Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The case has become an instant online cause celebre – with one lawyer saying that the integrity of history itself is at stake – because it ranges the US’s First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, against German privacy and criminal laws, which dictate that after a certain period a crime is “spent” and cannot be referred to. The UK has similar rules on the reporting of lesser crimes.

The two men, who cannot be named here, became infamous for the killing, for which they were sentenced to life in prison in 1993. They were released in 2007 and 2008. But Alexander Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, noted that Germany’s courts allow a criminal’s name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired.

“They should be able to go on and be resocialised, and lead a life without being publicly stigmatised” for their crime, Stopp said. “A criminal has a right to privacy, too, and a right to be left alone.”

German editors of Wikipedia, which is available in multiple languages around the world, have already removed the killers’ names from the German-language version about the victim, Walter Sedlmayr. But Stopp has also filed suit in German courts to demand that the Wikimedia Foundation, which funds and runs Wikipedia, remove their names from the English-language article.

In fact Wikipedia administrators – the unpaid group that helps oversee the running of the site – have been discussing the challenge for more than a year. But there is deep disagreement about whether the individuals’ German-determined right to privacy overrides the US First Amendment.

[ VIA ]

Even fewer are cross-platform. Wally, though, is happy to share its background-rotating skills with Windows, Mac, and Linux users alike. It’s built using Nokia’s Qt4 framework and supports an insane number of image sources: local and remote folders (via FTP), and popular photo sites like Flickr, Yahoo!, Panoramio, Pikeo, Ipernity, Photobucket, Buzznet, Picasa, Smugmug, and Bing. You can use any combination of sources you choose by adding and removing them on the settings screen.

Customization options are plentiful, from specifying the delay between image changes to tweaking the size of your local image history store. Images from the ‘net are pulled in based on the search terms you specify – and yes, you can shut off Bing’s adult filter if you want to.

Wally is free and open source, and pre-compiled downloads are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The project is also mirrorerd over at Sourceforge.

[ Play the game ]

Generally, in order to extract a small clip from a DVD, you’ve got to rip and convert the entire movie—or at least a specific chapter—before you can work with it. DVD Knife does away with this lengthy process with a quick, four-click solution. When you start it up, you just open the disc, navigate to and mark your start and endpoints, and click save. DVD Knife will extract the clip (without compressing or decompressing) into a small VOB file that you can then convert into whatever file type you need, giving you more time to actually concentrate on the goal at hand (or to finish up that project quickly and go do something else).

[ Download DVD Knife ]

Instructables user Larry SDonald found that magnetized screw drivers were handy but they have the downside of being unsuitable for working around magnetically-sensitive equipment. His solution to the problem—rather than buying duplicates of all his tools in magnetic and non-magnetic models—was to simply attach a small neodymium magnet to the shaft of non-magnetic screw drivers to impart a temporary and powerful boost.

Once you remove the magnet the magnetism dissipates and the tool is rendered non-magnetic again. Have your own handy tool hack? Let’s hear about it in the comments below.