A River's water of thoughts

Oh my god.

This thing just keeps more and more soap worthy.

So first there is the sale happening at all. Then TPB says that the site will stay the same, but that it will decentralize its operations. Then I read on some news site that the company that bought it (which takes possession of the site in August) will take TPB legit. Yep, no more freebies from TPB. It's going to be the new sold out Napster...which will make it the new iTunes. And the guys are getting hounded on twitter by their loyal fans.

Now, now there is talk of the sale being linked to insider trading

The acquisition for $7.8m (SEK 60 million) came as a huge shock to most people familiar with The Pirate Bay, as GGF promised that when it takes over the site it will eliminate illicit file-sharing - the base upon which The Pirate Bay achieved its worldwide fame and enabled it to gather millions of loyal users.

Indeed, most indications point to GGF being only interested in three things - the Pirate Bay’s domain name, the users and the revenue they can generate from them.

However, according to a report, the news of the acquisition didn’t come as a shock to everyone. Indeed, accusations are being made that some individuals knew what was about to happen and took the opportunity to try and cash in.

The day the sale took place Peter Sunde discussed the future of TPB.

Currently the site is down after suffering a minor DDoS attack, and TPB’s TiAMO told TorrentFreak that the site’s load balancer had crashed .

Peter says running Pirate Bay has resulted in ‘bad pay’, i.e minus SEK 30 million in fines - incidentally an identical amount to the cash payment part of the deal with GGF.

In addition, BBC did this report on how the GGF (the gamer company that bought out TPB is changing policy to have the file sharers make money.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, GGF's Hans Pandeya said that the only way to beat illegal file-sharing was to make something more attractive.
"We are going to set up a system where the file-sharer actually makes money," he said.
According to Mr Pandeya, GGF's chief executive, the business model for The Pirate Bay would be that it continued to be a file-sharing site. The only difference - at least in terms of content - would be that the files would be hosted legally, rather than stolen from copyright holders.

Torrentfreaks' review of it is a bit more critical.
GFF told us that most of their recent comments to the press were nothing more than “corporate bla bla.”

So let’s take a look at some of the bla bla that surfaced in the past day, to see if it makes any sense at all. Here are some of the key proposals.

1. The new Pirate Bay will put a halt to illegal downloading.
2. The Pirate Bay will compensate rights holders who publish their content on the site
3. The Pirate Bay will pay users for sharing files.

This sounds very impressive but, to put it mildly, it raises a few concerns.

It’s basically the same as saying that iTunes would pay its users to share music. When GGF has to pay both file-sharers and content providers they will undoubtedly have to raise huge sums money from a third party. So what is going to bring in this cash?

Ads of course! GGF is predicting to sell ads like no other website in the world has ever done. They told BusinessWeek that they hope to make as much as $672 million a year from advertisements.</blockquote>

The thing is the sale isn't finalized yet. There is still four more weeks.
So is this another TPB stunt?

In other news the RIAA has launched their vile guns towards UseNet provider.

The Recording Industry Association of America on Wednesday said it has won a copyright-infringement suit against Usenet.com, a site that lets newsgroup users share documents, music, and other files.

The federal court ruling in the Southern District of New York was handed down Tuesday. The RIAA had sued Usenet.com, a longtime online newsgroup provider, in October 2007.

Usenet.com works differently than many file-sharing sites in that it stores content on servers and makes it available on-demand. Other sites use a peer-to-peer architecture in which content is downloaded from people's computers on a network.

Tags: internet + law, the pirate bay

I was reading up on wired (they have articles on Iran and other important things like TPB sell-off - I'm still in shock, I never used them but they were icons!) and I found this interesting article on the GeekDad blog, Great Geek Debates: Kirk vs Picard.

I grew up on TNG it was what introduced me to Star Trek. Picard and Sisko were the captains I knew and loved. So when I finally saw TOS I was, to say the least, disappointed. It was like watching MST200. I felt like I needed to be on acid to watch it. And those SKIRTS!

So my money's on Picard. But overall, I gotta go with Sisko.

Btw, I think you should read the article, at least the comments.
There are arguments between Picard being a coward because of his constant diplomatic approach and caring about people's feelings and killing the most people in his crew because of his involvement with the borg and later being turned into one and Kirk being a womanizing idiot who just jumps into battle all the time.

All of this started because a few weeks ago , , got an idea to start do a post on Top 10 ways to Provoke a Geek Argument, it spawned a sequel and now a series.

Is it alright to feel shameful that I only know about half of the stuff they arguing about because I don't know programing language of any sort, I wasn't real hip on sci-fi/fantasy books or games?

How is it then I can call myself a geek?

This is just another reason why I want to live in Sweden.

I wonder how they are on freedom of speech? Manga porn...stuff like that?

federal judge on Thursday overturned guilty verdicts against Lori Drew, issuing a directed acquittal on three misdemeanor charges.

Reason being because it would criminalize what would usually be a breach of contract in website TOS.

Wu also doubted that MySpace provided sufficient notice to members to hold them responsible. If a user didn’t read the terms of service, the judge asked prosecutor Krause, could they still be charged with violating them?

Krause struggled to respond to Wu’s questions, emphasizing that not every terms-of-service violation would be prosecuted as a crime. In Drew’s case, he said, there was sufficient evidence to suggest that she knew what she was doing was wrong.

But Wu disputed this, pointing out that the government’s star witness — Ashley Grills — had testified that she never read the terms of service before clicking on a button agreeing to them.

Wu and Krause circled around each other for several more minutes before Wu finally announced that he was granting the defense’s motion to acquit.

Penguin Parents Won’t Chip In to Help Handicapped Spouse

Why you can't keep your foot out of your mouth?

Using ingenious experiments to reveal the brain’s hidden machinations, Wegner and others have found that our brains expend steady, conscious effort to avoid talking about ex-girlfriends on first dates, sending putts off the green, or letting slip the real reason you were late for work.

But when our conscious minds are stressed and preoccupied — by, for example, a desire not to screw up — a subconscious process devoted to guarding against the mistake slips through. Unwanted thoughts pop into the forefront of your mind.

New Class of Black Holes Discovered.

DOJ formalizes probe of google books settlement

The New York Times and others are reporting that DoJ has written to the federal judge administering the settlement, which gives Google the right to digitize not only works in the public domain but protected works, for a fee, unless content owners opt out, and a huge cache of what are known as “orphan” works — books whose copyright status isn’t clear.

Green Lantern lands comic con premiere and facebook sweepstakes

To sweeten the pot, the comics powerhouses have launched a Facebook promotion to get Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman nuts on board with a time-honored hero just landing his first dedicated film. Interested parties can power up widgets on their Facebook pages, which need, like Green Lantern’s iconic ring, to be continuously recharged to satisfy eligibility for prizes like a Playstation 3, 40-inch 1080 LCD HDTV and a Blu-Ray version of the film. Of course, if they don’t feel like recharging their lanterns, they can also goof around with the widget’s peripheral content, which includes a personality quiz, Green Lantern IQ test, videos, news, and downloads.

Bulwer-Lytton Contest Salutes ‘09 Sci-Fi/Fantasy Writing Disasters

Every year since 1982, the English Department of San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a literary battle royal that challenges aspiring hacks to compose the opening sentence of the worst novels imaginable.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the contest’s namesake, was a noted author and politician who coined famous phrases such as “the great unwashed,” “pursuit of the almighty dollar” and “the pen is mightier than the sword.” But, he also opened his novel Paul Clifford with the infamous clunker, “It was a dark and stormy night.” So, the contest bears his name.