How do you disable your synaptic trackpad in Ubuntu

[david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org (David Kramer)]

Mark J Dulcey wrote:
 > My system doesn't even recognize the trackpad as a trackpad (it has a
> Alps trackpad, not a Synaptic), just as a PS/2 mouse, so 'sudo rmmod 
> psmouse' is the way to turn it off. That doesn't persist across reboots, 
> though I could put psmouse in the list of excluded modules to make it 
> so. My USB mouse still works afterward.

Aha!  yes, mine was a psmouse too.  rmmod works, and best of all,
modprobe brings it back. It disables the nipple too, so if I don't have
my external USB mouse I have NO mouse, but I can always launch a shell
with gnome-do and type the command to reactivate it.

Thanks!