Good job, Internet. You win.

As the day of online activism opposing SOPA and PIPA continued, supporters quickly began to have second thoughts. Now, the final blows have been struck. Senator Harry Reid has decided to put the Protect IP Act on permanent hiatus, and Representative Lamar Smith pulled his support for the Stop Online Piracy Act. In doing so, the bills have been effectively killed.

There was amusement to be had from watching those who formerly backed the bill scatter as the wave of anti-SOPA/PIPA press swept the Internet on January the 18^th. Sites regularly used by nearly everyone with Internet access, such as Google and Craigslist, placed public denouncements of the bills on their sites. Over 4.5 million people signed Google’s online petition against the bills.

Other sites, such as Wikipedia, Reddit and Wired, restricted access to their content as a warning about what could happen if the bills became law. An estimated 162 million people visited Wikipedia during its 24-hour blackout, no doubt helping to spread the word.

Today’s news that the bills will not be moving forward was met with celebration that – this being the Internet  – manifested itself in images like the one above. It is unlikely that we’ll ever see these particular bills come to a vote now that they’ve been so thoroughly tarnished.

But don’t be surprised if we see the ideas resurface later. Even while removing support for SOPA, Representative Lamar Smith stated “The Committee will continue work with copyright owners, Internet companies, financial institutions to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property.” Translation? This isn’t over.

Source: Ars Technica

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Such a process isn’t entirely unheard of in software. Registration keys for Microsoft Windows work in a similar way. But Microsoft’s product registration usually only kicks in after a major system change, such as a motherboard upgrade. Ubisoft’s DRM is apparently a bit more sensitive.

This was discovered by Guru3D when they attempted to use the new game Anno 2070 for graphics benchmarking. Though aware of the game’s DRM, the site figured that swapping out video cards would be OK. They were wrong. Swapping cards required that the software be activated all over again. That would be fine if Ubisoft offered unlimited activations, but they don’t. Many of the company’s titles only come with three activations. If you use them up, you could be out of luck.

Ubisoft’s support does state that further activations can be provided if you use them up, but Guru3D’s initial attempts to obtain them were refused. The site has since been contacted by Bluebyte, the developer of Anno 2070, and activation for the site’s copy has been unlocked. But this action is almost certainly a unique response to Guru3D’s complaint.

If you’re going to buy an Ubisoft game, you’d better be careful about your hardware upgrades.

Source: Guru3D

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The MPEG-1 standard does not include a precise specification for an MP3 encoder, but does provide example psychoacoustic models, rate loop, and the like in the non-normative part of the original standard.
Decoding, on the other hand, is carefully defined in the standard. Most decoders are “bitstream compliant”, which means that the decompressed output – that they produce from a given MP3 file – will be the same, within a specified degree of rounding tolerance, as the output specified mathematically in the ISO/IEC standard document.
Several bit rates are specified in the MPEG-1 Layer 3 standard: 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160, 192, 224, 256 and 320 kbit/s, and the available sampling frequencies are 32, 44.1 and 48 kHz.

When performing lossy audio encoding, such as creating an MP3 file, there is a trade-off between the amount of space used and the sound quality of the result. Typically, the creator is allowed to set a bit rate, which specifies how many kilobits the file may use per second of audio. Using a lower bit rate provides a relatively lower audio quality and produces a smaller file size. Likewise, using a higher bit rate outputs a higher quality audio, but also results in a larger file.

This behavior enders your system unusable and inaccessible, causing severe data loss. In such critical situations, an updated and valid backup proves great help. But, if backup is not available, windows recovery is the only way to go.

In a practical instance of unbootable Windows XP computer, you may come across the below error messages while booting up y our computer:

“Unmountable Boot Volume”

After the above error message, boot process gets interrupted. The operating system can not load and you can not get into your system. In order to fix this behavior and recover Windows data, you must figure out the root of this problem.

What causes ‘Unmountable Boot Volume’ Error in Windows XP?

You may run across this behavior of Windows XP due to any of the below reasons:

The Boot.ini file of your Windows XP computer is either missing or damaged.

The hard drive is bad and unreadable.

Solution

There are two possible solutions of this problem, depending upon the cause of the problem:

Missing or Corrupt Boot.ini File-

Boot your system in recovery console.

Type chkdsk /p in recovery console to check if drive is bad.

Reboot your system if chkdsk does not find any error.

If you system has same problem after running chkdsk, reboot your system back into recovery console.

Run chkdsk /r to locate bad sectors and retrieve data.

Bad or Unreadable Hard Drive-

If critical data structures, like file system, boot loader, and MBR (Master Boot Record) of your Windows XP, are corrupt, you need to format the hard drive and reinstall operating system to fix the issue.

Although, formatting can fix most of such errors with your Windows computer, but also removes all the data from hard drive and puts you in need of Windows Data recovery.

Recovery is potential through advanced and powerful third-party tools, known as windows data recovery software. They are competent enough to systematically scan entire hard drive and extract as much data as possible from it.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is the most efficient and indigenous utility to ensure absolute recovery in all data loss situations. The software works well with Microsoft Windows 7, Vista, 2003, XP, and 2000. It supports recovery from NTFS5, NTFS, FAT32, VFAT, FAT16, and FAT12 file system partitions.

Re: mp3/mp4 player lost memory after format
Hey you are using fake mp3/mp4 player and that’s why you are getting such type of problem. You must check before buying whether it is working properly or not. Most of the people have such type of problem, who have take china made electronic device. If your mp3/mp4 player has warranty then you have toreplace it with new one to get rid out of this problem.

Re: mp3/mp4 player lost memory after format
Have you tried to format it using Command prompt. If not then use following steps to do this.
1.First connect your mp3/mp4 player to computer.
2.Now open Command prompt.
3.Now type “format _ ” (Instead of “_” use drive letter of your mp3/mp4 player )
That’s it.

Re: mp3/mp4 player lost memory after format
You have to use TestDisk utility to fix this problem. TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

Re: mp3/mp4 player lost memory after format
I able to fix this problem by using SD Formatter 2.0. I think you also use it to get rid out of this problem. This software formats all SD memory cards and SDHC memory cards using a formatting program that complies with official SD memory card requirements. SD formatting provides quick and easy access to your SD memory card. SD or SDHC memory card file systems formatted with generic operating system formatting software do not comply with official SD memory card requirements and optimum performance may not be experienced.

Re: mp3/mp4 player lost memory after format
I also had the same problem. Then as per your answer I used TestDisk utility to fix this problem and it really works for me. But one problem is there. I able to recover only 1gb from it. This means that now my mp3/mp4 player shows only 1gb free space instead of 2gb. Can anyone tell me how do I get back to 2gb. Is there any kind of software available.

Re: mp3/mp4 player lost memory after format
Hey I also have the same model and same problem. I also format my mp3 player and then it shows only 178mb free space. I tried various method to fix this problem, but nothing happened. Then after frustrating I replace my mp3/mp4 player with new one and I able to fix this problem. I think you also replace your mp3/mp4 player with new one to get rid out of this problem.