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Category: ‘Geeky Stuff’
YouTube has formally announced that it started to re-encode its videos in higher quality. “You may have noticed that we’re now giving you the option of watching some YouTube videos in higher quality. We’re making these streams available on certain videos, based upon the source file uploaded to us, and over time you’ll find a greater percentage of the library is available to view in higher quality.”
Now you can choose the higher quality as a default option by going to your YouTube account settings and changing the video playback quality to “I have a fast connection. Always play higher-quality video when it’s available.
The new setting is equivalent to appending &fmt=6 to the URL and you get 448 x 336 FLV1 videos with audio encoded at a sample rate of 44100 Hz, up from 320 x 240 FLV1 videos with audio encoded at 22050 Hz.
А я уже давно пользуюсь Userscript-ом, который определяет, есть ли для открытого видео версия лучшего качества, и если есть, то генерит ссылку 
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ГАЛАКТЕКО ОПАСНОСТЕ!!1одинодин
A STUDENT was left shocked when she checked her tourist snaps of the London skyline - and spotted what looks like a flying saucer.
University Of Exeter academic Karolina-Slavka Mueller was in London for the weekend, when she took some shots with her camera phone of the sights.
But when she looked back at the January 19 night time pictures of Tower Bridge and the London Eye, she was shocked to see an apparent UFO.
And experts claim it is the real thing.
Karolina said in an email: “What’s very strange about this is the fact that we didn’t actually see this object in the sky while I was taking the photos.
“I only discovered it once I loaded the photos onto my computer as I didn’t even look at the photos until then.”
The images - taken around 3.50am - were taken eight minutes apart as Karolina and two pals drove through Central London.
The apparent UFO is at an angle and appears to emit a mysterious blue light.
[…]
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30 июня 2008 года продажи операционной системы Windows XP по всем миру будут окончательно прекращены. С этого момента останется только «Виста», и достать лицензионную коробку с XP будет практически невозможно, хотя старая ОС продолжит распространяться по OEM-каналам и для корпоративных заказчиков. Пройдёт ещё несколько лет, и Microsoft прекратит выпуск обновлений безопасности для «устаревшей» ОС, так что она останется только у самых маргинальных юзеров.
Около 85 000 пользователей Windows XP, возмущённых такой перспективой и не желающих делать апгрейд и устанавливать себе «Висту», подписались с требованием продлить продажи Windows XP не бесконечно долгий срок.
И вот теперь компания Microsoft дала официальный ответ страждущим. В нём объясняется, что, во-первых, компания и так перенесла на полгода дату окончания продаж Windows XP, ведь первоначально планировалось распрощаться с ней ещё 31 декабря 2007 года. Во-вторых, нет никаких оснований откладывать дедлайн повторно.
В общем, даже если активисты соберут миллион подписей в защиту XP, вряд ли это спасёт её.
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Прикольная штукенция. Не тормозит (хотя это наверно от и-нета зависит).
PicLens instantly transforms your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for viewing images on the web. Photos will come to life via a cinematic presentation that goes well beyond the confines of the traditional browser window. With PicLens, browsing and viewing images on the web will never be the same again.
To use PicLens, move your mouse over an image and click the PicLens button that fades in. With one click, the image expands into full screen mode, where you can browse through the photos on the page in high resolution. You can jump between photos or start an automatic slideshow by using the buttons at the lower-left. You can also press the space bar to play and pause the slideshow, and the arrow keys to move between photos. Pressing any other key will take you back to your browser. You can click on a thumbnail in full screen mode to jump directly to that image. If there are more images than fit on the thumbnail strip, you can use the arrows to the left and right of the strip to scroll.
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Сцуки, бл%нах!.. но пикчур все таки нарисовал.. гх.. 
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Spammers, fresh from the success of cracking the Windows Live captcha used by Hotmail, have broken the equivalent system at Gmail.
Internet security firm Websense reports that miscreants have created bots which are capable of signing up and creating random Gmail accounts for spamming purposes, defeating Captcha-based defences in the process. It reckons the same group of spammers are behind both attacks.
Captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) challenge-response systems, which are used to prevent accounts being created until a user correctly identifies letters in an image, are designed to ensure requests are made by a human rather than an automated program. The technique has been used to defeat automatic sign-ups to email accounts by services including Yahoo! Mail and Gmail for years, and hackers are increasingly successful in defeating the approach. For example, the HotLan Trojan has created more than 500,000 spam email accounts with Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail since its arrival back in July 2007.
Websense reckons the latest Gmail Captcha hack is the most sophisticated it has seen to date. Unlike Live Mail Captcha breaking, which involved just one zombie host doing the entire job, the Gmail breaking process involves two compromised hosts. Each of the two compromised hosts applies a slightly different technique to analysing Captcha, as explained in a posting by Websense.
Even using the two techniques, only one in every five Captcha-breaking requests are successful. It’s a fairly low percentage, but one that’s still more than workable in the case of automated attacks.
It sounds like a lot of effort, but gaining a working Gmail account has a number of advantages for spammers. As well as gaining access to Google’s services in general, spammers gain a address whose domain is highly unlikely to be blacklisted, helping them defeat one aspect of anti-spam defences. Gmail also has the benefit of being free to use.
A wide range of Captcha-breaking services are hosted on a domain located in the US, Websense reports. The page includes a support page and payment advice along with an internal test page.
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Created by US inventor Stephen Hobly
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