Shennaniganz

Pirate Bay: End of the line?

2014-11-05T02:39:00.001-08:00

One of the most visited website in the internet, popular for facilitating peer-to-peer file sharing using magnet links and torrent. Pirate Bay had always been shrouded with copyright infringement controversies.

Founded in late 2003, it was actually first established by a Swedish anti-copyright organization called Piratbyran (Piracy Bureau). The website later run separately since October 2004 by dedicated individuals.

The Pirate Bay had a reputation of providing access to copyrighted material without the owners' consent. They have been involved in a number of lawsuits, both as plaintiff and as defendant.

On 31 May 2006, the website's servers were raided and taken away by the Swedish police in Stockholm. The websites went down for several days, but went back up and running as usual as the case pursuit by the authority went ongoing. It was on 17 April 2009 that the website's founders, admins, and supporter found guilty under the charge of 'assistance to copyright infringement'.

Who are the individuals behind The Pirate Bay? The defendants for the Pirate Bay case were, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neji, and Carl Lundstrom. All four of them were sentenced to one year in prison and payment of a fine for 30 million krona. They appealed the verdict and the case continues until 26 November 2010, where the Swedish appeal court upheld the verdict, decreasing the original prison terms but increasing the fine to 46 million krona.

Carl Lundstrom however was not one of the individuals that run the Pirate Bay website. However, in 2003 to 2005, it was his company Rix Telecom that provided services and equipment to the Pirate Bay torrent tracker website. He was charged for being 'accessory to breaching copyrighted law'. He appeal for the verdict when the court found him guilty, and had his sentence reduced to 4 month with increased fine to 32 million krona.

The Pirate Bay website then spiraled into cycles of online and offline status with its bandwidth provider receiving injunctions from the court and their URL being blocked by many ISP provider from other countries.

What about the other defendants? After the verdict by the court, all of the website's co-founders vanished and avoided capture. However, one by one they were apprehended with their sentence upheld. Gottfrid Svartholm was arrested by Cambodian police in the capital of Phnom Penh on 30 August 2012, Peter Sunde was arrested at a farm in Oxie, Malmo, on 31 May 2014.

And finally, early November on 2014, Fredrik Neij was arrested on the border between Laos and Thailand by the Thailand authorities. With Neij capture, all formers founder of the Pirate Bay have been apprehended, dealing a symbolic blow to the global online file sharing communities.

He was in custody in Bangkok immigration office pending deportation to Sweden.

Hendo Hoverboard

2014-10-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

From the KickStarter campaign, Hendo Hoverboard is designed by Greg and Jill Henderson. Claimed to be the world's first hoverboard, Hendo Hoverboard utilizes Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA) technology, similar to technology applied to maglev trains. For $10,000, this board can be yours.

How does the hoverboard works? It have four magnetic disc, or dubbed as the 'hover engines', mounted under the board. The board can levitate about an inch from the ground with the rider on top, but apparently this futuristic board is not without several drawbacks.

First of all, it does not levitate on just any surface. It requires a non-ferromagnetic conductor, such as copper or aluminium, smooth surface in order for it to levitate properly. Second, just like any other modern vehicle nowadays, this board also requires power source. And apparently the board uses LiPo batteries that could run about 10 minutes of hovering experience. Thirdly, it have a very loud screeching noise when in use.

But Hendo Hoverboard is not the only thing offered by the Henderson couple. One of their aims is also to promote the technology behind it, where they believe highly potential for future benefit if unlock. They also offered 'The Whitebox", a developer kit that contain basic hovering and propulsion system based on the technology they developing. It also include control for propulsion by you mobile device (iPhone/Android).

You can go their Kickstarterr campaign page to learn more about what they intended for the technology application. They also have set up their own webpage called HendoHover.

Oscar Pistorius - Athlete turned Criminal

2014-10-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

Just yesterday, on 21 October 2014, Oscar Pistorius received a prison sentence of maximum five years under the charge of culpable homicide. The case is from February 2013, where allegedly he shot and killed his own girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, a South African model, at his home in Pretoria, South Africa.

Oscar Pistorius, or known as the 'Blade Runner', because of his carbon-fiber running blades, is an athlete who won six Paralympic gold medals. These also made him known to be the fastest man running on no legs. He was also the first amputee runner to compete at Olympic Games, where he managed to appeal for qualification into Olympic 2012 in London. He have a long standing career as a sprint runner since Paralympic Games 2004 in Athens

His trial for the murder began on 3rd March 2014 in Pretoria. Although he acknowledged that he shot Reeva and causing her death, he insist that he mistook her to be a house intruder. The day that the incident took place, it was Valentine's Day. There was a possibility that her girlfriend wanted to give him a surprise for such occasion.

However, the case became a public outcry due to many factors such as the possession of firearm in the first place. Oscar also shot whom he though an intruder through his bathroom door, raising suspicion whether or not he deliberately unleashed the shots. Reeva Steenkamp was also shot several times with hollow point bullets.

Another factor was that some South Africans people raised the concern that Oscar might received leniency because he was rich and famous. Some of them even surprised that even though Oscar was acquitted with the murder, he was instead convicted with lesser crime of culpable homicide, or negligent homicide. The concern was that it would create a new precedent for future crime, where someone who shot a bullet through a closed door without knowing the person on the other side would not be accounted as murder.

Currently, Oscar Pistorius is serving his sentence in the Pretoria Central Prison.

Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

Actor Robin Williams passed away

2014-08-19T03:49:00.001-07:00

Last week, actor and comedian Robin Williams was found in his apartment, forever lost to us. Found in his home in Paradise Cay near Tiburon, California, he was allegedly committed suicide by hanging. Initially it was confirmed that the cause of death was due to asphyxia. He passed away at the age of 63 years old.

Robin McLaurin Williams, an actor and comedian. Commonly and famously known for his role as Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy. Though to his younger fans, he was also known to be the voice for the Genie character in the Aladdin animated movie from Disney. He was incredibly successful in his career in both stand-up comedy and feature film acting.

It was known that Robin William sometimes suffered from depression before this. He was also known to be struggling with addiction with drug and alcohol throughout his career. Though the mainstream media reported that Robin William was dealing with severe depression prior to his apparent suicide, amazingly he actually finished all 4 of his films that is supposed to be released posthumously around this year.

"Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb", "Meryy Friggin' Christmas", "Boulevard", and "Absolutely Anything" is Robin Williams final works, and possibly the final gift to all those that loved him.

Home-made Qassam Rocket

2014-08-01T12:07:00.002-07:00

Qassam rocket is a simple steel artillery rocket commonly known by its usage by the Hamas forces in the current Gaza conflict. This home-made rocket is developed and deployed by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of Hamas.

Simply made, easily deployed, the rocket however is notorious for its indiscriminate usage against populated areas. The rocket is not guided, and used en mass with the intention of inflicting as much damage as possible against the opponent.

Apparently, the rocket was designed after the Gaza people were barred from any means of defending themselves. Occupied, blockaded, and policed by the Israel armed forces for so many years, is what probably triggered the new arm race in the Gaza conflict.

Why Hamas attacked Israel?

2014-07-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

A lot of reasons actually. You know what people say, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. But is it fair to say that Hamas is a terrorist organization?

If you read the news today, mostly they will describe Hamas as a war mongering religious extremist that will stop at nothing short of the total destruction of Israel.

Sounds pretty scary, doesn't it? But do you know that Hamas actually have a pretty solid reason of attacking Israel, not matter how futile their attempt is.

1. Israel Occupation.

Screw self defense argument, State of Israel is actually built over the ash of the former Palestinian's land since 1964. Today, Palestine are only composed of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The rest was completely engulfed by the State of Israel, apparently through forced eviction and illegal settlement.

It have been decades of argument to whom the land truly belong, because Palestine is also known as land of Israel. It more like the chicken egg kind of thing. Though the truth it, both Israelis and Palestinians are actually Middle Easterner. So fighting who first comes where is like Chinese from Beijing arguing with another Chinese from Guangzhou. Which is ridiculous.

So that's why Hamas attack Israel with rockets. Because Israel attempt of pushing the Palestinian out, whom suppose to be their own fellow brethren, is seriously not cool at all.

2. Israel siege

Don't even try to deny this. Israel have been sieging the Palestinian states even since they declared their independence. The Israel might come up with something like 'allowing the Palestinian of self-governed state' and stuff like that, but did you know that Gaza Strip have been blockaded off air, land, and water, since 2007. Nothing goes in and nothing comes out.

Gaza Strip have over 1.7 million people inhabiting it, and its people are literally living in something similar to what we could call as 'world's largest open air prison'. If you wondering why didn't Hamas use the fund of making rockets for the betterment of their society, then the answer is that they have no choice.

Even UN has warned that Gaza will be inhospitable by 2020 if the Israel kept the blockade and siege. Gaza have no trade agreement and rely heavily on the humanitarian aid that comes from through Egypt and Jordan border, along with the Hamas own's secret tunnels.

3. Restricted Basic Necessity

Gaza also suffered from limited supply of water, electricity, and fuel. Israel's discriminatory division of water causes the Palestinians to get water for only 6-8 hours at a time every day. Not to mention during Israel 2009 assault, sewage treatment infrastructure in Gaza was severely damaged and with the blockade, resources needed for repairs are unavailable.

Lack of water treatment, and over-pumping and sewage contamination causes the ground water in Gaza to be a serious concern. About 90% of the water supply in Gaza is unfit for human consumption, and its Coastal Aquifer is severely damaged and will expire in 2016.

And that is for long term and people can easily missed that little tiny detail. What about fuel and electricity then? Fuel are severely limited by the Israel, and fuel are needed to operate the only power plant in Gaza. As currently, Gaza only have power running for 12 hours a day. Well, at least they got more than the North Korean, right? Not that they really needed 24 hours of electricity, who uses electricity all day long anyway? I don't know, a hospital maybe??

4.Travel Ban

This one co-relate with the Israel blockade and siege. But I separated the point here because it worth mentioning and should be explicitly expressed. The Palestinian people are literally confined into their 'self-governed' states. They can't go anyway, not into Israel, and obviously never between the West Bank and Gaza strip.

The people of Gaza can't even seek asylum in other countries due to this movement restrictions, and even students are prohibited from going abroad. In fact, several winners of U.S Fulbright Scholarships have been revoked in the past. So much of asking the Palestinians to better themselves.

5. Suppression of any growth

Seriously, when people question why the Palestinian are as backward as ever, you really need to go down there and see it for your self. Israel are known to destroy Palestinian lands whenever they got the chances. In fact, the Jewish settlement kept on increasing in size and shrinking Palestinian's land. Israel also systematically destroy agricultural land in the Gaza strip, and forbid Palestinian farmers from going the confiscated areas where they labeled as 'no go' land.

Farmers that attempted to enter this 'no go' land would usually suffer injuries and sometimes even death.

Its ok, maybe the Palestinian can go fishing instead and concentrate on fishery to boost their economic growth. But wait, to bad fishing is also restricted. They can't even bring in fishing rods into the Gaza. And Israel had barred the sea six nautical miles beyond Gaza's shore for the fishermen.

Seriously, what exactly can you do in Gaza?

This is only a small list of summary on what happened in Gaza.
I know that people would endlessly argue about self defend this, or they started this first and that, but the truth to the matter is that no people can live in this kind of situation without retaliating. No to mention, Israel have intention of fulfilling the Oslo Accords, that should also grant the Palestinian the right of return.

The Iron Dome

2014-07-25T03:32:00.001-07:00

Iron Dome is the Israelite new missile defense system. Designed to be mobile, all-weather, with the purpose of intercepting and destroying short-range rockets and artillery shells fired from the distances 4 kilometers to 70 kilometers.

Oh, they are still developing this defense system, even though they already deployed it in the rocket attacks from Hamas currently. The system is expected to have increased range of interception up to 250 kilometers with the possibility of intercepting rockets from 2 different directions simultaneously.

Ironically, even though Iron Dome is considered the most effective missile shield the world have ever seen, it actually comes with a hefty price tags. $50 million per battery with $20,000 per interception. Though some said with Tamir interceptor missile, the cost of interception will be as high as $60,000 per interception. And all that cost, against the Hamas $800 home-made Qassam rockets

MH17 victims body bagged into trash truck

2014-07-25T00:59:00.002-07:00

When everyone still holding hands and pray that the bodies of the victims would be handled with care, well, they are going to be disappointed. Apparently, some photos have been leaked and those photos, did not looked good.

There were many rumors circulating and mostly revolves around the tension between Ukrainians and the rebels (pro-Russia). Story has it straight from the grapevine, it that the rebels were looting from the MH17 crash sites.

There were cases where some of the victim's spouse realize that their beloved ones credit card charges still going on despite, you know, the card holder was already dead. While others claimed that the victims' mobile phone were answered by someone, giving off the impression that the mobile phones were being snatched from the victims' body.

The truth might not far from the rumors though. The plane crashes right in the middle of a conflict zone, and obviously you can't fund a rebellion with just sweat and piss. Somebody gotta pay the bills.

But then again, there is possibility that what seems to be a 'looting' activity, might just another identification job. Its common actually, when an incident like this happened, where the victims' are burned into unrecognizable charred bodies, the only hope of identifying the victims would be from their personal effects.

And speaking about the victims, they already started to transport the bodies about 3-4 days ago. After being left baking in the sun almost a week. Well, you can't blame them though, that place is a conflict zone. In a way, its a thankless job.

MH17 might be shot down by Ukrainian rebels

2014-07-24T06:26:00.002-07:00

Right now, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) in Britain had received the black boxes recovered from the crash site. Their experts will attempt to retrieve crucial data from them, even as we speak.

Hopefully they can find the explanation of what happened to the MH17 flight plane. Its not about pointing fingers, but to expose the truth and to seek disclosure.

This way, further fatal incidents can be avoided in the future. However, concern still as high as ever since the MH17 plane crash incident. Flight plane had been advised to avoid taking routes that might take them into the airspace of the Eastern Ukraine.

Story has it through the grapevine, that MH17 might have been shot down by the Ukrainian rebels (pro-Russia) that allegedly possessed air defense system that they might had gotten hand from their Russian allies. How did this story arises? Well, MH17 was not the only the plane crashed that day. 2 of the Ukrainian's jet fighter were also shot down at that time, and crashed just 35 km away from the MH17 crash site.

Well, one thing for sure is that the truth is out there.

MH17 Plane Crash

2014-07-24T05:35:00.001-07:00

Happened a week ago and it stirred quite a controversy. The plane crashed and killed all of the passengers and crews with no survivor at all. Contact was lost when the plane was in Ukraine airspace, and the crash site was found somewhere over the eastern Ukraine region, near Grabovo, some 100 km east of Donetsk, Ukraine.

Apparently, the plane was believed to be shot down instead of suffering a malfunction or freak accident.
Well, technically it still can be called an 'accident', considering that nobody wanted to admit who shot the plane down.

There are several argument of who downed the plane, due to the incident happened in a disputed area between Ukraine and Russia. There were 283 passengers with different nationality, and this had raised concerned over safety in traversing Ukraine-Russia border airspace.

Here is the timeline of what happened when the incident happened.

DNS Jumper

2011-06-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

Use this to avoid DNS blockade made by your ISP/telco. Works well with Ethernet connection modem. For HSPA modem user, you need to adjust your modem's DNS setting and change it into dynamic setting. Useful to use fast public DNS for faster surfing and downloading.

No need to install anything, just unzip the archive and run the program. This program supported many free DNS services, and you can even add some more you got your hand on some fast DNS yourselves. There is even a button for you to check which DNS is the fastest, called 'Fastest DNS'. This nice little button will ping all the DNS available and will list the DNS with its loading time.

There many other features, and it have a friendly GUI. So enjoy!

*Updated to v1.06

Download:

Tusfiles

Ziddu

FreeRapid

2011-06-02T10:52:00.000-07:00

Courtesy from the FreeRapid developer team. A Java downloader that supports a wide ranges of anything that can be possibly downloaded. Seriously, this software even support some of the video streaming websites. And for most file sharing websites, this software can help you from jumping through hoops just to get the download link.

Easy to use with friendly GUI and support many languages. The software plugins are also updated almost every week, so no worries about the ever changing file hosting websites.

Use this software for your easy download! Enjoy and..

"Stop being a clicking monkey!"

Download:

Tusfile

Ziddu

The Shennaniganz is Back

2010-11-13T05:22:00.000-08:00

Starting over.

That is best that I could come up with. I have left this blog for sometimes since the big underground websites crackdown that have been happening in the recent years.

But this time I decided to change the atmosphere. Instead of making underground resources for file sharing, I want to, well still share, but more on digital information contents. Meaning less download, and more reading.

I am a bit pissed off. Almost felt like we shared for nothing. People could just throw abusive words toward you simply because the download links doesn't work any more, or they couldn't wait for the latest movie to come out, or their internet line sucks ball and they wanted to drop the loads on ya.

Well, screw them.

Welcome to the Shennaniganz, and lets get crazy.