Content and news by Rob Williams

Found on Digg, one stealthy shopper went into a The Source By Circuit City store in Canada and noticed one of the TVs had two DVD rips loaded into the menu. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see a store rip their own DVDs and display them on their TVs, except that these file names had aXXo in them, the name of the largest DVD rip uploader on BitTorrent networks.

Is the MPAA just going to sit around? Might be hard since this took place in Canada. But we’ll see.

Source: Picture

Pidgin 2.0 is a highly extensible and cohesive platform for multiprotocol Internet communication that includes broad support for essential instant messaging features and common protocols. Rigged with a versatile plug-in system and an assortment of advanced features, Pidgin 2.0 is capable of competing with commercial instant messaging applications like Trillian Pro.

I have been using Pidgin since it’s release last week and have not been let down. Though, it’s not far different from the last version of GAIM. If I had any complaints, it would be the new emoticon set. It’s… not for my tastes.

Source: Ars Technica

AT&T is charging users of its prepaid calling cards up to eight minutes per minute spent making an in-state call. The practice began in February and affects in-state calls made from every state except Illinois, Indiana, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

How is it that this was not discovered sooner? Eight minutes for every one that you talk? That’s extreme! The list of States and their rates are listed on the page.

Source: Consumerist

The English Premier League is to sue video-sharing site YouTube for alleged copyright infringement. The football organisation said YouTube had “knowingly misappropriated” its intellectual property by encouraging footage to be viewed on its site.

It just doesn’t end for YouTube, but that’s no surprise for a website that ranks in the top ten on the planet. Still, how is it that the EPL is losing money because clips wind up on YouTube?

Source: BBC

Not your ordinary speakers, these “Talking Lips” actually have moving lips that synchronize with your mobile phone or online chat conversations (Skype, etc.). They come in three different colors (silver/black/red) and connect to your phone or computer via USB. Fortunatley, there’s an on/off switch on the bottom that will come in handy after the few seconds of entertainment are up.

Wow… just wow. This is one weird gadget, but they only get weirder…

Source: TecheBlog

It turns out that when someone signs up for an AOL.com account, the user appears to be allowed to enter up to a 16-character password. AOL’s system, however, doesn’t read past the first eight characters.

This is a horrible oversight on AOL’s part. Anyone on AOL should go and re-think their password if it’s more than eight characters long.

Source: Washington Post

New technology from Microsoft Research India in Bangalore could end the waiting game in offices with limited computers. Researchers are developing software that splits a computer screen in two halves, each side with its own operating system, desktop, applications, cursor and keyboard.

Although this doesn’t seem that interesting, it could save a lot of time and money for those business owners in developing lands. Two computers in the same space as one? It’s a good deal.

Source: Discovery

I’ve concluded that Dreamhost sucks phenomenally at hosting websites that generate any kind of traffic. Sure, their $9.99 a month plans with massive savings coupons are enticing, but if you knew what you were getting yourself into, you’d stay away. Dreamhost sucks like you’d want to suck on a knife covered in chocolate–which isn’t very much.

If you are looking to set up a site at Dreamhost, you may want to read this first. I have never dealt with them before, so I can’t speak of any experience. I sure wouldn’t want to head there after reading this though. One of their shared servers has 1,200 users!

Source: Elliott Back Blog

I’m always on the lookout for new music, so this site caught my attention quick. It allows you to jump to a random song depending on genre and then mood. If you feel like a positive sounding metal song (it happens), it will bring you straight to one. Then if you like the song you can follow through with a purchase on iTunes or Amazon.

It’s not perfect, as it declared Black Eyed Peas – Shut Up to be a dark rap song, but hey, can’t win em all. The overall music library doesn’t seem that large, but it it fun to play around with for a while.

Source: Musicovery

Starting May 31st, GameTap, a subscription-based video game on-demand service owned by Turner Broadcasting System (TBS), will offer thirty to sixty of its classic video games for free via a web-based application launcher called the Lite Player.

This sounds like a great deal! Ads to play a game doesn’t seem to bad. I guess it depends on just how annoying and frequent they will be.

Source: Daily Tech

According to an official letter sent to all corporate AT&T employees, the Apple iPhone launch will take place on June 15th with the launch period extended until the 15th of July. AT&T isn’t even approving their employees from taking any vacations during that timeframe, due to what the company is referring to as “the biggest selling period we have seen in a few years.”

All you iPhone iPhans can prep for the launch in 39 days!

Source: Boy Genius Report

Remember in the last few months how the movie industry was hyping up the idea that Canada was the center for camcording movies? This was bogus for many reasons — with the biggest being that movies recorded in theaters on camcorders are a tiny, tiny part of the counterfeit market. It’s much more common to actually get a movie leaked from an insider and then have the real copy spread around.

The MPAA first blames Canada for 50% of the camcorder problem and then 40% to New York. Something doesn’t add up.

Source: Tech Dirt

Dell plans to start offering Ubuntu as an option on selected consumer PCs in the coming weeks, said Jeremy Bolen, a Dell spokesman. Ubuntu is free, and machines pre-installed with it will be less expensive than PCs of the same configuration that come with Windows, Bolen said.

I would love to know how much cheaper these PCs will be with Ubuntu installed. If only we could have notebooks without an OS at all… installing Ubuntu on your own accord is free.

Source: Seattle Pi

Steve Jobs’ $1 salary was dwarfed by $646 million in stock compensation for 2006, Forbes magazine said today, ranking the Apple Inc. CEO as the highest-paid executive in the U.S. In its annual CEO paycheck scorecard of the 500 biggest U.S. companies, Forbes said the $646.6 million for Jobs was more than twice the compensation of the next person on the list — Ray Irani of Occidental Petroleum, who took home $321.6 million — the bulk of it from exercised stock options.

With $315K per hour, he could easily afford a gaming PC!

Source: Computer World

But this week’s “job action,” as they refer to it inside IBM management, was as much as anything a rehearsal for what I understand are another 100,000+ layoffs to follow, each dribbled out until some reporter (that would be me) notices the growing trend, then dumped en masse when the jig is up, but no later than the end of this year.

Ouch. Will this lead to IBMs demise or skyrocket their stock? It’s hard to say, but Robert Cringely isn’t so confident about either.

Source: PBS.org

openSUSE have announced that the results from the openSUSE survey are now online. The survey was live for almost 3 months and more than 27,000 users participated, making it one of the largest Linux distribution surveys ever.

There are many interesting results found here. 98% of the people who filled out the survey were male. Linux needs more women! 70% dual boot both Linux and Windows, which is one high percentage. Higher than I would have thought.

Source: Slashdot

It’s official: Spider-Man 3 has appeared online as an unauthorized download on public torrent trackers ahead of the release in theaters across the U.S. Just today, VCDQuality indexed two slightly different versions from the same source in China, presumably, as the recording is in English with Chinese subtitles according to one downloader who’s seen a portion.

I’ll never understand why anyone would want to watch a low-quality version of a movie captured with a camcorder at a 45° angle of the screen with heads popping up throughout with that really loud woman who is at EVERY movie. But here it is!

Source: NewTeeVee

Thousands of websites published the key, which had been uncovered in a bid to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) technology on HD-DVD discs. Many said they had done this as an exercise in free speech. An AACS executive said it was looking at “legal and technical tools” to confront those who published the key.

Things are going to get interesting now. It’s noted that over 700,000 pages have published the key, our site included. If only they’d worry less about DRM and more about making people want to buy the movie.

Source: BBC

OLPC, which aims to bring laptops to schoolchildren in impoverished nations, recently pushed its price per laptop to $175, from $100. India’s HRD ministry, which rejected the offer from OLPC, says it thinks it can push that price down to $10.

Let’s see this happen…

Source: TG Daily

Today, Forbes is reporting that Microsoft is in negotiations with Yahoo for a possible acquisition that could be worth $50 billion. According to the report, Microsoft is feeling greater pressure to compete in the online advertising space. Just recently, Yahoo announced its acquisition of online advertising firm Right Media for $680 million. While this is far from Google’s $3.1 billion expense on DoubleClick, it does indicate that Yahoo is already quite a force in online advertising.

I’ll reserve comment because who knows what the actual goings-on are. It seems too far-fetched to even be a consideration, but who thought AMD would ever purchase ATI? It’s going to be interesting if Microsoft pursues this.

Edit: It appears that talks might no longer be going on.

Source: Daily Tech