getting the big O out of the little O

November 8, 2008 5:17 AM

1. What is Barack Obama doing in my copy of Opera 9.62?
2. How do I get him out?

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04, modified for Eee PC (a build done by this guy).

Since November 4, my preferred web browser, Opera 9.62, has on launch started playing an audio loop of Obama's 'Yes We Can' speech, set to music, that's impossible to turn off. This was slightly charming at first but it's actually now doing my nut in.

I've searched reasonably hard to see if this is happening to anyone else, but with no luck. please reassure me that it's not happening in my own head and tell me how to remove it.

posted by randomination to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Eh, I can only resort to low-level hackery.

In /proc/${operapid}/fd/ is the list of open file numbers as symlinks to the files they open. Look for the audio file that is the music. Move it to a new name.
posted by cmiller at 5:38 AM on November 8, 2008

Sure your homepage isn't set to some audio file?
posted by orthogonality at 5:45 AM on November 8, 2008

So did this guy somehow patch this into the bundled version of Opera?
posted by dunkadunc at 5:54 AM on November 8, 2008

I don't know if this helps, but, once I learned of the rather funny site PalinAsPresident.com, I would check it periodically - they made a few changes every day or so. I last checked it the morning after the election, and, though the URL is the same, the title of the page had been changed to BarackAsPresident, and all the Palin jokes were gone, replaced by a static image of the Oval Office "at peace." Over this, an audio loop of Obama's "Yes We Can" speech, set to music, plays endlessly, and there's no apparent way to turn it off.

Now, I know *nothing* about web-coding, but maybe there's some way that you visited this site and its audio file got "stuck" in your browswer??
posted by Dr. Wu at 5:55 AM on November 8, 2008

Dr. Wu, that might actually be a good lead.
I'm sure I cleaned my cache and history but let me do that again.
posted by randomination at 6:10 AM on November 8, 2008

Right, I have silence. For now. I hope it doesn't come back. But it's weird how BarackAsPresident.com got stuck like that.
posted by randomination at 6:18 AM on November 8, 2008

Are you using the speed dial? It may have something to do with loading a page to generate the thumbnail.
posted by ghost of a past number at 7:25 AM on November 8, 2008