Flour Power

I bring disturbing news.

Pirate Bay, the website and BitTorrent tracker that has been gaining a lot of attention after the recent conviction of its owners for facilitating the sharing of copyrighted content, is being bought by Global Gaming Factory X for SEK 60.000.000 (about €5.5 million) and they intend to implement a new business model. In the words of the CEO, Hans Pandeya:

We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site.

This sounds like the Pirate Bay will go the same way as Napster, which is just dumb (has anyone heard of it again?). At first I thought this was some kind of hoax (a Swedish April Fools' or something), but an announcement in their blog clears it:

Yes, it's true.

News reached the press today in Sweden - The Pirate Bay might get aquired by Global Gaming Factory X AB.

A lot of people are worried. We're not and you shouldn't be either!

TPB is being sold for a great bit underneath it's value if the money would be the interesting part. It's not. The interesting thing is that the right people with the right attitude and possibilities keep running the site.
As all of you know, there's not been much news on the site for the past two-three years. It's the same site essentially. On the internets, stuff dies if it doesn't evolve. We don't want that to happen.

We've been working on this project for many years. It's time to invite more people into the project, in a way that is secure and safe for everybody. We need that, or the site will die. And letting TPB die is the last thing that is allowed to happen!

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That's the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And - you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That's awesome and will take the heat of us.

The old crew is still around in different ways. We will also not stop being active in the politics of the internets - quite the opposite. Now we're fueling up for going into the next gear. TPB will have economical muscles to let people evolve it. It will team up with great technicians to evolve the protocols. And we, the people interested in more than just technology, will have the time to focus on that. It's win-win-win.

The profits from the sale will go into a foundation that is going to help with projects about freedom of speech, freedom of information and the openess of the nets. I hope everybody will help out in that and realize that this is the best option for all. Don't worry - be happy!

And just as I was about to lose all my faith in the guys running it, I came upon this article on TorrentFreak (don't mind the headline, it's way too alarming) that unveils additional plans for TPB:

Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has informed TorrentFreak that the site will soon decentralize and stop running a BitTorrent tracker of its own. Instead they will encourage their users to use a yet to be launched third party tracker for their torrents.

To decentralize even further, the torrents that will be listed on the site wont be hosted on The Pirate Bay’s servers anymore. In the near future the site will use a new torrent hosting service that will store the torrents for them. This new hosting service will be open to other torrent sites as well and can be accessed through an API.

Decentralizing is good, right? And providing an API to access the files is also good. That means that BitTorrent users will be less reliant on the uptime of Pirate Bay’s servers alone and that the torrents will be more widespread.

I'm confused now... And I don't know how the decentralizing bit ties up with the plan to pay content providers and copyright owners.

We'll just have to wait and see what happens. In the meanwhile, I'll be watching Peter Sunde's Twitter (he's one of the founders) for updates.

@ the Fancy Dress night of the Galway Corinthians Tag Rugby Tournament (I plan to explain this later)

Can you spot me?

Well, I guess that's Hollywood's pretty-boy stereotype.

It's cover time again! This time I present you Scott D. Davis, with some great arrangements for piano of some well know rock songs. These 3 are my favourites, but check out his Youtube channel for some more:

Guns 'n' Roses' Sweet Child of Mine

Metallica's Nothing Else Matters

Evanescence's My Immortal

Enjoy!

This is a very stupid interesting move by Panasonic. The new firmware for some models of Panasonic digital cameras will prevent the use of third party batteries. Only the genuine Panasonic batteries will work. Here's the press release:

Panasonic Digital Still Cameras now include a technology that can identify a genuine Panasonic battery. For the protection of our customers Panasonic developed this technology after it was discovered that some aftermarket 3rd party batteries do not meet the rigid safety standards Panasonic uses.

Some of these aftermarket batteries are not equipped with internal protective devices to guard against overcharging, internal heating and short circuit. If these aftermarket battery packs were used, it could lead to an accident causing damage to your camera or personal injury.

Panasonic’s Digital Camera firmware has been updated on this website to detect these aftermarket 3rd party batteries so such serious safety issues can be avoided.

[ Warning ]
After this firmware update your Panasonic Digital Camera cannot be operated by 3rd party batteries (non genuine Panasonic batteries).

Let all the Panasonic camera owners start the uproar.

And here I was thinking of buying one of the Lumix TZ5... Seems like the search will have to start all over again...

It seems that the quest to get Windows Live Messenger to function properly at work has a new chapter. After fixing error 8100030F, his friend 80048820 showed up and got taken care of. But this is apparently a persistent foe, and yesterday decided to show his face again. Since the previous solution couldn’t be used again, I used the built-in troubleshoot option to try and figure out the problem:

So the problem is caused by some inability to connect because the program can’t use the required ports. Since I’m behind the company firewall, nothing could be done about that, so I had to do a few searches and a few minutes later, I did find a way to solve the problem. Open Internet Explorer, go to Tools –> Internet Options, choose the Connections tab, click the LAN settings button and tick the Automatically detect settings checkbox. That got it working again. Now let’s see for how long.

Ahh, how I love wacky products based around the second best thing Russia gave us – vodka. A few months ago, Bakon Vodka was revealed and now we are presented with “milky vodka” in a breast shaped bottle. Milky because it’s supposed to be some kind of Irish Cream, but the pun is too obvious to be missed. The design is by a Russian designer, Pavel Gubin:

Just what we needed, another reason to drink straight from the bottle…

(via The Inquisitr)

With everyone distributing free hugs around, this guy has a slightly different approach:

(Image courtesy of daily dose of imagery)

In the first episode of season 13 of the popular British motoring show BBC Topgear, the identity of The Stig is revealed. The Stig is a recurring character in the show, the expert race driver that never shows his face. Its identity has been thoroughly speculated upon, with several names popping up and people saying there is more that one Stig.

Here's the clip that shows The Stig removing his helmet and revealing that he is in fact Schumi:

Now why would they just reveal it like that and end the mistery around it? I'm guessing something else is going on and this is part of some marketing stunt. Let's wait and see.

Remember Empire magazine's Cryptic Canvas? The first time I tried it, I could only find 30 out of the 50 movies. But since I have a bit of a completion obsession, I had to go back and finish it. Here's the list of all the movies in the picture:

Brick
Iris
Snakes on a Plane
Moulin Rouge
Pulp Fiction
Children of Men
Trainspotting
Milk
Chocolat
The Thin Red Line
Walk the Line
An Interview With the Vampire
Attack of the Clones
Traffic
300
Enter the Dragon
The pianist
Swimming With Sharks
Ice Age
Crash
Signs
The Two Towers
The Last King of Scotland
The Fisher King
The English Patient
The Dark Knight
Iron man
Anchorman
Pi
The Matrix
Stardust
Saw
Happy Feet
Cloverfield
Bolt
Flags of our Fathers
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Zodiac
Liar Liar
Million Dollar Baby
Scream
Monsters inc
No Country for Old Men
The Green Mile
The Crow
Hook
Gladiator
Pirates of the Caribbean
Eagle Eye
Little Children