Not Just Third World Nations Banning Skype; Universities Get On Board Too

It looks like it's not just third world countries with government-backed telephone monopolies to protect that are banning VoIP. Some universities are getting in on the game as well. San Jose State University, just down the road from Skype's parent company eBay, has apparently decided to block all Skype use on campus.

Well thats a misnomer, partially because in the article cited, the campus has not blocked it, for now from the outcry of students and even professors; This shows that the telecoms are starting to feel that Skype is a threat to standard landlines, though the irony is that landlines have some advantages that you cant really get with cell phones, or Skype, one of those points is that the quality of the call on a landline is usually better than either cellular or via IP, though there are more ways to improve the quality of internet calling over cell phones.

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Alan Cox's Thinkpad explodes!

Even Linux gurus are susceptible to the perils of exploding batteries - last night famed kernel hacker Alan Cox's IBM Thinkpad battery burst into flames and exploded. Follow the link for an in-depth story in Telsa's inimitable style and photos of the laptop's remains.

Well, that sorts out one lession, don't use third party batterys, unless they can be trusted not to have impurities in them. Oh well, theres one more char-broiled laptop, to go......One more point though, who is Alan Cox? (Nevermind, apparently he is a famed linux kernel programmer).

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Python Programming for Beginners

"Despite what assembly code and C coders might tell us, high-level languages do have their place in every programmer's toolbox, and some of them are much more than a computer-science curiosity. Out of the many high-level languages we can choose from today, Python seems to be the most interesting for those who want to learn something new.."

Python may not be seen as the most prominent laungage, and as well has some simplicities over C++. This looks interesting and I'm definatley going to read up on this, becauase having one more programming language in anyone's arsenal, helps...

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New Apple Earbuds Available From Store

Now for the first time ever, you can purchase the same earbuds that ship with the iPods. Perfect for replacements or spares - for the *cheap* price of $29.00.

Apparently the design of the iPod earphones has changed slighty, to be more streamedlined, which in my opinion looks nicer. This seems to be the trend with Apple now, after they released there new Nano, which is sleeker, and takes on the better design of the mini, in a smaller package. Apple's new trend seems to be sleeker, brighter, and thinner. Though time will tell if these traits will make the next generation iPod even more thinner than it is now....

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Funny Prank to play on a friend, ex, co-worker or anyone.

This is way fun, enter anyone's phone number (us & canada) and type a message and choose what you want to display on the callerID, this site will call them and spoof the callerID so that it appears to be coming from whoever you specify. They then read the message back in the computer generated voice that you specify.

Sounds hilarious, being able to send fake calls to anyone, at least in the United States/Canada. I wonder what pranks could be done with such useable tool like this.

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New iPod Nano Disassembled

"Just got our new 'remastered' Nano today, and we immediately took it apart and posted photos online."

Huh, not much of a new design, more like a really small iPod mini. Hopefully with them going back to the mini design, it should not be as vulnerable to scratces. I must be out of the loop or something, because I didn't really hear much about this until I ran into this artice. Personally I think the new nano, looks better, with the curved edges...

Edit: After reading more about it, the body is now aluminum, and they added a 8 gig size nano...took them long enough to do that. If this was out when I got my iPod color, I probibly would of gotten that.....instead.

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Walkthrough: iTunes 7's big new features

Organizing, shopping, syncing - everything got a lot of attention from Apple's software engineers and, as you'll see throughout this walkthrough, a lot of polish has been applied to make this one of the most significant updates in recent iTunes history.

They have added quite abit to this version of Itunes, probibly in my opinon, the best feature is the Cover Browser, its neat just gliding through that view, and seeing all the album art (or the lack of it).

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Aqua is dead, long live Aqua! (iTunes 7 is a preview of new OS X style)

"Apple seems to use iTunes as a test-bed for new user interface design styles, and iTunes 7 brings with it an almost complete overhaul the Aqua look we have all grown to love/hate/tolerate."

From what the Windows version of Itunes shows, they've updated the Aqua theme considerably, but in a sense it is still aqua. You could call it really the "updated" Aqua, from the fact that it looks more modern than the previous Aqua.

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Hack to Change Windows XP Home to Windows XP Professional

Enable the features found in Windows XP Professional on your Windows XP Home Edition installation with this hack.

In the past, I've heard of other ways of getting Home Edtiton to act like XP pro via a program called TweakUI (or something like that), which is hard to find now. This process, from what I read seems a whole lot easier to do, and since its all done on the cd, it can be reused. Though after reading the digg comments, it seems to not give any of the pro features, but makes it look like its pro...which I guess is still nice...in a way...

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Kitty Nano

A spoof on the Ipod Nano Ad. cute and yet funny at the same time!

Top Ten Video Game Weapons

A very interesting video that GameTrailers made that counts down there picks for the top 10 video game weapons of all time...definatly worth a look