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Nintendo

Submission + - Nintendo controllers to be banned from US (wiiusers.net)

Submitted by Ana_scape
Ana_scape writes: Anascape, a texas based company, sued Nintendo for violating a patent on controllers. Instead of paying the $21 Million bond, Nintendo has decided to take all the controllers off the shelves. [...] As of July 23rd, no more Gamecube or Wii Classic controllers will be sold in the US. Nintendo, however, is not giving up. They plan on appealing the decision in a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which would put the ban on hold for the time being.
Google

Submission + - Is YouTube killing music?

Submitted by
niceone
niceone writes: "Recently YouTube seems to have started applying extreme compression to the audio of uploaded clips. This is the type of compressions used by radio stations to make everything louder, but in this case applied extremely badly. In quiet passages, breathing and shuffling become overpoweringly loud. A gently plucked guitar chord becomes a distorted thud. Listen to an example here. And here's what it could sound like — still not perfect, but a whole lot better. The fixed version is thanks to a workaround proposed by Sopranoguitar — the idea is to turn down the audio and mix in a high frequency sine wave (I used 19kHz). The sine wave fools YouTube's compressor into thinking that the file is at a uniform level (and does not need the volume changing at all) but is filtered out by the encoding process (so, no need to worry about deafening any dogs)."
Yahoo!

Submission + - Yahoo Bilks Its Domain-Name Registrants

Submitted by ArizonaJer
ArizonaJer writes: On 1 July 2008, Yahoo Small Business more than tripled its charge for domain-name registration from $9.95 to $34.95. There are two skeezy things about this: (1) their Website still advertises the $9.95 rate and (2) YSB auto-renews domains (and charges your credit card) unless you specifically tell them not to. They did advise me about the price hike via email, but I would guess that not everyone reads their renewal notices as carefully as I and that many folks were rudely surprised by the new rate when it turned up on their credit-card bill. I tried twice to reach customer service to make sure this email wasn't a domain-stealing spoof. The first time I gave up after 50 minutes on hold; the second time I was disconnected after 61 minutes on hold. Could it be that YSB customers are clogging the customer-service lines with their outrage?
Media (Apple)

Submission + - Does Jobs Need to Disclose His Medical Condition? (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times is saying that Steve Jobs doesn't have cancer, but that he needs to disclose all the information about his medical condition so investors can decide. Gizmodo's strong rebuttal says that everyone has the right to keep medical records confidential. They argue that, if prominent US presidents legally kept their grave illnesses secret — even while the security of the country was at stake — a simple CEO should be able to do the same: "Steve Jobs has the right to keep his medical records private for as long as he wants. Like FDR. Like JFK. Like any single person in this country and the world. It's our right, as humans, to do so."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Hardcore hardware hacking video - Citizen Engineer (vimeo.com)

Submitted by Solderingfool
Solderingfool writes: MAKE Magazine's Phil Torrone and open source hardware hacker Ladyada from Adafruit Industries have a new video series called "Citizen Engineer". In the first video they show how a SIM card works, then build a SIM card reader which could be used to clone a SIM card. Then they show how to use an old payphone as a regular home phone, later with coins and for their final hack — how to "Redbox" it. They released all the projects as open source, the video is well produced and has some catchy music during the soldering!
Software

Submission + - Best Integrated Issue-Tracker for Subversion? 1

Submitted by
JobSeeker
JobSeeker writes: "Now that subversion has merge tracking my boss wants to save money by dropping our expensive commercial solution. I've pretty much convinced myself that subversion can do the job. I like it. But what about integrated issue tracking? Version control without issue tracking is only half a solution. The TortoiseSVN docs say a little about bugzilla and not much else. What ready-to-play options (commercial or open source) exist for deploying subversion on commercial projects?"

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