Smiley's Life

A funny video game analogy

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:11:16 +0200

…brought to you from the Steam Users’ Forums!

In a thread about Ubisoft’s new DRM requiring one to be online at all times to play, even if that game is single-player-only like Assassin’s Creed 2, one Steam user presented a funny (yet odd) analogy between the new “solution” and the above animation:

Ubisoft is the bus.
Paying customers are the car.
Pirates are the guy crossing the street.

Haha!

Originally posted by Malkhuth in this thread on the Steam Users’ Forums.

BioShock 2 is already cracked and available online.

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:48:47 +0200

Packing in a nicely-chilled cocktail of “only-disc-checking-and-street-date-verification” SecuROM and Games for Windows LIVE, BioShock 2 seemed like it would survive a bit without being cracked and pirated. Alas, thanks to 2K releasing it 5 days early (hereby defeating the point of their street date verification, that was implemented to make sure no one played ahead of release), hackers had a few days before the real, grand release to start cracking it. And after hearing about it and checking, I can safely say BioShock 2 has been fully cracked and can be easily found online in PC and XBOX 360 flavors.

I have several issues with Games For Windows LIVE, most importantly the fact its client won’t run on my computer: Because it is a Hebrew version of XP, which requires a patch to run the new version, and because Israel (where Hebrew is the main language) isn’t supported by LIVE, there is no patch for Hebrew versions and because of that, I cannot run the client and buy any DRM for GTA IV, for example. (This will be one of the few times I will pirate content, despite my moral disagreement with it. Hey, if I can’t pay them for it in any way despite wanting to, that’s the only choice I have left.) However, even though SecuROM has yet to cause any issues on my computer - *knocks on wood* - I still don’t like the fact it was included along with GFWL in both retail and digital versions, especially Steam’s. I think they made a mistake using these two in the first place.

Another reason why this type of DRM shouldn’t be used is that a lot of games not using it have easily sold a massive number of copies, and ended up becoming less pirated than protected products. For example, Mass Effect 2 has no DRM at all and yet it sold more than two million units in its first week of release. The only form of DRM I agree with is Steam’s, because it’s the most flexible form of DRM possible that benefits the publisher and customer equally and because it can be circumvented quite easily if the service is unavailable or unstable for some odd reason. (Obviously, I will not post details here. Or anywhere.)

2K Games, I suggest you to learn from this mistake. Using intrusive DRM is never a good thing. Let’s admit it, EA is the last publisher to stop using DRM, so if it decided to stop using SecuROM DRM in Steam versions, and perhaps stop using it altogether in retail versions (Mass Effect 2 is one hint), maybe it’s a sign for you to stop as well. And for crying out loud, don’t release a game without DRM and later bundle downloadable content for the game with DRM like you did with Borderlands. That’s just sneaky and even more unfair to the customer.

Bye bye 012 (Smile), hello 013 (NetVision)!

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:01:00 +0200

I’ve been using a troublesome ISP for over 6 years. Now, after so many technical issues, so much frustration and a couple months of some new issues, like failed connections and having certain ports blocked, I’ve finally moved to the best ISP (Internet Service Provider) around: 013 NetVision.

My parents are divorced (and it’s perfectly fine) and each use a different ISP: my mom uses 012 Smile and my dad uses 013 NetVision. Using both ISPs over the years made me see how one works very well while the other does not. For as far as I can remember, I’ve used NetVision without any issues at all and don’t recall making any calls to their technical support line. (There was one last week, but that turned out to be the server’s fault - it was busy - and my own, not opening certain ports after reconfiguring my router) However, I do recall making countless calls to 012 and Bezeq (my infrastructure company) to solve technical issues, only calling Bezeq because 012 simply didn’t fix it and I thought it may not be their issue. This made me realize we should switch, and after postponing it for so long - I realized this almost 2 years ago - I finally did it, after new problems popped up with 012. Many connections just failed or froze, mainly on Google. Yes, Google. It took me loads of stops and reloads to get just one search done, which defeated the purpose of Google: Speedy searches. After that, I finally snapped and switched.

Long story short, I’ve had various deals offered to me and ended up picking this one: a combined plan consisting of internet service at 10Mbit/s (1.25MB/s)and getting the infrastructure at the same speed through the same ISP, for just ₪150/month. (Though, my infrastructure provider would still be Bezeq. However, that’s just fine.) Seeing as the infrastructure alone was offered for ₪100/month through Bezeq, and the other deals cost about ₪65-75/month, I figured it was the best one.

And now, after finishing it up and configuring my network, I’ve finally left that bad, old ISP and my connection is already better. Raptr, which was for some reason blocked on 012, now works flawlessly and server connections no longer fail. So now, I’m happy. :-)

One of the best parts about being openly gay...

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:04:58 +0200

...is being able to say stuff like this:
Friend A: I've been working out so much. Check out my abs! *takes off shirt*
Friend B: Stop taking off your shirt! Nobody wants to see that!
Me: Speak for yourself!

I bought the best paperclips: emoticon paperclips! (black border...

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:15:00 +0200

I bought the best paperclips: emoticon paperclips! (black border added because cutting away some graphical junk ruined the borders. :-/)

An extreme case of legal software agreements gone nasty

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:57:56 +0200

An hour ago, in the supermarket, I saw a cereal box advertising this flying game inside. What caught my eye was small, bold text under the ad saying you need to agree to a legal release form and a End-User License Agreement to use the game. This seemed odd, and because the form was on the back, I started reading. Here’s a rough translation of what I found: (Text was in Hebrew. Bold parts were not originally emphasized.)

From the moment you insert the disc into your optical drive, you agree to waive your legal rights against the publisher, should it damage your optical drive. […] By using this computer program, you confirm you are aware any computer program may contain a computer virus (“infection”) or any form of malicious code. All possible actions were taken to make sure the disc will not have any defects or errors. However, you agree to waive your legal rights against the publisher should the disc contain any defects, errors or malicious code. […] The application may gather information about your computer and use of the software and send it to the company’s servers, should you contact technical support. You agree to have the application gather information about your use of it, your computer and its configuration.

It “may” damage your drive? It “may” contain malicious code? It “may” watch what you do and tell its creators? Awesome!

I’ve read about cases where a license agreement was tricky and had some bad parts, and we all know about SecuROM, a known “legal computer virus”. But this is just too much. You’re basically agreeing to not take any legal action against the developer/publisher or even complain if the game turns out to be a malicious spyware-like virus! Earlier cases and the legal release form above (Yes, the game also comes with an additional EULA you must agree to. Crazy!) emphasize the fact a user should NEVER install software without thoroughly reading the attached agreements.

Welcome to the 21st century’s revision of the “Buyer Beware” rule.

Steam's Early Holiday Sale

Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:52:32 +0200

See Steam’s Early Holiday Sale page, containing each day’s deals.

Steam, Valve’s great content delivery system for games, is having a five-day sale of games for the holidays. Every day 6-8 other games are discounted for 25%, 50%, or even 80%. I personally adore Steam (I’ll write my opinion blog post in the coming days) for its ease-of-use and great prices, since games are usually sold for 150% their U.S. cost here in Israel, and because Steam has great weekend and midweek deals. Today’s deals are Left 4 Dead for a mere $7.49 instead of $29.99, Resident Evil 5 for $24.99 instead of $49.99, SPORE for $19.99 instead of $39.99, Ghostbusters: The Videogame for only $9.99 instead of $19.99, Trine for just $9.99 instead of $19.99, Borderlands for $33.49 instead of $49.99, Order of War for just $9.99 instead of $39.99.

Of the above, I personally recommend Left 4 Dead (4.5 stars), Trine (4 stars) and SPORE (4 stars). I’ve played those three and can definitely say they’re great games: Get Left 4 Dead if you like action-packed shooters that unlike the other 80% don’t take place in a military environment. Get Trine if you like puzzle platforming games, and have a thing for retro sidescrollers. (It’s a beautiful ”3D sidescroller”.) Get SPORE if you like smart simulation games.

(This post has been redone from a link with a description, since my theme apparently does not support link descriptions. I’ll add it in myself later. >.>)

Hello again, World!

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:10:00 +0200

Well, I guess the move was successful! After sticking with WordPress for a while, I finally decided to move to Tumblr. Mostly because of its kick-ass design, though. :-D

But unlike when I moved to wordpress.com, this time I’m starting over. Meaning, except for a few recent posts none of my old, pre-teen posts will be available here. I’ll keep smileybarry.wordpress.com open for archiving purposes, showing my older posts, (or maybe just move them to a dedicated Tumblr blog instead?) but those posts won’t be here, on the new blog. I’ve matured a lot over the years, and if I had my old-old blog’s content (I accidentally deleted the wrong database back then and had no backup. AHH!) I could showcase my progress. This new blog will be a little less “lol” and a little more serious than my previous one, but it won’t be a Negative Nancy. Or a Serious Samuel. (Serious Sam series unrelated) :-P

But in conclusion, what I wanted to say from the start is: Hello again, World. :-)

Me VS Virus: Progress Report

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:15:00 +0200

I recently handed in my PC for a disc drive repair, and it ended up that one of their USB pen-drives, which was used on my computer, was infected with a autorun.inf virus. They also apparently disabled my antivirus’ behavioral scanner, which enabled the unknown virus to act. So far the only thing it has appeared to do is spread by making an autorun.inf file on every USB stick, and I’ve managed to track it down to a Services group in Windows. To investigate, I disabled all but the basic and antivirus services and am now scanning with various other ones (Mine, BitDefender Antivirus 2009, couldn’t find it even then.). I may even contact BitDefender support for help and attach the infecting file for them to investigate, but it seems I may need to format and reinstall. Fortunately, I only set it up 9 months ago and clearly know what I need to backup and what I can simply redownload.

My mom and I already decided we will buy our future computers from a known OEM like HP when the time comes again, because of the amount of times we’ve been burnt by their bad parts and lousy support. As of now, I’ve replaced my old PC’s motherboard about 3 to 4 times, changed the power supply twice, and on my new PC that is only 9 months old, I changed the power supply 4 times and replaced the disc drive once (now). And my mom’s new PC’s disc drive is defective and can’t read any discs’ last sectors.

Given the new development, once my mom comes home from Beijing (she’s on a trip to Beijing and Tibet) we’re going to send a letter to the CEO of Ivory Computers, only ship the parts we know are bad to Ivory requesting a replacement according to our warranty agreement and if necessary, take the computer to a different branch for repair, since my uncle uses Ivory PCs and has not come across an issue like ours.

I’m sick and tired of these troubles that I didn’t even have anything to do with. I just want to use a normal, working computer. If this continues I’m sure my mom will agree to buy new HP PCs already and reuse the graphics card if the troubles continue. Trust me, the gas used to drive there all the time may actually cost the same.

This is doing wonders to my ongoing depression.

Poem: Fake Crush

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:47:00 +0300

Sometimes when I’m bored, I come up with poems about many things just for fun. (Most are, obviously, about love.) After re-reading one I wrote last night, I decided to share it and some of my following ones on my blog every now and then. Here’s my first one, named “Fake Crush”:

Before you first came along,
I was heavily depressed.
But when I saw you,
With my heart you’ve messed.

You gave me strength to go on,
And show everyone the real me.
And I thought this may in the end,
Make you go out with me.

But as I walked towards the light,
It became clear.
You don’t really know me.
You’re not even here.

You’re on the other side,
Playing for the other team.
And everything I wanted,
Was nothing but a dream.

If you have anything to say about the poem - feel free to comment! :-)

Store your game progress in the cloud - for free

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:08:00 +0300

Valve introduced a sub-service of their content delivery system Steam last November called Steam Cloud, which is basically a system to store your saved games on Steam servers as well, so that you could pick up where you left off on any other PCs you might have, without needing to do anything. The service sounds well, but sadly, only supports a limited number of games, most of them from 2008 and later. Games like Half-Life 2 and Portal were excluded with a notice from Valve that they will be supported in the future. In addition, Steam Cloud only supports games purchased and/or activated through Steam. But with a little willpower and about 5 minutes, one could make his own Steam Cloud without repurchasing games or even paying a single dime. You don’t have to be a computer expert, too; you just need to have an advanced knowledge of computers and not have the irrational fear of black-background-white-text console windows many people have.

It is strongly advised to backup your saved games before playing with junctions, as they can cause you to lose some of them if you accidently do something you shouldn’t.

First of all, go to getdropbox.com and sign up for a free account. Dropbox is a service currently in ~~alpha~~ beta which can sync a single folder across all of your Windows PCs, Linux computers and Macs. You can sign up for a free account and get 2GB of online storage on getdropbox.com, which will come in handy for many things.
After you’ve signed up, install the desktop application on the website on the computers you’d like to sync. A new folder will appear in your My Documents folder called “My Dropbox”. That’s the folder which will now be synced in realtime with the other computers.
Once that’s done, download and extract Junction from Microsoft’s website. Junction is a utility for creating junctions on NTFS file system drives. A junction is a virtual “shortcut” mechanism for folders, which is mainly used for times when you want an application to save data at another place than its default one. (In the case you can’t change the location in the settings. Like having Firefox save your profile data in a more visible place.) It’s recommended to extract Junction to some easy-to-type folder on your hard drive. I extracted it to C:\Junction.
Now, think about where you’d like to have your saved games in your new Dropbox. I keep mine in a folder named “Steam game saves”. (NOTE: Don’t make a folder for each game in it! That will be done later.) Leave the window open when you’ve decided.
Track down where your games save your progress. For Steam-distributed games by Valve, it would probably reside in “C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\\\\SAVE”. For other Steam-distributed games, it will reside somewhere in “C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\”. When you find that directory, leave the window open.
Click your “Start” button and choose “Run…”. Type in cmd and press Return/Enter on your keyboard. In the new console window, type in the address to where you’ve extracted Junction and the executable in it. For example, it would be “C:\Junction\junction.exe” for me. (Don’t press Enter yet!)
After it, type in the location (or copy it from the open window showing the appropriate folder’s address bar) of where you’d like to keep the saved games (in Dropbox) in quotation marks, along with the game’s name (or any name you’d like) after it as if the folder existed. For example, for Portal it would be “..\My Dropbox\Steam game saves\Portal”, despite the fact the folder Portal does not exist. (It will be created by the app as a junction and not as a folder.) The example is shortened on purpose and you shouldn’t type in those first two dots, but the full path.
Finally, type in the location (or copy it from the open window showing the appropriate folder’s address bar) of where the games are actually saved in quotation marks. Again, for portal, it would be “..\steamapps\portal\portal\SAVE”. (Once more, the example is shortened on purpose and you shouldn’t type in those first two dots, but the full path.)
Now, you may hit Enter. If the window says the junction was created, it went successfully. If not, read the error and retry the operation.
On your other computers, do the exact same steps but make sure you reverse the junction — make the saved games folder in your games folders the junction and set the folder in your Dropbox as the target. In other words, type in the directories in reverse order: first where the games would actually be saved, and then where they are right now in your Dropbox.
From now on, when your games (on computers other than the first) try to load your progress on their original directory, they will actually access the folder on your Dropbox without knowing this. (This method theoretically (and practically. I didn’t have any problems with it so far and I’ve used it for over a month.) has no additional problems than the ones present before you made the Junction.) Test your games and see if they can load your saves. If they can, you did it! If you they can’t, check your steps and look inside the folders. If you’re using Windows Vista, a little arrow may appear on a junction’s icon to let you know it’s not a real folder.

NOTE: Don’t delete the junctions by hand later, simply run Junction again but this time only with the junction’s location (the link, not where the games actually are) and with “-d” (without quotation marks) preceding the path. If you delete it through Windows Explorer or through other apps, you may accidentally delete the real folder.

And there you have it: your own Steam Cloud remake. The best part about using Dropbox instead is that, unlike other syncing services, Dropbox only uploads and downloads the parts changed in a file, and not the whole file again, which makes syncing a lot faster in some cases.

Image credits:

Cloud by nicubunu, released to the public domain on Open Clip Art Library.
File:Steam logo.svg adapted from Steam’s logo, uploaded to Wikipedia by Skybon under a fair use license for non-free logos.

iPhone App Review: Byline (and giveaway!)

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:55:00 +0300

UPDATE @ 8PM Central Time (2AM GMT): …and that’s it! The giveaway’s closed. Apparently, only Lisa entered so she’s getting the free copy. Congrats, Lisa! :-)

UPDATE @ 6PM Central Time (12AM GMT): Bah, I forgot to close the giveaway. Well, you’ve got one last chance thanks to that. I’ll close the giveaway in TWO HOURS. That’s 8PM Central Time, 6PM Pacific Time or 2AM Greenwich Mean Time.

Today, I’m starting a new section of my blog where I review applications for Windows and iPhone OS. This odd combination of systems was chosen because I use an iPod touch and Windows PC. And to hit it off with a bang, I’m also having a little giveaway! Its details will be available after the review. (For the subscribers out there it will be placed after the link to the full article.)

Byline, developed and sold by Phantom Fish, is a Google Reader application for iPhone and iPod touch, mostly known for its key function: syncing articles for offline browsing.

Upon opening the app (or tapping the refresh button), the application starts syncing itself with your Google Reader stream. By default, the app caches all of your starred items, and up to 200 of your unread items. It also syncs the first linked page of every unread and starred item, (AKA the “real” article linked from its title in RSS readers) which is very helpful. However, the process takes too much time in my opinion, and as I don’t have a Wi-Fi connection very often or even for a long time, I disabled it. You can also have Byline save read items, so it would function similar to Google Reader when you select “all items” in reading mode instead of “x new items”. Caching also usually saves the images in the article, which helps with a lot of feeds. Especially the Sims 3 story blogs. With web page saving disabled, caching is pretty fast.

On the main screen (shown to the right) you can find out exactly how many new items are there in your stream, view your starred items, notes, and even read items by folder. However, if you keep your feeds unsorted like me, you won’t see them there. Sadly, Byline only shows folders and not lonesome feeds. Hopefully Phantom Fish will add that option in future versions.

In any screen (unread items, starred items, folders, etc.) you can sort items by feed or by date. I prefer sorting them by feeds so I could leave the good stuff for last. When looking through items, you can star and share them, with or without a note, in one single tap. Links inside the feed open in the application, and no matter the page size I have yet to run into a “out of memory” crash you could get with applications which embed Safari. (You can open the post in Safari, however, if you need to.) Sadly, posts showing videos from sources other than YouTube (like Failblog, which started using Viddler recently) appear video-less in both online and offline mode. The app feels smooth, fast and easy-to-use, with barely even one freeze ever since I started using it a little less than a month ago, and the interface looks pretty great as well, both giving the app a polished feel - performance-wiseand appearance-wise.

However, Byline’s key feature is offline browsing. After your items have been cached, Byline can show you them when you have no internet connection. (For iPhone users, when you’re on the subway or in Airplane Mode, or for us iPod touch users, most of the time.) Items load very quickly from the app’s cache, without a single issue. (Except for YouTube videos, but hey, did you expect the app to cache a 20MB+ video?) The feature is great for iPod touch users, as we don’t have a constant internet connection. It’s also great for iPhone users without an unlimited (or high-bandwidth) cellular internet package, as Byline has an option to cache only when connected to the web via Wi-Fi.

In conclusion, Byline is a great RSS client for iPhone, and possibly the best Google Reader client for iPhone, which doesn’t just import feeds like most other “Google Reader-compatible” clients. iPhone users will find it a great Google Reader client to replace Reader’s web interface thanks to its great performance, look and feel, while iPod touch users will love it for its offline browsing capabilities. As of such, I give Byline a 4 out of 5.

Byline requires an iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 2.2.1 or newer. The application is only available in the iTunes App Store, which can be found here.

And now, to the giveaway!

To hit it off, I’m giving away a free copy of Byline (which is currently priced at $4.99) at random to any person who comments on this post and follows the rules below:

You must be under 18, aged exactly 18 or over 18. :-P
You must have a U.S. iTunes Store account. The promotion code will not work in any other store. :-(
Your comment must be made between today, Thursday, July 30th 2009 and next Monday, August 3rd 2009. Sorry for the short period of time, but it’s only because of the following issue:
The code can only be used once and will expire either on that use or on August 7th, whichever comes first. (Sorry, but codes are valid only for one month, and I only got it around the middle of July.)
One comment per IP. If you post more than one comment from the same IP, your submission will still only count once.However, submitting more than 5 comments in a spammy manner may get you disqualified.
Should you win, you will be contacted by email. Make sure your email address is correct before submitting and make sure you are able to reply to the email message by next Tuesday, August 4th 2009. (To verify you have received the code.) Should you not respond, it will be randomly given to another commenter. Should you make a mistake, post another comment saying the address in that one is the correct address.
Needless to say you need a Google account to use the app. It can not function as a standalone RSS reader or connect to any other platforms.

Good luck! :-)

New bookmarklet: Inspect website with Mcafee Site Advisor

Tue, 12 May 2009 23:59:00 +0300

Earlier, I was browsing the web and I discovered this site called “Zaazu”. It was something like a new “Smiley Central”, a program you install to get free smileys for your emails, IMs, social networking sites, etc. I got suspicious. So I opened the Mcafee Site Advisor website since I don’t have the extension anymore (Last time I used it was with Firefox, when I had a little automatic checker), and typed in the address. I discovered it had the same good effects (well, except the “I-installed-a-toolbar-in-your-IE-and-changed-your-search-engine-and-home-page-lol” part) which basically were allowing easy insertion of smileys, as advertised. No hot keystroke action.

Then I realized something: why should I go through the big trouble of looking it up manually every time? Why not just have a little, easy-to-use button to do it?

So, I started coding a new bookmarklet. And in a minute or two, I had a working Javascript bookmarklet which got your current site’s top directory (E.g.: Using it on “http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en” would return “www.google.com”), connected it with the Site Advisor website URL (the previous example would become “http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/www.google.com”) and browsed to it, showing you Mcafee’s professional inspection detailing how safe that website and its downloads are. All in one simple click! :-D

To install it, go here and drag the link to your bookmarks bar or bookmarks menu. (Or button, if you’re using Firefox 3.)

Ivory should use the opposite of Apple's slogan: "It Just Doesn't Work."

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:05:00 +0300

About a month after I got my new PC I noticed something: the power supplier was acting odd. Sometimes, out-of-the-blue it would just restart (no Windows BSOD pun intended). About 2 months later (I couldn’t find the time earlier - go figure!) I went to my PC parts supplier and assembler and asked them to replace the power supplier. They did, but then it was another odd-acting one. This time? Whenever a component needed massive power (mainly the graphics card), it would just crash electrically and will not turn back on until I switched off the power supplier, took out the power cable, put it back in, switched it on again and pressed the power button. So I went over there again. On the spot, they replaced it with another weird one. That one would not supply enough power, so whenever I tried to play a game it would run amazingly slow. And they forgot to plug the DVD drive back in when switching the cables all over the place. So this time they sent a tech to me to make it up to me and he installed a new power supplier, this time a GOOD one, (Good as in not faulty, not as in the scale: “bad-ok-good-perfect”.) and connected the drive again. Then it was all good.

Until now.

So, guess what just happened? I’m betting you’re now thinking “Is the power supplier broken again?”. Well, no. But close enough: My DVD drive just broke. It still works electrically but will not read any CDs or DVDs. (Yes, it’s a hardware problem. I ran some tests.)

So now, I have to go all the way to their nearest store, wait in line, give them the PC and do it all over a few days later when it’s replaced. Why? Because they “have to check everything” before they replace something! Right, if you would’ve done that properly, I wouldn’t be here bitching.

If one more thing breaks, I will seriously consider suing them and getting a branded PC (E.g.: HP) or a Mac. Paying more for a computer is a lot better in the long run if I don’t have to take it in for repair every few months!

(P.S.: I had the same problems as with the power supplier but with the motherboard on my previous PC (at the start), which was also from them. It fried in 3 days, then was replaced but with one that wasn’t my previous model, then replaced with a good one that was the correct model.)

Pirate the crap out of those record companies

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:54:00 +0300

UPDATE: Google can also be used to search for torrents explicitly! Just type in anything and attach “filetype:torrent” to the end of it, and you’ll come across nothing but torrents for what you wanted. For example, searching “fallout 3” filetype:torrent will yield almost 800 torrent results for Fallout 3. Interesting, huh?

A while back, the Pirate Bay four (the guys hosting the website) were sued for assisting copyright infringement and copyright infringement itself and just recently, they were found guilty and sentenced to jail for one year. I’m pissed off about this, as their (the four’s) winning argument which didn’t work for some reason was right: the Pirate Bay is just like Google. It just provides links to what you want, like any other search engine. It doesn’t host the files, but just the directions - like a street expert knowing where all the drug sellers work. Want proof? Open Google, type in what you’re looking for (a song, movie, show, etc. - keep it commercial), attach the words “free download”, and hit Google Search. Voilà. You just did the same as looking up the same words on the Pirate Bay only without the “free download” appendix. Heck, even adding just “free” or “download” would work. (And honestly, using HTTP instead of torrents is sometimes a lot faster, so in this case Google may be more of a threat than the Pirate Bay. HAH.)

And so, I offer this week-long project. For every song (they were being sued by the record companies, so let’s only hit them) you’d like to download, illegally or legally, just go on Google and look it up like I said above. (song name + “free download”) (Don’t use The Pirate Bay if it comes up or iTunes or Amazon or whatever - keep it illegal.) Then, when you’re done, share the fact you just did the same as using The Pirate Bay by merely using Google along with what you were looking for and the URL. (“I just got Ciara’s Love, Sex, Magic illegally by just using a link given to me by Google, exactly like how The Pirate Bay works. http://someillegalwebsite.com”) Use Twitter, Digg, Reddit, Facebook, Plurk, Identi.ca, WordPress, whatever - just let the world know The Pirate Bay is as guilty as any search engine. It just gives you a link to what you want.

Of course we won’t cause the companies to lose a ton of money, but hey - at least we’ll voice our opinion to the public. And maybe we’ll eventually get to the whole ignorant world. Maybe.

Looking for something?

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0300

My Tumbler blog only contains a few old posts from my WordPress blog, out of wanting to “start fresh” and because, along the road, I discovered you either have to code something elaborate and complex to import select blog articles or do it manually.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, or if the post you’re trying to find was written before April ‘09, feel free to look around my old blog.