If you do not know what the Internet Freedom Disk (IFD) is, please take a moment to read the first post on this blog here: Internet Freedom Disk - Introduction
A bit about That: For the geeks that got a bit testy in the comments last time I say this now: I did not invent the IFD, and the IFD is not new. Its proper name is a Linux LiveCD. There, I said it, there is no reason to comment on that part. This blog is for the many who simply do not know of its existence, amazing uses, and availability. Sheesh!
Bookmarking: As you pop your IFD into your CD and boot your computer you start to realize the bookmarks you saved last time won't be there today. After all, the hard drives were locked in the vault so nothing could write to them ... not even bookmarks from your web browser.
Its been great feeling the freedom to visit web sites without worrying if you were about to be attacked, being able to open all those email attachments about celebrities, and leaving no traces on the hard drive from your web surfing adventures, but not having bookmarks might be a too much to give up.
Well fear not. I wouldn't have brought it up if I could not offer you a work-around so here are a few ways. Pick the one that suits you best. These are in no particular order.
a) Join a bookmarking community like reddit.com, del.icio.us, etc. There are many sites that you can join for free where you can store your bookmarks. Whenever you log onto the Internet simply browse on over and log in.
Using the tabbed browsing feature of FireFox (which is installed on the IFD) you can use the first tab to always have your bookmark site available. When you go to click on a link use the right-click and select "open in new tab". This way your bookmarks will always be easily avaiable.
In picking one to use you may wish to find out which sites your friends use and join with them. If they haven't selected one yet, then you can all join the same one for now. After all these sites are about community.
Keep a draft email on your gmail account (or msn, yahoo, etc). This will work nice if you do not have a large number of bookmarks. But here you can simply open up the draft email and all your links will be avaiable.
If you have a new bookmark, you can copy and paste the link into your draft email and save it.
One reason I like this method is that you probably check your email every time you get on the Internet so this is already right at your fingertips.
c) Import/Export! Firefox can export its bookmarks to a file. To do this you select Bookmarks->Organize bookmarks and a window will open. On the new window select File->Export then you can select a location to save them.
"The location to save them" .... hummmm. Sure it appears you have a disk but that is all in RAM and is forgotten after the machine is turned off. Oh no:( Well just save it. The trick will be to put that some place on the Internet where it is easy to get back.
I do not want to get ahead of myself because I will be talking about saving files on the Internet soon. For now just understand that we can export our bookmarks to a file, and read them back in at a later date. This way we can use all our standard bookmarking techniques. AS LONG AS WE REMEMBER TO SAVE THEM!
As you have guessed, importing them works the same way, just select Import rather than Export.
Conclusion: Ok, so you have 3 great ways to work around not having a permanent storage attached to your computer and still be able to create bookmarks that will always be available.
WARNING: The IFD cannot protect you from phishing scams. This is where evil people create copies of web sites in an effort to get you to enter your user name and password.
The IFD is not 100.00% effective. And even if it was today, the evil people might figure out how to penetrate the vault tomorrow. So you still need to keeps your wits about you.
Thank you
33 comments:
Kewl. Downloading from ur fav as I type this. A full kiss on ur lips, eeeeuuuuu.
This is a great article, written with absolutely wonderful tone. As one of the "geeksters" you so fondly refer to, it was a real pleasure to read.
Great..... none of these (live cds) oops sorry, support the usb wireless network dongle i have.
they r pants.
u r a moron.
uuumm Are you serious? Have you been living in a cave? This is not new, not a "freedom disk"! Linux has been around for ever and the live CD for years..
BTW.. if you don't like the idea of having to boot to a cd ever time you want to be free, buy a Apple computer.
"That green stuff" is an open solitaire game.
"No time to fix your windows, use this in the mean time" is jumping the opportunity.
As a platform to spread free software i have some ideas for one general free software installer platform with room for all your preferences (distros, etc.): http://steltenpower.com/freedomdrive.org (soon on just freedomdrive.org)
Only if you offer phone support for all my gift getters cause I'm not doing it especially not on Christmas or New Years.
Surf with impunity! No way Jose! The crackers will get you and will install their rootkits in your hardrive. How is that? They mount your partitions,scan your files, get your IP, get back to you in due time pal.
I Believe you are over excited regarding the 100% secure philosophy you are trying to spread. Beware!
Great Marketing, this is what Linux needs to free it from us "geeks"!
An (easier?) alternative that you might want to mention is the VMware "Browser Appliance" and VMware Player. Also free, and runs in Windows, while protecting Windows from any malware people might pickup from surfing. Not as complete a solution but, faster and probably easier for most. It can sometimes be a little work to get knoppix on a wireless network. Get VMware player and the browser appliance here:
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/
I look forward to seeing where you go with this
Wow, if your gonna do this, why not get your "geekster" friend to partition your hard drive and actually install Linux there?
Honestly I know this was written in Layman's terms for people who aren't into computers that much but it sounds like its selling cheap insurance.
As for wireless internet devices, try installing and using NDIS wrapper, it works for me
OH JOY.
Nothing quite like feeding the fire of stupidity. Your upbeat 'tone' really says,
"Wow! You're too stupid to operate a computer without crashing it! DOWNLOAD THIS KEWL STUFFZ!!1one Even though people have been doing it for years, I'd like to pretend I've invented something new! HERE ARE SOME LINKS TO LINUX DISTROS!!"
...Idiot.
I'm a Linux user. I wrote this comment via Ubuntu.
But this "Freedom Disk" theme is lame.
It's Linux (or even GNU/Linux, if you prefer), it's not "Freedom OS".
(using the IFD called ubuntu 6.10)
... and if you klick on that nice little icon on the desktop called "install" you can even get rid of your MS-Windows.
THAT IS GREAT!
Live CDs are nice to "try before you buy", but on ordinary hardware they're really quite slow and annoying. Are you trying to tempt people to move to Linux, or are you suggesting they boot a live CD everytime they want to do anything?
(and calling it an "Internet Freedom Disk" is a bit misleading ... it's a whole OS, with OpenOffice (etc). Plus, most don't come with Flash -not much browsing freedom, then).
Why not just buy them a Ubuntu mug? Would probably do a better job of convincing them to use Linux.
There isn't ONE right way to talk to non-techs about Linux - if this works for some, and tempts them to put their toes in the clearer waters, then that's fine...
There are many PC users (on Windows) that are scared of doing transactional stuff such as Online Banking, or even using a credit card online - so using a live CD or a Freedom Disk or an "Internet Safety Disk" all works for me...
Ultimately dual-booting will be the logical way to go.
Ubuntu is nice, not for newbies actually. Knoppix has way too many stuff for people not to get confused at some point.
Include Freespire (http://freespire.org/) in your list, it's easy to use, simple and cute/pretty/shinny. :D
Cool article btw
Puppy Linux ( http://www.puppyos.com/ ) is an ~80 MB full-featured Linux on a live CD which loads and runs entirely from RAM (128 MB required for best results.) Thus it runs extremely fast, and frees the CD or DVD drive for other uses. It can run without a hard drive and save to the live CD or DVD, if the disk was burned as a multisession (best done with the burning utility in Puppy linux.) Or it can save to a USB flash memory (or a hard drive if you have nothing better.)
Wow, I'm not even close to being a techie, but this still sounded way condescending. Seriously, "the nasties"? Ok, we're not two years old here. And even I know that booting to a CD every time would be annoying. I've got Linux friends, I'll just have them install the real thing if I want it.
You should have picked a Freedom disk that can play WMV movies. As it is now, most users of your Freedom disk will have only still images for porn. Very late 1990s, very disappointing.
Nice push for Linux Live CD's... but Seriously... just call them what they are. Linux... NOT 'Internet Freedom Cds'!
You read like you should be selling used cars.
Linux Live = ftw.
To help with the phishing setup the live cd to automatically use the OpenDNS servers http://www.opendns.com/. I've been using opendns for about 2 months and it's been pretty sweet. And they protect from quite a few phishers. (Ignore spelling mistakes please:)
Well...This "Freedom Disc" aka Linux Live CDs is kind of lame...Why dont you call them with their real names...?
Anyway as a Linux user I believe that people have to start exploring different OSes than Windows.Although you tried to promote them,as you can see most of the comments make fun of you...Can you think why...?Next time maybe!
the other day I was happily browsing some interwebs some nasty people took my internets away, now I can take it back from those bastards, all thanks to this magic internets freedom disks!!!! wooooo yay!!!!
this is the lolzors!!11
There are 310 LiveCDrom Distros at http://livecdlist.com
Some are very specialized, and will run as a router/firewall, or as a MythTV box, wiping out the installed OSes quite easily! So, NOT for winidiots!
I give out LiveCDroms of this:
http://pclinuxos.com
Keep up the good work :-)
get a life. Err should i say LIVECD! Its like your trying to add a usa feel good msg to linux. In fact thats the last thing we want. Linux is free for the world. Its kinda like calling french fries, freedom fries. Stupid gay yankee's.
Obviously this article is not written for people that know about Linux and LiveCD's, it's for those that don't have a clue to its existence.
For that purpose I say "Good job", but you did leave out the parts about problems with wireless adapters and saving preferences.
This kind of crap makes a bad name for such a powerful OS. and it will never work.
As you can see I do not censor postings unless they are pornographic. There was one. I apologize to those making comments that I have had to turn on moderation. Now I am about to embark on a 15 day road trip to expose my children to their extended family which means I will not be able to moderate your comments in a timely fashion. For this I apologize, however I will moderate ASAP. To the previous commentary "Freedom is Universal not American!",
If you know what Linux is or a Live CD then you were not the target audience, however hopefully this blog could be a destination you would send friends in search of Freedom.
I wish all of you a happy and healthful new year.
dankoozy this is no crap. cash is king is trying by all means to convey the message to non-techies, because millions of people are captured under the M$ cloud. They do not UNDERSTAND the geeky/techie/nerdie language that everybody use in the GNU/Linux world.
Those millions of people have money in their pockets -do you imagine the successful marketing of "Internet Freedom Disk"? It could be possible that everybody starts buying this powerful OS.
I Started with Lycoris Desktop/LX, then bought Suse Linux Professional 9.2 (US$80.00), then Suse Linux 10.0 (US$60.00) now downloaded 10.2 and Ubuntu/Kubuntu; and dual boot Windows XP and Home.
I have done my own research -never asked "linux guys" because I do not like to be RTFM-ed or being insulted. If you will not help cash is king -let him be. Happy Holydays, Merry Christmas and Merry Xmas...
Ezight was here.
Puppy Linux
Slax
Knoppix
Mepis
D@am small linux
All live CD's
They ALL work without a HD even being present on the ide cable or you can use them to recover a crashed Microshaft OS.
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