The Piracy War

Dave brought to my attention the other day that the TV-links site administrator has been arrested and servers seized and shut down. Although he hasn’t been formally charged, TV-links did not hold any content on their servers hence the name, he is basically in a lot of shit. I didn’t think too much of this until yesterday…

Will (hippie Will) has recently got me membership access to one of the best private torrent communities going around called Oink. It specialises in music and has one of the most awesome catalogues available. It has a very good selection of software and download speeds are always at least 100k/s. Yesterday this happened:

Oink Shut Down – Google News

A 2 year interpol operation that coordinated police in England and the Netherlands has led to arrests and servers being confiscated. Much to my disgust I have now lost an incredible resource that could have benefited us all nicely. It also got me to thinking about how real the threat of police action against the p2p community may get. Previously we would dismiss it as ‘no chance’, but the last week has led me to think that maybe we are about to see a change?

I do realise that these arrests are minimal compared to the whole p2p community, but if they look to cut it hard at the source, then being a site administrator for torrent communities could be a dangerous and possibly very lucrative profession.

Be keen to hear the thoughts of other torrent freaks out there…

Second Life

Just wondering if anyone has heard about this interent community called ‘Second Life’? As far as I can tell you create your character and live in this digital community on the net. Not like blogs where its just text, you actually see yourself walking around on screen like a video game. You nteract with other people to the point where you can purchase items and even build property. At present there are 1 million people ‘living’ in his thing.

My info may be wrong but apparently alot of real money (in USD) is transferred around the community through trade (I saw something to the tune of 400,000 a day). It may sound a bit silly but big business has got in on the act. Leo Burnett, a large global advertising network, is creating a creative hub inside second life for all there offices where they can access each others ideas. Plus a correspondent for Rueters in London is going to start running a news program within the community.

Is this a look at how the internet is evolving? How long before people start making their ’second life’ their real life?

Revolution? Or recession of humanity?

The Future of the internet

This is a very interesting look at what many believe will happen to the internet over the next 20 years.

There are some interesting predictions in it and some even sound like the relm of sci-fi…

It is a bit of read but the first 15 pages gives you a good idea.

2006survey.pdf

How To Rip a DVD

Amon was asking me how to rip DVD’s a couple of weeks ago, so why not share with the rest of you the link I gave him:

How to rip a DVD: A Tutorial by Elliott Back

I’ve been using this method for ripping DVD’s for a couple of months now with no hassles.

Watching stuff from the ‘net on your TV

Seeing as I’m one of the more technically-inclined folk (read: nerdier) folks around here, I thought I’d start my contributions with something a little bit geeky. I know most of us are fans of Lost, so much so that we all resorted to the wonders of BitTorrent to get our fix. However, watching it on the computer can be a pain in the ass – especially if you all have to crowd into someone’s room to watch it.

So, what options exist for watching our beloved .avi’s on the television in the lounge room?

There are a few, and a lot of them can be expensive, but luckily I’m also a bit tight with my cash as well as nerdy. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce on the most impressive open-source applications I’ve seen:

X-Box Media Centre

That’s X-Box as in the normal, now somewhat old-school, X-Box. Combine one of those, which you can easily pick up (with DVD remote) for under $200, with completely free software and a network cable and you can be watching all the episodes of Lost you want from your couch!

In days of old, to run software like XBMC (that’s a nerdy acronym, everything in IT has one) you had to install a modchip. Well, those days are long behind us – you can mod your X-Box without even opening it’s case! It’s not even hard to do – plug an X-Box controller to USB converter into your PC, copy a hacked save game over to the X-Box, then load that save game. It then gives you a menu where you can install any software you like. Seriously, this shit is fucking genius.

As a side bonus, you can also install play your (probably not) legally acquired backup X-Box games, emulators (Galaga, bitches!) and listen to music over the network.

I’m more than happy to point people in the right direction for more details. I’ve also got the game and cable you need to do the mod as well.

Well that’s it for now, I’m off to watch today’s episode of Prison Break.