I stumble a bit while trying to share my Windows Vista internet connection with a Windows XP machine. I did this steps:

• set the ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) on the Windows Vista machine and
• set the Windows XP machine to connect to the net through the Windows Vista machine.

Everything was fine and the Internet Gateway icon showed up on Windows XP network connection. Except that the Windows XP machine still can’t connect to the net. What to do?

Troubleshooting

The solution turns out to be simple. We only need to do this steps on Windows Vista:

1) Disable the internet connection sharing, if it’s already enabled. Don’t forget to enable the automatic IP address assignment.

2) Open Control Panel / Network and Internet / Network and Sharing Center.

Click Manage network connections on the left taskbar.

Select both LAN connection and internet connection. Right click and select Bridge Connections.

Wait a bit…

…until the bridge is enabled.

3) Right click on the Network Bridge icon and select Properties. Click Continue on the UAC dialog. On the Adapters box, uncheck the internet connection. Click OK.

4) Back on Network Connections window, right click on the internet connection icon, and select Properties. Click Continue on the UAC dialog. Select the Sharing tab and check both checkboxes. Click OK.

The end result should be like this:

It’s done. Wait a minute and both Windows Vista and Windows XP machines should be able to connect to the net. If this is not the case, just restart both machines.

Can Ubuntu use Windows Vista ICS?

In my case, no problem. My Ubuntu 7.04 installation can connect to the net through Windows Vista ICS. I don’t even need to set up anything on the Ubuntu machine.

Innalillaahi wa inna ilaihi raaji’uun…

Suharto, former Indonesian President, dies at 86 today, January 27th 2008 at 13.10 local time.

Indonesia’s former president Suharto dead
Indonesia ex-leader Suharto dies
Suharto, Former Indonesian Dictator, Dies at 86

Windows Vista is a vast improvement over Windows XP, in terms of visual appeal, user interface and security. But Windows Vista also has many problems. After using Windows Vista for a while, I can list a couple of things I like and dislike about Windows Vista.

Things I like about Windows Vista:

1) Better user interface on Windows Vista’s Explorer. New buttons bring formerly obscure features to the front. Much easier and integrated Search feature (no more need for Ctrl+F), new view types (Large Icons and Extra Large Icons) for image browsing and easier to navigate Address bar.

The new integrated Search feature inside Explorer.

2) Much faster directory display on Windows Explorer, especially on directories with more than 5,000 files or subdirectories. Try to display a directory with 6,838 files on Windows XP 32 bit.

Displaying 6,838 files takes no time.

3) Easier to navigate Start Menu, thanks to the integrated Search feature. Extremely handy if you have installed way too many applications.

Easier to navigate Start Menu, thanks to the integrated Search feature.

Things I dislike about Windows Vista:

1) Lack of driver supports. The first time I installed Windows Vista, I had no sound! The printer driver doesn’t work. Nor does the drivers for my Bluetooth dongle, Phillips Pinnacle PCTV Stereo and dirt-cheap Chinese-made webcam. Luckily the driver for my USB ADSL modem works. Otherwise I won’t be able to connect to the internet. The audio problem has also been solved, thanks to the latest update from Microsoft. I still can’t print, though.

2) Lack of software compatibilities. Software that runs just fine on Windows XP, doesn’t run at all on Windows Vista. I have an application that actually crashes Windows Vista and forces me to restart in Safe Mode to uninstall it. This has led me to search for Vista-ready updates, and if there is none I have to replace it with other Vista-ready applications.

3) Extremely cautious dialogs. Window Vista doesn’t trust me and need to remind me for almost every action I am about to take. Thankfully the default response can be set to be less extreme.

Conclusion: I like Windows Vista, but I also need my PC for work and I need to use all the devices inside. Its lack of driver supports doesn’t bide well for this. Perhaps I should reconsider Windows XP?

Update: Google lists this page in 6 minutes. Wow!

As I didn’t have much luck with Ubuntu upgrade, this time I install Ubuntu 7.10, fresh. Still, it doesn’t stop the problems that show up on Ubuntu upgrade. Here are some quick fixes for Ubuntu 7.10:

1) Can’t connect / browse the net

This has something to do with bug #81507. Ubuntu 7.10 activates IPv6 by default and in this case, we need to deactivate IPv6.

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

Look for a line which contains alias net-pf-10 ipv6. Change it to alias net-pf-10 off.

Save changes. Restart Ubuntu.

2) Can’t update / keep redirected to address 1.0.0.0 instead of archive.ubuntu.com

This is also related with bug #81507. This may not be a good solution, but you can somehow correctly redirected to archive.ubuntu.com by pinging it before you update.

ping archive.ubuntu.com

In my case, the update runs smoothly. Other reports that the update runs slowly.

3) Trouble activating compiz / 3D desktop

To activate compiz, we may or may not need to activate the restricted graphic card drivers. I use ATI Radeon X300 and I’ve managed to activate compiz without using the restricted ATI drivers. Anyway, we need to install compiz.

sudo aptitude install compiz compiz-core compiz-fusion-plugins-extra compiz-fusion-plugins-main compiz-fusion-plugins-unofficial compiz-gnome compiz-plugins compizconfig-settings-manager libcompizconfig-backend-gconf libcompizconfig0 python-compizconfig

Restart X by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. Try to open System/Preferences/Appearance and choose Visual Effects tab. If succeeded you should see four (not just three) different desktop environments.

If not, then you need to install the restricted drivers. Open System/Administration/Restricted Drivers Manager. Check to enable the accelerated graphics driver. Restart X.

Open the Visual Effects menu again. If you’ve got “The composite extension is not available” message, open X configuration file.

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Look for a line which contains Option “Composite” “0″. Change it to Option “Composite” “1″. Save changes. Restart X.

Open the Visual Effects menu again. This time if you’ve got “Desktop effects could not be enabled” message, then you need to install xserver-xgl.

sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl

Restart X.

Phew. Now you should be able to see the four choices on the Visual Effects menu. Choose Custom. Click on Preferences. You can play around now with the available options. If you want to the enable the 3D desktop cube, check for Rotate Cube. And don’t forget to set your workspaces to 4 columns and 1 row.

For 3D desktop cube — hold Ctrl+Alt, left click and drag.

To switch between tasks, the 3D style — hold the Windows key and press Tab repeatedly.

So, it’s been a week since I upgraded my Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 7.10. The upgrade process was pretty easy. I saw one flashing button on the Update Manager window, telling me to upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10. So I clicked the button and upgrade I did. Some 1.4 GB of download later I restarted the PC and Ubuntu 7.10 was ready to run.

Yippee!

Not quite. The first thing that instantly bothered me was that I could no longer browse the Internet! What the hell!? I mean, there always be a bug or two… hundreds. But being unable to connect to the net is just too much for a bug. I played for a while with my network setting before I decided to go to Google for some helps. But of course, the internet connection was no longer there, so I was forced to switch to Windows XP to do just that. Talk about irony

And just as I expected, there was already some posts on this particular problem. To sum it up, the solution is here. Something to do with IPv6. So I went back to Ubuntu 7.10, apply the solutions, and they worked! The internet connection is back.

I was about to forget this small issue when I stumbled upon other problems while trying to perform some basic Ubuntu operations:

• Trouble with Synaptic / Update Manager.
• For whatever reasons, FireFox crashes a lot now.
• Couldn’t start VMware Player.
• Couldn’t connect using ssh.

These glitches makes the new Ubuntu 7.10 no longer deemed as “Linux that just works“. Instead it’s now a “Linux that just works — provided you know how to patch the holes“. It’s a shame, really.

Ubuntu 7.04 managed to be a “Linux for human beings” and wins a lot of converts from Windows, including me. After all, the intended users of Ubuntu are the ones that simply want to set up Ubuntu once and proceed with their daily activities, without tinkering deeply into configuration files. Upgrading Ubuntu should not be a ticket to n00b hell.

Next step: I’m going to try a clean installation. If the same problems remain, I have no choice but to deal with the fixes. On the positive side, my current Ubuntu is quite messy anyway, so this clean installation is a necessity.

Update, November 5th 2007: Done with a clean installation. The first bug remains the same: can’t connect to the internet. Hmm… should I switch back to Ubuntu 7.04?

It was October 24th 2007 and Big Brother Google gave me a gift: a PageRank penalty. For whatever reason(s) one of my site’s PR was demoted from PR 6 to PR 4. I said to myself, “Here it comes.”

For months I’ve been troubled by Matt Cutts — head of the Google’s WebSpam team — posts, here and here, and Google’s ‘advice’ for for us webmasters to use nofollow tag to stop comment spammers. In summary, Google wants us to use nofollow tag for every paid links on our sites. Sounds fair enough. Google wants to minimize people gaming the whole link-for-vote system. But here comes the question: “How in the world Google can automatically tell between natural and paid links?” The answer is: No, it can’t. Faced with a simple <a href> HTML code, not even a manual review can tell the difference. This lack of clarity would set any webmasters into paranoia mode. Should we now put nofollow tag on every link lest we risk a special visit from the Big G?

I must admit that I’ve been playing with a grey hat practice for 5 months, selling text link ads via TLA on my ex-PR6 site. I did this while knowing that people who bought the links were hoping to get some link love from the site and not just to get some focused traffic. I did this armed with several guidelines:

• I wouldn’t give links to non-relevant sites
• I wouldn’t give links to bad neighborhood
• I assumed that Google automatic scanner can’t tell the difference between paid and natural links from the raw HTML code alone (yes, evil me)

But of course, I’m not the one who set the rules. Google does. And Google did demote my site to PR4. I don’t know how Google come to conclusion that I sold text links. But I can only guess that their methods are not that sophisticated. One glaring example is what happened to Brian Clark. His CopyBlogger blog suffered a penalty, demoted from PR6 to PR4. This despites the fact that Brian doesn’t sell links on his blog. Fortunately Google restored CopyBlogger’s PR later to … PR7.

The good news is, the organic traffic stays about the same. And my SERP ranking doesn’t seem to be affected by the whole PageRank gymnastic. Perhaps this is a mild warning. Or perhaps the PR value displayed on Google Toolbar doesn’t mean a tad anymore. If that is the case, then Google doesn’t want people to rely too much on PR value, thus discouraging the whole paid link business.

At the end of the day, I took no chances. I dropped all my TLA ads which resulted in revenue loss. And I realize that few people (read: nobody) will purchase a link on my site for the merit of the traffic alone. Google won and I’m left with a reduced revenue and an ex-PR6 site.

Oh well… back to work.

It’s been awhile since I read Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, an online book about how to stay anonymous on the net. On countries with dismal human right records, anonymous browsing is as vital as breathing. That, or perhaps you just want to lurk around below radar.

The book teaches several methods to keep a person anonymous on the net. The simplest one of them is to use TOR or The Onion Router. So, what is TOR and how to use it?

Quoted from TOR’s wiki:

What is TOR?

Tor is an anonymity network. It protects your privacy on the internet. Tor uses a series of three proxies - computers (or nodes) which communicate on your behalf using their own identifying information - in such a way that none of them know both your identifying information and your destination. Tor can also help people get around restrictive firewalls which censor web content.

Installing TOR

Sounds complicated? Yet its installation turns out to be quite simple. Ubuntu users don’t even need to manually download and install from TOR’s website. Simply type this command:

sudo apt-get install tor

Installing Privoxy

So everything’s set and we can start anonymous browsing? Not yet. We still need to install Privoxy, an HTTP proxy. Why bother?

Quoted from TOR’s wiki:

Using privoxy is necessary because browsers leak your DNS requests when they use a SOCKS proxy directly, which is bad for your anonymity. Privoxy also removes certain dangerous headers from your web requests, and blocks obnoxious ad sites like Doubleclick.

Install privoxy by typing:

sudo apt-get install privoxy

Next, we need to open privoxy’s config file:

gksudo gedit /etc/privoxy/config

and insert this line at the beginning of the file:

forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .

(don’t forget to include the dot at the end of line)

Save the modification and restart privoxy:

sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart

Using TOR with FireFox

To use TOR inside FireFox we need to change the browser’s proxy server configuration. Fortunately, there is Torbutton plugin that simplifies the task. Install the plugin, restart FireFox and check the bottom right of the browser window:

Click once on the “Tor Disabled” label to activate TOR inside FireFox:

That’s it. Now we need to test whether we’re already anonymous on the net. Open this address:

http://torcheck.xenobite.eu/

And if you can see a message like the one below:

then congratulation! You’re anonymous now (well, it has flaws, but at least you’re better off). Click once on “Tor Enabled” label to deactivate TOR inside FireFox.