Entshaing Blog

File-sharing site The Pirate Bay went down today after its Internet service provider, Black Internet, cut its connection to avoid being fined by the Stockholm district court. A 500,000 Swedish kronor (US$70,000) fine would be the result if Black Internet did not comply with the decision in the district court. The Stockholm court’s decision goes back to May when a number of movie and record companies filed a motion with the court to fine the people behind the Pirate Bay operation, including Black Internet, as long as The Pirate Bay users can access copyright-protected material.

Black Internet isn’t the only operator that sells capacity to The Pirate Bay, but it’s by far the largest. There is some redundancy with capacity from other operators, but not enough for the site to be up and running. A Swedish court apparently decided it is illegal to be an ISP, said former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde via Twitter today.

This isn’t the first time copyright holders have been able to block The Pirate Bay by taking action against an ISP. The same tactic worked in Denmark, but failed in Italy. There is also a case pending in in Norway, which will go to court Oct. 17. Meanwhile, Global Gaming Factory X is planning to acquire The Pirate Bay. Its shareholders will decide at a meeting Thursday whether the deal should go through.

Source: Computer World

Sony Ericsson Thursday introduced two new environmentally friendly handset phones, the C901 GreenHeart and Naite, which Sony Ericsson said will be sold in smaller packaging, come with all-digital user manuals, use recycled materials and consume less energy overall with lower-power chargers.

According to Sony Ericsson, the C901 GreenHeart’s phone casing is made from at least 50 percent recycled plastics and its color comes from a water-based paint. A light sensor changes the brightness of the C901 GreenHeart’s display, Sony Ericsson said, to adjust to its surroundings and consume less energy. The C901 GreenHeart includes a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, Xenon flash and smile-shutter, and also has a 2.2-inch, 240 x 320 display, A2DP Bluetooth, a Memory Stick Micro M2 card slot and Google Maps installed.

Google has told publishers that it will start selling eBooks by the end of the year, according to newspaper reports. The search giant is preparing to take on the likes of Amazon by selling eBooks directly to consumers, the New York Times reports.

Google already allows people to search for and read extracts from books, via its controversial Book Search service. That same service also provides links to leading book stores such as Amazon and Waterstone’s, where people can buy print and electronic versions of the titles.

That sound you just heard? That’s the sound of a gazillion fanboys and girls screaming, cheering, or gasping in unison. Yes you read the title correctly. Hideo Kojima has announced at the E3 Microsoft keynote, that the Metal Gear Solid franchise is coming to the Xbox 360.

This isn’t just your standard run of the mill Metal Gear Solid franchise, it’s an all new title called Metal Gear Rising and it won’t star Solid Snake it will star the hero of MGS2: Sons of Liberty Raiden. This comes as a bit of a surprise, because over the last couple weeks Kojima had started a countdown teaser site showing nothing but a clock and thunder filled sky. After the initial countdown was over, another clock was revealed, this time showing the face of Big Boss. There was a ton of speculation as to what exactly could be coming down the pipeline from Kojima; and Famitsu jumped into the fray by announcing that it would be a new PS3 Metal Gear game.

Digital music supplier Napster said on Monday it is slashing its monthly subscription price to $5 and adding downloads of songs to its streaming service in a bid to expand its customer base and compete with Apple Inc’s iTunes. It is the latest attempt by Napster to take on iTunes, the dominant digital music leader, and its first major strategic move since being taken over by retailer Best Buy Co Inc last October. Los Angeles-based Napster said users can now get unlimited access to stream music from its library of 7 million songs and five free songs for download every month for a subscription fee of $5.

Previously, Napster had charged subscribers $12.99 for a streaming-only service. Napster will roll out an in-store marketing campaign across Best Buy’s 1,031 stores in the United States. “We’ve worked very closely with our label partners to come up with a re-engineered economic structure that is a win-win for everyone starting with consumers,” said Chris Gorog, Napster’s chief executive.

The story that refuses to die gets another chapter this week, as Hewlett-Packard is recalling 70,000 notebook batteries due to a potential fire hazard. Two batteries in the recall pool have already gone up in flames, so this isn’t a theoretical risk but one that should be taken seriously if you have an affected system. The packs were sold both bundled with new laptops and as aftermarket replacement batteries in a wide range of outlets, including HP’s online shopping sites and third-party retail outlets.

As well, the batteries included in the recall cover a wide range of notebooks under numerous HP brands, including HP Pavilion, HP Compaq, Compaq Presario, and the plain-old HP line.

The latest revision of the Asus Eee PC line, the 1008HA (also called the “Seashell”), is finally coming to the U.S., according to Asus.

The revised model, recently released in the U.K., looks to be a fairly major overhaul of the Eee PC, with a slimmer design and a weight less than 2.5 pounds. We got a sneak hands-on peek at the 1008HA earlier in May, and it’s definitely the best-looking Eee PC yet (see pics after the jump). We liked the tapered design, along with the thin 10-inch LED display, and slightly faster Intel Atom N280 (most Netbooks have the N270).

A report released Tuesday claims that 20 percent of PC software within the United States is pirated – and that that rate is still the lowest in the world. The sixth revision of a joint study between the Business Software Alliance and IDC found that that Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia, and Zimbabwe are the countries with the highest amounts of piracy, topping 90 percent.

Worldwide, the rate of software piracy rose from 38 percent to 41 percent, because of the increase of Internet users in high-piracy locations such as China and India, the report found. Software piracy within the U.S., meanwhile, has remained flat. Setting the effects of exchange rates aside, the report found that the estimated losses from software piracy grew by 5 percent to $50.2 billion. In 2005, however, The Economist published a critique of the BSA/IDC methodology, concluding that the study’s results were exaggerated. BSA and IDC representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Full article at ZitZot.com

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Improving performance is one of Microsoft’s design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.

We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user.

The largest difference was 4 points–102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Our other two test machines showed similarly minor performance improvements: A Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop improved by 1 point (from 138 on Vista to 139 on Windows 7), and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop improved by 2 points, from 97 on Vista to 99 on Windows 7.

The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program has reportedly been compromised, with those responsible deleting records and now wanting $10 million before the records are restored, Wikileaks.org discovered.

“I have your [expletive] In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions,” the hacker said in a ransom note.  “Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password.”

The Virginia Prescription Monitoring Program website is used to help pharmacists track prescription drug abuse, and has the records of 8 million state residents available through the network.  The network, along with other portals connected to the Virginia Department of Health Professions, is still unavailable at the moment.