Apr 30 2009

The Most Badass Speakers Around Today: Plasma Arc Speakers

Plasma ion tweeters are an evolution the “singing arc”, invented by William Duddells 1900. He basically reworked a carbon arc lamp – which were known for being fairly noisy.

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Apr 30 2009

AT&T Quietly Updates Its Wireless Plans… Again

In the latest changes to AT&T’s service terms, it looks like the company is trying to exempt its own video services while prohibiting competing services like the Slingbox. It’s not very “Internet” when the ISP is picking and choosing what legal activities you may and may not do with your connection.

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Apr 30 2009

Godaddy: Don’t Buy dot-TV Domains, The Island is Sinking.

If I’m reading the pop-up window correctly, domain registrar Godaddy recommends against purchasing .tv domain names because the island of Tuvalu, which the domain represents, is sinking.

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Apr 30 2009

Google Custom Search Cuts uTorrent Off

The immensely popular BitTorrent client uTorrent recently added a Google powered torrent search engine to its website. This added search capability used Google’s custom search program and allowed visitors to search for .torrent files on Google. For reasons unknown, Google appears to be blocking the use of its search technology on the site.

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Apr 30 2009

US Says Canadian Copyright As Bad As China’s, Russia’s

An anonymous reader writes “The US is blaming Canada in a new report that claims that Canadian copyright and intellectual property laws are as bad as those found in China and Russia. Michael Geist notes that Canadian officials have dismissed these findings in the past, arguing it ‘does not recognize the Special 301 process due to its lacking of reliable and objective analysis.'” (Read more about the annual Special 301 report.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Apr 30 2009

LoTR Fan Film — The Hunt For Gollum

stevedcc writes “This weekend sees the release of The Hunt for Gollum, a Lord of the Rings fan-film. It’ll be available on the web for free. The BBC are running an article about the making of the film, with a budget of £3,000 (spent mostly on costumes and make-up). There were 160 contributors involved, many over the internet.” I hope it lives up to the trailer (linked from the BBC story); the finished film is approximately 40 minutes. memoryhole supplies links to YouTube for both the full trailer and a second trailer. Reader jowifi adds a link to NPR’s story on the film, writing, “NPR discussed the legality of this type of creation with EFF lawyer Fred Von Lohman, who said it’s not clear if such a production violates the copyright for Tolkien’s work.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Apr 30 2009

Windows 7 RC Rush Crashes MSDN, TechNet Pages

CWmike writes “Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) and TechNet paid subscribers were supposed to find the 32- and 64-bit editions of Windows 7 RC available for download today. But in a snafu reminiscent of the problems Microsoft had in January when it tried to launch Windows 7 Beta, the download pages for the release candidate were inaccessible, despite numerous attempts over an hour-long span up until about noon Eastern. TechNet and MSDN subscribers were not happy. ‘Man, this stinks,’ said a user identified as Lyle Pratt, on a TechNet message forum at 10 a.m. ET. ‘I can’t believe we can still bring MSDN to its knees!’ said John Butler, a Microsoft partner. ‘Surely, they should be able to deal with this? Not a good advert for Microsoft.’ The Windows 7 RC is slated to be available for public download next Tuesday, May 5. Meanwhile, Microsoft said today that the RC would operate until June 2010, for 13 months of free use — a significantly longer time than it did with Vista’s previews.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Apr 30 2009

50 Tools Everyone Should Own (With Tips!)

We need tools to build, repair and maintain the mechanical world in which we live. With these 50 tools, you’ll be ready for just about any project.

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Apr 30 2009

Palm Eos: super-thin, 3G, and headed to AT&T?!

Liked that blurry photo of a new Palm webOS phone we saw earlier? Well how about some specs, a name, and a better look at this thing? Enter the device above, apparently dubbed the Palm Eos (codenamed Castle… where have we seen that before?), which it seems will be the company’s proper follow-up to the Centro! Full specs list, coming to AT&T!

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Apr 30 2009

Linux : Group Test: Netbook Distros.

Ultraportable laptops – netbooks such as the Eee PC – are becoming increasingly popular. A computer that’s small enough to live permanently in your bag without giving you backache can be incredibly useful, especially as wireless connectivity and 3G hardware are growing in ubiquity.

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