News Briefs

“Nerdy” goes mainstream

Last week, Weird Al Yankovic’s new single, “White & Nerdy”, hit number 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 list. This is the highest point that any of Yankovic’s songs has ever reached in his career.

“White & Nerdy” bested his previous high of 12 with “Eat It,” which debuted in 1984.

It has always been one of Yankovic’s goals to reach the top 10.

Yankovic credits the Internet as being the main reason his song has done so well. Sites such as YouTube aided him by hosting the “White & Nerdy” music video. According to Billboard.com, Yankovics’ song is now No. 11 on the Hot 100 list.



Boston smashes pumpkin record

Boston is now the new record holder for the most jack-o’-lanterns lit in one place at the same time.

The residents of the city met at Boston Common to light 30,128 carved pumpkins.

It was estimated that over 100,000 showed up to carve pumpkins and eat pumpkin pie for the event.

The former record was 28,952 pumpkins, which was held by Keane, New Hampshire. Keane attempted to break their own record but was only successful in lighting 24,682 pumpkins.



iPod restrictions cracked

Hacker Jon Lech Johansen claimed yesterday that he has figured out how to remove the playback restrictions on Apple’s iPod and iTunes music products.

Johansen is 22 years old and has already managed to remove copyright protection from many DVDs, earning him the nickname, “DVD Jon.”

He plans to license his newly developed code to businesses so that they can create content that is playable on iPods.

The new business he plans to license the code under is name DoubleTwist Ventures.

Johansen knows he will probably have legal troubles with Apple, but he feels that they will not be major enough to cause him significant financial harm.