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Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Funky Cold Medina & Music Piracy

March 18th, 2009

Ola to you regular readers! All five of you, including my mom. Sheesh!

This is Tone Loc’s funny-ass hit from nineteen hundred and eighty nine. Please ignore the video.

For your listening pleasure, you may download the entire album here

or just the song here.

Which brings me to the state of content piracy on the internet. You used to have to be a bit of a nerd to know how to pirate music and movies in days past. Setting up a torrent client, finding torrent files, making sure your ports were open and mainting a decent share ratio was not for the faint of heart or feeble of mind. (Bonus geek cred for understanding the beauty and simplicity of how torrent sharing works.)

But all that has changed nowadays. All you need to do is be able to spell half decently & do a Google Search and sometimes not even that. The almighty Google suggests corrections. That and knowing how to open a .zip file opens up to you a cornucopia of copyright content, just begging for violation.

There are tons of music blogs on the web these days, most on Blogger (another Google property) that are dedicated to nothing but linking to entire albums of music, literally thousands of them, neatly zipped along with album covers, available for direct download, no shady file sharing or nasty P2P software needed, just a browser and a few mouse clicks. Here are two such sites I found this week.

http://3-2-0.blogspot.com/

&

http://thegodfathertrilogy.blogspot.com/

Google is the one, true overlord of the internet and has become as much of a verb as it is a noun. Absolutely no one has the cojonés or the money to take them to court and fight an extended legal battle. So the file sharing genie is now well and truly out of the bottle, once and for all. (If that is, there were any lingering doubts about the fact)

Copyright Associations can threaten indiviuals, sue PirateBay (and they are trying as I write this) and try to thumb the dikes, but it is all over. (I almost spelt dikes with a ‘y’ instead of an ‘i” before I realised what a grevious error that would be.)

So. The point I am trying to get at, in my usual belaboured and obtuse fashion is this:

Copyright, as we know it, is dead.

So. From now on whenever I post links to music, I will also try and post a direct download link to the song. For review purposes only, of course. If you like the music, you be sure to go out and buy the record now.

And delete that dirty, nasty MP3 file…

Peace & Love ;)

Music, Random, Tech , , , , ,

The Economy made me do it!

February 10th, 2009

 

HTSo, thanks to the drivel you read here, I got offered a sort of gig to write a few pieces for the Hindustan Times’ Mumbai Supplement called ‘HT Café’ and I took them up on the offer. The first piece came out today and I’d have linked to it but HT’s online version (or epaper) requires a (free) user account to view. I know most people can’t be bothered to go through the hassle of setting this up (I wouldn’t) so I’m posting the article right here, after the jump. To the powers at HT please get with the program and remove the login requirements for your epaper. Even The Times of India dropped their login for the epaper sometime last year. Imagine that!  Welcome to the year Two Thousand and Nine.

The piece I wrote was about Gmail Offline, a new Google labs feature available in your Gmail account. The article is refreshingly free of cuss words and snarky euphemisms (mostly) for those who’s fragile sensibilities are offended by such stuff. If HT’s readers like the piece (and more importantly, if HT ‘shows me the money!’ I’ll probably do this occasionally) Read on..

Read more…

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Google Crashes: Idiot At Keyboard.

February 5th, 2009

GoogleIf you have been reading the papers you may have read about the huge fuck up (there is no other way to put it) over at Google this week. A tiny error ended up flagging every site on the internet as malicious, including Google’s own sites.

You may have come across these warning flags, quite often if you search for warez or hacked software or serial numbers or porn. (I’m just sayin’) Google’s search result page will have a link with a warning saying “This site may harm your computer” more than once and it refuses to link you to the site directly. If you are sure you’re safe (on a Mac) or if you really want to see ‘Teh nekkid ladies’ you have to manually copy and paste the web address or URL into a fresh browser window and go there at your own risk.

Many people do this. I have done this very often too. You make a stupid mistake. Idiot at keyboard.

Read more…

Rants, Tech , , , , , , , , , , ,

Google Analytics LOL

January 30th, 2009

Google Analytics is a service from Google that gives you a lot of interesting stats for your website. One of the most interesting lists available is the search terms that people have input at Google.com that led them to your site. Here are some of the funnier ones for this site.

1. this is all gonna end in tears samreth

2. obama bush same clinton sheeple

3. barkha dutt bitch

4. dating love site lv

5. body searches

6. coz i’m cool

7. indian bitch

8. mighty mouse fucking piece of shit

9. obama is bs

10. satyam fucking company

11. happy singh.com

12. video footage of george w. bush waving to stevie wonder


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