Restoring/Replacing the Bios on an Acer Aspire One [6]

Just after a flawless new install of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), I ran into a pretty serious problem with my Acer Aspire One Netbook: the BIOS became corrupt. When this happens your computer is bricked: it cannot do anything—spin the CD or hard-drive, load a USB key, or even boot. Well not quite bricked, in my case the fan was working. Fortunately, while the problem is serious, the solution is really quite easy.