Month: March 2013

By kdawson, Slashdot – April 18, 2010 at 08:12AM

Pickens writes “Corporate Counsel recounts the profound legacy of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, author of the majority opinion in what some consider the most important copyright ruling of all time — the 1984 Betamax decision (Sony v. Universal City Studios) that established that consumers have a personal ‘fair use’ right to make copies of copyrighted material for non-commercial use. Justice Stevens’s contribution to the ultimate decision in Betamax extended well beyond writing the opinion. The justices’ initial debates in the case make it clear that Stevens was the only one of the nine (PDF) who believed that the ‘fair use’ doctrine gave consumers a right to make personal copies of copyrighted content for home use. It was his negotiating skill that pulled together the five-vote majority allowing home video recorders to be sold and used without interference from copyright holders. An IP litigator is quoted: ‘The ruling that making a single copy for yourself of a broadcast movie was fair use … that was truly huge, and was a point on which the court was deeply divided.’ So the next time you’re TiVo-ing an episode of your favorite show, remember to give a quick thanks to Justice Stevens; and let’s hope that whoever President Obama appoints to replace him will follow in Stevens’s footsteps and defend Fair Use, not corporate copyright interests.” The review also touches on Stevens’s “patent skepticism,” which may be on display when the court delivers its eagerly awaited Bilski ruling.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch – April 18, 2010 at 08:05AM

Eyjafjallajökull has become a curse word in Europe as the Icelandic Volcano continues to delay flights across the Atlantic. The cloud of volcanic ash is creating havoc for travelers and European startups who can’t get anywhere. But entrepreneurs in London at least are coping with impromptu meetups.

If you haven’t seen images yet of the volcano up close, there are some on Flickr and YouTube. Reader Baldvin Hansson sent us the photos below (here is his entire set), which he took in a small plane near the volcano (presumably upwind).

By Rich Whittle, Business Opportunities Weblog – April 17, 2010 at 06:45PM

You know when the sign on the bread shelf at Winn-Dixie says “10 for $10,” that’s just wishful thinking on the store’s part, according to a story at Tampa Bay Online.

You can just buy one for $1, or three for $3 if that’s all you really need.

But the pricing strategy, somehow, seems to work, according to a study in the Journal of Marketing Research from 1998 that’s still touted online.

The research indicates that promotions using multi-unit pricing (“3 for $3″), purchase limits (“Limit 12/person”) and suggestive selling (“Buy 10 for your freezer”) all doubled what consumers purchased, according to a summary of the research by Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab.

“When most people buy products, they buy one or two at a time. They decide on a low number (like one or two), then buy more if the product’s on sale,” the summary said. “When promotions suggest high numbers (“Buy 12 so you don’t run out!”), people shift their reference point to the higher number, and buy more.”

More interesting data and helpful tips on the psychology of shopping can be found at the Cornell lab’s Web site. Just click here.

Photo by psychologytoday.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

By Angelina, MakeUseOf – April 17, 2010 at 03:31PM

To the average computer user, contracting a virus is like contracting a rare disease – it brings life to a halt, it is expensive to remove, and worst of all, the probability of catching a virus is much higher than that of catching a serious disease.

After the dreaded infection, removal procedures usually include taking the computer to a service center, where technicians charge hundreds of dollars to remove the virus. But what many users don’t know is that viruses are actually not very difficult to deal with.

In fact, there are hoards of free tools on the internet that make it simple enough to remove viruses for free, for anyone with even a bit of technical savvy. These tools render spending ridiculous sums of money for a virus removal a thing of the past.

The bulk of the work is brute forcing: repeatedly attacking the virus with different scans until it gives into deletion. If you have a decent amount of time on your hands, virus removal becomes a very simple process.

The first step to remove viruses for free is backing up your data. At work, I usually take the hard drive out of the computer and use a hard drive dock (pictured above) to back data up on our servers. This is the safest method of backing up files, since the traditional method of backing up your files to an external hard drive yields a higher chance of the viruses copying themselves onto your external.

However, not many people own a hard drive dock, so in a pinch, you could try uploading your files to a cloud based storage system, like Dropbox. If you do want to invest in a dock, though, the cheapest one I found online was $20.

Once you have your data backed up, you can begin running virus scans on your computer. First, boot your computer into safe mode. Each manufacturer has a different F-key for boot up options, but the most common one is F8. A quick Google search should tell you which F-key is the one your computer uses to boot into safe mode. Make sure, when you are selecting which mode to boot into, that you pick the safe mode with networking, since we will be running both online and software scans.

From here on out, I will simply list tried and true scanners that I use on a daily basis (also check out Justin’s recent article on the 10 best free anti-virus programs). The procedure for each is the same: download the installer, install it onto your computer, make sure you update the definitions, and then let it run (always select FULL scan). Once you’ve completed the scan, make sure you uninstall the program before you install and run the next one.

Anti-Virus Softwares

1. Malwarebytes

2. A Squared

3. Microsoft Security Essentials

4. AVG Free

5. Spybot Search and Destroy

The procedure for running online scanners is exactly the same as running software scanners, except that instead of downloading an installer, you will simply be downloading a plug-in.

Online Scanners

1. Panda ActiveScan

2. Bitdefender

3. ESET

Usually, by the time you’ve made your way through the above list, you should be receiving clean reports from your anti-virus scans. Sometimes, you will encounter a virus that is particularly difficult to remove, but if you have already identified it, Bitdefender hosts a bevy of free removal tools for specific viruses. Otherwise, there are dozens of other, equally effective anti-virus tools on the internet: for example, Avast and Avira. Just follow the same process as above, and you should be good to go.

The last resort, if all else fails, would be to reformat your computer. However, if you must settle for this option, rest assured knowing that your data is already backed up, and, since the procedure you just went through is the same as the one many computer repair shops use, that you probably would have been told to reformat anyways.

Do you have any trusted virus removal tools, or any pro tips for other users wishing to keep their computers infection-free? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit : Nils Geylen

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By Soulskill, Slashdot – April 17, 2010 at 11:37AM

isometric writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra:
“IA Labs is accusing Nintendo of infringing on two separate IA Labs patents through technology used in the Nintendo Wii, Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, the Wii Balance Board, Wii Remote, Wii Wheel, Wii MotionPlus, Wii Nunchuck and Wii Zapper. … The patents in question are ‘Computer interactive isometric exercise system and method for operatively interconnecting the exercise system to a computer system for use as a peripheral’ and ‘Force measurement system for an isometric exercise device.’ The claim said that IA Labs had been in contact with Nintendo during 2007-2008, discussing possible overlaps of IA Labs and Nintendo patents. Emails between IA Labs and Nintendo showed that IA Labs wanted to license its technology to Nintendo. IA Labs was also in talks with Nintendo about a product called Sqweeze, a controller for Wii and PC that’s meant to increase physical activity when gaming.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Deron Bauman, clusterflock – April 17, 2010 at 11:15AM

Ralph Morse, a young photographer for Life magazine, was assigned to photograph the Einstein funeral, but because of the privacy wishes of the family, the photos were left unpublished — dramatic pause — until now.

Dr. Thomas Harvey (1912 – 2007) was the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Einstein at Princeton Hospital in 1955. The stranger-than-fiction tale of Einstein’s brain — which Harvey controversially removed during the autopsy, carefully sliced into sections, and then kept for years for research purposes — and the intrigues long-associated with the famous organ, are far too convoluted to go into here. However: on the day that Einstein died, Ralph Morse was able to take a few quick photographs of Dr. Harvey at the hospital. Morse says he’s certain that that is not Einstein’s brain under Dr. Harvey’s knife in this never-before-seen picture. Then, after a pause, Morse qualifies that certainty: “You know, it was fifty-five years ago. Honestly, I don’t remember every single detail of the day. So whatever he’s cutting there …” Morse’s words hang in the air. Then, mischievously, he laughs.

By (author unknown), Groklaw – April 17, 2010 at 12:28AM

Every day I check to see if there is any news about a decision by the US Supreme Court on In Re Bilski. I’m sure a lot of you do too, so while we wait, here’s a 30-minute movie by independent filmmaker Luca Lucarini, Patent Absurdity: how software patents broke the system, made possible by a grant from the Free Software Foundation, on how we got into patent quicksand in the US:

Patent Absurdity explores the case of software patents and the history of judicial activism that led to their rise, and the harm being done to software developers and the wider economy. The film is based on a series of interviews conducted during the Supreme Court’s review of in re Bilski – a case that could have profound implications for the patenting of software. The Court’s decision is due soon…

You don’t want to miss the movie, regardless of your views on software patents. Even if you love them, you will at least understand why software programmers almost to a man do not. It’s under a Creative Commons license, so you can share it with your friends and with the world. EndSoftwarePatents is asking for help with subtitles in as many languages as possible, so that’s a lovely project for the weekend, if you have the skills.

It explains how software patents came to be allowed, and it is explained by folks you’ve read about and trust, like Dan Ravicher, Eben Moglen, Richard Stallman, Ben Klemens, James Besson, Ciarán O’Riordan, and Mark Webbink. I think you’ll enjoy it a lot. Ben uses a blackboard to explain a real patent eHarmony obtained, and it’s both hilarious and memorable. Here’s where you go to download it, in various levels of quality. It was made with free software, by the way, including my beloved Audacity.

By Lee Mathews, Download Squad – April 16, 2010 at 01:45PM

Filed under: Design, Web

AutoDesk has been working on their free online 3D home design tool for quite some time. Last year, Project Dragonfly debuted and I was impressed with the early effort. Now the easy-to-use web app has been relabeled AutoDesk Homestyler, and it’s better than ever.

What’s new in Homestyler? The biggest change is that you can now do landscape design as well — something I was hoping they would add when I first reviewed Dragonfly last May. Drag and drop trees, shrubs, and water features onto your plans to spiff things up outside. Loads of decking, rock and mulch, and grass options are provided, too.

In addition to improvements to the design program itself, AutoDesk has added more login options so you don’t have to create yet another web account. Now you can sign in using your Google, Facebook, Windows Live, or Yahoo! credentials — nice!

Creating great-looking designs is still as easy as it was in the early days of Drgaonfly. Drag and drop rooms, resize them, insert furnishings, choose your finishes — and then switch to a 3D view to get a real-life look at your handiwork.

Homestyler is free to use, and no download is required: simply open it in your favorite web browser and start creating your home designs! Since it’s web-based, that means everyone can use it, whether you’re using a Windows, Mac, or Linux-powered computer.

[via Lifehacker]

AutoDesk Dragonfly becomes Homestyler, does easy 3D home design for free originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By Jason Fitzpatrick, Lifehacker – April 16, 2010 at 12:00PM

Connecting an external hard drive to your Wii to backup and play your games is a simple way to keep expensive discs out of harms way, decrease game load times, and organize your collection with swanky cover art. Here’s how it works.

Last year we shared two guides with you that other people had written—the original and a revision—on how to back up and play your Wii games from an external hard drive. Unfortunately, like many things on the internet, the guides faded into the digital night (read: they were taken down). Setting up your Wii with an external hard drive is a wildly popular topic, however, and since the old guides went offline, we’ve received daily emails on the topic. In response to the demand, here’s our own complete guide to setting up your Wii to play games from a USB hard drive.

When laid out screen-by-screen this guide is quite lengthy, but the process itself only takes about 10 minutes start to finish—if you’re not stopping to take lots of screenshots and write a tutorial along the way! This guide will show you how to activate an exploit on your Wii to allow more advanced Homebrew software to run, how to setup and format an external USB hard drive to play nice with your Wii, and how to manage the process of backing up your games and displaying them in cover-flow inspired style. When you’re done your games will be load fast, be immune from scratches and mishandling, and be displayed in a way that will make your friends envious.

Before you delve into the project why don’t we take a peek at this video demonstration of the interface to help you decide if it’s worth it—it’s so worth it, but who’s going to say no to a video tour?

Ready to call in sick and spend the day setting up your Wii? No? Watch the video again.

Precautions and the Necessary Hardware:

Before we get started, let’s review some necessary cautions and the tools we’ll need. Anytime you mess around with a piece of closed hardware like a Wii and start monkeying with the guts you risk bricking your toy. Have we ever bricked a Wii? No, despite modding Wiis and all sorts of consumer electronics, we’ve never bricked anything. Is it possible to brick your Wii? Yes, the risk is always there and you should proceed with appropriate caution and respect for the process. Every step and every tool used in this entire guide can easily be looked up on Google if you want to read more about it.

Precautions provided, let’s take a look at the tools you’ll need:

• An SD card (this is a perfect job for an old 512MB or 1GB SD card)
• An external USB hard drive (Wii games take up around 2GB on average, so select a drive according to your collection)
• A Wii with the Homebrew channel installed (We’re not going to recap how to install the Homebrew channel in this tutorial, so check out our step-by-step guide to installing Homebrew on the Wii without Twilight Princess if you need to Homebrew your Wii.)

Getting Started by Softening up Your Wii’s Defenses:

If you have an older Wii with an out-of-date menu system (3.2 or lower), you can skip this section about the Trucha Bug since your system still has it. (If you’re not sure what version you have, click on the Options button in the lower left corner of your Wii’s main menu and then on the Wii Settings icon on the right hand side of the screen; the version number is displayed in the top-right corner of this screen.) If you have a newer menu system, you’ll need to read this section.

The Trucha Bug is just a code vulnerability that existed on early versions of the Wii operating system (referred to in Wii-hacking documentation as IOS). As of the 4.0 Wii menu update, the Trucha Bug was eradicated; luckily for our hacking purposes, you can easily reintroduce it in order to exploit it.

Download DOP-Mii v12 and extract the zip file onto your SD card keeping the folder structure intact. Pop the SD card back in your Wii and launch the Homebrew channel.

Run DOP-Mii and select Install I0S36 (v3351) w/FakeSign from the menu:

The next series of screens look similar to the above screenshot. On those screens you will apply—press A to say yes to—the ES_Identity patch, the NAND Permissions patch, and then you will download the patches through your Wii’s internet connection like so:

After the screen above, DOP-Mii will ask you if you want to restore IOS15 to v523. Again, click A to confirm that you would. DOP-Mii will complete the modification and kick you back to the Homebrew channel. Note: In some instances this tweak can invert the Homebrew screen, a strange quirk. You can fix it easily by reloading the Homebrew installer.

The next step is to introduce a new IOS to your system. Download the cIOS installer here. Extract the zip file, again keeping the folder structure intact, to the /Apps/ folder on your Wii SD card. Pop the SD card back in the Wii and launch the Homebrew Channel:

Launch the cIOS installer. On the initial screen use the right and left Wiimote directional pad to switch the ISO number to ISO36. Press A to confirm:

On the next screen, use the keypad to select Network Installation. Press A to confirm. The cIOS Installer will churn away for a minute or so and then confirm a successful installation. Press any button to reboot the Wii.

Prepare Your External Hard Drive and Install the Boot Loader

At this point your Wii is ready for all the fun Homebrew antics you can throw at it—Homebrew by itself is really awesome, but Homebrew with a custom IOS under it is even better. At this point we’re going to explain how to prepare your external hard drive to work with your Wii, so grab that external drive, plug it into your computer, and let’s get cracking.

We need to go grab copies of the USB loader and WBFS manager we’ll be using. For this tutorial (and on our personal Wii consoles) we’re using USB Loader GX—a great USB loader packed with features and eye candy. We’ll also be using WBFS Manager. WBFS Manager is Windows-only, but don’t be discouraged if you’re running Mac OS X or Linux. Visit this list of WBFS managers to pick out a WBFS manager for your operating system.

WBFS stands for Wii Backup File System. It’s possible to use some of the more advanced loaders with NTFS formatted disks, but it’s dicey and not worth the headache. Stick with the Wii’s native file system for maximum stability. You’ll want to plug your USB drive into your computer and fire up your WBFS tool of choice at this point—for the tutorial we’re using WBFS Manager. Select your USB drive from the pull down menu and click the format button. Just like using the regular format tool this is serious business. Make sure you pick the right drive.

Although WBFS Manager is packed with features, we don’t need it right now for anything but formatting. You can revisit it later to backup your backup drive and other nifty tricks, but for now you can shut it down and unplug your USB drive from the computer and plug it into the bottom USB port—the one closest to edge of the Wii and the little rubber foot (the other port is reserved for games that require USB accessories like Rock Band).

Head back to your computer computer point your browser to the download section of the USB Loader GX site. If you’re on a Windows machine, scroll down to the bottom of the file list and grab a copy of USBLoaderGX_1.0_Installer.exe—it’s a simple application that will update and install the USB Loader GX files on your Wii SD card for you.

If you are grabbing them manually, go to the top of the list and grab the most current .DOL and .WAD files.—as of this writing that would be r929.dol and r929.wad. Place the .DOL file on your SD card at /apps/usbloader_gx/ and rename it to boot.dol and put the .WAD file in /wads/. While you’re at it download the USB Loader GX Forwarder here and put it in /wads/ also. You’ll need it later for the extra credit portion of the tutorial. Put the SD card in your Wii and boot back into the Homebrew Channel.

Launch USB Loader GX:

Looks lonely in there. Pop in a game and click “Install”. Depending on the game it can take anywhere from a minute to several to rip a game. Wii Sports, for example, is only 0.31GB in size, whereas Super Smash Bros. Brawl is 6.93GB. The average Wii game is around 2GB or so—though you’ll be surprised to see how many games are really tiny. After you’ve ripped one you might as well work your way through the stack in front of you. Soon your loader screen will look like this:

It’s not lonely anymore but it sure is boring looking. Press 1 on your Wiimote. This menu will pop up:

Cover downloads? Yes ma’am! The covers will download automatically—they’re stored on your SD card, if you’re curious. After you’ve downloaded the covers your default interface should look like this:

Clicking along the bar at the top of the screen gives you new layouts like the one at the top of this article and this one:

Not only is USB Loader GX a beautiful loader to look at, it has tons of features under the hood. You can favorite games to make a “Best Of” list or sort them by number of plays so your most frequently played games rise to the top. You can even set a parental lock so that children playing games on your Wii can’t load the Mature rated titles—do you really want to explain why your nephew is playing No More Heroes instead of Super Paper Mario?

Extra Credit: Put Your Loader on the Front Page

So far things are looking pretty good. You’re rocking Homebrew, you’ve got a USB hard drive with all your games hooked up to your Wii, and it’s all controlled by a beautiful cover-style loader. What could be better? Not having to launch the Homebrew Channel and then launch the loader, just to get to your games. Let’s put the loader front and center.

We’re going to need a few more tools so grab that SD card. We need a WAD manager, essentially a file manager for the Wii that handles installation bundles. You can’t go wrong downloading Waninkoko’s Wad Manager; you’ll find a copy here. Extract the zip file to /apps/wad manager/ and remember to rename the .DOL file to boot.dol. Throw it back into your Wii and boot into the Homebrew Channel. Run the Wad Manager. You should see a screen that looks like this:

Select IOS249 as the IOS version—it should already be selected. On the next screen select “Wii SD Slot” as the source device. The next screen should look like this:

Select the USB Loader GX-UNEO_Forwarder.wad, click A to install it. After the installation is complete, hit the home button on your Wiimote to boot back into the Wii. Exit the Homebrew Channel and on the main screen you should be greeted by the addition of the USB Loader_GX icon:

From now on whenever you boot up your Wii you’ll be one click away from your awesome collection in all its cover-flow glory.

---

Before we break from the tutorial we have some links to share with you. The following sites have astounding amounts of information about the Wii, modding the Wii, and the inner workings of the Wii. If you can’t find the answer to your Wii-related questions among them you probably won’t find it anywhere.

• Wiibrew
• Wiihacks
• The Complete Softmod Guide
• /Wii/ @ GBATemp.net

Have a favorite Wii-related resource? A great piece of Homebrew software to share? Whatever Wii tips or tricks you have up your sleeve, we want to hear about them in the comments.

By Karl L. Gechlik, MakeUseOf – April 16, 2010 at 11:31AM

I have used OpenDNS in the past for monitoring children and employees. Now I am here to tell you how important it is to safeguard your children online. I have also said in the past that the Internet is a great place for kids to learn and a computer can be their best friend. See my post on Baby Smash and Nick JR’s website here.

Today I will be showing you a free spy software download put out by the same people who brought you the McGruff crime dog from the 1980’s. Do you remember him? He had the slogan “Help us take a bite out of crime!”

Well he is back and he is spying on your kids Internet activity. He can email you if your child does something that trips the alarm. These things can be a stranger “friending” them in an online social network. It could be them or one of their online buddies using “dangerous” acronyms like LSD or PCP.

To start we will need to create an account.

After creating a “parent” account using the form above we can move on to install the free spy software download on the computer your little one uses. We need to select the types of alarms you want installed. They include: bullying (being bullied or your child being the bully), sexual terminology, curse words, alcohol and drug talk, loneliness or suicide watch words, violence and strangers talking to them. You can see the full list below:

Now we need to physically install the software. Don’t worry if you are not in front of their PC. You can click No to the following question and have the link emailed to you so that you can install it on their machine. If you are on their machine click yes and continue.

Go ahead and click OK on the next screen to install.

It will take a few minutes for the software to check your built in firewall and security software for compatibility. They might give you recommendations on how to deal with them. For me I was good to go.

Select the first option and then point it to the account we created at the beginning.

When you are finished hit next. That will take you to this screen telling you that a McGruff icon will appear on the child’s computer. If you click on the button labeled why it will tell you how important it is to talk to your children about Internet safety but there will also be a button to remove the icon from there, for the sneakier of MakeUseOf readers.

Now you can view how many unique websites have been looked at on this machine. You also have the option to view the websites browsed to, prior to the installation, by hitting the show details button. You can see what mine looks like below:

The next check box will not allow your children to view inappropriate websites.  I skipped this step as I want her to have free range but also be able to see what choices she is making. This will help me guide her in understanding the World Wide Web.

Next up we see the notification screen. This is where you can set up how you want your snooping data statistics delivered. You can have it emailed to you or view it online (or both). You can also be alerted instantly via email to “dangerous browsing activity”.

Here is a quick glimpse of my control panel and how much data it actually aggregates and gives you access to.

How do you keep your little ones safe online? Do you always watch them while they use the computer? How young is too young to be left alone online?

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