Following a request, I edited a bunch of high resolution Tiger icons out of Jaron Brass’ excellent Tiger wallpapers and saved them as PNG files with a mask so they can be placed on any background image or color. The Mac OS X icons were originally designed by Cesar Carrera (and copyright Apple — don’t sue me, please!), however I’m not sure if the ones included here are all his. In this set, you’ll find:

• Address Book
• the Applications icon
• Automator
• Bonjour
• Core Audio/Image/Video
• Dashboard
• .Mac
• FileVault
• Finder
• the Home icon
• iChat
• Keychain
• “Mac HD”
• .Mac Sync
• Mail
• Preview
• QuickTime
• Safari
• Spotlight
• Xcode
• the Apple logo from “About This Mac…”

Each image about 500px in size, which is considerably larger than what you’ll find in Mac OS X’s standard icons. Here’s a preview sheet of what you can expect. If you like what you see, download the whole lot (3.7 MB). Personally, I’ve used a few in the past for sprucing up Keynote presentations given at MUG meetings. I’m not sure what other purposes they have — post below if you find them useful!

The Wall Street Journal has a great article on Jon Johansen, detailing the man behind software that, among other things, allows you to decrypt DVDs and un-protect purchased iTunes Music Store songs.

At the age of 15, Mr. Johansen wrote a computer program that allowed users to copy DVDs. Then he posted it on the Internet. A Norwegian private school awarded him a prize for making an outstanding contribution to society. The Norwegian government indicted him.

In the interview, Jon argues that “the biggest film pirates mass produce DVDs using the same equipment the industry uses, not his software program.” What about the long tail of pirates? Could the sheer volume of amateur DVD-R pirates actually outweigh the volume output by “professional” pirates that use pressing factories?

In any event, I’d like to thank Jon for his continued efforts in giving digital media rights back to the consumers, who continually get the short end of the stick from Hollywood.

While Googling for some information on Apple, I ran across this great primer on HD video that’s a worthwhile read if you’re new to HD. The two page primer covers interlacing and progressive scanning, as well as various scan rates and aspect ratios.

Via digg, here are videos and tons of information on a skillfully engineered two-wheeled robot that can balance itself as well as drive around. An electronic gyroscope and accelerometers help orient the ‘bot and keep it upright while moving, and a separate sensor provides tilt data while it is at rest. Built by David Anderson, the balancing nBot is an impressive piece of work.