I want to activate my road runner account

Compaq Presario 543OUS series 5000
Pentium ® 4 processor 1800 Hz
Processor speed 1800/400 Hz
Processor stepping F12
Cache size (L1/L2) 20/256 KB
RAM 256Mb; Clock 1.8 Gb
Hard Drive 30 Gb
16X Max* DVD-ROM; CD-RW
NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (version 96) (recommended) [disabled]
Ubuntu 9.04; Ffx 3.5.2

I have Wine (1.1.28-wine hq0-u), Wine dev (1.1.28-wine hq0-u), and Wine gecko (1.0.0 Oubuntu1).

When I configured Wine for Windows xp, Ffx3.5 got a lot faster – although I'm still having driver issues [as Dr. Oliver Diedrich noted in The H open source: (. . . As the Ubuntu development team freely admits in its release notes, under Ubuntu 9.04 the Intel driver has "performance regressions". In plain English this means that graphics on Intel chips are slower in the new release and that on some chips the X Server may even freeze – though there is at least a workaround for the latter problem.. . .)]. (The workaround seems too complicated for me – I don't want to screw anything up.)

My internet provider is TIME WARNER CABLE and the services it provides is ROAD RUNNER High Speed Online. Well, I wasn't here when Larry (the cable guy) came out and hooked up my internet connection, I just left the money and someone to open the door. Plus, I didn't have a computer then, either. Later, when I got my computer, I just plugged in the modem and got busy.

Yesterday, (five months later, by the way) I happened to get around to browsing through the ROAD RUNNER user guide and noted that I need to activate my ROAD RUNNER account. So when I went to www.activation.rr.com., right of the bat, I got the following message:

 Welcome to Road Runner

 We're sorry, we are unable to proceed with the Activation Wizard until you update your Internet browser. Please click on the link below to download a supported version of Internet Explorer from the Microsoft website. You will need to download Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher.

 Please re-boot your computer after the browser is downloaded and installed. When the browser installation is complete, you will be able to run the Activation Wizard.

  Download Internet Explorer

Well, they say that they support Firefox “. . . on a best effort basis.” Basically, I'm trying to accomplish this on my own without having to resort to approaching a proprietary concern (hat-in-hand) to please hook up my Ubuntu for me. I also note that TIME WARNER has windows 2000/XP as part of its system requirements. Even though I do have Wine Gecko, it must not fit the ROAD RUNNER bill.

I want to add that at the time I got my computer, I didn't even know what an operating system was, much less that Linux wasn't universally accepted. But I don't have any problem with that as the Ubuntu Philosophy fits well into my personal values and telic ethics.

randall@Randall:~$ sudo apt-get install ie6setup.exe
[sudo] password for randall:
E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
randall@Randall:~$ sudo apt-get install ie6setup.exe
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package ie6setup.exe
randall@Randall:~$ sudo apt-get install ies4linux-2.99.0.1
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package ies4linux-2.99.0.1
randall@Randall:~$ sudo apt-get install ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
randall@Randall:~$ ies4linux-2.99.0.1.tar.gz
bash: ies4linux-2.99.0.1.tar.gz: command not found
randall@Randall:~$

Arochester, at Linux Questions.org told me: Have you tried the Firefox add-on called "User Switcher Agent" which allows you to spoof that you are using different browsers - IE 6, 7 or 8?

As it turned out, user agent switcher isn't compatible with Ffx 3.5, so I added on to 3.0. I have ie7 installed, but I don't have a toolbar. I once saw a Wine IE window, but I've never seen it again – I was thinking that I'd at least be seeing that now.

I've been able to go to www.activation.rr.com and login with my road runner username and reset my password, but the activation wizard won't let me go any further until I allow ActiveX. Well, I'm not getting a road runner homepage, either. I don't see how I can allow for ActiveX with out interacting with the road runner homepage. I've added-on Mediawrap but no help as far as I can tell.

Every time I see a _______ advertisement for internet service at $19.95 a month, I think about the 49.95 I pay. But now, I think I see what the difference is: Runner has a lot of other perqs – perqs I could appreciate in light of the driver performance regressions (and kernel workaround that's too complicated for newbie me to impliment) unique to Jaunty.

Can/will someone help me out with some directions? As always, I'll really appreciate it.