Tubemogul – a flash tracker

I value my privacy quite a bit, so when I figured out how to make Flash ask me for permission to store info, I was quite pleased.

Except today… Today I’m rather annoyed. I was over at Second Life’s site trying to watch tutorials and there were 3, yes three sites asking to store info in Flash.
blip.tv (the video hosting site)
flash.quantserve.com and
tubemogul.com

The last two are trackers – they keep track of who watches what, what the person tends to watch over time, and other stats.

The problem? I had to click [Deny] to their request 3 – 5 times in a row and it was reasking me every 30 seconds.

OY! I’m trying to watch a video here, not engage in a battle of wills. Gah!

The part that annoys me the most? I can’t tell it to never ask again, like I could when blip.tv asked.

It’s not an option.

So I edited my hosts file.

No change in how it behaved (it still tries to annoy me into saying yes).

I went to the site so I could get the option to deny. Yeah, the site’s blocked editing the settings (data storage, access to mics / webcams).

So I guess the question is… how the fuck do I block this when editing my HOSTS file didn’t work!?

My computer, my connection, my choice.

Linux Link “Operation Not Permitted”?

I ran into an interesting snag today: one of my favourite games (Widelands) is installed on my second hard drive but has a save game folder in my home folder.
I didn’t like this (my home folder’s big enough as it is) so I tried to create a folder in Widelands’ folder and then make a (sym)link to it from my home folder.

Operation not Permitted.

No explanation why (that needs to be changed), but a quick Google search found the problem:

My Widelands install (and therefore the temp directory I was going to use for the saved games) is on a FAT formatted drive.

FAT (in whatever incarnation you have – NTFS, FAT32, whatever) doesn’t do (sym)links.

So… short of making the partition the game was on a different format (and wiping it in the meantime)… I moved my Widelands install to my ext3 partition.

Linked and off we go! Easy, once you know the problem.

Disable Slow Keys in Ubuntu

For whatever reason (long story involving a keyboard not working right) I had assistive technologies installed on my machine – you know, the ones that help the physically / mentally challenged use a computer?

Well, one of them was hindering my ability to use one of my favourite programs: Slow Keys.

If I held down the shift key for more than 8 seconds, it would ask me if I would like to enable Slow Keys.

Unfortunately, this dialog box makes anything you type not work / appear until it’s dealt with.

Annoying? Oh yes, and even more so as it tended to pop up UNDER the main window, so half the time I thought I was lagging / having technical issues.

The solution? To go into the settings for the assistive technologies:
System > Preferences > Keyboard > /Accessability/ > [ ] Accessability Features can be Toggled with Keyboard Shortcuts

I tried Googling it, nothing came close, so here it is.