Aug 28

What NOT to do when the RIAA Comes to your Door

Posted in: General, Music, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

riaa.pngLet’s just pretend for a minute that the RIAA has come knocking on your door accusing you of using a P2P service to illegally share music, and violating copyrights. Your first instinct is what? If you’re Jeffrey Howell, you:

  1. Uninstall KaZaa
  2. Delete EVERYTHING in the shared folder
  3. Reformat the hard drive
  4. Download and use a file-wiping program to eliminate all KaZaa logs

If you are the judge in this case, you automatically find Howell guilty and rule in favor of the RIAA. Yes, the RIAA did score a win.

At the beginning of this whole situation, Howell actually had things going his way. The judge ruled his his favor saying that making a file available on a P2P network like KaZaa isn’t enough to find someone guilty of copyright infringement as the RIAA argued. According to Ars, after the judge made that ruling, it looked as though the case would go to trial in the Fall, that is, until the RIAA filed a motion regarding Howell’s tampering and destroying of evidence. The judge ruled in the RIAA’s favor.

Once Howell knew he was in trouble, he did all of the things listed above which was enough to show that he had to be guilty. He’ll likely have to fork-out a good chunk of money to the RIAA once he gets a written order from the judge.

Now you know what not to do if the RIAA comes knocking on your door.

Image Source

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Aug 24

CyberNotes: Extensive Free Flight Tracking With FlightAware

Posted in: CyberNotes, General, Today's Chili, Web Sites

This article was written on August 19, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNotes
Weekend Warrior

Flight Aware is an extensive free flight tracking service that tracks flights live. Talk about impressive! Right now as I’m writing this, FlightAware is tracking 2979 aircraft with 27,215,352 total flights in their database. Just in the last 24 hours alone, they have tracked over 49,000 arrivals. It tracks both commercial and private traffic.
Flight Aware

FlightAware has only been around since March of 2005 and according to their site, they track aroud 600,000 flights per day or around 7 requests per second. Their website hosts arrival and depature “boards” for users who would like to participate in a discussion.  Besides the convenient way of tracking flights, FlightAware also has a few additional features worth mentioning.

First, for pilots they provide helpful airport information like airport diagrams or airport procedures.  When searching, you can either search by a flight number, airport code, or just browse flights. Another cool feature is that you can become a registered user (again, for free) but you get some extra benefits.  These benefits include flight data history going back 4 months (7 days for non-registered users), and you can receive flight status alerts via email, AIM, or Jabber.

I clicked on a flight that had just departed Chicago’s O’Hare International headed for Los Angeles.  FlightAware pulls up a map showing me the path it’s taken along with information like the duration of the flight (4 hours and 9 minutes), and the progress of the flight. At the time that I tracked the flight, it was only 12 minutes into the flight and had 1,718 miles left to travel.  Additional information it provides is the departure time along with arrival time, speed, and altitude.

Flight Tracker

 FlightAware is a great source to gather aviation data or just browse at the insane amount of aircraft that are up in the air at a time. They have a good visual analysis of a day in United States airspace. Clearly, between 10:00 am and 6:00 pm air traffic is without a doubt the busiest time to travel.  If you have a few minutes this weekend, check it out.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments | Tags:
Aug 19

Awesome Video: Robots Playing Soccer

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 18, 2006 by CyberNet.

This is an absolute must-see in my opinion! This soccer match isn’t your typical one because it is completely played with remote-controlled robots! It is amazing to see the robots fall over and then get themselves back up.

The movie starts off a little slow but you will eventually see robots “tackle” each other and at the end there is a shootout. Now really, when was the last time you saw a bunch of robots kick a ball around? The background music could be a little better though. :D

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Aug 17

CyberNotes Celebrates 2 Years and 700+ articles

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on June 30, 2008 by CyberNet.

cybernotes-1.jpgOver two years ago Ashley and I started to think about what we could do on CyberNet News that would help distinguish us from the millions of other blogs that are out there. That’s when we came up with the idea to start a CyberNotes series which we would write each and every day of the week. They have since evolved into an extensive set of reviews for products, applications, and websites.

Here we are two years later, and as of today we have 742 CyberNotes articles on the site. If you don’t count the weekly summaries (posted on Sunday’s) that would still be well over 600 CyberNotes articles that have been written.

Our daily CyberNotes articles are almost always the most viewed articles each day, and we’re happy to see that since they take us hours to write. I do have a few favorites of my own: 200 Firefox extensions because of how fun it was to do, and how to change your primary monitor on a laptop because of how many people it has helped.

And just for fun I thought I would jog your memory of our CyberNotes logos that have progressed through the three redesigns that we’ve done. The first one is the oldest, and the last one is what we currently use:

CyberNotes1.jpg
CyberNotes2.gif
CyberNotes3.gif

We realize that many of you haven’t been reading us long enough to remember all of the CyberNotes that we’ve written, and that’s why we created the randomly generated CyberNotes feed. Each day it goes and grabs one CyberNotes article that we have previously written, and adds it to the random feed. This is about as good as it gets if you don’t want to manually go through our monstrous archive.

If you’ve got a favorite CyberNotes article we’d love to hear about it in the comments! Here’s to another 2 years of CyberNotes. ;)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Aug 15

Microsoft Interview Questions: Riddles, Thinkers, Algorithms, Applications.

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 29, 2006 by CyberNet.

Microsoft Interview Questions

Ever wondered what it’s like to sit in the interviewers chair at Microsoft? I for one wouldn’t want to find myself there, but the interview questions are fun and sometimes funny and typically are broken down into a riddle, questions about algorithms, applications, and thinker type questions. Some of my favorites:

Riddles:

1. Imagine you are standing in front of a mirror, facing it. Raise your left hand. Raise your right hand. Look at your reflection. When you raise your left hand your reflection raises what appears to be his right hand. But when you tilt your head up, your reflection does too, and does not appear to tilt his/her head down. Why is it that the mirror appears to reverse left and right, but not up and down?

2. One train leaves Los Angeles at 15mph heading for New York. Another train leaves from New York at 20mph heading for Los Angeles on the same track. If a bird, flying at 25mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?

3. If you have two buckets, one with red paint and the other with blue paint, and you take one cup from the blue bucket and poor it into the red bucket. Then you take one cup from the red bucket and poor it into the blue bucket. Which bucket has the highest ratio between red and blue? Prove it mathematically.

4. How many manhole covers are there in the USA?

Algorithms (If you can answer these, kudos to you, I couldn’t! :) )

1. Suppose you have an array of 1001 integers. The integers are in random order, but you know each of the integers is between 1 and 1000 (inclusive). In addition, each number appears only once in the array, except for one number, which occurs twice. Assume that you can access each element of the array only once. Describe an algorithm to find the repeated number. If you used auxiliary storage in your algorithm, can you find an algorithm that does not require it?

2. Implement an algorithm that takes two strings as input, and returns the intersection of the two, with each letter represented at most once. Now speed it up. Now test it.

3. How would you print out the data in a binary tree, level by level, starting at the top?

4. Imagine this scenario:
I/O completion ports are communication ports which take handles to files, sockets, or any other I/O. When a Read or Write is submitted to them, they cache the data (if necessary), and attempt to take the request to completion. Upon error or completion, they call a user-supplied function to let the users application know that that particular request has completed. They work asynchronously, and can process an unlimited number of simultaneous requests.
Design the implementation and thread models for I/O completion ports. Remember to take into account multi-processor machines.

Applications:

1.  How can computer technology be integrated in an elevator system for a hundred story office building? How do you optimize for availability? How would variation of traffic over a typical work week or floor or time of day affect this?

2.  Define a user interface for indenting selected text in a Word document. Consider selections ranging from a single sentence up through selections of several pages. Consider selections not currently visible or only partially visible. What are the states of the new UI controls? How will the user know what the controls are for and when to use them?

3.  How would you design a coffee-machine for an automobile.

4. How would you go about building a keyboard for 1-handed users?

Thinkers:

1.  How would you explain how to use Microsoft Excel to your grandma?

2. Suppose you go home, enter your house/apartment, hit the light switch, and nothing happens – no light floods the room. What exactly, in order, are the steps you would take in determining what the problem was?

3. How are M&Ms made?

4. You have been assigned to design Bill Gates bathroom. Naturally, cost is not a consideration. You may not speak to Bill.

News Source: Sells Brothers

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Aug 14

About The Few Hours Of Downtime…

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on October 30, 2006 by CyberNet.

Maintenance As many of you probably noticed we had a few hours of downtime earlier today. It wasn’t anything expected and took my host and I a little while to find the issue in order to correct it.

As it turns out there was a “runaway” process on the server that had completely filled the temporary files directory. There was over 523,000 files in that folder. Since it was filled to the brim there was no where that the database could create and write their temporary files…therefore giving us several ugly database errors.

It looks like we have not gotten everything cleared up and it should be smooth sailing from here… I hope. :)

Now I have to go and catch up on all the news!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Aug 09

Announcing the 2008 CyberNet Awards

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

CyberNet Awards

It’s that time of the year again! We are just a few days away from ringing in the new year, and just like last year we’re going to do so in style. We’ve got some awards that we want to give out to those who have earned it. These are companies and services that offer products we (as in Ashley and myself) would hate to see shut their doors. It’s also our way of saying thanks to those who have taken the time to develop the quality products and services we have at our disposal each and every day.

So stick around over the next few days as we hand out the prestigious CyberNet Award to only the most deserving. If we fail to mention a product or service you think should have won in a particular category, be sure to let us know in the comments of the respective article.

P.S. Our categories are all different than the ones from last year.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Aug 02

CyberNet Wants To Make You An All-Star

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on August 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

CyberNet Logo If you read the comments here often you might have noticed that when Ashley or myself submits a comment that it has a unique look to it. Earlier this week we were trying out a new star that was being placed in the corner of our comments and now it is your turn to get a star!

Maybe it sounds lame but we are trying to make it easy for new people who are visiting our site to recognize the commenter’s that spark great conversations. To pinpoint those people we are going to look at how frequently you comment. Right now you’ll need 50 comments but that number may increase as more people become “All-Stars”.

CyberNet All-Star

In order to receive the star pictured above you will have to register on our site. Once you register you’ll be able to keep track of the top commenter’s by selecting the “Manage” button located at the top of the sidebar. There you will also find the current list of All-Stars.

The top commenter’s are sorted by email address, so if you haven’t registered yet that doesn’t mean you have to start over. When registering make sure you enter in the same address that you have been using in the comment form. That will help ensure that the number of comments is carried over onto your account.

Here is what the comment count looks like right now:

  1. Inferno_str1ke (82)
  2. Max (81)
  3. natmaster (31)
  4. Keith L. Dick (31)
  5. Jason (30)
  6. Pieter De Decker (21)
  7. Ed West (16)
  8. mediaphile (12)
  9. PhoenixP3K (9)
  10. Alfredo (9)

So we have two people that are now considered All-Stars here and Inferno_str1ke’s comments will now reflect the change but Max still needs to register. We really appreciate everyone who takes the time to comment and we can’t wait to make more of you All-Stars! :D

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments
Jul 31

About

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 03, 2005 by CyberNet.

Welcome to CyberNet News – a site filled with a refreshing assortment of technology news and productivity tips! CyberNet News was started on December 3, 2005 with the goal of sharing technology news with an active community of readers who are just as passionate about technology as we are.

Our community includes professional geeks and non geeks; die-hard Firefox Fans and devoted Opera users; Loyal Linux and Proud Windows users; Google followers, and your typical average-Joe (or Jane) who is just trying to keep up with, or begin to understand the Tech-World.

We report news throughout the week using a combination of in-depth reporting, user-polls, CyberNotes editorials, short and to-the-point articles, and helpful tips and tricks. Topics include, but are not limited to: web browsers, computer hardware, software, the World of Web 2.0, and a variety of other carefully selected tech-related topics.

CyberNet News is written and edited by Ryan and Ashley Wagner.

If you have any comments, tips, or suggestions for CyberNet, please email us at tech@cybernetnews.com.

ABOUT RYAN WAGNER
Ryan is a graduate of Iowa State University with a B.S. in Computer Engineering. He originally started CyberNet News as a hobby while he was a student. Currently he is a Systems Engineer for Thomson Reuters.

When he has free time, he enjoys playing a game of basketball, fishing, photography (including editing), and a good movie. He also enjoys playing with new software to help make him more productive.

He currently resides in the Chicagoland area with his wife, Ashley.

ABOUT ASHLEY WAGNER
Ashley is a graduate of Iowa State University with a B.S. in Elementary Education. She got involved with CyberNet in June of 2006 just for fun, but ended up getting hooked and has enjoyed every minute of it since then. Currently she is a Teacher/Technology Integration Specialist at a school in the Chicagoland area.

In her free time, she enjoys time with friends and family, exercise of any kind, playing the piano, fishing, and shopping.

She too, resides in a suburb of Chicago.

POWERED BY
CyberNet News is powered by a server at Cari.net, and uses WordPress with a custom design.  Features such as CyberMarks and Unread Comment Tracking are not set-up in plug-in format, instead they are custom made and deeply integrated into WordPress.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

    No related posts


No Comments
Jul 31

And the MojoPac License Winners are……

Posted in: General, Today's Chili

This article was written on December 27, 2006 by CyberNet.

mojopac give-away We are pretty excited to be giving away two software licenses for MojoPac! It’s a pretty useful piece of software, and the two winners will surely be able to find some kind of use for it! Thanks to all of those who gave us your explanations on why it would be useful! This give-away wasn’t about who had the best reason, it was simply random. So, without further ado, here are the winners…….

  • Entry #3 by kfonda: “I run a small consulting company here at the Jersey shore. This would be absolutely perfect to put on a portable USB drive that I can carry with me all the time. I’ve never heard of this application before but it really looks useful.”
     
  • Entry #16 by The Slasher: ” It certainly sounds like a good idea – I can see this type of product or technique becoming the way of the future, i.e. everyone having a USB device that they “jack in” to the nearest computer they are using and never ever have to worry about settings and what the PC they are using is set-up like.

    I’d love to try it out, I’d want to see how secure the system was, which is pretty much my most important factor in USB-keying and jacking in with my data to other computers. Right now, I use encryption, which is great and tough to beat but isn’t the easiest to manage as far as gaining access to your data on a public PC. Maybe this is the solution. “

Winners, be sure to let us know what you think of it! :) You should have already received an email with the license key.  If not, check your spam folder… it may be hanging out there.  Remember, you need to start by downloading the product (To everyone else, they do have a free trial!). After you’ve downloaded MojoPac, you’ll be able to enter in your license key. After that, you’re all set!

Stick around because we’ll have more software to give away in the future!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:


No Comments