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This tip gets emailed to me every then and again, so heck, why not throw it up? Can’t say this isn’t interesting. Courtesy of the University of Washington CS department, check out this a clip of The Matrix rendered in ASCII. No word yet on if the MPAA plans on suing.
Read More 
| Matrix ASCII
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I think it is safe to say that we all love broadband Internet access. As connection speeds for home users continue to be upgraded, one question comes to mind, “Do we really need and have a use for all this speed?” Although any one’s initial answer may be, “Yes, give me more!” this is hardly the case – at least at this point in time. Sure it’s great to have a 20Mbps connection, but without websites providing content worthy of such speeds, what’s the point? No matter how fast your download speed, you will never be able to bring in the content faster than the server can serve it. Spencer Kelly of BBC News takes a look at this topic at an even greater depth – check it out.
Read More | BBC News
The ability to pick and choose your music collection through an online music store is great. Shelling out $13 for a CD where only two or three songs are to your liking is not our kind of deal – hence the popularity of online music stores. However, what about the users without broadband or those people that still do not have a CD burner? That’s where Wal-Mart wants to capitalize. Now you have the option to pick and choose what songs you want on a CD and have Wal-Mart burn the CD, pretty it up with nice graphics, and mail it out to you. All this for a price of $4.62 for three songs, and 88 cents for each additional song with shipping set at $1.97. This is a nice alternative for some - we will stick with Russia for our music.
Read More | Wal-Mart Product Page via Yahoo News
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Yahoo has launched a test version of their latest search offering – My Web. These tools will allow users to save, search and even share any information they find on the Internet. What I find very interesting about this service is that Yahoo is incorporating these tools to its instant messenger and its new blog service. This will allow users to share, comment, and even subscribe to search information of other users – building a community devoted to finding information of a specific theme. The stored search history and pages can even include notes to remind you what the page consists of or simply to jot down ideas based on that web page. The services are currently being tested, but as soon as they are released to the public, Yahoo will make their API available to developers so that they may include the web tools in their next project.
Read More | Yahoo: My Web via BBC News
Family Entertainment and Copyright Act Signed By Bush
Posted by Jesse Easley Categories: Internet, Music, Video Games,
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act has been signed and approved. This act is to reduce/eliminate the amount of piracy of pre-release movies, music, games, etc. The act itself is very concrete in stating that even if you have one pre-release file in your shared folder, whether you downloaded it or not, you are subject to fines and prison time for up to 3 years. It does specify that it pertains to files being prepared for sale in the US. As of right now, it’s not clear on how this act will pertain to people who re-distribute TV shows and movies from other countries.
“The protection of intellectual property rights is vital to the movie industry,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who joined Bush for the signing ceremony. “This bill is necessary to ensure that all those involved in the production of a film, from the director to the set carpenter, are not cheated.”
Read More | The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act
If you’re an avid Google user, (and really, who isn’t?), be sure to pay close attention to how you type Google’s address into your browser. Security company F-Secure made an announcement that if users were to visit “Googkle.com” they would be bombarded with various trojan viruses, spyware, and backdoors. The attack is aimed at users in a rush or that simple put in a type, as the “k” key is right next to the “l” key.
Read More | F-Secure Advisory
The original creators of Netscape have taken another step in the world of the interweb. Mike Homer and Mark Andreessen have launched the Open Media Network which allows public broadcasters, video bloggers, podcasters, and others to make their work public. This new service takes the publishers files, places them into their P2P, and organizes them into an organized guide kind of like an on screen channel guide for TV. From there you can subscribe to the publishers content you like or just simply view things on a click by click basis.
“We’re trying to create a free consumer service that would allow the viewing of public service content on the Internet. Right now there is no easy way for consumers to (publish and view) these things. It has not been a consumer phenomenon, it’s been an early adopter phenomenon,” says Mike Homer.
Read More | Open Media Network Home Page
These days privacy is king, especially when it comes to the Internet. Simply put, we don’t like bring tracked. This is why sites like goproxing.com put a smile on our faces. Basically, it is a site that displays websites you wish to visit within its own interface. It may not look pretty, but when browsing through GoProxing’s free site, you are hidden from prying eyes as you surf through anonymous proxy servers. No downloads needed, just visit and type in the web address you wish to visit. There are a few tweaks you can make as well, such as deciding to show/hide images, accept/decline cookies, as well as a few others.
Read More | GoProxing.com
For everyone who uses P2P to download files be on the lookout. According to antivirus company Sophos, a hacker has created a virus that will wipe your music collection clean if you happen to catch it. The virus, named Nopir.B, is designed to look like a DVD cracking program to bypass disc copyright protection. When the program is launches, it searches your hard drive for MP3 files along with select programs and removes them from your PC.
Read More | Sophos
Google will now remember all of your search history, and they advertise this as a good thing. I’ll admit we have wasted much time looking for a particular site again when we didn’t remember the specifics of the search. But is it a good thing to remember all of our searches? We don’t think so. There are some I wouldn’t want anyone to see. Possibly even some that I wouldn’t even want to see again. Luckily, the feature can be paused - but it remains on by default.
Read More | Google My Search History FAQ
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