Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM use…

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Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM use…

View full post on FileHippo.com

Comodo Dragon is a Chromium technology-based Browser that offers you all of Chrome’s features PLUS the unparalleled level of security and privacy you only get from Comodo. Including a greater level of privacy than Chromium technology offers.

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Trouble is brewing, dear readers. Our rights and freedoms are under increasingly under attack from corporate entities with enough money to control those in power. We may have won a minor victory against SOPA, but that’s the least of our worries. We can’t keep up the fight forever, and I predict we’re heading to a dark, dark place. Let’s look at the evidence.

DMCA

Brought into law in the US right back in 1998 and now a prominent part of any website with user-created content, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act created a legal framework for rights-holders to send “takedown notices” to services found to be serving infringing content, or links to infringing content. Like all of these measures it is widely criticised as having too much power and leaves itself open for abuse.

A study from Google indicated that 57% of all the claims it received were abuse by targeting a competing business, while 37% were simply not valid copyright claims. Dealing with these claims costs businesses working time and money, of course – probably more so than the infringing copyright would have cost the claimant anyway. On more than one occasion I’ve had to deal with DMCA complaints directed at MakeUseOf, some utterly unjustified and some simply because a user pasted something they took from another site into a comment here.

It’s also led to security vulnerabilities being left unpublished because of fears that any crypto-analytic research may violate the DMCA, which is just downright dangerous. Want to know more? Read our previous article explaining the DMCA in more detail.

Having hastily pushed through the DMCA, the RIAA still weren’t satisfied though. Specifically, they could never quite accept the idea of safe harbour - whereby ISPs won’t be held responsible for content their users upload. Now they want ISPs to do their dirty work for them as well.

“You cannot monitor all the infringements on the Internet. It’s simply not possible. We don’t have the ability to search all the places infringing content appears, such as cyberlockers like [file-hosting firm] RapidShare.” (RIAA President Cary Sherman)

Any further legislation will be to address that, turning the ISPs to police and removing any safe harbour loopholes.

SOPA/PIPA

I’m sure you’ve all heard quite enough of SOPA, I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say, it would have given rights holders broad reaching capabilities to shut down entire sites at the DNS level if any piece of infringing material was found – so the internets took action, and the bill was put on hold.  On hold, I emphasise – that doesn’t mean it’s gone away, just that they’ll bring it back (I suggest they rename it POOPA) when you’re off looking at lolcats, and the rest of the nation is being told about an impending attack by insurgents with a weapons of mass distraction  destruction. Make no mistake, the SOPA successor is being drafted as you read this.

ACTA

You thought SOPA was bad? ACTA – The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – bypasses sovereign laws in countries signed up – thats America, Japan, Austraila, Canada, and more recently, the whole of Europe too. ACTA doesn’t just cover copyright infringement, but trademarks too – generic medicines, counterfeit goods, seed patents – that sort of thing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation speculates some of the possible ramifications of the agreement:

• A 3-strikes law, similar to the one currently used in France
• Mandatory deep packet-level filtering by ISPs
• ISPs to remove infringing material on their servers (goes against the safe harbour rule)
• Criminal charges for users crossing borders with a single copyright song on their PC
• Stopping access to generic versions of drugs and medicines (in favour of expensive, branded ones)

As I write this article, the full text of the agreement was only made available this morning – though you’ll need to understand legalese – as well as a document that tries to ease our minds as to some of the myths surrounding ACTA. I expect over the coming weeks for a more fuller and accurate picture of the exact details of ACTA to emerge, but I’m sure it’ll be quite scary stuff.

That’s not the whole story though. Here are a few more bills over the years; and though some never made it, some might still – have you ever heard of them?

• Copyright Extension Act – which added yet another 20 years onto the copyright term to the existing 50 years after the death of the holder. 
  
• Digital Transition Content Security Act of 2005 – never made it through, but would have required all analog recording equipment to have a form of secret copy protection in it, as well as only allowing a 90-minute window for watching time shifted content.
• The PIRATE act, 2004 was eventually rejected, but would have opened the door for civil lawsuits (as opposed to criminal ones) against copyright infringers, lowering the burden of proof for prosecutors. It later became the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act of 2007, but also failed to pass.
• The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act (PCIPA) is still in deliberation, and along with new data retention laws will all but eradicate any concept of privacy. It would give agencies unparalleled access to information from ISPs on suspicion of any crime and without a warrant. This is all justified under the guise of searching for child pornography, so you’d have to be a real a**hole to oppose that!

I can’t possibly claim to understand all the ins and outs of these various laws and acts – no sane normal citizen possibly can – and that’s kind of the point. I’d love to sit here and say you need to continue fighting against these, but the nihilistic part of me says it’s absolutely futile. The industries are so powerful already – they effectively own our politicians and senators through the legalised corruption we call lobbying. These new laws will continue to be introduced, and slowly but surely we will be worn down into accepting them without protest. What’s your next move going to be, internet?

You know what you could do? You could stop buying records, movies, DVDs, or going to the cinema. Hit them where it really hurts, and let them know that this continued attack on our freedoms will not be tolerated.

Image Credits: ShutterStock; XKCD; Copyright terms through the ages – Tom Bell

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Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM use…

View full post on FileHippo.com

Comodo claim that their firewall is unique in that it passes all known leak tests to ensure the integrity of data entering and exiting your system. Comodo has put firewall through all kinds of sophisticated tests to ensure its firewall powerful enough to ward off these attacks with default settings. No other firewall has had to work this hard.

View full post on FileHippo.com

Comodo Dragon is a Chromium technology-based Browser that offers you all of Chrome’s features PLUS the unparalleled level of security and privacy you only get from Comodo. Including a greater level of privacy than Chromium technology offers.

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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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I was reading a fascinating story that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal about a kid named Aidan Dwyer that believed he had discovered a way to configure solar panels to mimic the Fibonacci sequence that makes up the structure of tree branches. Aidan’s theory – a fairly decent theory for a kids that’s only 13 years old – is that by mimicking that sequence, he might be able to also mimic the efficiency of nature itself.

So, he performed an experiment. Using a equal number of solar cells, young Aidan laid out the solar panels side by side in sunlight. One, the typical flat panel that people use today, and the other his unique “tree” design – a metal structure shaped like a tree branch. Young Aidan hooked up a meter to each, and to his surprise, he saw a higher voltage reading from his tree design. It was a remarkable finding, he thought.  So he decided, with the support of his parents, to enter it into a national science competition – and he won.

The Internet Attacks Dreams

What happened next is something that those of us that have been on the Internet for a long time now would not find very surprising. The story about the science competition hit the Internet, and everyone from PhD researchers to armchair scientists took a look at young Aidan’s design, and the flaming began.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Aidan’s introduction to the world of online commenters didn’t go too well.

“Commenters and bloggers attacked Aidan with vitriol usually saved for political enemies and the Kardashians. Blogs decried his experiment as ‘bad science’ and ‘impossible nonsense.’ Someone called him ‘an alien—a cool one, though.’”

Reading the article made me remember some of the stories that I used to write about years ago, such as science scams and other silly claims throughout the fields of Ufology and the paranormal. I’ve always felt justified, as an engineer, in my online attitude. In fact, I’ve been one of those vitriolic writers before, trashing poorly designed scientific theories and various silly claims like alleged “free energy” findings.

Here is a blog post of mine in 2006, publicly ripping apart a guy who constantly claimed there were connections between UFO stories and the CIA and other government agencies.

I called him an idiot, a moron, liar…

This was back in 2006, and in the next 5 years, I gradually – for lack of a better word – “matured”, to some degree. And writing for MUO helped, because I started noticing what it’s like to be at the receiving end of all sorts of nasty accusations and cruel comments.

Why People Feel the Right to Be Cruel Online

The truth is, I really don’t think that I would talk that way to people in real life. I don’t think many people would. The guy I was slamming above – if we were sitting together in some cafe having coffee – we would probably have a pretty interesting intellectual conversation – disagreements and all.

But there is just something about the Internet that feeds hate and anger. For me, it’s people that flip out and draw premature conclusions over so-called scientific “discoveries”. I’m sure that’s what angered the many PhD academics and skeptics in Aidan’s case. But do we have to be so cruel about it? Even here at MUO – a community that I consider to be very intellectual and mature – there is a contingent of people that have a certain arrogance, and feel justified in calling someone they don’t even know a moron.

Here’s an MUO Answers commenter calling the questioner stupid.

Or this commenter in another article calling another reader retarded.

And yet another spat between commenters on another article, issuing pretty nasty jabs back and forth.

What has scared me the most, since writing and reading posts and comments from other writers here and elsewhere on the web, is that the cruelest comments that I’ve read remind me….of me. It is a sobering realization, and one that dampens my comments as the years go by, although I am still known for losing my temper with others now and then. I don’t know if it’s genetic, or maybe just a curse.

Mistakes Lead To A Pig Pile

What I’ve noticed is that two things seem to incite a greater level of vitriol, the likes of which poor young Aidan had to experience. The first is making a mistake. Online folks are very unforgiving when it comes to making mistakes. Aidan’s mistake was that in his entry into the science competition, he only measured voltage. Unfortunately, voltage alone doesn’t equal overall power – so his findings were questionable. That one single mistake led to an influx of attacks and name-calling.

The other factor seems to be anonymity. Anonymous posts are almost always particularly harsh…cowards are always so brave with their words when they don’t have to use their real name. Would those same people have spoken those same words directly to the young boy’s face, in the presence of his parents? I doubt it.

And if Aidan goes on to accurately measure the power of his test contraption, and he is proven correct in his theory, will all of those arrogant, nasty people respond again and apologize to young Aidan? Will they be remorseful for attacking a young child that is motivated enough to explore science at such a young age? Probably not.

Why do you think people get off on trolling and posting hateful comments online?  Have you ever done it yourself and regretted it? Let us know your thoughts and insights in the comments below.

Image Credits : Wall Street Journal, Shutterstock

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Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM use…

View full post on FileHippo.com

Comodo Dragon is a Chromium technology-based Browser that offers you all of Chrome’s features PLUS the unparalleled level of security and privacy you only get from Comodo. Including a greater level of privacy than Chromium technology offers.

View full post on FileHippo.com

The internet can be a dirty place. No, I am not referring to the adult websites that are all over the place; I am referring to the fact that many websites are covered with junk that you do not want to see. If you go to a website to read an article, it would be convenient to be able to see the article. If you go to YouTube to watch a video, it would be amazing to watch it without a million suggested videos and comments detracting from your enjoyment.

Thanks to these three Chrome extensions, you can now have the clean web browsing experience you wanted all along. All your favorite articles and videos can be as clean as you always dreamt them to be.

The three extensions that I am going to highlight today will remove all the garbage from websites and leave you with a clean and shiny viewing experience. If you have a hard time concentrating and dealing with distractions, these extensions are tailor-made for you.

Clea.nr

Clea.nr is a simple extension. It cleans up YouTube and Amazon, and makes them much more pleasant places to be. It seems like YouTube keeps adding more and more stuff, making it less about the video you are watching now, and more about the video you need to watch next. Clea.nr solves that by removing everything but the video you are watching, and a search bar.

If that is not enough, you can also click the “Dim Lights” link right below the video to have the background fade. This way, it is even easier to lock in on the video and forget about everything that is going on around it.

The program works the same way for Amazon. It clears out all the extras Amazon shows you around the side of the screen, and simply shows the search results. This makes Amazon easier to navigate. It also prevents Amazon from up selling you to something you do not need.

TidyRead

We have covered TidyRead before, but it has made many improvements with this new extension. TidyRead is designed to clean up the websites you read. It removes all the extras and only shows you the article you are reading. I have to say, please support the websites you love by not blocking the ads completely, but instead use a program like this to hide them just while you are actively reading an article.

Tidy is packed with features. You can set it on automatic, so as soon as you click on an article it cleans it. You can choose to set it to manual, so it only cleans up an article when you click the icon next to the address bar.

Once you are looking at an article, there are all kinds of options. You can change the font size, color, background and so much more. The settings appear at the top of the article, and are easy to access and change.

If you are looking to make more changes, you can right-click the extension’s icon and go to options. From here, you can fine-tune the program even more. In the settings screen you can choose whether you want TidyRead to be automatic or manual.

Clearly by Evernote

For Evernote users, this should be your go to program. It does not offer as much customization as TidyRead, but it does allow you to tweak the color palette for the article. It cleans up the article and shows you only the important parts. To clean up an article, simply click the extension’s icon next to the address bar.

The thing that makes Clearly so great is the ability to quickly clip the article to your Evernote account for later reading. When you are viewing a cleaned up article, simply click on the Evernote logo on the right side of the screen, and it will automatically be saved to your Evernote account. This is awesome if you are in the middle of reading something and you have to stop for one reason or another.

Another nice feature of Clearly is the ability to print an article quickly. On the right side there is a little printer icon. Click that and Clearly will print the cleaned up version of the article.

Conclusion

With these three extensions, you will be ready to visit a clutter free internet. Just remember, websites rely on ads to give you free content, so support them and at least check out the ads before you clean everything up!

Did these extensions make browsing the web more pleasant? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: ShutterStock

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Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM use…

View full post on FileHippo.com

class="align-right" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/radiotray_logo.jpg?323f2c" alt="free radio streams" />I don’t know about you, but I tend to listen to Internet href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/radio/">radio streams quite a bit, enough to where I’ve got a subscription to one. It’s fairly easy to listen to them already, but it stinks that I have to use a full-fledged media player for it, especially when I move onto my netbook.

Thankfully, there’s a little application for href="http://www.makeuseof.com/service/linux">Linux that can solve this problem by playing the Internet streams that I want in a very discreet way.

About Radio Tray

href="http://radiotray.sourceforge.net/">Radio Tray does this in a very user-friendly way. It plays your selected radio stream and hides itself in the system tray. It also offers a couple of options to customize your listening experience.

Installation

In order to install this in href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/ubuntu">Ubuntu, you can go into the Ubuntu Software Center and choose Radio Tray. For other distributions, you should be able to find a Radio Tray package with a name like radio-tray or something similar. Once the installation completes, you can go ahead and launch the application.

First Run

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/radiotray_firstrun_config.jpg?323f2c" alt="free radio streams" width="580" height="347" />

The first time it runs, it’ll ask you where you’d like to place the tray icon. On Ubuntu, you must choose App Indicator or else it won’t show. For other operating systems, Icon in the Notification Area will work.

If you choose an option and the tray icon does not appear, you’ll need to remove the /home/<user>/.local/share/radiotray folder and try again. Otherwise, you’ll see a tray icon that you can use to manipulate what Radio Tray does.

The Tray Icon

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/radiotray_menu.jpg?323f2c" alt="internet radio streams" width="580" height="314" />

When you click on the icon, you will see that there are already a few categories present along with some Internet streams inside of them to get you started. You can play around with these to try out how Radio Tray works, although don’t be surprised if some of these default stations don’t connect. It seems that the default station list isn’t updated very often. When a station isn’t playing, the icon will stay gray, but when something is playing the icon will turn blue.

Preferences

Under preferences, you’ll find a couple options that you can make use of. There are menu items for Volume Up and Volume Down, for a sleep timer, for reloading bookmarks, and for Configuring Radios. If you want the entire system to shut down at a certain time, you can go to the terminal, and do the following:

Type sudo at 17:30, then hit enter and type in your password, then type shutdown -h now and hit Ctrl + D. You can replace 17:30 with the time you actually want it to turn off.

Configuring Radios

class="aligncenter" src="http://main.makeuseoflimited.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/radiotray_configure_radios.jpg?323f2c" alt="free radio streams" width="580" height="417" />

When you configure the radios, you can change the groups, stations inside the groups, add separators, move them all around to your preferred order, and plenty more. Radio Tray supports virtually any audio formats (as long as the codecs are installed), so it shouldn’t matter what kind of format the radio stream is.

Conclusion

Radio Tray is a very simplistic app that will play your radio streams simply and easily. With all of its functions and interface hidden in a little tray icon and its low memory usage, this little application does wonders for all music lovers.

What’s your favorite Internet stream player? Why do you like it the most? Let us know in the comments!

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Comodo claim that their firewall is unique in that it passes all known leak tests to ensure the integrity of data entering and exiting your system. Comodo has put firewall through all kinds of sophisticated tests to ensure its firewall powerful enough to ward off these attacks with default settings. No other firewall has had to work this hard.

View full post on FileHippo.com

Comodo Dragon is a Chromium technology-based Browser that offers you all of Chrome’s features PLUS the unparalleled level of security and privacy you only get from Comodo. Including a greater level of privacy than Chromium technology offers.

View full post on FileHippo.com