Removing My Web Search from your Firefox navigation bar in Windows.

I hate this sucker and I know you do, too.

This is a bitch. I hate this extension. It displaces the Google search box in the Firefox navigation bar (upper right) with a crummy search (“powered by Google;” yeah right) that finds commercial sites instead of information. To use a real Google search you have to use put Google in your Bookmark toolbar and punch it everytime you want to google. And My Web Search slows down your searches and your computer. Where did it come from? You probably installed it without knowing it when you installed some funny face program that melts images. You want to get rid of it. I’ll show you how. These instructions are based on a 64 bit Windows computer, and I use Firefox and Windows 7 Home Premium.

Intro:
There are two or three places you have to go to remove this steaming mess from a Windows computer.
1) your computer’s “uninstall” program aka “add/remove programs” aka “programs and features”; takes two minutes.
2) about:config in Firefox: 5 minutes
3) regedit program on your computer; this step also will require finding, installing and running a free program called Spybot. May or may not be needed, takes 90-120 minutes

Let’s roll…
First, go to your uninstall program or “add or remove programs”, which you reach from the start button and control panel, depending on your version of Windows. Remove/uninstall anything that says My Web Search. That won’t complete the job.

Next, open Firefox and type about:config in the navigation space at the top left side of the browser and hit return/enter if it doesn’t go there automatically. When the page comes up, punch the consent button that says yes, I promise to be careful.
Find the filter space, and there type myweb (“filter” basically means “find” or “search.”)
Several entries should come up. Put your cursor over each item in turn, do a right click, and select reset on all of the items in the list.
Restart firefox. if My Web Search is still there, go back and do the same thing again; this time try filtering for Myweb or mywebsearch or myway or Myway etc etc until you find the last culprit. Reset it as before.
Close and restart Firefox.
If the search box is still showing My Web Search, you have another couple of hours of work ahead.

Third and last: regedit/Spybot
Go on the internet and find and download Spybot Search and Destroy (free) and install and run that. It will take 15 or 20 minutes; go do some pushups, brush your teeth, order a pizza. When it finishes, Spybot will show you the 30 or so registry keys associated with My Web Search. You have to expand the Spygot window and the partition of it so that the complete character sequence (‘string”) of each bad key/file can be seen. Do not close Spybot or this window. You will need this list to tell a program named regedit which keys/files to delete.

Finding regedit (REGistry EDIT, get it?): click the start button and enter regedit in the “find” box just above the start button, and then hitting return/enter. That will open regedit and show an enormous list of files/registry keys, each of which is identified by a “name” or “string” of about 20 characters. You are interested only in certain files/keys contained in a directory/folder named Hkeys_classes_root. Within that directory, you have to find the Interface subdirectory/folder. All of the My Web Search registry keys are in this subdirectory.

How do you know which files/keys?

You have to look at the bad key list you generated with Spybot, and then find each of these in regedit, one at a time. So you want to have two windows: one shows the list in Spybot, the other showing regedit, so you can easily go back and forth.

There is a trick to this. Regedit is not very good at searching. You have to help it by directing it where to search ie select the Interface directory/folder as previously indicated. Select that directory/folder each time you search for a key/name/string.

You don’t have to copy the entire name/string from Spybot into regedit to find each bad key; entering a string of any 6 consecutive characters from each entry on the Spybot list of bad keys, into the regedit search/filter box will be enough. Then regedit will highlight a file/key that has a matching 6 character string; it will PROBABLY be the file you are looking for but you have to verify carefully by crosschecking to see that it matches the one in Spybot’s list. Then delete it. It will ask you if you want to delete the key and all its subkeys. Click yes. To delete 36 bad keys will take you a good hour or more.

That should have eliminated My Web Search. Close Spybot. Restart your computer and your browser. If My Web Search is still there, run Spybot again to make sure you got all the keys. If Spybot shows that you missed one, go back to regedit and get rid of it. If they are all gone, but My Web Search is still in your Firefox navigation search box, then you missed something in about:config. Go back to that and try different strings in the filter box, using caps, etc. until you find the culprit. Reset it as you did with the others, close Firefox, and reboot your computer.

Keep at it. It’s worth it.

Steve Clemons on Senator Clinton and Senator Obama

Clemons thinks HRC is very smart and hard working, and wonders why Obama hasn’t held a single hearing in the subcommittee that he chairs.

Clemons is a smart guy.  I don’t know his history with HRC, but he is apparently closer to her than he is to Obama.  I was disappointed that he didn’t choose to comment on Edwards.

US military at Guantanamo vandalizes Wikipedia, sockpuppets themselves

link

These geniuses should be put out of business.

Joe Klein moves into serious contention for Smokey Award

[h/t ThinkProgress]

The competition for Smokey Awards is pretty tough again this year, but Joe’s year-long performance, in print and on his blog, capped by his crapurulent lies about the FISA bill (and his subsequent fandangos around the truth) have put him into contention. I thought he was just a garden variety fool/tool. Now, with this beaut on MSNBC, he has surpassed himself on NIEgate.

The Bush reaction to this — he didn’t try to block it. He didn’t try to postpone it. He didn’t spend weeks, he didn’t ask the intelligence community ‘give me a couple of weeks, let’s see if we can figure out some kind of negotiating initiative or some way to respond to this.’ He didn’t try to spin it to our advantage. This is an amazing moment of candor by the United States.

Breathtaking. George Bush and candor. Is there such a thing as a parody of a caricature? if there is, Joe Klein is it.

A skeptical Joe Scarborough responded to Klein’s cheerleading for the administration, stating, “Well that’s one way to look at it,” then explained that Bush continued to warn of World War III with Iran despite knowing better. Klein chuckled, “There is that…”

He may not eclipse Dick Cheney for the top Smokey statuette, but who could? We at least one category into which Joe would fit very nicely….
Yes, Mrs. Jamtoss 5th Period** Circled Big Red D Award, we’re lookin’ at you….

[Interestingly, OTLS! notes that Joe gives out “Teddy” Awards every year; whew, that is too close for comfort.]

Dan Bartlett: Right wing bloggers are regurgitators.

LINK

I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

Actually, that’s a nicer thing than he might have said. He might have just gone ahead and used words like mindless, bigoted, unthinking, morons…but he’s just a nice guy…

Googling Google: the kingmakers

NY Times:

 This election cycle, Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., has become a favorite destination.

Hillary Rodham Clinton made the pilgrimage in February. Then came John McCain, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and most recently, Barack Obama.

In terms of theatrical symbolism, the trip to Google is similar to the G.M. plant visit. In both cases, the visits gave the candidate the chance for a photo opportunity at the most technologically advanced edge of the economy, “signaling identification with the future,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.

Republicans don’t seem to like the venue; I wonder why:

The politicians visiting auto plants could control what was said during the event. Today, candidates must place themselves at the tender mercies of the audience. Those who go to Google sit exposed on the stage, without the protective lectern provided in a debate, answering questions for 45 to 60 minutes. But without the escape hatch of a timekeeper’s buzzer, and as the only speaker, the candidate cannot evade uncomfortable questions. Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chairman and chief executive, for example, asked Senator Obama for his views on Iran, Pakistan, and Guantánamo — and that was a single question.

Googling Google: what are they up to now?

Those wild and crazy nerds in Mountain View are just bustin out all over; they’ve been Over the Line for a long time, yet OTLS! has not been giving them a damn bit of coverage. Meanwhile, we have been covering the insane Rapture Index guy. That’s all about to change. Rapture Guy may have humor value, but let’s face, how many ways can you ridicule madness? Google, on the other hand, has a certain geekness which will offer a myriad of opportunities for mirth. Not to mention stock tips.

This week, they announced that even as they seek to conquer the mobile-phone market and uphold their Internet dominance, they are going to try to solve the world’s energy problems.

Google calls it the Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal project.

Beginning with about two dozen clean-tech staff engineers, and investments in the “tens of millions” from the company’s philanthropic arm, google.org, the founders said they hope to produce low-cost clean energy – and do it soon.

“We really want to rapidly push forward, and our goal is really to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that’s cheaper than coal economically,” Page said on a conference call Tuesday.

A gigawatt is enough to power San Francisco.

First of all how geeky is

Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal;

I mean, is the acronym RETCH? [update: Tom Friedman clues me in: it’s RE < C; how opaque] Power San Francisco? More like power the peninsula or the South Bay; you know, Google already provides supposed internet to the entire city of Mountain View, and they have a little iGoogle homepage for anyone who enters. Except that the signal is so weak you have to walk up and down the streets trying to find even a “warm spot.” So you Google Guys, don’t scrimp on the RETCH megawatts, okay?

Link

Happy Thanksgiving

The management of Over the Line, Smokey! wishes you a happy Thanksgiving. We will be taking the entire research, editorial, technical and janitorial staff out for some bowling, so the lights will be out, the shades drawn, and the doors locked. The alarm system will be armed, a guard dog is posted, and Tommy Lee Jones is on cruiser patrol, so don’t even think about breaking in and stealing our thunder.

Favorite sayings: “the Clue Train….”

The Cluetrain Manifesto is a great business book of a few years back. Strangely, you never hear anyone use the sarcastic “clue train” epithet:

“The clue train stopped there four times a day for ten years and they never took delivery.”

It sounds like something George Costanza might have said, but I like it anyway.

Andrew Sullivan: won’t give up the race card

link

It is a pity that educated people find it necessary to continue to be nativists, to try to make much of skin color, to try to find differences, rather than treat all people as individuals and equals in the face of the law and whatever god there might be.

Whatever in the world does the racial profile of Olympic sprinters have to do with the world of Andrew Sullivan? Really. What is the purpose of such a statement? It’s just to crack open the door to bigotry. It goes like this: “Now that we’ve established that “they” are “different,” let’s just push ahead to “they‘re not like ‘us…”

This is the kind of wink, wink crap I expect to hear repeated by the alienated right, but I didn’t think Andrew Sullivan was part of that crowd. I guess I was wrong.

A pity. Maybe it’s time to dust off some slurs about gays. A little cold water for Mr. Sullivan.