Month: March 2013

By Mike Masnick, Techdirt. – June 10, 2010 at 03:40PM

If you go back to the original intent of copyright law, it was to improve learning and knowledge. “Promoting the progress of science” really mean “knowledge” at the time it was written. But, these days, we’ve lost pretty much all touch with that original intention. Last year, we noted that there was a growing battle over whether or not teachers could sell their lesson plans, with some districts claiming copyright over all teacher curricula and lesson plans to make sure that only they could determine how those plans were used. Of course, in the past (and, for many, the present) teachers often freely shared curricula and lesson plans with each other, in an effort to spread the knowledge and help each other out.

But throw in a bit of copyright, and a chance to “profit” — even for a public school — and apparently the whole concept of sharing gets tossed out the window. Kevin Donovan alerts us to the news that publishing giant Pearson has signed a multi-million dollar deal with a public school district. Basically, Pearson is giving the Montgomery County Public Schools $2.25 million for the right to their curricula, which it will sell. The schools will also get a 3% royalty. Pearson can change the curricula if it wants, so it might not even be what the teachers there put together, but they’re apparently trying to build up a big brand around this school district, which tends to do well in various metrics.

Of course, some people are quite uncomfortable with this. Now the teachers won’t be able to share the curriculum they themselves develop. And that could come back to haunt them. Will teachers at other schools be willing to share their own curricula with schools that are locking down and selling their own? One of the dissenting school board members (only two were against the deal) is reasonably worried that deals like this may turn teachers into sales people, rather than teachers.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

By Erica Ho, Lifehacker – June 10, 2010 at 02:30PM

Summer brings sunshine, fresh air, and, sometimes, ants into your home. If the ants become troublesome this year, home improvement site DIY Life suggests drawing lines with chalk around the house to keep the ants at bay.

Photo by photogirl17.

With some chalk, apparently it’s not hard to keep ants away from particular areas of your home without using harsh chemicals.

To keep ants out of your house, draw chalk lines around your doorways and windowsills. Ants won’t cross a chalk line. Why? It’s not entirely clear, but some say the ants don’t like the particles sticking to their feet, while others say they’re averse to the calcium carbonate in the chalk. Whatever the reason, this nontoxic solution will keep ants outside where they belong.

It may sound absurd (okay, it does sound absurd), but a quick Google search shows a lot of support for this method. And if that doesn’t work, consider other natural remedies like using cucumbers to keep the ants away. Got other nifty tricks for keeping the bugs out of your home? Sound off in the comments.

By Kyle VanHemert, Gizmodo – June 10, 2010 at 01:40PM

Built with the blue-laser diode of a dismantled Casio projector, the $200 Spyder III Pro Arctic is the world’s most powerful portable laser. It can permanently blind you and set your skin—or anything else, really—on fire almost instantly. More »





Laser – Business – Physics – Optoelectronics and Fiber – Electronics and Electrical

By Karl L. Gechlik, MakeUseOf – June 10, 2010 at 11:31AM

Do you use Malwarebytes as much as I do? I use it 4 or 5 times a day on average. I use it to clean machines that have become infected. The antivirus software on the machines in question have either been compromised or they are not up to date.

The only disadvantage of Malwarebytes is that it takes a long time to run a full scan. I have started using NoVirusThanks before running Malwarebytes and it is pretty quick and catches a lot of infections.

Let’s take a look at it. You start by downloading the free malware remover from here. It is 1.2MB and downloads pretty quickly.

It requires Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5. Please install it before the installation if you do not already have it. You can grab the .Net Framework from here if you need it. After the quick installation you will need to launch the application from your start menu.

The authors describe the free malware remover as follows:

NoVirusThanks Malware Remover is an application designed to detect and remove specific malware, trojans, worms and other malicious threats that can damage your computer. It includes also the ability to remove rogue software, spyware and adware. Scanning time is very fast and does not use or need much memory even with other high-resource programs are running.

Next you will see this screen:

We see a standard antivirus-like scanning interface. Before we start the scan we will take a look at how to configure and update the application. Click on the settings tab near the top left of the window. That will take you to the settings page where you will see the following:

In the general tab we have three options. The first one that reduces the applications memory usage will indeed use less resources but your scan will take longer.  This is better on slower (older) machines. Work in background will minimize the application to a system tray icon and the final option I feel is a must after installation. Auto update database before scan will automatically download the newest update before it starts scanning. This is a no-brainer.

The next tab is the scan tab which contains options about your scan. The scan type I would leave on quick scan unless you will be leaving the machine for a long period of time. The full scan takes much longer to run but is much more intensive. The limits of scanning files less than 5MB and only scanning well known file extensions will speed up your scan but they can be unchecked when your scan is run.

At the bottom of the settings we have four options. The only one that is not selected by default is to use their Paranoid scan. This will scan EVERYTHING and takes a very long time. Again if you will be leaving the machine for 12+ hours to return the next day then it can’t hurt. If you want a quick scan then do not check this option.

The report option only has one tab which is enabled by default to save the report when the scan is finished. The backup tab allows for two options. They are to backup files before deleting them and to alert the user if a backup fails. These options are checked by default and should be left alone.

Under the last settings tab entitled delete there are two options that are disabled by default. Use aggressive deletion. This will kill files even if they are in use or somehow protected. This is a good option to use when infected files were not able to be removed after the first scan. The second option is to create a system restore point before deleting files. This option I check before running the application.

If you did not check the check box to automatically update the database before scanning you will need to go to the update tab and manually update the definitions like so:

If you need to change your interface’s language you can do so via the language tab.

Now we are ready to run our scan. Click back over to the scan tab and press the scan button show below:

The status of the scan will update at the bottom of the interface. If you have the update database before scan option selected it will do that first:

And then it will start scanning. As it finds suspicious files it will list them in the grid:

When it is complete hopefully you are all clean like I was but if not simply hit the remove button to start the removal procedure. My scan on a 200GB SATA drive took about 27 minutes. Not too shabby! I have tested it on some heavily infected machines and it really did its job.

What do you think of NoVirusThanks? Do you have another free malware remover that you use? Let us know in the comments.

Do you like MakeUseOf articles? Do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us.

• We Have 3 Copies Of McAfee Total Protection 2010 [MakeUseOf Giveaway] (168 comments)
• ThreatFire – Free Zero Day Realtime Virus, Trojan & Malware Protection (19 comments)
• Reminder: We’re giving away 3 x McAfee Total Protection 2010 [ends Feb 5th] (4 comments)
• How To Remove Computer Viruses At Home For Free (24 comments)
• Announcing The Winners Of Our McAfee Total Protection 2010 Giveaway! (6 comments)
• Use Norton Power Eraser To Aggressively Scan & Clean Scareware (11 comments)
• The Best Websites To Find Free Virus & Malware Fixes (6 comments)
• The 10 Best Free Anti-Virus Programs (74 comments)
• How To Remove Antivirus System Pro Completely From Your PC (21 comments)
• How To Get Rid Of A Trojan Horse Virus That Won’t Go Away (23 comments)

By Whitson Gordon, Lifehacker – June 10, 2010 at 11:00AM

We’ve seen the speed benefits of Solid State Drives (SSDs), but they also have the downside of a more limited number of writes. Technology blog Ghacks shows us how to increase an SSD’s longevity by moving oft-written caches to a RAM disk.

Photo by Yusuke Kawasaki.

The constant writing and erasing of caches and other temporary folders on your computer will wear out your SSD faster, so one way to get as much life out of your SSD as possible is to move these folders somewhere else. If you have a regular hard drive installed alongside your SSD, you can move those caches to the magnetic drive, but if your computer is only running on an SSD drive or drives, you’ll have to be a bit more creative.

Ghacks has put together a guide to not only moving these caches (for anyone interested in doing so), but shows you how to turn some of your RAM into a storage device called a RAM disk. If you have a good amount of RAM in your system (around 3 or 4 GB should be fine), you can save your caches there instead, thus saving your SSD the constant writes and erasures. Hit the link for the full guide, and share your SSD optimization tips in the comments.

By MG Siegler, TechCrunch – June 09, 2010 at 02:40AM

This morning, my colleague Jason Kincaid wrote a very good and very level-headed post about the new iPhone (and the new iOS 4 software) from the perspective of an Android user. I’m going to come at it from the other angle.

Recently, I’ve written my takes on both the Nexus One and the EVO 4G from the perspective of an iPhone lover. Obviously, I don’t have an iPhone 4 yet, and so this isn’t a full review, but after the keynote yesterday we did get some hands-on time with the new device. So I figured I’d write down my initial reaction after playing with the new hardware for about 20 minutes or so. Before I go any further, I’ll save you the suspense: it’s awesome.

The Build

The biggest thing that stands out in my mind one day later is that immediately after I put down the iPhone 4 and went back to my iPhone 3GS, the latter felt kind of like a toy in comparison. Now, I’ve always been a fan of the design of the first iPhone over the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS — that is, I liked the aluminum flat back of the first one more than the plastic backs of the second two. The iPhone 4 is a return to form — literally — but it’s even better now, as the aluminum has been replaced by glass (in either black or white).

As Jason noted, the device feels rock solid in your hand. It is without a doubt the most impressive piece of mobile hardware I’ve ever held. There’s nothing on the device that feels janky. Aside from the backside upgrade, all the external buttons on the device are now improved as well. The iPhone 4 is pretty much identical in weight to the iPhone 3GS, but it’s significantly thinner. This may be a bit hard to notice in your hand as the iPhone 3G/3Gs has the curved back (so you mostly handle the thinner edges), but I have no doubt it will be noticeable in your pocket.

The Screen

When the iPhone 3GS first launched, I wasn’t sure that the boost in speed would be enough to make an upgrade worth it. I was wrong. Once I had an iPhone 3GS and went back to using an iPhone 3G, the latter almost seemed unusable to me. Thanks to the screen on the iPhone 4, this seems likely to be the case as well.

As Steve Jobs joked in the keynote, “once you go Retina Display, you can’t go back.” After just 20 minutes of using it, I’m hooked. As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber noted yesterday, it’s not just that the iPhone 4 has four times the pixels of the earlier iPhones, it’s that much of the distance between the glass you touch and the pixels have been removed as well. It’s subtle things like this — things that most people will never even realize they’re noticing (but they are) — that make Apple, Apple.

With the iPhone 3GS (or any of the other iPhones), if you bring the device close enough to your face, you can see the pixels. With the iPhone 4, you can’t. It’s really not like looking at a computer screen at all. It’s like looking at a picture — or when something on the screen is moving, film.

The Speed

In terms of speed, it’s hard to know what is the new iOS 4 and what is the new hardware, but the device does seem to run a little bit smoother. It’s not noticeably faster in the way that the iPhone 3GS was noticeably faster than the iPhone 3G, but I would attribute this to the fact that there are already rarely any lags in the iPhone 3GS with iPhone OS 3. I suspect some new games that come out may push the new A4 chip though.

The Camera

As has already been noted, FaceTime is brilliant in that it requires absolutely no set-up to work. Yes, it sucks that it’s WiFi-only, but that will change with time. It also would have been brilliant for Apple to get this working with iChat on Macs (as others have also noted), but since it’s supposedly going to be published as an open protocol, that will probably come too.

I can see the new front-facing camera doing wonders for startups like DailyBooth — and yes, maybe even ChatRoutlette.

The key feature of the camera though has to be the ability to shoot HD (720p) video. There’s some debate out there as to whether this will or won’t kill the Flip cam. My reaction is that while the iPhone 4 alone may not, I can’t see how all of these new smartphones gaining this feature (the EVO 4G can do it as well) won’t.

The Android Question

I know that it’s shocking to some of you that I would love this device. Most interesting may be my thoughts on what this means or doesn’t mean for Google’s Android platform.

As you’ve undoubtedly read a lot in recent weeks, Google is making fast gains in terms of the Android software. I was beyond impressed at Google I/O with everything that was shown off. With Android 2.2 (which I have running on the Nexus One), most system speed issues seem to have been resolved. That said, in my view, there is still no Android device that is better than the iPhone 3GS. And so obviously, the iPhone 4 just widens the gap.

The fact of the matter is that while the software may be getting there from a practical perspective, it still lacks the polish of the iPhone OS (now iOS). A number of people (on both the iPhone and Android sides) I’ve spoken with recently agree, but point to Google’s recent hiring of Palm’s design guru Matias Duarte as a sign that this may change. I hope so.

Overall app quality on Android also still lags behind the iPhone. And the fact that you have to use third-party task killing applications to get devices like the EVO 4G to run the way it should, is completely unacceptable from a users’ perspective.

With the iPhone 4, Apple has refined the hell out of their winning combination of hardware plus software. It’s hard to imagine it getting much better in this form factor — and that’s why I think we may see some radically different things next year for iPhone 5 (well, aside from a Verizon version).

The Mac vs. PC debate has often found people using a car analogy to explain things. I keep coming back to that when thinking about iPhone vs. Android. For a long time, iPhone felt like a Lexus while Android was more like a Kia. With recent upgrades, Android has transformed into more of a Honda. But with iPhone 4, the iPhone is now an Aston Martin (it was James Bond, remember).

But the crazy thing is that the iPhone is an Aston Martin with a Honda-price. Meanwhile, Android remains a Honda at a Honda-price — it’s a good deal, but it’s not an iPhone-deal.

In fact, it’s such a good deal that I continue to say that the only thing really holding back the iPhone (in the U.S.) is its carrier, AT&T. Even if you have no problems with AT&T, you have to acknowledge that they’re becoming the big barrier to the iPhone’s potential growth. There are simply always going to be million of users not on AT&T. In fact, there will always been more users not on AT&T than are on it. So Apple needs to move beyond it to keep expanding.

And if they’re the Aston Martin being sold at Honda-prices, when they’re sold at other dealerships (other carriers), they’ll dominate, right? Well it’s not that simple.

The Honda-like price is only thanks to the sweet deal Apple gets from AT&T. Without the deal, Apple would undoubtedly sell the iPhone for more money (to keep up their margins), and it would be a less attractive purchase for people. It’s the same reason why everyone doesn’t buy an Aston Martin (or a Lexus, to be more practical). Would some people still opt for the Honda if it was more customizable? Sure, some would. But most would opt for the nicer machine, all things being equal.

But all things aren’t equal because the iPhone is tied only to AT&T. And all things are unlikely to ever be equal because prices might have to go up if the sweet AT&T exclusive subsidy goes away. But seeing the success Apple has had being at the luxury end of the PC market, I’m not sure how much they’ll ultimately care. But the fact that they seem to now (as evidenced by pointing out their market share vs. Android in keynotes) is interesting.

As Jason noted in his piece (and I have in the past), the fact of the matter remains that a strong rivalry between iPhone and Android is a good thing for us all. Android continues to improve at a healthy pace and they have some features (like Google Voice integration) that it seems unlikely now that Apple will ever get. Meanwhile, Apple continues to improve their hardware/software combination at a rate that it’s not clear that Google (and their OEM partners) will be able to match.

It’s two different approaches. And that makes sense since the two have different motives. At the end of the day, Android exists so that Google can get more people searching — and keep them searching as mobile devices overtake computers. The iPhone exists to be one of the mobile devices that overtakes computers so that Apple can keep selling high-margin machines.

In my view, for most consumers, the iPhone remains the winning argument in the space right now. And the iPhone 4 just extends that.

By (author unknown), ScienceDaily: Latest Science News – June 08, 2010 at 02:00PM

The US Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate new Imaging System for Immersive Surveillance is as detailed as 50 full-HDTV movies playing at once, with optical detail to spare.

By (author unknown), Gizmag Emerging Technology Magazine – June 08, 2010 at 01:52AM

It might be a sad indictment on today’s society but surveillance cameras are an increasingly common sight on city streets around the world. Most of these systems employ a fish-eye lens to capture a wide field of view, but such lenses distort the image and can only provide limited resolution. A new video surveillance system currently being developed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) overcomes these shortfalls to provide perfectly detailed, edge-to-edge images that could prove to be of great assistance to law enforcement…
Continue Reading New 360 degree video surveillance system gives criminals nowhere to hide

Tags: High-resolution,
Law Enforcement,
Surveillance,
Video Camera

Related Articles:

• New technology allows for simultaneous high-speed video and high-res stills
• The Digital Security Guard detects uninvited guests
• Intelligent video surveillance combines situational awareness with flexible encoding
• The soldier helmet that pinpoints enemy snipers
• Wide-angle camera improves security surveillance
• New Samsung Video Wall System manages up to 250 video displays

By Saikat Basu, MakeUseOf – June 07, 2010 at 05:30PM

The great thing about Google is that you can take any of its services and extend it to uses that are not so obvious. We have seen the uncounted ways you can use Google Search. Now, take Google Books for instance.

Google Books is a Google service that makes discovering book content easier for us on the web. It started way back in 2004 and since then its mission has been to digitally scan and archive tons of book.

Knowing the breakneck pace that Google sets, one day it could become the absolute knowledge tank as far as books go. The ongoing Partner Program and the Library Project are helping to rocket things along.

But Google Books does not allow you to download whole books unless it’s in the Public Domain. It also does not display the entire text of other books. What’s the point of using google books, you might say?

Plenty, if you can ‘exploit’ the information that’s freely available. Just think, there are more than a million books in the Public Domain alone. If you have a yen for information and a zest for lifelong learning, here are ten ideas for using Google Books.

Build Your Own Personal Library for Lifelong Learning

Building your own reference library (My Library) with Google Books is a good way to start off. Google Books allows you to read an entire book that’s out of copyright in Full View. Then for some books you can flip a few selected pages to have a Limited Preview. Even with Snippet View and books tagged with No Preview Available, you can get some idea what the book is all about.

Looking at the contents of an index for a particular book, gives me some ideas for further reading. Use the index like a keyword list and you can dive into the web for more information.

Also, think of your bookshelf on Google Books as a reading list for lifelong learning. To own a book you can take the help of the links provided alongside the book excerpt. From casual reading to serious research, the snippets of information are like untapped wealth.

You can do the reverse bit of adding the books on your physical bookshelf to the My Library in Google Books. Here’s how someone did it with a simple barcode scanner.

Your Very Own Magazine Stand

Of late, Google Books has started cataloging magazine too. Personally, I find Google Books a great place to look for magazines I wouldn’t have got at my corner store (Imagine going back to 1926 and reading Popular Science). Unlike books, each magazine in Google Books is fully viewable. Here’s how to read complete magazines online in Google Books.

Try the Advanced Book Search

Try out the Advanced Book Search when you are building your personal bookshelf on Google Books. You can search by language, or search more specifically, by ISBN/ISSN number, search between dates, etc. The date range search is useful when searching for magazines and periodicals.

A great use of the Advanced Book Search crops up when you go out to search for a book without knowing the title or author.

Reminder: You can now search for books directly from the Search Options panel on the new Google search page.

Share Your Library with Others

You can mark your bookshelves as Public and share it with others. The library’s URL can be sent to friends or posted on blogs. You can also refer to a single book (or any of its parts) by linking to it. You can even export your bookshelf as an XML file and share the exported file.

Exporting as XML is useful when you want to import the information into any desktop book manager or digital catalog.

Search for Specific Text within Your Own Collection

Once you have your personal bookshelf filled with choice material, it is easy to reference information as you can search within your own collection. Searching within a book is user friendly with the little hints that appear in the margin to indicate where you results are located. You can jump straight to that part with a click.

Find Copycats

You can put a piece of text within quotes and do a quick plagiarism check in Google Search. The search feature of Google Books is a Google Search child and can be similarly used to find copied text taken from published works.

Get the Meanings of Words in Context

How exactly do I use a word like ‘Morton’s fork’ in a sentence and be in sync with the context? Perform a Google Book search with the word as a keyword and get to the book texts where the word has been used.

Online dictionaries can also do the job, but this is just to show that Google Books has little uses like these too.

Search for Other Editions or Related Books

There have been instances when I have found a useful bit of information in an edition different to the one I was searching on. Going over to Related Books also helps to understand the different angles to a specific topic.

Download Google Books for Offline Reading

Books in the Public Domain can be downloaded to your desktop as PDF or EPUB files. A third party app called Google Book Downloader for Windows can download full view/limited view books, and magazines too.

Though it is no longer under active development, you can download Google Book Downloader from here. Downloading via this app does take some patience.

Mac users have their own Google Book Downloader for the Mac also available for download.

Using these two apps, you can work around the limitation of offline reading for some books and magazines.

Quench Your Hunger for Strange Knowledge

Let me cite the testimonial of Diane Gilleland as mentioned on Google Books’ User Stories. She stumbled on a forgotten knitting technique. For me, it could be something as mysterious as UFOs. A Google Books search gives me a lot of limited previews and snippet views. I can take it up from there. Just start doing a wild search, I am sure you will stumble on books (and topics) you never knew existed.

As the user stories show, the ten ways are just the few uses that we can put Google Books too. I am sure you have your own ideas for using Google Books too. There are some features that I haven’t covered. Definitely, Google Books deserve another post. For now, let us know how useful do you find this exhaustive Google service.

MakeUseOf has teamed up with zozi to provide you (and a friend) a FREE 7-day, trip to New Zealand. Sign up now!

• Where To Research Material For Your Homework (9 comments)
• Track Your Reading and Catalogue Books with BookTomb [Win] (15 comments)
• Track the Books You Have (and Want To) Read with Goodreads (23 comments)
• Take Your Goodreads Booklist With You on Windows Mobile (6 comments)
• Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free (14 comments)
• How To Search the Collections of Famous Libraries & Museums (9 comments)
• How To Make Your Own Books From Wikipedia (10 comments)
• BookRix – A Community For Book Lovers & Wannabe Authors (2 comments)
• Allconsuming – Catalog Your Book, Movies, Music Collection & Much More (1 comments)
• 4 Great Ways To Keep Track Of Your Expanding Book Collection (30 comments)

By (author unknown), The Big Picture – June 07, 2010 at 02:06PM

U.S. troops disembark from a landing vehicle on Utah Beach on the coast of Normandy, France in June of 1944. Carcasses of destroyed vehicles litter the beach. (Regional Council of Basse-Normandie/U.S. National Archives)

France – Normandy Landings – United States – World War II – Utah Beach