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By (author unknown), The Big Picture – April 19, 2010 at 12:23PM

Lightning streaks across the sky as lava flows from a volcano in Eyjafjallajokul April 17, 2010. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

By Peter Friedman, Techdirt. – April 19, 2010 at 10:01AM

To prove a point about how few people actually read the “terms and conditions” when making a purchase online, British game retailer GameStation decided to play an April fools joke on its customers, tricking many of them into agreeing to hand over the rights to their soul. GameStation’s current terms require online purchasers of its products to agree to the following:

By placing an order via this Web site on the first day of the fourth month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from gamesation.co.uk or one of its duly authorised minions.

The company provided a simple opt-out check-box and inferred from the number of shoppers who didn’t click the box (about 88%) that very little attention is paid to such agreements. The fact that so few people read the contracts they sign is not exactly news, but the troublesome part is that these contracts are generally enforced — although, in this case, GameStation admitted that they would not hold customers to the “immortal soul” clause. Contract law is founded on the notion that we are all free and equal individuals left to our own devices to enter into whatever transactions we wish. Moreover, many believe that any limitations on what individuals can be allowed to agree to (within certain well-accepted limits) are counter to economic wisdom. But when we face up to the fact so few people actually read these agreements, sooner or later we’re likely to have to admit that some limits on what retailers can require in these agreements may make sense.

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By Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker – April 19, 2010 at 08:10AM

Microwave popcorn is not all it could be, at least compared to its stove-top and popcorn machine brethren. Want a likely fix? Heat a bowl of water in your microwave right before it’s popcorn time, and you might get moister, fluffier results.

Photo by grantlairdjr.

Lifehacker commenter HeartBurnKid got this tip on a microwave popcorn bag handed out as a freebie by his health insurance company—we’ll presume it was of the “light,” or at least non-buttered variety. His directions call for a cup of water, heated for one minute on high, with a quick swap-in of the popcorn after it finishes. Popcorn maker Pop Weaver also calls the water-before-popcorn method the “first step in making great microwave popcorn.” If so, at least one Lifehacker editor has to look back on 29 years of movie nights and wonder why this never came up.

Have you given the water-heating popcorn hack a try? Tell us about your results, or any other popcorn improvements, in the comments. While you’re getting hungry, consider our previous tips on making movie-theater-style popcorn at home, getting fewer kernels in a microwave bag, and, what the heck, making popcorn with bacon fat.

By udijw, DIYPhotography.net -DIY Photography and Studio Lighting – April 19, 2010 at 04:45AM

A while back we had a piece about the power of using LEDs in photography. In that article we had a very primitive LED ring light. In this guest post, Tim Brook shares a much better way to create a LED ring light.

Browsing through the dealextreme website, I came across these LED car headlight rings and thought that they’d be ideal for making a Macro Lighting Ring so I placed my order and had a go.

read more

By (author unknown), ScienceDaily: Latest Science News – April 18, 2010 at 05:00PM

Although evolutionists and creationists strongly disagree about the role that intelligent design plays in the origins of bodies and brains, they curiously agree about the role that intelligent design plays in the origins of human inventiveness. However, both camps would do well to focus less on perceived foresight and purpose and more on the actual origins of behavior, according to one expert.

By kdawson, Slashdot – April 18, 2010 at 08:12AM

Pickens writes “Corporate Counsel recounts the profound legacy of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, author of the majority opinion in what some consider the most important copyright ruling of all time — the 1984 Betamax decision (Sony v. Universal City Studios) that established that consumers have a personal ‘fair use’ right to make copies of copyrighted material for non-commercial use. Justice Stevens’s contribution to the ultimate decision in Betamax extended well beyond writing the opinion. The justices’ initial debates in the case make it clear that Stevens was the only one of the nine (PDF) who believed that the ‘fair use’ doctrine gave consumers a right to make personal copies of copyrighted content for home use. It was his negotiating skill that pulled together the five-vote majority allowing home video recorders to be sold and used without interference from copyright holders. An IP litigator is quoted: ‘The ruling that making a single copy for yourself of a broadcast movie was fair use … that was truly huge, and was a point on which the court was deeply divided.’ So the next time you’re TiVo-ing an episode of your favorite show, remember to give a quick thanks to Justice Stevens; and let’s hope that whoever President Obama appoints to replace him will follow in Stevens’s footsteps and defend Fair Use, not corporate copyright interests.” The review also touches on Stevens’s “patent skepticism,” which may be on display when the court delivers its eagerly awaited Bilski ruling.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

By Erick Schonfeld, TechCrunch – April 18, 2010 at 08:05AM

Eyjafjallajökull has become a curse word in Europe as the Icelandic Volcano continues to delay flights across the Atlantic. The cloud of volcanic ash is creating havoc for travelers and European startups who can’t get anywhere. But entrepreneurs in London at least are coping with impromptu meetups.

If you haven’t seen images yet of the volcano up close, there are some on Flickr and YouTube. Reader Baldvin Hansson sent us the photos below (here is his entire set), which he took in a small plane near the volcano (presumably upwind).

By Rich Whittle, Business Opportunities Weblog – April 17, 2010 at 06:45PM

You know when the sign on the bread shelf at Winn-Dixie says “10 for $10,” that’s just wishful thinking on the store’s part, according to a story at Tampa Bay Online.

You can just buy one for $1, or three for $3 if that’s all you really need.

But the pricing strategy, somehow, seems to work, according to a study in the Journal of Marketing Research from 1998 that’s still touted online.

The research indicates that promotions using multi-unit pricing (“3 for $3″), purchase limits (“Limit 12/person”) and suggestive selling (“Buy 10 for your freezer”) all doubled what consumers purchased, according to a summary of the research by Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab.

“When most people buy products, they buy one or two at a time. They decide on a low number (like one or two), then buy more if the product’s on sale,” the summary said. “When promotions suggest high numbers (“Buy 12 so you don’t run out!”), people shift their reference point to the higher number, and buy more.”

More interesting data and helpful tips on the psychology of shopping can be found at the Cornell lab’s Web site. Just click here.

Photo by psychologytoday.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

By Angelina, MakeUseOf – April 17, 2010 at 03:31PM

To the average computer user, contracting a virus is like contracting a rare disease – it brings life to a halt, it is expensive to remove, and worst of all, the probability of catching a virus is much higher than that of catching a serious disease.

After the dreaded infection, removal procedures usually include taking the computer to a service center, where technicians charge hundreds of dollars to remove the virus. But what many users don’t know is that viruses are actually not very difficult to deal with.

In fact, there are hoards of free tools on the internet that make it simple enough to remove viruses for free, for anyone with even a bit of technical savvy. These tools render spending ridiculous sums of money for a virus removal a thing of the past.

The bulk of the work is brute forcing: repeatedly attacking the virus with different scans until it gives into deletion. If you have a decent amount of time on your hands, virus removal becomes a very simple process.

The first step to remove viruses for free is backing up your data. At work, I usually take the hard drive out of the computer and use a hard drive dock (pictured above) to back data up on our servers. This is the safest method of backing up files, since the traditional method of backing up your files to an external hard drive yields a higher chance of the viruses copying themselves onto your external.

However, not many people own a hard drive dock, so in a pinch, you could try uploading your files to a cloud based storage system, like Dropbox. If you do want to invest in a dock, though, the cheapest one I found online was $20.

Once you have your data backed up, you can begin running virus scans on your computer. First, boot your computer into safe mode. Each manufacturer has a different F-key for boot up options, but the most common one is F8. A quick Google search should tell you which F-key is the one your computer uses to boot into safe mode. Make sure, when you are selecting which mode to boot into, that you pick the safe mode with networking, since we will be running both online and software scans.

From here on out, I will simply list tried and true scanners that I use on a daily basis (also check out Justin’s recent article on the 10 best free anti-virus programs). The procedure for each is the same: download the installer, install it onto your computer, make sure you update the definitions, and then let it run (always select FULL scan). Once you’ve completed the scan, make sure you uninstall the program before you install and run the next one.

Anti-Virus Softwares

1. Malwarebytes

2. A Squared

3. Microsoft Security Essentials

4. AVG Free

5. Spybot Search and Destroy

The procedure for running online scanners is exactly the same as running software scanners, except that instead of downloading an installer, you will simply be downloading a plug-in.

Online Scanners

1. Panda ActiveScan

2. Bitdefender

3. ESET

Usually, by the time you’ve made your way through the above list, you should be receiving clean reports from your anti-virus scans. Sometimes, you will encounter a virus that is particularly difficult to remove, but if you have already identified it, Bitdefender hosts a bevy of free removal tools for specific viruses. Otherwise, there are dozens of other, equally effective anti-virus tools on the internet: for example, Avast and Avira. Just follow the same process as above, and you should be good to go.

The last resort, if all else fails, would be to reformat your computer. However, if you must settle for this option, rest assured knowing that your data is already backed up, and, since the procedure you just went through is the same as the one many computer repair shops use, that you probably would have been told to reformat anyways.

Do you have any trusted virus removal tools, or any pro tips for other users wishing to keep their computers infection-free? Let us know in the comments!

Image Credit : Nils Geylen

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By Soulskill, Slashdot – April 17, 2010 at 11:37AM

isometric writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra:
“IA Labs is accusing Nintendo of infringing on two separate IA Labs patents through technology used in the Nintendo Wii, Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, the Wii Balance Board, Wii Remote, Wii Wheel, Wii MotionPlus, Wii Nunchuck and Wii Zapper. … The patents in question are ‘Computer interactive isometric exercise system and method for operatively interconnecting the exercise system to a computer system for use as a peripheral’ and ‘Force measurement system for an isometric exercise device.’ The claim said that IA Labs had been in contact with Nintendo during 2007-2008, discussing possible overlaps of IA Labs and Nintendo patents. Emails between IA Labs and Nintendo showed that IA Labs wanted to license its technology to Nintendo. IA Labs was also in talks with Nintendo about a product called Sqweeze, a controller for Wii and PC that’s meant to increase physical activity when gaming.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.