possible) even worse. Luckily there is another one.

I find it quite good, despite the dialect. However, it turns out it exists in Danish as well. (Try to ignore the dancing girls.) There is way more than one version in Danish too. Now, I started wondering which version came first. The lyrics are the same in Danish and Swedish, but whoever wrote it I do not know. As is often the case with Swedish Wikipedia it let me down.

A clue, however, could be found on YouTube. Turns out the original is actually Italian (!) This is the absolute original version of the song. The group, as it turns out, is the most famous pop group in the Latin world. So much so, that they even recorded this song in Spanish too. What little Spanish I do know tells me that the lyrics have a SLIGHTLY different meaning in the Scandinavian versions ;P

Oh, btw, on Så ska det låta they made Måns Zelmerlöw sing it...