(Note: my post title was the original name for the video until someone flagged it for content)

Well with YouTube you’re in luck – as of the date of this post, there have been no changes to the Channel Uploads RSS feed. It has just been hidden from your browser’s “Subscribe” feature. All you have to do is take the existing YouTube Channel Uploads subscription in your feed reading software, and copy and paste into a new one with the channel name changed.

NOTE: These instructions only apply to the Channel Uploads feed.

The Channel Uploads feed for YouTube user HowToVanish is:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/howtovanish/uploads?alt=rss&v=2&orderby=published&client=ytapi-youtube-profile

Replace “howtovanish” in the above example with the name of the channel you wish to subscribe to, and you have that channel’s RSS feed.

Enjoy!

If you’re like me, you’re probably pissed off that the crucial Firefox extension Adblock Plus, with its new Version 2 has become crippled by a sleazy payoff to allow “non-intrusive” advertising from a whitelist maintained by the developer. “75% of users agree” with yet another tech-industry sellout based on some alleged “user survey”.

Quotes from the help file:

Which ads are “acceptable”?

We currently have the following requirements:

• Static advertisements only (no animations, sounds or similar)
• Preferably text only, no attention-grabbing images
• At most one script that will delay page load (in particular, only a single DNS request)

These criteria are not final, we are working on improving them. In particular, we want to require that user’s privacy is respected (mandatory Do Not Track support). However, we are not yet in a position to enforce that requirement.

How can I see what you are allowing?

The “Allow non-intrusive advertising” checkbox simply adds one more filter subscription to your list.

And while you can disable this “checkbox”, the whitelist remains available at:

easylist-downloads dot adblockplus dot org slash exceptionrules dot txt

As of the date of this post, the whitelist includes (of course) one of the major godmothers of all tech-industry whores, Google, and a few other advertisers like Sedo’s domain parking.

However, if you don’t trust the “checkbox”, you may stop Adblock Plus from polling the whitelist.
This has been tested on Firefox 8.0 and Adblock Plus 2.0.1.

1. First disable the “Allow non-intrusive advertising” checkbox in Adblock Plus’s Filter Preferences.
2. In your Firefox URL bar, type “about:config” and press Enter. If you get a message about “voiding your warranty”, ignore that and proceed.
3. In “Filter”, type in “extensions.adblockplus.subscriptions_exceptionsurl”. This Preference Name, with Value showing the whitelist URL, should appear
4. Right-click the “extensions.adblockplus.subscriptions_exceptionsurl” under Preference Name, and click Modify.
5. Delete all the text in the dialog that pops up (usually pressing Backspace will clear it completely)
6. Click OK, close, and restart Firefox.
7. Enjoy the privacy, control, choice, and browsing experience Adblock Plus once gave you!

I also suggest that in addition to Easylist, you use unofficial lists such as Fanboy’s:

fanboy dot co dot nz

As I’ve stated before, Slackware is the purest when it comes to maintaining control over your own physical property. I’ve mentioned frequently on this blog my opposition to involvement by the NSA and other crooks in the development, as well as the “Google/Mozilla/Kernel Foundation/GNU Project/CIA/NSA/etc-can-do-no-wrong” sheepish attitudes which empowers them politically and financially, but Slackware is well known for its simplicity, not carrying stuff like SELinux and PAM and focusing on the individual compiling source code rather than the dependency hell all the other distros have. The remaining spook taint (at least what they tell us exists) can be compiled out of the kernel, you can customize things and disable daemons you don’t want. Slackware takes a lot of crap for its DIY nature as opposed to pre-packaged Winjunk distros like Ubuntu, but it’s totally worth it.

To make room in my super-packed dresser, have been going through old clothes. I don’t wear sweatshirts or sweaters anymore, so they just take up space, and I have lots of very-old T-shirts which either don’t fit or are in bad condition. I have two bags of clothes so far and will probably have one or two more, and will eventually give them to charity.

I still haven’t had a chance to watch a movie I got off eBay, leaving the seller waiting for feedback. I should be able to sit down and watch the movie soon.

Also started taking Tae Kwon Do earlier this month. Have taken two classes already, was terrible at the first class but did much better the second time around.

I’m off to sleep. Just had to get a blog post in there since it’s been almost a month.

This led to some changes on the site which are user-friendly and non-intrusive. Unlike Google AdSense, which I used years ago with moderate success (and tried again briefly before shutting down the account a few months ago), Amazon Associates requires a purchase of some kind (with certain exceptions) at Amazon. So placing banner ads all over the place is useless.

So far, this is what I’m doing:

• Banner ad on the bottom of the “About Us” page (which also includes the Amazon Associates required notice)
• Banner ad on the sidebar
• All links to Amazon (or Amazon searches/products/etc.) on previous posts have a referral tag added. This will also occur in future posts.
• The word “Amazon” (if I’m referring to the store) will always be linked to the referral page. Previous posts have been updated as well.
• Some posts (mostly the “column” and “rant” type posts), as well as the “Download Library” and “Software (TI Calculator)” tabs above, will have image links to four related products manually chosen (but not necessarily endorsed) by the X-Cop Fly Company. Occasionally banner ads will be utilized instead. I am slowly working on this for backdated posts.

Hopefully this will work well for me. I get lots of visitors, but too few people click Google ads, and their contract is extremely strict in terms of what you can do on your site and with their ads. Amazon Associates seems a lot more Webmaster-friendly – we’ll see how things work out.

(Post last updated October 25, 2011.)

UPDATE 8/31: Power back this afternoon – we’re back in action! Fixed missing link to flag and added thumbnail.

I am blogging here from the Milford, PA library computers because the hurricane has left us without power for two days now. In the towns everything is mostly fine, but not true of the woods where I live. Fortunately I was able to access a shower and was even more lucky to reserve an hour of Internet time, after getting frustrated at attempting to use the library’s wireless login system with Vista.

Rumors are circulating of electric companies shifting personnel further down the river to a flooded nuclear power plant. According to the blog Environmental Leader, there are damaged nuclear power plants (and lots of other things damaged), and there are almost 6 million without power on the east coast (several thousand in my county).

I have to head back home now and can’t search for any info on this, sorry. If you can e-mail me (see “About Us” for my email) before I can access a computer again, I’ll credit you.

Thank you.

Here is a direct link to the paleolibertarian flag (a hybrid of the anarcho-capitalist flag and the Gadsden flag) on the sidebar everyone seems to be searching for. I found it by searching Google Images. Click the thumbnail below to download the image:

Or does it?

A whistleblower came forth and stated in a private e-mail, which OpenBSD leader Theo de Raadt published to encourage auditing and removing of the offending code:

My NDA with the FBI has recently expired, and I wanted to make you aware of the fact that the FBI implemented a number of backdoors and side channel key leaking mechanisms into the OCF, for the express purpose of monitoring the site to site VPN encryption system implemented by EOUSA, the parent organization to the FBI. Jason Wright and several other developers were responsible for those backdoors, and you would be well advised to review any and all code commits by Wright as well as the other developers he worked with originating from NETSEC.

This is also probably the reason why you lost your DARPA funding, they more than likely caught wind of the fact that those backdoors were present and didn’t want to create any derivative products based upon the same.

This is also why several inside FBI folks have been recently advocating the use of OpenBSD for VPN and firewalling implementations in virtualized environments, for example Scott Lowe is a well respected author in virtualization circles who also happens top [sic] be on the FBI payroll

You can read the OpenBSD mailing list post here. A less technical, easier-to-understand article is available on Hacking Expose.

I apologize to every reader of my blog for saying that OpenBSD was free of corporate and government taint. I also applaud Theo de Raadt’s publication of this whistleblowing, and hope that it will not only clean up BSD variants, but finally wake up the open-source sheep that unconditionally support every product, decision, and action connected to the Linux kernel team, the Free Software Foundation, and Google and get some serious reform done.

I’d love to see a new open-source OS in which:

• Donations from active developers only – all external funding is refused.
• BSD or similar permissive licensing is used, so that one will be free of the moneyed Free Software Foundation’s management decisions regarding future license versions. Even if “or at your option, any later version published by the Free Software Foundation” is taken out of the default template, changes in treaty and law (the reason for the GPLv3) would render the project legally stuck and thus still subject to the FSF’s management.
• In order to join the official development team, developers must sign a contract, swearing under penalty of perjury that they are not acting in the interest or on the payrolls of multinational corporations, tax-deductible nonprofits, governments and/or espionage.
• To counteract other distributions and operating systems which exploit the permissive licensing to engage in digital rights management or secret backdoors, the developers would “authorize” uses of the code which are “pure” and “free of corrupt influence”. If needed, the 3-clause “New BSD License” rather than the 2-clause “Simplified BSD License” could be used to prevent fraudulent endorsements.

Until then, assume every operating system and every distribution has been tampered with by the moneyed and powerful.

Mentioning or linking to Wikipedia (or Wikimedia Commons, or any of their leecher sites, WAPedia, Answers.com, etc) on a Google-indexed Web site results in a higher position in Google search results for Wikipedia articles.

This tutorial need not require a domain name – follow these tips on your Blogspot blog, Facebook entry, even the description field of the YouTube video you’ve just uploaded, to weaken the influence of this wannabe-Orwell bullied teenage reject narcissism fest on Google, Yahoo, and the minds of you and your children:

1. Avoid mentioning the word “Wikipedia” (or “Wiki pedia” or something similar) in your articles.
2. Avoid linking to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, WAPedia, Answers.com, etc. in your articles. For example, when linking the word Slackware Linux, link to slackware.com rather than the Wikipedia entry for Slackware Linux.
3. When I left Facebook, the “Likes” system was being centralized around Wikipedia articles. Use the unofficial Facebook “Like” pages instead of Facebook’s Wikipedia-based ones, or use Facebook “Groups” instead. (I don’t know if this is still possible.)
4. Link to entries on Wikipedia alternatives like Conservapedia, Anarchopedia, Infoanarchy, and Wikia-based wikis.
5. Word of mouth
6. Create your own (intelligent) pages on the same subjects. Do not use Wikipedia’s content. Be sure to make it as visible as possible (do not use noarchive, nocache, block via robots.txt, etc.)
7. Don’t visit Wikimedia Commons sites or Wikipedia leecher sites for any reason. Block them out in a filter if you have to.

Even though you can’t see the effects of your boycott, you individually are still making a very small effort, and you’ll feel proud that you’ve done your part in protecting the minds of children and adults from this behemoth of junk. It’s easy – there is nothing to lose, just follow the tips above (and invent your own) and keep your effort going!

Rather than go on a standard political rant about this issue like any other blogger would, I thought I’d apply this to each amendment in the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution.

(Note that the content in this article may not apply to blogs hosted on major “community” sites such as Google and Myspace. Since they are run by major corporations, with Myspace owned by the parent company of Fox News, they may be subject to the same/similar issues as Twitter and Facebook.)

1st Amendment: No Establishment of Religion (basis for “Separation of Church and State”), Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Peaceful Assembly, Right to Petition the Government:
Blogs have empowered the people more than ever, as they expose media bias and blackouts, political scandals, and more corruption you would never find out about on TV or radio. Information about diverse religions and philosophy available on the Internet is discouraging many parents from vaccinating their children by temporarily changing their religion or claiming an exemption. Some religious issues reported by Media 1.0, such as sexual abuse issues in the Catholic Church, have been subject to further debate on blogs – for example, the role of the vow of celibacy required by most priests. Material critical of Islam, such as the movie Fitna and depictions of Muhammad, freely spreads through blogs, causing Islamic theocracies to play whack-a-mole, banning entire Web sites and threaten to execute their owners. As a means of news, blogs containing audio and video, such as embedded material uploaded onto YouTube, have enabled individuals to “broadcast”, regardless of archaic laws. Broadcast licensing was originally designed to prevent interference according to issues not present in the age of GPS, satellites, digital transmissions, and “simulcasting” (the ability to put multiple channels in a single frequency, such as with Digital TV and HD Radio). However, they eventually became a means of media control. It took many media blackouts for obscure anti-establishment politician Ron Paul to gain media exposure in 2008, and in the 2004 Democratic primaries an antitrust-minded man named Howard Dean was mocked out of the race over a pep rally. Many grassroots campaigns, spread via blogs, have been highly successful. The Internet has made it easy to send e-mails and faxes to Congressmen and -women, as well as make laws and transcripts available for full viewing.
What gives blogs the advantage with all of this over Twitter or Facebook is the fact that if you own or lease the hardware running your site, you have much more freedom, since the less contracts there are, and the more privacy rights you have (Facebook is notorious for a mysterious “selling out” on the importance of privacy rights some time ago), the freer you are.

2nd Amendment: Right to Bear Arms:
In a world of liberal and neo”conservative” media, true conservatives and libertarians have grown due to blogs. Efforts such as the “Ron Paul Revolution” presidential campaign of 2008, the successor group Campaign for Liberty, and Tea Party protests owe the Internet their success. In opposition to these efforts, bog-standard left-wing charges of “violent racists” and “angry white men” fly at innocent Republicans who now have a new opportunity to speak their mind. And unlike Twitter and Facebook, which respond to any one complaint by banning the user or material immediately, so-called “hate speech” and “harassment” accusations by the left-wing establishment can be resolved more easily and fairly with a hosting provider, even if similar bans are in their contracts.

3rd Amendment: No Quartering of Soldiers:
Many blogs, such as the anarcho-capitalist LewRockwell.com and Justin Raimondo’s Antiwar.com, frequently criticize wars, foreign policy measures, anti-terrorism laws, and the actions of the US military (in fact, LRC is banned from offices of US intelligence agencies). No longer are complaints about the military or government limited to our minds or homes – while none of us, whether criminal or peaceful, are anonymous to authorities in any way, blog pseudonyms enable us to publish all kinds of crazy ideological arguments without our families and friends even knowing. Again, Facebook and Twitter will shut anything “hate speech” down immediately.

4th Amendment: Search & Seizure, Warrants, Right to Privacy:
The establishment has grown very successful in defeating the protections of this amendment. Laws such as the Patriot Act have eroded this right, and social networks and search engines have become goldmines for both private industry and government agencies. Facebook and Twitter are no exception – those sites store backups of your actions even if you delete your account. Web hosts have their own privacy policies and law enforcement measures which may be much less invasive. Other laws, such as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, have granted these same broad powers to copyright holders, though in some cases they are used for purpose of censorship or forming trust-like “holding” organizations rather than copyright infringement.
And while Media 1.0 will censor or twist anything that reflects badly upon its own industry (or any other industry for that matter), and Facebook has “mysteriously” reversed its stance on privacy rights recently, blogs such as Slashdot have risen to fill in the blanks.

5th Amendment: No Double Jeopardy, No Self-Incrimination, Right to Life, Liberty, and Property, Eminent Domain:
6th Amendment: Right to a Speedy Trial, Nature of Trials:
7th Amendment: Right to Trial By Jury:
Acts which threaten the establishment have led to intelligence agencies and copyright holders to engage in dealmaking which is slowly trending towards entire leasing of your machine. Blogs have been reporting these efforts by Microsoft, Apple, the MAFIAA, and others, as well as reporting hacker attacks on remotely-stored personal data, which is sometimes marketed as “cloud computing”. After eminent domain laws were extremely loosened to allow seizure of property by Wal-Mart, bloggers not only reported the story, but debated the consequences. Trial by jury is being threatened through the expansion of forced arbitration, mandated by a federal law irreversible by states, including to Web sites about cartoon characters, rapists, neglectful murdering nursing homes, and consumer electronics purchases, but people are getting together and fighting the law, and some arbitration companies have left consumer dispute markets. The banking industry’s role in the current recession, reported by bloggers with an anti-establishment bias, has helped with this issue as well.

8th Amendment: No Cruel or Unusual Punishment:
Information regarding foreign wars have been reported by bloggers, with Media 1.0 dishonesty even being videotaped. Torture and other events at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would be easy to hide if blogs didn’t exist, and there would be less questioning the claims made by the President about national security and foreign dictators. The use of pseudonyms have encouraged people to discuss and debate the Israeli lobby without fear of being publicly labeled an anti-Semite, even if they secretly are one.

9th Amendment: Rights Not Limited to Constitution:
As rights such as copyright protection have been broadly expanded in length and scope, bloggers have been making use of Creative Commons licenses to waive such rights for the benefit of themselves and others. This even includes musicians who rely on a cult following and touring, such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead, who have left major labels and still kept their fans. Some have gone even further and released material entirely into the public domain, as controversial creationist figure Kent Hovind once did. I myself have released much of this blog’s content into the public domain.

10th Amendment: States’ Rights, Other Rights Belong to States & People:
Due to dissatisfaction with the establishment, fueled by blogs and the Tea Party movement, many libertarians have started a “Tenther” movement, proposing that the US become a confederacy where states have nullification rights over an ever-expanding federal government. Many want to repeal other Constitutional amendments associated with infringing on states’ rights, including parts of the 14th (birthright citizenship, bill of rights applies to states), the 16th (direct federal income tax), and the 17th (senate popularly elected like the house is, something I want to see repealed). Twitter and Facebook, once again, will shut down anything after somebody points the race card.

27th Amendment: Limiting Congressional Pay:
(part of original Bill of Rights, but not ratified until 1992)
Bloggers have been able to monitor Congress like never before, including not only laws and transcripts in their entirety, but also exposing financial and sexual scandals, ties to various lobbies, and other forms of corruption Media 1.0 would never report, and would be extremely difficult to spread via Twitter.

So I decided to find a proxy server based in Pakistan, plug the settings into Firefox and check things out. Google loaded just fine, but YouTube was replaced with an “Access Denied” page, and Facebook refused to load.

Another site refused to load – TheReligionOfPeace.com, an anti-Islamic Web site notable for citing violent portions of the Quran and keeping track of terrorist attacks since 9/11. They make a counter of terrorist attacks available as a small Web graphic, and if you’re not in Pakistan you can see that counter right on the sidebar of xcopfly.com!

So xcopfly.com is officially censored in Pakistan!

NOTE: From now on YouTube videos embedded here will make use of YouTube’s “Privacy Enhanced Mode”, which blocks Google’s cookies when viewing the videos from XCopFly.com (cookies apply when going to YouTube.com). Old posts are not being edited.

Claims that a blurry object in a satellite photo is the mythical Loch Ness Monster have sparked a flurry of interest among enthusiasts.

Security guard Jason Cooke said he “couldn’t believe it” after seeing a Google Image photograph of the oblong-shape moving through the waters in the Scottish Highlands.

“It’s just like the descriptions of Nessie,” Mr Cooke was quoted in The Sun newspaper as saying.

The object measures about 20m in length — the same length of a plesiosaur, a carnivorous marine reptile from the Jurassic period which “Nessie” believers say lives in the waters.

Full Article

For an example, note the tags chosen for this post.

Microsoft Bing apparently does not like the Azz Pizz Institute. Maybe it’s because we endorse Slackware Linux, Vim, and Web standards, and oppose copyright protection, liberal Democrats, and everything else supported/opposed on the side bar buttons.

But we make Google money, and they’re the most popular right now. (To be fair, Yahoo does place us relatively high.) Go Google!