Gearfuse

I love Hulu. Thanks to Hulu, my roommates and I were able to cancel our cable subscription and now watch all our favorite shows on Hulu, save for the HBO and Showtime stuff. Now, in an out-of-the-blue move, Hulu has released a desktop app that lets you watch shows without a web browser. But be warned! I just went to download it and don’t even own a computer fast enough to run the program. Check out these minimum requirements for Mac users:

Minimum requirements: Intel Pentium Core Duo 2.0GHz At least 2.0 GB of RAM Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) or later 2 Mbps Internet connection Flash 9.0.124

The requirement is more or less the same for Windows users. Such a beastly app! If anyone with a brand new computer has the time to try this thing out, let us know how it is. It even has support for the Apple Remote!

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Hey! You! Yes! All five of you! Come here. I have some good news for you. So remember when you guys all went and bought 30GB Zunes awhile back? Well I know they’re out of warranty now and all, but I just got this great tip from a friend. It seems Microsoft is going to let you trade in that old, defunct Zune for a newer 120GB, 80GB, 16GB or 8GB version. Prices will vary but you’ll receive a significant discount by trading in your old unit. The five of you Zune owners should grab a beer together and celebrate.

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Forget what I said about the Vectrex, I was merely poking fun. It is a goofy looking but awesomely retro gaming console that’s easy to ridicule. If you just so happen to have one collecting dust in your attic because of an obsolete chip, In Choi writes on Programmable Logic DesignLine about emulating the chip with logic design.

Choi proves that there are practical ways to overcome chip obsolescence. Constructing a replacement chip dubbed a RLD (retro logic device), a swap for the broken chip gets the system up and running again. We’re glad he used the Vectrex to prove his point.

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Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make a digital copy of any of your DVDs as if it were an audio CD you wanted to import with iTunes? You can! I mean, you will once RealNetworks introduces it’s $30 software program: RealDVD. It’ll allow users to make a digital copy of an entire DVD, including all the extras and artwork from the box.

Let’s face it: Blu-ray is king these days and that sucks for all the loons who bought a library of DVD movies (which is everyone). Now that DVD is out the window, Hollywood could care less if you copy all of your DVDs and start selling them on your website. OK, that’s not true at all but at least it’s giving up the ban on digital backups. If you dare do it with Blu-ray discs, the peoples of Hollywood will hunt you down and kill you. Just prepare your hard drive beforehand, otherwise you’ll only be able to fit the first season of Dawson’s Creek on it, and we all know that the second season is way better.

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Sometime in March, Blizzard filed a class action lawsuit against Michael Donnelly, the creator of the MMO Glider program, which performs key tasks in the game automatically, such as fighting and looting. Well, Blizzard “pwned” the shit out of the software bot’s creator, claiming it infringes the company’s copyright and potentially damages the game.

Donnelly says his tool does not infringe Blizzard’s copyright because his software makes no copy of the WoW game client software. However, Blizzard has said the tool infringes copyright because it copies the game into RAM in order to avoid detection by anti-cheat software. Well, the judge sided with Blizzard, claiming that copying the game into RAM is an unauthorized copy. Epic fail.

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Pesky trespassers, beware! This USB missile launcher is outfitted with a radar that picks up enemy movement in its field of vision. The instructions to make one are provided with a circuit board layout and a free download of the C# code to run it. Just plug this missile launcher into your PC and you’ll be scanning for Charlies in to time.

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