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ThePirateBay for Sale: The death of a symbol?
04 July '09 by InF, under Tech Posts, Torrents.
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If you are not aware of it yet, it seems that The Pirate Bay (TPB) is up for sale, and as already acquired a potential buyer in the name of the Global Gaming Factory X AB (GGF). The price tag was set up at $7.7 million. What now follows is my personal opinion on the matter.
I think that, if TPB is indeed sold, it’ll mark the death of a symbol in the fight against major labels, Hollywood and whoever wants to make the most money out of customers as it is possible. TPB was a major fighter, often disgracing the people who intended to bring it down. By TPB, I mean the collective running the site, including Peter Sunde. On its website, it often mocked their legal threats and did not take any actions to comply in any way whatsoever. People saw in TPB, a revolution, a rebellion. They took TPB’s side, and identified themselves with the tracker. They wanted content cheap or free, and TPB could provide it. TPB getting sold means that these folks lose their avatar.
However, TPB going down does not mark the end of piracy on the Internet. Torrents are small files, and as TorrentFreak says, one can simply move all the torrents to another tracker, and a clone of TPB would have been born. Technically yes, another TPB would have risen. However, the black-sails-pirate-ship symbol that many associate with piracy nowadays will be gone. I bet that the labels are already rejoicing and are eager to do business with GGF! Wherever there’s money to be made, you will find labels and the usual guys.
GGF wants to make TPB into a legal venture, which instantly defeats the philosophy of the site, that is promoting illegal file-sharing; an image that it has painstakingly preserved over the years. The ship was battered, but never sunk even in a deluge of legal threats. No label, no Hollywood firm could claim the head of the tracker. Seems GFF will be able to, soon.
As if this was not enough, GGF has even more plans for TPB. It plans on taking over the 20 million plus users of the tracker. How? By monetizing the uploads and downloads. Sounds familiar? This is exactly what “legal napster” tried to do, and if you don’t know how it ended, better check it out. In a few short words:no MP3s, DRM.
What will happen to TPB? I don’t know. It depends on how things turn out. There are a number of possible outcomes, the most prominent ones being that the site becomes even more popular with users. Seeders get paid to upload the content they just downloaded (the content they PAID to download). Artists and others get paid to put their content on the tracker. And the site makes money via advertising. Basically, it’s all about money. Think iTunes, but using Bittorrent technology. I guess that is what GFF wants to make TPB into.
The other, darker alternative is that the bulk of the faithful users of the sites move on to other trackers, or another tracker rises to claim the rank of TPB as No.1 notorious tracker, and acquires the users of TPB. This one seems most plausible to me. I don’t think that people who were used to get stuff for free at TPB will now want to pay to get it. They’d just prefer to move on to some other tracker. Not that there’s a scarcity of those anyway.
Also, this sale does not concern the by-products that TPB spawned, most notably, that Youtube alternative that TPB staff were talking about launching recently.
Now, the first part may have sounded a bit dark, but alternatively, there may be an upside to this story. It may be that the Industry has finally seen the light and have acknowledged the Bittorrent technology as the future of media distribution, and will adapt to it, instead of trying to fight it. This too, is a possible outcome of the sale. The problem in this is whether people will stick it it. But I guess that if the price is right, the service will manage to find customers.
Moreover, ISPs will probably want a role in this scheme too. Which ISP wouldn’t like to see Bittorrent traffic reduced on its network. If the content is legal, they may introduce local caching for the most accessed files, which in turn reduces international traffic and boosts speed for users.
I don’t want to sound negative, but I believe that the “darker” outcome is the one most probable. Already, a number of users are demanding that their accounts be closed at TPB, if the sale concludes. This shows that TPB users don’t actually want to buy content. They want it for free: they want it the way TPB has always provided it. And free cannot be beaten by any offer whatsoever.
For now, let’s just stand by and watch what happens. If TPB goes, it’s a symbol destroyed. It’s as if a general is killed in battle, but is in no way the end of the war. Others will replace it, just as Oink was replaced. Just like Kazaa was replaced by Torrents. If the sales is indeed concluded, the TPB war would have ended, but the people behind it would be $7.7 million richer to fight their legal battle, and possibly buy Sealand? Or some other small island and build their own pirate colony? Who knows where this matter is going.
Have your say! The comment box is below.
Sources: TorrentFreak, TorrentFreak, Wired
2 Comments
Firefox 3.5 officially released: Reviewed!
01 July '09 by InF, under Firefox, Reviews, Software, Tech Posts.
Firefox 3.5 was officially released today, Tuesday 30th. The released candidate (RC) was available for a while back, but the version we are talking here is what I call the Final version, that is officially released.
If you haven’t done so already, go to Mozilla and download your copy. If you are lazy, you can try Help - Check for Updates directly in your Firefox 3. If you are already in RC, get the final! Got to show Internet Explorer 8 who’s the boss around here (and to stop MS from bragging any further)! Note that some of your addons will not work, such as Tabmix Plus, one of my favorites. Their forum have an updated beta copy, but for now, I downloaded alternatives (TabKit) to compensate. Do a backup of your stuff, if ever you want to restore.
Now is not too many upgrades to comment on, so I’ll just go on and review those I’ve seen worthwhile of mention. And some that operate in the background and that you will not see.
I have to start somewhere, right? So let’s see what changed in the immediate interface. You will see that Mozilla (now referred as ‘they’) have modified the tab bar to make it more like Chrome’s. Note that small + button near the tab? That’s your new tab button. It follows you now. Apart from that, not much to see in the main window. Looks mostly the same as Firefox 3.
Now the menus. All the menus are similar, save for the History and Tools menu. In History, you now have the option to undo closed tabs, but now, also closed windows. That’s pretty cool for people who use multiple windows. As for me, I prefer a ton of tabs rather than more than 2 windows at once.
In Tools, you will find the Private Browsing mode, or what we common folks call the “porn mode” - this is what it’ll be mainly used for. Legitimate use: accessing your bank account. Or so the “innocent” claim they use it for! 
Some other interesting features you might find interesting are:
- Ripping out tabs: Drag a tab away from the tab bar and release. Voila, you now have a window, with that tab inside. Pretty cool way for creating new windows, rather than using File - New Window, copy-pasting the address and whatever. You can also drag out tabs, and put them in other existing windows. Well, you can do a lot of cool things with dragging tabs now. If you don’t want to drag, right-click and choose Open in a New Window for the same effect.
- Firefox 3.5 is promoting porn mode or what? In the History sidebar, and some other places History-related, there is an option to “Forget about this site”. I’ll leave this one to your creative uses.
- Tracemonkey was included. That means faster Javascript. Well, a lot of stuff Javascript-related faster. If you want the gory innards, check out Mozilla’s Tracemonkey Wiki.
- Video and Audio HTML5 tags are now supported in-built. This will probably mean that sometime in the future, you’ll not need to install Adobe Flash or whatever other plugins to view video and have audio on websites. I can’t begin to imagine what crazy ideas developers will come up with to over-exploit those! Just wait and see.
- AwesomeBar filters: You know what AwesomeBar is right? It’s the address bar, for those of you who don’t. Well, now when typing in it, you can filter what results it returns. It’s easy enough to use the filters. As for remembering the symbols, I can’t say the same. Who came up with those? I also gave you a way to remember those. My own personal method. E.g. Try “Geekscribes *” in the address bar without quotes.
- History only = ^ (Up symbol, like, from where you came previously. Assume you are navigating down something)
- Bookmarks only = * (The * symbol is on the 8 key, that looks like a B symbol. B for Bookmarks)
- Tagged Pages = + (+ for pages that I like)
- URLs only = @ (The @ symbol is used in email addresses. URLs are called addresses)
- Title/Tags only = # (That one I don’t know how to remember!)
- You can restrict the search to your history by typing
^, or bookmarks with*, or tagged pages with+. To make what you’ve typed match only in the URL type@, and for title/tags only use#.
- Geo-location. Basically, now your browser knows where in the world you are. So when you are looking for pizzas in Google Maps, it’ll show you what’s closest to you. Haven’t tried that personally. I’m just scared of the implications. My browser knows from where I’m browsing porn! That’s so scary. It may even lead me to some unwanted locations (in the real world) to find what I’m looking for. I hope I’m joking, because seeing Google pointing me to the nearest porn would be awkward!
- Session restore improved. If ever your browser crashes, on the next restart of the browser, you are prompted to restore the previous session, complete with ticks to choose what tabs and windows to restore. That’s very nice of Mozilla. It’s directly there in the browser window, like one of those Pages not Found messages. You get the idea. Unfortunately, I was able to recreate it by End Task’ing Firefox via Taskmanager.
- Did I mention that Firefox 3.5 is fast? It’s amazingly responsive, and hardly lags. Memory usage is still quite too. 127MB for 5 tabs and around 20 addons installed. It also loads fast. Less than 2 seconds it seems.
Not much to say apart from that. I’ll leave the rest of the goodies for you to discover. After you go, come back here and give us some comments and opinions about Firefox 3.5! 
(Some info taken from Lifehacker)
1 Comment
Internet Explorer 8 Lolz: Act 2
19 June '09 by InF, under Fun, Software, Tech Posts.
EDIT: (starts here)
More lies and debunking them! You really have to see those two links.
Among the most interesting ones:
“Internet Explorer 8 has much more functionality than other browsers, and its functionality is there from the moment you open the browser. Internet Explorer 8 offers almost all of the features the most popular add-ons in Firefox have, and you’re able to personalize your browser in a way that saves you time and research.”
Internet Explorer 8 passes more of the World Wide Web Consortium’s test cases than any other browser.
Can’t Microsoft be prosecuted for spreading lies like that? It’s almost offensive to web-developers!
(ends here)
I recently mentioned that Internet Explorer and Microsoft were afraid of other browsers. Remember that 10k competition thing?
Well, Microsoft has done it yet again! Only this time, it’s a lot more funny and weird. And the amount of lolz just got way higher! See for yourself! And the Digg source.
Line by line comments follow after the shot:
Now the comments:
- Yeah right. IE is more secured than both Chrome and Firefox. I wonder where all those vulnerabilities come from. All those ActiveX nasty stuff. Yeah. IE is indeed secured.
- In-Private browsing? Ever heard of Chrome’s Incognito mode? Firefox’s new Privacy mode? Or what we call “the porn mode”? Another set of ticks missing here!
- IE is easy to use? Since when? Accelerators? Try SmarterFox. Chrome is fast enough as is!
- At least they got some humility to say that Firefox 3 is better. But still, I doubt IE8 is better at standards. Remember that ACID3 test?
- Developer Tools? I dunno. Can’t comment. But I know nothing beats Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar combined!
- Reliability. Firefox will soon have tab/process management, don’t worry IE. Chrome already has it.
- Customizability: Many of the things I want? Right out of the box? Gimme the features of a fully-featured RSS reader directly in IE (Brief?). Or coloured tabs (Colourful Tabs). Or a powerful download manager (DownThemAll). I can even write my own, or customize existing ones! Stop hating Firefox, MS! Give some love to the Fox!
- Compatible with more sites on the Internet than any other browser? For real? And that ACID3 test again? And the non-respect of standards?? Don’t make me laugh! Opera is the best in compatibility imho!
- Manageability: What do they mean here? I can’t understand.
- Performance: Why isn’t Safari here? I heard it’s the fastest of them all.
Overall, IE is bluffing. But hey, more lolz for us! Who are we to complain? I’d so like to see Firefox 3.5 soon. Hey, why not Firefox 4? Let’s see IE fight that!
Seems TechCrunch is poking some fun at IE8 too!
So long!
4 Comments
Firefox displays weird characters as headings (solution)
19 June '09 by InF, under Firefox, Software, Tech Posts, Tips and Tricks.
I am currently using Firefox, latest version that is 3.0.11 at the time of writing, and I encountered a strange problem on some sites, one of which is the famous Smashing Magazine. The headings were displayed using weird characters, or what it would seem, special characters. You can see a screenshot below.
At first, I thought it was a problem with character encoding. Changing to UTF-8 did not solve the problem, nor did switching off Auto-Detect from View menu - Character Encoding solve anything. Well, basically, after a lot of trying out solutions, it was not a problem with charset or encoding.
I tried other solutions but none seemed to work. One of them gave me a clue as to what the problem is. It was going to Tools - Options - Content - (Fonts & Colors) Advanced - (uncheck) “Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above”. This rendered all pages without custom fonts, except my default of Times New Roman. The problem was solved.
The workaround indicated that the problem resided with my fonts. I thus went and checked out the website source and the stylesheet and found out that Smashing Magazine uses Helvetica font as primary font for h2 tags. This line was found in the source and stylesheet respectively (I shortened the code with …’s):
<ul class="topic-list"> <li> <h2><a...> ... </a></h2>
ul.topic-list h2{font:44px Helvetica,Arial, ...}
If you don’t know, Helvetica is a proprietary font and doesn’t come with installs of Windows by default. It didn’t come with mine, on both my XP and Vista installs, so I’m assuming it doesn’t come by default.
The Solution:
So what can you do? Apparently, nothing. You cannot acquire the Helvetica font for free and install it. Unless you are willing to pay for it, you are stuck.
Now, if you are crafty enough, you can use some Google powers and try to find the font by… let’s just say, alternative means. I am not posting links here, because I do not encourage piracy. I managed to find a copy of Helvetica somewhere, installed it and problem was solved. You can see the results below.
If you do want to do what I did, you just need to find a copy of Helvetica from somewhere, install it, restart Firefox and the problem should be solved.
Another plausible solution would be for sites with such problems to substitute their fonts for those people do have on their machines. But we cannot require this from site designers. Another way would be to be able to find an addon or similar for Firefox that would allow for font substitution. If you know of such a solution, you are free to share it with us.
A bit of strangeness here is that, since Firefox did not find Helvetica on my machine, it should have used Arial. I cannot understand why it did not.
If you do install the Helvetica font and still get the problem, maybe it’s another font being used and that you don’t have.In this case: check the website source, find which element it is, search the stylesheet for that element, find which font it is and install the font. Restart Firefox, and the problem should be solved.
Hope my solution helps. That’s it! Kinda easy, wasn’t it?
Note: I uninstalled Helvetica after I tested the solution, for those of you who were interested!
3 Comments
Is Microsoft THAT afraid of Firefox?
18 June '09 by InF, under Fun, IT, Software.
EDIT: They changed it! Ahhh they finally found some reason! Note the different tone of language. Note the less number of points! Good good!
Hey readers, check out what I found in my feeds today! It’s a competition hosted by Microsoft! 10K prize money offered. The catch? You need to have Internet Explorer 8. The ad in itself is really funny, almost laughable. It seems Microsoft is really scared about losing market share to Firefox especially, and other browsers considering the tone of the ad. I’ve included a copy below, and for your viewing pleasure, here’s the original link.
A small comment: Since the page can only be opened in IE8 which got a lousy score in ACID3 test, it the page where the money is hidden must be so quirky that Firefox refuses to even find it! Also, note point #2! “Microsoft’s best ever browser” but not simply “best ever browser”. Does Microsoft itself know that its browser is not the best out there?
Enjoy your lulz, and comment! Seriously, I lol’d hard! Couldn’t resist blogging this as soon as I saw it! 
Click the image for the larger version
6 Comments
The Mauritian Blog Brethren - The Story Behind?
15 June '09 by Guru, under General, MBB.
Did I spell wrong or is it everything is wrong? For a very long period of time, the SysOp and maintainers of thembb has not been active. Of all the day, today I decided to looks for some inspiration from fellow bloggers to write an article and boom. What did I saw?
- thembb.com
- thembb.blogspot.com
This definitely make me hint at account takeover. Anyone else noticed this?
I tried a whois on the domain name and got the nameservers:
NS1.SEOBUMMER.COM
NS2.SEOBUMMER.COM
Must be a weak password or what?
The lesson, don’t use weak password and change your password frequently
16 Comments
Backup your hamachi profile
01 June '09 by Guru, under Software, Tips and Tricks.
Many times you need to format your PC and start anew. What about your so loved Hamachi configs and your so long “had”, ip address? Backing it up need only a minor copy-and-paste. (In a safe location).
The easy way
- Launch Hamachi
- Click on the “pulley” looking icon on the bottom left corner of Hamachi - “Configure Hamachi”
- From the pop-up menu choose “Preferences“
- On the left pane of the opened window entitled “Status and Configuration“, select “System“ (again presented with a pulley icon)
- Now, you would be presented with 3 buttons. Click on the one with caption, “Open Configuration folder”
- Hamachi configuration folder will be opened. Go up one level
- Finally you will see a folder named “Hamachi”.
- Copy it in a safe location and you would be safe.
The “not so lengthy” way
C:\Users\Guru\AppData\Roaming\
Replace “Guru” by your username, open location and finally copy and paste folder “Hamachi”
You can open the location by navigating one level at a time to the required directory or simply press Windows Button + R to open the “Run” dialog box, paste the location in the text box and hit Enter to go to the “Roaming” directory.
Easy?
