Ironically, on April 20th, Hitler’s birthday, YouTube began eliminating certain parody videos of Hitler off their servers.

Most of you have probably seen the “Hitler finds out…” meme with English subtitles dubbed over a scene from the German-Austrian film Downfall (or “Der Untergang” in German). And if you haven’t, you’re too late.

The company responsible for the movie, Constantin Film, has asked YouTube to remove the parodies, due to a copyright infringement.

However, these movies did nothing but promote this film. I had never heard of it before I saw this meme.

Farewell meme. We’ll miss you.

Play him off Keyboard Cat!

UPDATED: A nice meme portraying its own demise: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/21/hitler-finds-out-that-dow_n_545836.html

Only you (and Lugia) can prevent internet piracy!

The “new” Pokémon games – Heart Gold and Soul Silver. Some praise it’s improved graphics, its integration with the PokéWalker, it’s ability to catch Pokémon from almost all of the Pokémon games. However, it’s real gem is something most users hopefully won’t ever encounter.

When most users think of copy protection, they think of computer games or software. They major problem with copy protection is that there’s really no way to make an effective protection service without severely inconveniencing those who actually paid for the software.

Copy protection isn’t just for computers. Many games for the Nintendo DS handheld, especially the higher end ones, have some sort of copy protection on them. Usually, this just keeps the game from running in an emulator or on a modified DS game cart. But this Pokémon game has the most brilliant form of copy protection that I have ever seen.

The greatness of the Pokémon franchise is that nearly anyone can pick it up and have a wonderful time. The makers of Pokémon realized this, and incorporated a sneaky copyright protection software, one that the gamers might not even realize is there.

Instead of the game not letting the copyright-infringer play, the game randomly freezes approximately every 20-40 minutes or so (it seems to be extremely random. Sometimes it won’t happen in a long time, sometimes it’ll happen a lot) when starting a battle with an opponent, and entering/exiting an area. This forces the player to save quite often or else they will have to backtrack a lot. This method inconveniences the player, but still keeps the game playable. And the real-life aspects such as the Pokewalker make purchasing the game desirable.

Video game and software developers need to follow this example; especially with computer games, where a user may pirate a copy of the game to test its compatibility with their computer. These creative methods encourage people to buy the game, yet still allows them to get hooked and try it, and in no way inconveniences those who buy the game.

All copyright protection should be like this.

Ubuntu 10.04: Lucid Lynx!

Not ready to take the big jump to Lucid (Ubuntu 10.04) yet? Too nervous to try the beta? (and you have reason to be, the Beta refuses to boot on my desktop.) There’s countless reasons why you might not want to try Lucid before the actual release.

One of the new focuses of Lucid is the integration with social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and so on. I am currently using Lucid on my netbook, and I’m loving the new features.

The first of these social networking applications is called Broadcast. This application is also available in 9.10. Broadcast is actually a renamed version of the already available program called Gwibber.

Gwibber is already available in the 9.10 repos, install it using:

sudo apt-get install gwibber

(Note: If you’re using an older version of Ubuntu, there’s a Gwibber for you too! Check here for details)

While this isn’t exactly like the program in Lucid, its extremely close. Definitely close enough to use until you’re ready for Lucid. And it even integrates in the mail and chat application launcher too!

The second social networking program is the chat program already included with Ubuntu 9.10, Empathy. However, if you want the compatibility with Facebook, you’ll have to download a newer version. All the info can be found here: (http://tinyurl.com/y9llh6s), but in short, this is all you have to do.

Run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:telepathy/ppa

This’ll add the official Empathy repo to your sources. Run “update-manager” to update it. It may ask you to perform a partial upgrade, say yes. Run Empathy and now you can add your Facebook chat account.

That’s all the tweaks I’ve found to bring 9.10 closer to 10.04 in functionality. If you do think you’re going to update to 10.04, I recommend doing a fresh install. That’s the only way to get its incredible boot up times.

You can view the original post here: link

This is how to shut down your PC at a certain time, without the need of you being there.

First Here is the code:

AT 12:00 Shutdown -s

It’s as simple as that. That code will shut down your PC at 12 o’clock. Change the 12:00 to whatever time you want, remember it must be in a 24 hour clock format.

If you want to just run this, go to Start > Run
Then paste that code in.

If you want to create a shortcut for quick use. Open notepad, paste in the code, Save as Shutdown.bat or whatever you want to call it, make sure it’s a .BAT file. Then just run the batch file & there you have it.

It’s invisible but if you want to view the shutdown you can go to Start > Programs > Accessories > System tools > Scheduled Tasks

There you can delete or edit it.

If you look closely, you’ll see that CNR has Chuck Norris’s head mounted on his wall.

Notice Chuck Norris's head mounted as a trophy

Look out Chuck, you have competition…

You can watch the video here

Understanding Google Squared

Google Squared goes beyond tracking down Web pages about any given topic. Rather, it puts together a virtual dossier of facts from numerous sources based on your search query.

Search for “small dogs,” for example, and Google Squared would give you a table on various small dog breeds. Data ranging from the animals’ heights to weights would be included in (what’s designed to be) an easy-to-digest, organized format. From there, you could click onto any section of the table to get more information from its specific source. You could even save the custom table for later use.

“It is something that pushes search in an entirely new direction,” stated Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of search products and user experience. “It is a hard, computer science problem to take this unstructured information and present it in a structured way.”

Google Squared is expected to be made widely available within Google Labs before the end of May.

Via The Inquisitr

The Mifi is a tiny, battery powered EVDO modem which sits in your pocket and turns the incoming 3G radio waves into a small Wi-Fi network, enabling you to hook up your laptop, iPod Touch or anything else with a Wi-Fi radio. This last is pretty exciting on its own as it effectively turns an iPod Touch into an iPhone without a phone.

The difference with the Mifi is that it is so tiny and, according to the New York Times’ David Pogue, ridiculously easy to use. It’ll run for 40 hours in standby, much like a cellphone, and when you hit the single switch on the side it springs (or rather, stirs) into life, firing up a little 30 foot bubble of Wi-Fi around you. Once on, the battery will give five hours of surfing but can be plugged into the power as it goes to re-juice the batteries.

Of course, its a cellular modem, so you have some rather low data caps. The $40-a-month plan limits you to just 250MB (yes, megabytes) and jumping to $60 gives the industry-standard 5GB. You can share the connection with up to five devices, so if you’re generous with the neighnors on the Muni, for example, you could burn through that pretty quick.

Gripes aside, this looks to be an amazing device, freeing you from a specific connection for all of your internet-abled gadgets and just covering your personal space with a personal connection. I wonder if this will end up in Europe anytime soon — we have, apparently, excellent 3G coverage.

Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed [NYT]

Verizon Launches MiFi Hotspot Without Subscription [PCmag]

Via Wired

Unfortunately, there is no need for a defragger in Ubuntu and the disk space recovery tool takes just a few seconds. It makes me feel uncomfortable leaving my computer running without it doing something for me.

I remember someone’s comment on a blog I read, “It’s amazing how a filesystem can be so screwed up that you have to use a program to put the files back together again.”

With Linux, I have the power to do whatever I want with my computer. If I want to delete a file, linux never questions my competence. It faithfully deletes that file, without any objection, even if I tell it to delete itself with “rm -rf /” (Note: DO NOT RUN THIS!).

There is no “Are you sure…” dialogue for any task less than dangerous. Want to delete a file? Done. Install a program? Done.

Of course this method allows you to destroy your system. But I CAN destroy my own system, because I own it.