MPAA 1: IsoHunt 0. Major bit torrent and P2P index site IsoHunt has announced that it has disabled US users from accessing its trackers, due to legal pressure being applied by American movie industry group, the MPAA. This announcement went up on IsoHunt’s site yesterday:
“As of earlier today, we have disabled access from users in the US to our trackers, until further notice. This goes for ALL trackers (torrentbox, podtropolis) we run. This is due to the US’s hostility towards P2P technologies, and we feel with our current lawsuit brought by the MPAA, we can no longer ensure your security and privacy in the US. So, if you’re outside the US, you may notice less peers. We encourage you to add other public, unhampered trackers to torrents you post, in addition to Torrentbox and Podtropolis’s trackers.”
Wired magazine profiles productivity guru David Allen and offers a good summary of his Getting Things Done system, its history, and some great quotes from The David. First, for folks who say GTD is too complex: [Allen]realises that his system can be difficult and that he’s often accused of going overboard with elaborate schemes. He responds with a shrug. “Look, the workings of an automatic transmission are more complicated than a manual transmission,” he says. “To simplify a complex event, you need a complex system.”
The people willing to take on that complex system? They’re the ones who know they need help and are trying to improve.
In an attempt to catch up to Google, Microsoft will be rolling out improvements to their Live.com web search engine over the coming weeks.
The first national research project to study participants in Open Source in Australia has been launched. The survey, called the Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census, is being conducted by Open Source consultancy Waugh Partners. Pia Waugh blogged about the survey, and why they’re keen to hear from as many companies – and individuals – as possible:
“It has an Australian focus specifically so that the final report (which will be freely available to download) will help educate and inform Australian Government, corporates and education about the realities rather than the perceptions of our industry and community locally. Hopefully it will reflect the strength, diversity and opportunities presented by the Australian Open Source industry and community, so everyone needs to stand up and be counted.”
ExtremeTech has published an overclocking guide for those who want to get every last drop of speed out of their computer. I liked the fact that the article talks you through how to work out which components in your PC are overclockable, and then goes on to explain how to do an ‘overall overclocking’ of all those components.
But I do have to giggle at an article which starts off saying: “Once upon a time, overclocking was considered a risky and dangerous thing to do… Now, it’s almost insane not to.” and then goes on to issue warnings like:
“When you overclock a PC, it’s never truly stable. The PC was not designed to run with different things at different clock rates that aren’t necessarily compatible with each other. What you gain in performance you lose in piece of mind: This thing could crash at any moment.”
I guess it’s horses for courses. I don’t want an Top Gear car which might get insane speeds for a whole 60 seconds before turning into a cartwheeling fireball o’death.. nor does overclocking really appeal to me. I don’t have high performance needs, and I don’t want to sacrifice reliability. Your mileage may vary, of course. If you overclock I’d be interested to hear why, and how much it affects your system reliability.
Dried ink on printer cartridges can render your expensive ink unusable, but blogger Bucky decided not to toss the cartridges out and instead soaked the base of the cartridge in WD-40. The result: a cartridge that works again. I got a brain-storm of an idea the other day and decided to try soaking the base of the cartridge in WD-40 to see if it would soften and clean the dried ink and holy crap – it worked!!! (I soaked it over-night and then wiped it off good before reinstalling it in the printer.)
I had to run the printer through three head cleaning cycles afterward, but it cleared the clogged nozzles and it is now working perfectly.
Since printer cartridges are rather expensive, this tip should help save you money while helping you get the most out of your ink. Thanks, Lacy! AU - WD-40 is a very handy lubricant-cum-fix-all spray you can get in the US – I’ve found similar stuff here under a different name. Your local hardware store should be able to help you out.
Yet Another Use for WD-40 [The WVb]Windows only: Freeware application Foldr Monitr watches any user-defined folder and automatically uploads any new photos to your Flickr account. After installing the program and authenticating with Flickr, just select the folder you want to monitor and that’s that. If you’ve set Foldr Monitr to start with Windows and point it to your main photo folder, the app will automatically back up all of your new pics to Flickr as soon as they hit your hard drive. I hacked together a similar solution for automatic folder monitoring and uploading to Flickr that works across platforms, but this freeware, Windows-only solution brings a much friendlier user interface and many more advanced options to the process.
Flickr Foldr MonitrAn always-on server can come in all kinds of handy for running automated tasks, syncing your data, remote controlling downloads and acting as a proxy. Lot of us have access to a remote computer—if not a hand-rolled home server, most Lifehacker readers said they couldn’t live without their hosted web space—but most of us probably aren’t getting everything we can out of it. Check out our top 10 ways to put your remote server to best use.
When you’ve inherited someone else’s PC and want to make it your own, you can change the registered owner’s name in the Windows Registry. The How-To Geek runs down the steps; in a nutshell, using the registry editor (Start->Run->regedit.exe to get there), change the RegisteredOwner key value located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion. As always, back up your registry before making changes, just in case.
Quick Tip: Change the Registered Owner in Windows [the How-To Geek]Does the thought of hiring a virtual personal assistant in Bangladesh for 5 bucks an hour make your skin crawl? Entrepreneur Ryan Norbauer explains how he got over his hang-ups and got super-productive with hired help. He writes: What is the part of your work (whether personal or professional) that only you can do? And what if you could somehow force yourself to do only that work? In my case, doing precisely this with the help of outsourcing has radically improved my effectiveness.
