Fudgiepoos

BitTorrent Site Admin Sent to Prison at Torrentfreak

> The 23 year old Grant Stanley has been sentenced to five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention, and a $3000 fine for the work he put in the private BitTorrent tracker Elitetorrents.

I wonder why most torrent sites move to other countries, with a bit more liberal view on these things. Elitetorrents did promote that they had StarWars on their frontpage, so I can see how the MPAA got a bit pissed off.

Wired News: Secrets of the Pirate Bay

> MALMO, Sweden — It’s Saturday night and I’m lounging on a living room sofa surrounded by lanky twenty-somethings in shorts and deep tans. Across from me, a wire emerges from a green Xbox — modified to stream movies from its hard drive — and snakes past two dusty turntables and into a video projector, which is displaying a menu of movies that would make Blockbuster jealous.

Nice writeup of The Pirate Bays history and motivation.

PRESS RELEASE: Pirate Party Launches World’s First Commercial Darknet | Piratpartiet

> Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

The Pirate Party has gotten quite a bit of media attention after the The Pirate Bay bust. I can’t wait to see how it turns out for them at the next swedish elections - they have a huge following and are inspiring people in other countries to do the same.

Washington sues movie download service for spyware - Network World
> The state of Washington has sued the owners of the Movieland.com, alleging that the company used spyware to strong-arm users into signing up for its paid movie download service.

> Consumers who dowloaded Movieland.com’s free three-day trial software would eventually be hit with frequent pop-up ads informing them that they were legally obliged to purchase the product, said Paula Selis, an assistant attorney general with the state. The tactics forced some consumers to give in and pay between $19.95 and $100 for the service, she said.

I’m quite happy that I run Linux and most spyware don’t offer a linux download link.

Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web Toolkit

> The recently released Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is a comprehensive set of APIs and tools that lets you create dynamic Web applications almost entirely in Javaââ��¢ code. Philip McCarthy returns to his popular Ajax for Java developers series to show you what GWT can do and help you decide whether it’s right for you.

Still can’t decide if GWT is for you? Read this article for a good overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the framework, and you might be in a better position to make up your mind. Personally, I find it’s a bit too much like developing GUI applications, and I don’t feel too comfortable with the vendor lock-in.

ABC News: Online Identity Theft Ring Out of the ‘Shadows’
> June 29, 2006 � The man who administered and co-founded what federal law enforcement officials described as one of the largest illegal online centers that trafficked in hundreds of thousands of stolen credit card numbers was sentenced Thursday to 32 months in prison.

The co-founder of shadowcrew (shad0w cr3w?) has been found guilty of trafficing more than 1.5 Million stolen credit/debit cards. And, yes, he did use phishing and spamming to get ahold of them.

As I get more and more spam, and Akismet is unable to catch it all, I’ve installed wp-hashcash which is a really good idea. I wish there was some similar functionality for phpBB, as my forum gets even more spam. And you don’t want to see my inbox, it’s horrible after a few years with email addresses listed on high traffic websites.

Scandinavia pressures Apple’s iTunes - Yahoo! News

> STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Denmark, Norway and Sweden plan to force Apple Computers Inc to break the exclusive link between its iPod music players and online iTunes store.

> The three Scandinavian countries have decided to take iTunes to their respective government mediators, or ombudsmen.

> At present, the only portable players able to play files downloaded form iTunes are Apple’s own iPods.

> “iTunes’ terms and conditions are illegal in all three countries,” Swedish Consumer Agency spokeswoman Marianne Aabyhammar told AFP Friday.

France tried doing the same thing and failed, so we’ll see how this pans out. Apple has quite a few lawyers, and I’m sure they’ve checked that what they’re doing in each country iTunes is available is legal.

The Local - Companies sue Sweden over Pirate Bay raid

> Ten companies which had their servers confiscated during the police’s raids against file-sharing site The Pirate Bay plan to demand compensation from the Swedish state.

> The companies say they will hand in demands for between 10,000 and 200,000 kronor each to the Chancellor of Justice in Stockholm on Wednesday, amounts that they say correspond to their losses following the raids.

Way to go. It’ll be very interesting to see how this all pans out. The Pirate Party in Sweden is gaining members and popularity, The Pirate Bay is still there, and Anti-Pirat Byraan shut down its website. Who’s going to win?

Google Browser Sync

> Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings � including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords � across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

More goodness from Google. They’ve been busy lately, but then, they’re always busy it seems. I frequently need something I’ve bookmarked at work when I’m at home, and vice-verca so consider it installed.