Think Twice About IE7 Before Upgrading To XP SP3

Still haven’t made up your mind about Internet Explorer 7? No problem, you can always uninstall it and revert to the Internet Explorer 6 web browser that came with your operating system. Unless you’ve upgraded to Windows XP SP3, that is. Because Microsoft is telling computer users that if they install IE7 before XP SP3, there’s no going back.

Basically, when you install IE7, your IE6 files are saved in an uninstall directory that includes the original IE6 installation files and any security updates you’ve added over the years. But SP3 includes a different set of security updates. So if IE7 is already installed when you load SP3, the uninstall directory that was created when you were using SP2 is no longer valid.

If that’s all a bit confusing, here’s what you should take away: If you don’t plan to use IE7, don’t install it. Period. If you do plan to install it, but want to be able to uninstall it, then you should load Windows XP SP3 before upgrading from IE6 to IE7. If you upgraded Internet Explorer before installing XP SP3, the only way to uninstall it would be to uninstall the entire service pack, which is really far more trouble than its worth.

Stereo-Photography Pic of 18th, 19th Century Anatomical Models

The Stanford Medical Center is using stereophotography to document gorgeous Italian anatomical waxwork sculptures from the 18th and 19th centuries. Clement Susini (1757-1814) created more than 2,000 of the sculptures to educate medical students. A team from Stanford University Medical Media and Information Technologies (SUMMIT) collaborated with colleagues from the University of Bologna and 3D photographer Bernard Makinson to document the sculptures, currently stored at the Museo delle Cere Anatomiche Luigi Cattaneo.

The team has put the first test photos on Flickr as both anaglyphs and “mono” photos. The former are quite spectacular when seen through red-blue glasses.

US State Dept. Loses Anti-Terrorist Program Laptops

It has surfaced that the US State Department can’t account for up to about 1,000 laptops, perhaps as many as 400 of which belonged to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program. Internal auditors found that the department lost track of $30 million worth of computer equipment, “the vast majority of which… perhaps as much as 99 percent” were laptops according to one official.

Another official calculated that the average State Department laptop costs US$3,000 and figured that meant as many as 1,000 laptops might be astray — not 10,000 laptops as the US$30 million figure suggests. They’re obviously not very good at maths.

Breville BKT500 Makes Tea And Toast For Two

I don’t quite understand my particular fascination with toasters — I rarely eat toast — especially since I’m comfortably of the school that specialized gadgets have no place in a proper kitchen. Still I haul my Back-to-Basics toaster from under the counter from time to time, hoping the collected dust and hairballs on the unused egg poaching tray won’t make their way into my bagel, trying desperately to forget that brief three-day honeymoon when I scarfed down Egg McMuffin clones.

The BKT500 features a 1 liter kettle with a fast boil concealed heating element (a percolator, I believe), and an electronically controlled toaster with “extra wide and deep self centering toasting slots.” It also includes a brilliant little “A Bit More” button that you push when your toast pops up not quite done.

All this convenience can be yours for only $130.

TorrentSpy Hit with $111M Fine for Copyright Violation

BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy may have shut down last month, but that wasn’t enough to prevent a federal judge from slapping the site with a $111 million fine yesterday. While BitTorrent didn’t host any copyrighted materials on their own servers, the service did make it easy for users to illegally trade files. And the judge ruled that TorrentSpy’s operators should pay $30,000 for each of the 3,699 instances of copyright infringement shown in the case.

Anyone familiar with sites like TorrentSpy knows that it’s possible the site got off easy, as there were probably far more than 3699 copyrighted files made available through the site. On the other hand, TorrentSpy has already declared bankruptcy, and is incapable of paying the high fine. If the site hadn’t already shut down, this ruling would most certainly have forced it to do so. A lawyer for TorrentSpy says the company plans to appeal.

This case was the first major test of the legality of BitTorrent sites in the US. Something tells me it won’t be the last.

Hitman on iTunes Free (Unintentionally)

If you were among the ten people to actually see this videogame-to-movie adaptation in the theaters, well, now you can watch it for free in your own home thanks to a mis-price by iTunes. Just follow the instructions below, and you’ll be able to download all 1.09 GB of bald gunplay for yourself — all for the price of a pat on the back. Even if you don’t enjoy, there is some boobage a couple times in the movie, which makes this deal groundbreaking — because where else can you see boobs on the internet?

From the Article: “Well, thanks to our readers found the tip to get this movie completely free. In iTunes, click iTunes store, look for the “Browse” on Quick Links in the right hand side. Than, select “Movies” and then “Thriller”. Look for the title “Hitman”. You will see it is free (as pictured above) for the whole version at 1.06GB. I can download it and watch it successfully. Not sure whether it is something new or a bug of iTunes.”

Hello Kitty Cell Phone Car Charger

Spotted on FarEast Gizmo, a Hello Kitty car charger for cell phones.

HowTo: Patch Vista For Custom Themes (Visual Styles)

By default, Windows Vista doesn’t allow you to install custom color and window decoration themes, unless they’ve been specifically reviewed by Microsoft. The reason is because Windows checks the themes with a cryptographic key, so you have to patch windows to allow custom-created themes to install. With a set of Uxtheme Patches, and a willingness to roll up your sleeves and patch your system, you can enable custom themes and tweak your colors, windows, and other desktop parts to your heart’s content.

Note: It’s highly recommend that anyone trying it out back up their files and create a restore point before pressing on. Having said that, there are some pretty slick themes out there, at deviantART and elsewhere. Uxtheme Patches are free downloads for Vista (standard and SP1) only.

First Step - Download the Patched Theme Files

This is an incredibly important step, as you don’t want to rename any files in the system32 directory without having the patched versions for the right version of Vista. You’ll need to browse to the Within Windows site and download the correct version for your operating system. If you are running SP1, make sure you get the correct version, whether 32-bit or 64-bit.

There are three .dll files included in this package: themeui.dll, uxtheme.dll, and shsvcs.dll. All of these files are normally located in the C:\Windows\System32 directory. Those files will need to be replaced with the patched versions in order to enable custom themes.

Once you’ve downloaded the files you’ll need to extract them using a utility that can process .rar files, like WinRar or the free jZip utility. Make sure that you have extracted the files before you move on to the next step!

Second Step - Create a System Restore Point

You should create a system restore point before moving fowards, just in case there are any problems, so you can roll things back.

Patching Files Using Take Ownership Utility

Patching these files is easiest if you use the Take Ownership context menu item, which will help you assign ownership of these files to your user account which will allow you to rename the files. Browse down to C:\Windows\System32\ and then put the following into the search box so you can see all the files at the same time (make sure to use capital letters for “OR”): themeui.dll OR uxtheme.dll OR shsvcs.dll


Right-click on the files and choose “Take Ownership” from the menu, and then click through all the UAC prompts. Now you’ll need to rename the files and append .old to the end of the file (either right-click and choose Rename or use the F2 key). At this point you should have 3 files with the .old extension. Whatever you do, DO NOT RESTART your computer at this step, or you’ll be using system restore and probably asking for help.

Now we need to copy the patched files into the system32 folder. You can just type C:\windows\system32\ into the address bar, and then copy / paste or drag the patched files you downloaded into this folder. The most important thing here is to make sure that those three files are sitting in the System32 folder. Now you should be able to restart your computer.

Alternate Method: Using the Command Line

I recommend using the take ownership script above, rather than this method, but for completeness I’ll explain it as well.

First you’ll need to open a command prompt in Administrator mode by right-clicking the command prompt and choosing Run as Administrator, and then run these commands to take ownership of the files, and then grant access to the administrators group:

takeown /f c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll
takeown /f c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll
takeown /f c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll
icacls c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll /grant administrators:F
icacls c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll /grant administrators:F
icacls c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll /grant administrators:F

Note: Whatever you do, don’t try and run takeown *.*, because taking ownership of every single file in the windows directory is going to cause all sorts of problems.

Now that you have taken ownership of the files, you can rename the files to *.old by running these commands:

ren c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll c:\windows\system32\themeui.dll.old
ren c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll c:\windows\system32\uxtheme.dll.old
ren c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll c:\windows\system32\shsvcs.dll.old

Note: At this point you should be very careful to NOT RESTART your computer, because if you do so things will break.

Now you can copy the files that you downloaded and extracted into the system32 directory by running a command similar to this one (adjusting for wherever you extracted them to): copy c:\users\flcl\downloadedfileshere\* c:\windows\system32\

At this point you can now restart your computer.

How to Install a Custom Visual Style

When you download and extract a custom Visual Style, you’ll need to copy them into the C:\Windows\Resources\Themes directory, usually into a new folder. You’ll want to make sure that the folder contains the visual style file within it, and not within a sub-directory of the theme folder.

Note: Some visual styles are structured incorrectly and will have problems. Read this post for more information.

Now that you’ve patched Windows and installed the theme, you need to open the Classic Appearance dialog by right-clicking on the Desktop, choosing Personalize, then Window Color and Appearance. Then you can click the link at the bottom to open the Classic Appearance properties dialog.

Now you can choose the theme in the list. Note that some themes are based off the Window Aero theme and will show the same name, so if one is selected then just choose the other one. You’ll need to have Aero available in order to use a theme based on Aero, of course.

At this point you should be able to see your new custom themes. Enjoy!

Where to Find Custom Visual Styles: If you want to download the custom theme from the first screenshot above, it’s called Ways of Light and can be found here. One of the best places to find custom visual styles is deviantART.

How to Un-Patch Your System: If you want to reverse the process, you can simply remove the .dll files that you copied, and then rename the .old files back to .dll.

What To Do if You Have Problems: If you are having any problems, you should unpatch the system first, or can run System Restore to put the system back to normal. If you are still having problems, head over to our forums and ask your question there.

Blocked Enzyme CaMKK2 Curbs Appetite, Promotes Weight Loss

Good news, America! Your faithful scientific elite have isolated a brain enzyme that, when blocked, decreases appetite, promotes weight loss and improves the body’s ability to handle blood sugar levels. You’ll be fat and diabetic no longer!

There’ll be no need to exercise when you’ll have easy access to a drug that makes trans-fat-laden fast food less appealing while it burns away the vast reserves of fat your body has been storing away all these years in preparation for a wilderness expedition you’ll never take. Of course, the blocked enzyme, CaMKK2, has only been tested in mice, but I mean mice are like one step away from humans, right?

Screw the testing, just bring us the drugs and we’ll take the risk. Just don’t make us keep exercising or using willpower to stay healthy. We can’t take it anymore.

Family Guy Enters The Matrix

If someone had asked me right when I woke up this morning if I expected to see an superb Family Guy/Matrix trailer mashup, I would have said “frickin’ sweet” and may have searched YouTube for it later, but I wouldn’t have done it so quite incredulously

Democratic Senator Tells ISPs To “think twice” Before Screwing Up Net Neutrality

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has put ISPs on notice that he’s going to do everything he can to preserve Net Neutrality, telling ISPs to “think twice” before they start to corrupt the connections they provide to their customers.

From the Article: “Wyden delivered his ultimatum at a Computer & Communications Industry Association conference in DC, where he cast the entire network neutrality debate in terms of a legislative compromise. Years ago, Congress began protecting ISPs from the twin threats of regulation and taxation; in return, ISPs were expected to deliver an unimpeded connection to the Internet. A move away from a neutral ‘Net would undermine the ‘very philosophical underpinnings of what we fought for for the last 15 years,’ according to Wyden. If that happens, he sees no reason for Congress to continue sheltering ISPs.”

AT&T Wiping the Decks For the 3G iPhone?

Nobody keeps a secret like AT&T, and by that I mean nobody keeps a secret quite so poorly. Boy Genius Report and other sites are talking up an internal Death Star memo that asks employees to hold down the fort during the June 15 - July 12 window. Vacations should be moved if possible, says management, and no additional vacations are being approved during that period.

Since AT&T pulled a similar Mr. Burns-esque maneuver last year prior to the iPhone launch, it’s entirely reasonable to pin this year’s lockdown on the arrival of the 3G iPhone after WWDC. It’s probably not necessary to stake out your place in line just yet, unless you happen to be an elected official. If you were planning an iPhone purchase in the next four weeks, however, this is some of the strongest evidence yet that you really should put your credit card down and think it through.

GTA IV Knock It Out with A 6M Unit / $500M First Week

Amazingly, the pre-release estimates of a $400 million first week for the latest edition of Grand Theft Auto turned out to be low with publisher Take-Two trumpeting a 6 million unit, $500 million debut. Playing GTA IV in HD isn’t without controversy, however, with reports of over-scan issues on older HDTVs (some experiences range to the last number or letter in mission descriptions sometimes running off the screen), and with the PS3 version of the game not quite meeting some 720p expectations (although some say differences in textures and lighting more than make up for it).

Being “only” 640p didn’t stop previous record holder Halo 3, and looking at the numbers it appears Rockstar has made the right moves as well, although I’m sure some will wait for the inevitable PC version to run the game in as high of a resolution as possible.

Live Lobster Claw Game

Ha ha — pincers. This reminds me of The Simpsons episode Team Homer where Otto is obsessed with getting that lobster harmonica out of the claw game at the bowling alley. But instead of a bowling alley, this claw game is located in Osaka, Japan’s Namba district, and instead of winning a lobster harmonica, you can actually win a real life lobster.

Obviously you’d have to up your claw game skills if you expect to snag a moving target like a live lobster, but if you do happen to snatch one the arcade manager will at least give you a plastic bag so you can carry it around with you the rest of the night. I’ve also included a video below of some tourists successfully scoring themselves a tasty lobster prize.

Did the Earth Once Have Had Multiple Moons?

A new study from NASA’s Ames Research Center has suggested that the collision of Earth and a Mars-sized object that created the Moon may also have resulted in the creation of tiny moonlets on Earth’s Lagrangian points.

From the Article: “Once captured, the Trojan satellites likely remained in their orbits for up to 100 million years, Lissauer and co-author John Chambers of the Carnegie Institution of Washington say. Then, gravitational tugs from the planets would have triggered changes in the Earth’s orbit, ultimately causing the moons to become unmoored and drift away or crash into the Moon or Earth.”

The longest-lasting of such Trojans could have persisted for a billion years. They would have been a few tens of kilometers in diameter and would have appeared in the sky like bright stars.