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Businesses

Warner Bros. Acquires The Pirate Bay 348

mlingojones writes "TorrentFreak breaks the news of The Pirate Bay's acquisition by Warner Bros: 'After years of hostility, lawsuits, police raids and heated invective between the two groups, the Pirate Bay has today announced they have settled their differences with US media conglomerate Warner Bros. The largest BitTorrent tracker has sold out to Hollywood and the two have agreed a deal.'"
Software

Toward the Open Company 272

Arto Stimms writes "The author of the e text editor is using the principles of open source to transform his company into an Open Company. Not only is he releasing the source, the company itself becomes totally open: no concept of bosses or employees. Anyone can join in at any time, doing whatever task they find interesting, for whatever time they find appropriate. This is in service of the idea of 'the real freedom zero': the freedom to decide for yourself what you want to work on."

Comment Re:The simple one. (Score 1) 678

Keeping the computer in the living room doesn't prevent them from stumbling on bad stuff.

The purpose of a good filter is 2 fold:
1. prevent kids from stumbling onto bad stuff.
2. prevent kids them from using the internet to be curious (the parent is paying for the connection and has a right to block or allow whatever they want).

A customizable filter is best: k9 (win/mac). Customizable = if blocked it allows the user to invite the parent to override the block, (and add the site to a whitelist). This way, the kids can still access blocked items.

So who determines what gets blocked? With a customizable filter, it is the parent, and because they are paying for the internet connection, they have a right to control what comes in on the internet connection. When the kids move out and go to college, they are old enough they can make their own decisions.

However, I haven't found a customizable filter and free for linux yet. If you have an extra computer with 2 network cards you can try untangle os a firewall os with content filtering. I will try the opendns suggestions listed below, because it sounds like you can choose what categories are blocked and which aren't.
Hardware

What Does a $16,000+ PC Look Like, Anyway? 495

justechn writes "Tom's Hardware has an article about custom PC maker Puget Systems, who had just finished a custom $16,000 PC for one of their clients. So what exactly goes into a $16,000 system? How about: Four quad-core Opteron processors, 32 GB of memory, Windows Server 2008, Asus Xonar DX PCI Express sound card, 3Ware 9550SX-8LP SATA 3 Gb/s RAID controller, Two Western Digital 300 GB VelociRaptor hard drives in RAID 1, Two 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s also in RAID 1, and Four 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F1s in RAID 5. Puget went with MagiCool's Xtreme Nova 1080 radiator, Nine 120 mm fans, Four Koolance CPU blocks, Koolance combined pump and reservoir unit, and Cooler Master Stacker 810 case. In addition to all that hardware, it also runs very quiet and very cool. The temperature of the CPUs is 36 C at idle, 45 C at load."
Image

Powering Restaurants WIth Deep Fried Fuel Screenshot-sm 148

Mike writes "Here's a brilliant idea for biofuels: rather than filtering used fry oil for use in vehicles, why not simplify matters and use it to heat and power the restaurant itself? The VegaWatt turns used vegetable oil into clean heat and energy for restaurants, eliminating the dirty and costly mess of oil disposal while producing 10-25% of the electricity needed to run a small restaurant. It also produces fuel free of chemicals or fossil fuels, unlike standard biodiesel."
Windows

Microsoft Ramps Up "Fix it" Support Tool 144

CWmike writes "Microsoft has ramped up its new Windows support assistant 'Fix it for me' nearly three months after it quietly released the automatic repair and configuration tool. The upgrade adds a 'Fix it' button to some of the support documents that Microsoft posts to its Knowledge Base. The blog introducing the changes lists some of the Knowledge Base documents that boast the 'Fix it' button, including one that prevents users from connecting a USB storage device — useful in protecting against one of the infection vectors of the 'Downadup' worm. Have ideas for the tool? In a forum on the 'WinVistaClub' Web site, someone who said he was part of the 'Fix it' team at Microsoft encouraged users to send feedback on the feature to the group at fixit4me@microsoft.com."
Media (Apple)

Apple's Terms No Longer Allow ITMS Purchases Outside of US 319

JasonDT writes "I just accepted the new terms of service for iTunes and found that I will no longer be allowed to access US iTunes outside of the United States. This may seem like no big deal but, I am a US citizen living abroad and I regularly purchase and view TV and movies from AppleTV. Not to mention US citizens just traveling abroad. Does anyone know if this has been enforced or have themselves been affected by this?"
Biotech

"Subhuman Project" Human Powered Submarine 103

"Inventor Ted Ciamillo and marine biologist Frank Fish (yes, that's his real name) are at work on a human-powered sub designed to cross the Atlantic. What's interesting is the highly efficient propulsion system which uses a 'tail' modeled after CAT scans of a dolphin's. From the article: 'Ciamillo and Fish say they knew they were onto something when the first prototype Lunocet, a piece of sculpted foam sandwiched between two pieces of carbon fiber, essentially swam by itself. When they released it at the bottom of a test pool, its buoyancy combined with its cambered shape generated a forward thrust that made it scoot across the tank.'"
Technology

LED Lighting As Cheap As CFLs Invented 553

mcgrew writes "New Scientist reports that a British team has overcome the obstacles to cheap LED lighting, and that LED lamps as cheap as CFLs will be on the market in five years. Quoting: 'Gallium nitride cannot be grown on silicon like other solid-state electronic components because it shrinks at twice the rate of silicon as it cools. Crystals of GaN must be grown at 1000C, so by the time a new LED made on silicon has cooled, it has already cracked, rendering the devices unusable. One solution is to grow the LEDs on sapphire, which shrinks and cools at much the same rate as GaN. But the expense is too great to be commercially competitive. Now Colin Humphreys's team at the University of Cambridge has discovered a simple solution to the shrinkage problem. They included layers of aluminium gallium nitride in their LED design... These LEDs can be grown on silicon as so many other electronics components are. ... A 15-centimetre silicon wafer costs just $15 and can accommodate 150,000 LEDs making the cost per unit tiny.'"

Best Buy API Aims To Expand Store's Reach Online 99

surely_you_cant_be_serious writes "Best Buy has opened up proprietary product catalog data in its online store through an open API. Through the Remix API, Best Buy can track how many people are using its information, while users can check to see where a certain product is available without visiting Best Buy's site. Web developers and bloggers can also sign up to become an official Best Buy affiliate. If approved, they can get a small percentage of a sale if someone makes a Best Buy purchase through their site."
Media

Submission + - Obama, MediaTech, Inauguration & Clogged Inter (technewsworld.com)

whtmarker writes: "The Inauguration showcased some new technologies, interesting but not life changing.
From technewsworld.com: Yes They Can — but So What?.

Barack Obama has made it as clear as a 1080p high-definition image that he intends to be the Digital President.... The intense interest in the [inauguration] clogged the Internets right around the time Obama placed his hand on Abraham Lincoln's Bible, raising new questions about whether streaming media was ready for prime time... Yeah, it's kind of cool to finger-flick from a photo of Obama... but audiences raised on "CSI" software fantasies weren't likely to be overwhelmed by 2-D turned into 3-D turned back into 2-D on your TV, even if your TV is HD.

During inauguration coverage, GeoEye was also featured, which will be a google maps supplier later in 2009."

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