Piratebay sold!

Image via WikipediaThe event which millions of users were hoping would be avoided, just happened yesterday. Pirate Bay, one of the leading file sharing sites is selling out to Global Gaming Factory X, a little known Swedish gaming company for $7.8 million.

The acquisition will be completed by August this year, and the change of ownership will take place after that. What is interesting is a statement by Hans Pandeya, CEO GGF saying that they "would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site". I am sure after reading this, most users wont be amused. and they arent, reactions to blog posts on the site havent been very kind. "Sellouts" is the reaction almost everyone is using. Most users believe that after the takeover, all copyrighted content would be removed from piratebay. As some users put it, more than 90% of piratebay content is copyrighted stuff, so getting copyright permissions would mean that most contents would be removed. And this has infuriated most.

One thing is for sure. After the takeover, the number of users using piratebay is going to plummet, judging by the reactions. Infact the request for deletion of piratebay accounts have been so many that the team has decided to create an account deletion application.

This might well be the end of the road for Piratebay and as users put it, its curtains down for one of the most revolutionary sites ever.

Full Press Release here: http://www.globalgamingfactory.com/

Manchester United's new kid on the block

Image via WikipediaLuis Antonio Valencia Mosquera

Heard that name before? This Ecuadorian footballer has signed up for Man United yesterday. He was previously playing for Wigan Athletic since 2006. Sounds promising really for Man Utd fans, but the point is, is he big enough to replace a huge star like Ronaldo, or is he going to be just one of those players who signs up for a season or two and bids goodbye. Will have to see how this one turns out.

Lets be optimistic here. Sir Alex has steered the team into so many wins and I'm sure he knows what he's doing. But one thing is for certain, this isnt going the first player to sign up for Man Utd this season. With a fresh £80m infusion, the club shouldnt be too worried about cash. Lets hope we see some good players in the team.

My browser dilemma

Image via WikipediaTo be frank, I never ever thought I would face such a situation. I am totally pissed off as I write this post.

All I was asking for was a plain and simple browser with decent speed and easy functionality. Is this asking for too much? Apparently, yes.

The problem with firefox is that...its just a browser, nothing else. I mean it just browses and does nothing more. The loading time of firefox isnt really impressive compared to its google counterpart and opera.

Next I checked out Flock, a firefox based browser but with a lot of tweaks. Now thats all cool, except for the fact that its still in beta and very much so. Loads of irritating problems and bugs. Also, because its not yet a stable version provides ample opportunies for hackers to take advantage of its instabilities.

Finally had no other option but to check out the crappy google chrome. I know it has privacy issues, but the fact that browsing speeds are mind blowing is what lured me. Even here I was thoroughly disappointed, the browser not just hangs, it screws up big time even while chatting on facebook!

As you can see, I am left with no other option but to return to firefox. Lets hope we see better browsers in the future, coz the present batch is pure and utter crap.

Flock, the "social browser"

Flock, a new Mozilla Firefox based browser has caught the attention of many coz of its innovative features, especially the ones for social networking sites.

I decided to give the Flock a try. Well, firefox was getting a bit boring. :P Anyway, so after googling "flock", I was directed to the official site which had the download link. The file size is around 12.6MB for the latest version, and have to say, compared to firefox, this was almost double the size of any standard browser. After downloading, the installation was a breeze. No stupid customization questions, simple express setup and youre done.

Next came the task of figuring out how the thing worked. First up, the interface looks damn cool! But to be frank, its not really simple. One needs time to get accustomed to it. If you're a newbie, chances are you wont really like this stuff much. Anyway, once you've got the "adaptation" thing sorted out, the next part is about signing in to various sites. Easy enough? Wrong! No matter how many times I signed in, the Flock would show that I wasnt actually signed in. This is really a pain in the arse!

Now the best part of flock is that you can acess all the social networking sites and various other sites, just by cling on the "people sidebar". And you're logged in to all those sites simultaneously, which is really really cool! The other awesome feature of flock is the fact that no matter what site you visit and even if you havent logged in to facebook, you will be able to see and edit your status as well as chat with your friends in the status bar of the browser itself! Also, the fact you can post on your blogs right from the browser itself is another innovative feature. Now if that isnt mind blowing, I dont know what is! :)

However I do miss some customisation options of firefox. Say for example, the fact that you could add a keyword to every bookmark of yours (unavailabe in flock) is something you wont find in many browsers.

To sum it all up, flock is a cool browser which introduces a completely new genre of "social browsing", something which I hope the rival companies like IE or Opera will pick up soon. But the program as of now is very much in beta and isnt really something which I would call "error free". However its a start and thats what's important.

R.I.P. MJ

Image by Getty Images via Daylife
June 26, 2009. The day the world lost a true genius, the poster boy of pop music in the 80s and one of the greatest entertainers the world has seen.

Many would argue that his life ended on a sad note, $500m into debt, involvement in some of the most publicised court cases ever and to some extent as someone who couldve managed his career far better than the way he did. But as for me, I would opt for a "selective memory wipe" (Time news report) and look back at all those wonderful moments, those stunning performances, those out of the would high pitched vocals and the revolutionary moonwalking and remember one of the most influential people of our time, Michael Joseph Jackson.

RIP MJ...

Facebook username

Image via CrunchBase

Everyone's excited about it. At last I noticed the notification on my facebook page informing me that I could now get a username.

Cool enough. I had a dilemma however. My twitter username was vacant_heart and not using the same on facebook would dilute the very essence of using a username.
But damn! I wanted to keep it real. After all, most real people on twitter use real usernames. Also, as someone most eloquently put it, you can change your real name via affidavit, but you cant change your facebook username! So, I kept it plain and simple "arnab_das", my real name. But again another problem crept up, I couldnt use an "_". Dont know why, but for some strange reason, facebook doesnt allow usernames to have an "_". Now an underscore is the very essence of a twitter username isnt it? Again, I had no option but to go for a silly looking "arnab.das".

Again, twitter doesnt allow "." in usernames! Now I was well and truly screwed!

What to do? Had no option but to go for "arnab_das". :(

Also, I did something interesting. I removed all traces of vacant heart from all my blogs and stuff. So from now on everywhere I post, I'll be using my real name. As they say, lets keep things real!

How lame are facebook quizzes?

I know many have pretty strong views about this, but since this is MY blog, you have no option but to read MY views about it. Now get yourself a seat.

To answer this question my friend let us delve in to the deep thought as to why facebook was created in the first place.

CRAP!

For whatever reasons facebook was created, as of now, its become a playing ground for some morons who think of themselves as the know-it-all so-called motivational gurus.

Why on Earth (why does earth have an "E" in caps? Am I gay or something? oh well let me try out a facebook quiz to check!) do we need some stupid quizzes (mostly created by ******* idiots) to tell us what we are, how we should be and if we're gay!

As far as quizzes go, I have seen some pretty lame ones like how fat are you or how lazy are you. Man, if I were lazy or something, I would know that myself! I dont need a bloody quiz to tell me how lazy or fat I am! And these quizzes actually tell you the percentage of your laziness (like one of them told me that I was like 93% lazy). Dude what does that even mean? Whats the difference between 70% lazy and 97% lazy? And who the hell gives a damn!

(oh btw, I just tried out that facebook quiz "how gay are you" and the answer is 11%)

And the worst of all quizzes? Well you really wanna know? Okay, the worst of facebook quizzes are the ones which tell you which movies describes your life. Believe me this one is the worst worst worst quiz you'll find on planet Earth (I'm really gay, aint I? "E" in caps again). And you dont wanna know what the result was in my case! No you dont...dont you dare bother me. STOP IT!!!

Okay..okay, it said the movie which best describes my life is...Jurassic Park!!!
I mean how lame is that? Do you get lamer than that? I mean in what aspect is my life like that movie? Am I those gay dinosaurs? (btw, some of those dinos were gay, oh not gay but hermaphrodites, now if you dont know what that means...you aren't straight!) Or am I the metrosexual Dr. Grant? Phew, I have spent sleepless days and sleepless nights (hang on, you dont sleep during daytime do you? who cares? I do) pondering what deep philosophical thought may have provoked this disastrous outcome of the silly facebook quiz...

Finally, I gave up! I found absolutely no answer to the fact as to why Jurassic Park was the movie which best described my life and why I was exactly 11% gay.

After intense research with some of the greatest thinkers in the world I came to the conclusion that the gay community doesnt like facebook quizzes. And that some of them are indeed...very inaccurate. What if I'm 12% gay and not 11%? What if someone gets to know that he's 90% gay (simply because he likes Coldplay; yeah according to some quizzes, liking Coldplay is a gay trait. I'm pretty sure Chris Martin wont be too happy to hear that) and does something foolish to himself or to others? What about if he has a family? What if he's weak hearted? Look its not wrong to be gay, but who gives anyone the right to tag someone as gay? What does a person gain by creating such quizzes which analyse others when they themselves are nothing but...whatever! This sense of judging others is really really irritating.

And the worst part? Well, the worst part is, these quizzes come up with these stupid notifications informing you that some or other friend of yours has "recommended" you a quiz, which he/she has taken (doesnt say that its a complete waste of your time).

Anyway, enough of beating around the bush. All I meant by all this is that facebook quizzes suck! And its really a shame that facebook is tolerating and encouraging these stupid applications. Well what can you do? Facebook is on a myspace takeover spree (at least in terms of number of users) and has no intention of doing anything that would dampen its curiosity factor. At the end of the day lets face it, facebook quizzes (no matter how lame they are) is a hot favourite thing across all ages of users, and yeah, no matter how lame this may sound its true: facebook quizzes gave me an opportunity to write something on my blog. :)

Ocean's Thirteen and the sleepless night

Okay I live with my parents. So as you can imagine that demands a lot of sacrifice. No porn, no late night movies, and no fooling around. I could of course stay in the hostel but that would mean leaving behind everything I treasure; my LCD, Tata Sky Plus, DVD player, my PC and of course my parents (yea they do count! :P). Anyway yesterday I guess I violated one of those cardinal rules of the house. I was watching Ocean's twelve till midnight and liked it better than its predecessor. I had the recorded version of Ocean's thirteen with me and really didnt want to wait for another opportunity where I could get the tv totally to myself.

So Ocean's thirteen followed and I became deeply engrossed all over again with Mr. Danny Ocean. I never kept a tab on the clock. Well never really felt the need to. When the likes of George Clooney, Al Pacino, Matt Damon are gracing your tv set, time is the last thing on your mind.

Hours passed and I started to feel sleepy, well lets admit Ocean's thirteen isnt really a movie you would want to ruin your sleep over. Just as I was about to switch off the tv, I heard mom crying out 'what the hell are you doing so late in the night'?

What followed is not beyond anyone's imagination. :)

Anyway, what an eventful end to a surprisingly boring day.

New to Twitter?

Image via CrunchBaseTwitter. A strange name which has taken the world by storm. Has it? Oh well, we'll see.

The thing is I had never even heard of twitter just till just a few months back. I still clearly remember that day. I was watching Larry King Live on CNN and Ashton Kutcher was on the show. Kutcher kept mentioning about this new social networking phenomenon called twitter.

I checked out the site that day itself. Signing up was suprisingly easy and to be frank the really user friendly interface got me hooked immediately. Now that I had signed up, my next task was getting to know how all of it worked.

So what I was supposed to do was answer a simple question 'what are you doing?' Cool enough? Absolutely! Next you follow others whose updates aka tweets you would like to receive. And if that person isnt a total moron or a celeb youre likely to get followed in return. So your follower count rises and so does your popularity. It is true that unless you have gathered a substantial number of followers you wont really get the essence of twitter. In other words, you will need time to get yourself accustomed to this new medium. But once you get used to it, it'll take over your life in every possible way.