The Great Geek Manual

From Around the Web

45 Free Useful Thumb Drive Applications – Thumb drives were once used to store files and make data portable, but due to the rapid increase in storage capacity over the pass few years these gadgets now have a bigger role. Some even run the entire operating system on a thumb drive.

Aerial Virtual Tour of New York City – Is a virtual bird eye’s view that improves on Google Earth by adding the ability to tilt and pan the view from a number of fixed points around the world’s biggest city in the U.S.

Assembly Primer for Hackers – Assembly language is probably the most important thing one needs to master if he desires to enter the world of code exploitation, virus writing, and reverse engineering. This multi-part video series will help you get started.

Cory Doctorow discusses Digital Distribution – Doctorow makes a series of excellent points on the fundamental futility of Digital Rights Management technologies during a lecture delivered at the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference.

Court Sets Rules For RIAA Hard Drive Inspection – In a Boston RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the Court has issued a detailed protective order establishing strict protocols for the RIAA’s requested inspection of the defendant’s hard drive, in order to protect the defendant’s privacy.

How to Make Gmail Your Ultimate Productivity Center – These days there are a proliferation of digital tools we use for productivity, for time management, for communication, for social networking, for keeping track of our lives, online and off. It can be a nightmare to keep track of it all, and frankly, it’s a bit unproductive to keep switching between a dozen different tools. Enter Gmail, my favorite solution for just about anything.

Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design? – You’ve seen them. Those tag clouds in the right-hand column of Web sites with jumbled type of varying weight and size indicating the relative usage of words. Tag clouds may be the most common example of an emerging field known as “information visualization,” an offshoot of graphic design devoted to the clear display of complex information.

MPAA to teachers: just record your TV with a camcorder – The educational community is asking for an exemption to rip DVDs to take clips for classroom use. The MPAA responded with a video showing how to camcord movies from a flat screen monitor, arguing that educators and students should do this instead of ripping DVDs.

Pirates of the Internet – This flash from the past (2003) is a clip from 60 Minutes examining the “new trend” of sharing movies. It’s funny, but it’s also a bit of a relief in that Hollywood hasn’t made much headway in slowing the trend down.

Secret Codes You Aren’t Meant To Know – The use of codes is intended to convey essential information quickly and with a minimum of misunderstanding to staff. Some places use secret codes to pass information between store employees. These are meant to be a secret as they don’t want to alarm the non-staff members or alert someone like a thief to the fact that they have been noticed.

Ultimate Star Trek Set – After his wife left him, Tony Alleyne set out to create the ultimate bachelor pad, painstakingly turning his flat into a Star Trek set… The 500-square-foot apartment features voice-activated lighting, LED lighting, running lights, air-conditioning—but no bed…

Miscellaneous

Bowen, Queensland is being overrun by giant bird-eating spiders that are venomous and the size of a grown man’s hand. These monsters are reasons one through eight why Australia has been struck right the hell off my list of places to visit.
Popular Mechanics takes on spontaneous human combustion.
New Evidence Suggests An Asteroid Couldn’t Have Killed The Dinosaurs
Could flowers bloom on icy moon Europa?

Tech News

Amazon Doesn’t Want to Sell Music to Pirates
Nerd shoots for the stars and NASA comes knocking