Tech Blackout to Protest SOPA

Stop Online Piracy Act (Scary Facts)

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet

Biden on Internet Freedom

WTF is SOPA ? aka The American Government trying to ruin the internet

Related: Innovation and its enemies

(0) I strongly suggest you rename your existing connections to something shorter and simpler. Microsoft have introduced naming of the type ‘Local Area Connection’, ‘Wireless Network Connection’ etc. While there certainly is reason behind that decision, for a home/office computer I personally find LAN and WIFI better. Go to Start button and type View network connections in the search field. Click on View network connections contol panel widget. Then rename ‘Local Area Connection’ to LAN and ‘Wireless Network Connection’ to WIFI.

(1) Open Notepad and copy the following 3 lines. Each line should start with the command netsh:

netsh interface ip set address LAN static <ipaddress> <subnetmask> <gateway> <metric>
netsh interface ip set dns LAN static <dnsaddress1>
netsh interface ip add dns LAN static <dnsaddress2>

On the blog the <gateway> and <metric> are on a second line, but they belong to the first.

Substitute <ipaddress>, <subnetmask>, <gateway>, <metric>, <dnsaddress1> and <dnsaddress2> with the values, provided by your ISP or corporate network administrator. Metric can be substituted with 1.

Example:

netsh interface ip set address LAN static 192.168.0.100 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 1
netsh interface ip set dns LAN static 192.168.0.1
netsh interface ip add dns LAN static 192.168.0.2

(2) Save the file as something descriptive for the location, e.g. home.bat, office.bat or university.bat, giving it a .bat extension, instead of the default .txt. Make sure Save as type: is set to All files (*.*), otherwise Notepad will append a .txt extension automatically.

(3) Now open a new Notepad window and paste the following lines to have the settings automatically acquired by the network:

netsh interface ip set address LAN dhcp
netsh interface ip set dns LAN dhcp

(4) Save as auto.bat, again observing the Save as type: All files (*.*).

(5) Keep all the files together at a convenient place (e.g. a folder on your Desktop or elsewhere).

(6) Activate the appropriate settings by right-clicking the corresponding file and selecting Run as Administrator from the context menu.

Same approach can be used for creating WiFi presets, substituting the word LAN from the commands with WIFI.

Note: In the commands above, LAN is the name of the network connection. If you have not changed it, substitute with the default ‘Local Areas Connection’ or any other name you have chosen. If the name contains spaces, make sure it is surrounded with quotes, otherwise they can be omitted.

There are many commercially available software tools for creating and manipulating mindmaps. The premier free and open source alternative is called FreeMind. It is a high productivity tool, written in Java (runs on any platform that has Java – Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and provides all needed functionality for creating, editing and printing mindmaps:

So you want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don’t you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips of Robert Pirsig, described in his sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila. Do you want to refactor your essays in a similar way you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep personal knowledge base, which is easy to manage? Why don’t you try FreeMind? Do you want to prioritize, know where you are, where you’ve been and where you are heading, as Stephen Covey would advise you? Have you tried FreeMind to keep track of all the things that are needed for that?

Here is a nice overview/tutorial on FreeMind‘s main features:

Productivity Future Vision (2011)

Productivity Future Vision (2009)

Manufacturing Future Vision

Health Future Vision

Retail Future Vision

Banking Future Vision

Engadged reveals a little bit more about it:

Keynote – e-G8 from lessig on Vimeo. (via @yovko)

Please, share it with your friends, because it is important.

http://www.earthhour.org

Update: Other interesting services for tracking airplanes:
http://www.airnavlive.com – geo mapping of flights, similar to RadarVirtuel
http://data.flight24.com – live flight tracking
http://www.flightstats.com – live flight tracking

• capture the whole screen – press Shift + Print Screen to copy the whole visible screen, then paste in an application (can be either a graphic editor like Photoshop, or rich-text editor like Word)
• grab the current (active) window only – press Alt + Print Screen to copy, then paste in an application

These shortcuts apply to Windows, but there are the equivalent shortcuts in MacOS also. Just try different combinations of Shift, Option and Command keys together with Print Screen to see which does what.

Bear in mind, that some applications (video or games) use advanced techniques to display content, utilizing what’s called an overlay surface. In such cases, you may or may not be able to capture the window’s content.

Additionally, if you wish to record video of your interactions with a program, you will need to use a dedicated screen capturing application.

The First Major Motion Picture Made For The Internet
Only on YouTube… and it’s FREE

GIRL WALKS INTO A BAR connects a group of apparent strangers over one night across ten bars throughout Los Angeles. Zachary Quinto stars as a dentist who teams up with a feisty would-be assassin (Carla Gugino) to put the final touches on the plan to kill his wife. Once he makes a play for the assassin’s payment, he unknowingly sets off a chain of events that fuels a crosstown journey through the many lounges, bars, strip clubs and the occasional nudist ping pong clubs scattered across Los Angeles. By turns funny and heartbreaking, this sharp-witted comedy features ten interconnected vignettes that build to a revealing finish.

Girl Walks Into a Bar on IMDB and Wikipedia.