SOPA is dead, Feds shut down Megaupload

2:44 p.m. EST, January 20, 2012

The Texas legislator who proposed SOPA today withdrew the bill “until there is wider agreement on a solution,” reports show.

A Reuters report shows that Republican U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, the head of the House Judiciary Committee, told the news service, “It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products.”

Facebook weighed in on the decision by posting a message on their Washington, DC page: “We are relieved that Congress has recognized the serious damage the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) could cause to the Internet and are pleased that congressional leaders have decided not to move forward on these bills.”

The post continues by thanking “the millions of Facebook users who shared their views with us, with members of Congress, and with their friends and families on this important issue, and who changed the direction of this harmful legislation.”

The news of SOPA’s demise comes after the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigations today shut down file-sharing website Megaupload and charged seven people associated with it of running an international enterprise based on Internet piracy.Megaupload is one of the most popular Internet services that lets users transfer large documents, music, photos, and movies anonymously. The movie and music industry has accused Megaupload in the past of copyright infringement.

A New York Times report shows Megaupload, run by Kim Schmitz, also know as Kim Dotcom, of causing $500 million in damages to copyright owners and generating more than $175 million in ad revenue and selling premium subscriptions to users.

Authorities arrested Schmitz today at Dotcom Mansion in Auckland, New Zealand this morning. The 37-year-old Schmitz fled to a safe room and police “had to cut their way in,” reports show. When police entered the safe room, Schmitz was found with a shotgun at his side.

“It was definitely not as simple as knocking at the front door,” detective inspector Grant Wormald told the New York Times.

Reports show officers seized $4.8 million in luxury automobiles, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe and a pink 1959 Cadillac. Myriad artworks and electronics also were taken from the estate.

On Thursday, several Internet sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Boing Boing, among others, protested the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act(PIPA) by enacting “blackouts” that temporarily shut down their services.Other sites like Firefox and Google showed their support by explaining the ramifications of PIPA and SOPA, but they didn’t interrupt service to Internet users.

Copyright © 2012, Orlando Sentinel

Dec 6, 2011 10:00 AM

Dear Lifehacker,
I’ve been syncing my iPhone with laptop, but now I want to start syncing with my desktop. When I connect it to the desktop, iTunes wants to erase everything in order to start syncing with his new machine. I want to start syncing with the new machine, not remove all the content already on my phone. What can I do?

Sincerely,
Data in Peril

Dear DiP,

You’ve stumbled upon a complicated situation. Apple does not make it very easy to start syncing with a new computer unless you want to completely wipe out your device in the process. This doesn’t mean you can’t do it. The process is simply less than ideal. First things first, let’s take a look at how to solve your specific problem. After that, we’ll look at a few ways you can sync with multiple machines.

Switch Your iDevice to a New Machine

Switching your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a new machine isn’t fun but it isn’t impossible. Just follow these steps:

1. Authorize your new computer to use your Apple ID. This is the email address you use to sign into iTunes (and probably anything else Apple-related). If you don’t know it offhand, you can just check the computer you’re currently syncing with. If you go into the iTunes Store it should appear in the upper-righthand corner. Once you know it, go to the new computer you want to sync with and locate the Store menu. From there, choose Authorize This Computer. (In the event you’ve switched Apple IDs and made purchases with more than one, you’ll need to perform this authorization for every account. See this Apple support page for details.)
2. Connect your iDevice and wait for it to pop up in the iTunes sidebar. Once it does, go to the File menu and select “Transfer Purchases from Hot Carl’s iPhone.” (I’m just assuming that’s what you named your device, but if it’s different this option will reflect that.) If your device is full of content, this process may take awhile. Go make yourself one of your famous meatball subs and give it a little while.
3. Now it’s time to transfer your other media that wasn’t sanctified by purchased through Apple to get onto this new computer. If it’s all in your other computer’s iTunes, you can just copy this data to the new machine you want to sync with. You’ll find it in Your Hard Driver -> Users -> Your Home Folder (it’ll be labeled with your username) -> Music -> iTunes. You won’t need everything in that folder, but that’s the content you’re looking for. Just drag all the content in your iTunes folder on to the new copy of iTunes you want to sync with. This will add it to iTunes but you won’t be able to keep your playlists. The only way to be able to do that is to completely replace your iTunes library on the new computer with the old one, or use an application like Media Rover (or this more DIY option) to sync the two together.
4. In the event you have content on your iDevice that’s not in the old computer’s iTunes library, you need to transfer that content from your device. To do that, you’ll need some extraction software. $20 can get you the fantastic iRip. It’ll send your music straight to iTunes if you’ve got a Mac. Senuti will do the same for free, but isn’t quite as feature-rich or elegant. If you’re running Windows, you can just go into iTunes, select your device, enable disk mode, and open up the disk in Windows. Once you have the iPod open in Windows Explorer you’ll need to go to the Tools menu, choose Folder Option, and check view hidden files and folders. This will provide you access to your media. Alternatively you can use winamp’s iPod plugin (along with Winamp, of course).
5. Sync your apps from your device to your computer in iTunes by clicking on the Apps tab from your device’s page, checking the sync apps option, and clicking “Apply”.
6. It never hurts to backup your device so let’s make that a necessary step. Right-click your device in the iTunes sidebar and choose Backup. (This should take a few minutes so now’s a good time to see what else is on Lifehacker.com.)

Wasn’t that tedious and annoying? On the plus side, at least your content is ready to be synced on the new machine. If your content gets wiped on your phone, at least it’s safe and sound in iTunes on the new computer you want to sync with so it can be transferred back. Of course you can always just buy iTunes Match and let Apple sync your music for you. (Note: you’ll still have to go through the processes above to transfer your apps, videos, and everything else, but at least it’ll take care of what is likely the biggest hassle.)

Sync Your iDevice with Multiple Machines

There are two ways you might want to sync with multiple machines and neither are perfect. First, if you want to sync some content (such as music, videos, and other media) with one machine and different content with another (such as apps and contacts) you can do that easily by just being selective on each machine. On the first machine, connect your device and tell it what you want to sync. On the second machine, do the same but select different options. That means if you tell the first machine to sync music you cannotsync music with the second machine. This has the obvious drawback of being unable to take the same kinds of content from two machines, but if that’s not something you need to do then this method should work just fine.If you just want to be able to sync with any machine, the absolute best method (in my opinion) is syncing your iTunes folder with Dropbox. That link will take you to a very in-depth tutorial that’ll teach you the entire process for both Mac and Windows. I’ve been doing it for almost a year now and it’s fantastic. If you don’t want to pay for all that Dropbox space, however, check out MediaRover. It’s free and will sync everything locally.

Assuming you’ve made it through this entire article, you’re probably well-aware by now that there’s no perfect solution. While it sucks that your iDevice still can’t sync and work with multiple computers easily, hopefully these options will help you get by in the interim. Good luck and happy syncing!

Love,
Lifehacker

Windows has more antivirus programs than we can count, but we keep coming back to Microsoft’s own offering, Security Essentials. It’s easy to use, lightweight, and does everything in the background, so you rarely need to interact with it.

Microsoft Security Essentials

Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Download Page

• An extremely easy to use interface from which you can manually update definitions, see your recently detected items, and schedule scans
• Set the default action for different alert levels (i.e. remove or quarantine the offending file)
• Real-time protection that scans all your downloads, monitors file activity, and more.
• Exclude certain file types, locations, and processes from a scan
• An heuristic scanning engine that helps it detect viruses not in its definitions

Microsoft Security Essentials solves every problem you’ve ever had with antivirus. It’s super lightweight, easy to use, and will update and scan without you ever knowing it was there. Its interface is dead simple to use, so you can set up schedules and change your settings when you want, but you really don’t need to do much. Set it up, forget it, and stay protected. It’s amazing it took antivirus apps this long to get this simple.

MSE’s only real downside is that it while it’s pretty darn effective, it isn’t the most effective program at catching viruses, at least according to AV-Comparatives’ report. Still, it’s one of the most effective programs out there, especially among free programs, and coupled with a bit of common sense, should keep you more than protected from any malware floating around the net. It also doesn’t have any email, IM, or other extra scanners, but we personally consider a lot of those things bloatware. There’s a fine line between feature-filled protection and something that’s just going to slow your system down more than a virus would. Practice safe browsing and emailing and you’ll get the best of both worlds.

When it comes to free options, Avira is probably the best competitor to Security Essentials. AV-Comparatives found it to be the most effective free program out there, at least with heuristics set to “high” (which isn’t without downsides, mainly a higher possibility of false positives). Like Security Essentials, it isn’t super feature-filled, and it isn’t nearly as lightweight as Security Essentials either (nor is the interface as easy to use). If you prefer something a tad less aggressive, ESET NOD32 is a great application that’s almost as simple as Security Essentials, though not quite. All three of these are great options for free antivirus.

We’d be remiss not to mention Avast and AVG, two longtime favorites of our readers. However, both have quirks that make it hard for us to recommend them over the above options—they aren’t quite as effective in finding viruses and malware, and both have their own bloat and annoyances (like Avast’s once-a-year registration requirement) that put them at the bottom of our list.

Some paid alternatives, like F-Secure, Norton, and McAfee Total Protection are better at finding viruses and malware than free options, but they do so at the cost of your system resources (and your wallet). We personally don’t think they’re necessary in a home setting, as long as you use good browsing habits, but if you want to protect yourself against every possible virus or theoretical piece of malware you could get, they might be the way to go.

In the end, the best possible antivirus you can have is good browsing practices (you know, in case I haven’t mentioned that enough). They’re more effective than any antivirus software out there, and they won’t put any kind of drain on your system resources, money, or stress level. Keep Windows and applications like Flash updated, stop downloading questionable files, and just practice good common sense. If you do, you’ll probably have to deal with your antivirus program very little.

There are more antivirus programs out there than we can even count, but these are probably the best out there right now. Many of you undoubtedly have your own favorites, some that we might not have even listed—so share your favorites with us (and why they’re your favorites) in the comments. If you’re interested in more comparisons between each program’s effectiveness, we highly recommend checking out AV Comparatives’ summary report from last year. It has a wealth of information for those looking to install antivirus on their system.