According to Techdirt Piratebay was sold to a public Swedish company for about 8 Million US Dollars.
Huge news and good for the Piratebay folks.

Wonder what this means for the service and its uers though..

id Software, the legendary makers of Doom, Wolfestein 3D (Wolf 3D), Quake has been sold to Zenimax Media, owners of Bethesda Softworks, creators of games like Oblivion, Elder Scrolls IV.

id Software holds a special place in my heart for the countless hours of entertainment they gave me through Wolf, Doom and Quake. Wolf was the first FPS I ever player and absolutely loved it. I played it to death, in all modes, without and with cheat codes.

Then came Doom and Doom 2, absolute classics, amazing games. And then came the kings, Quake and Quake 3. Somehow I missed playing Quake II but the others more than filled up my time to allow me to miss it.

And of course, John Carmack was my childhood hero, always seeing his name whenever I started Doom up.
I’m glad that with this deal, id will live on and produce new games. Hopefully I will be able to make more time and play those new games as well

Bonus: A nice interview with John Carmack after the sale of id Software

• How To Communicate Securely in Repressive Environments « iRevolution
  (tags: security Privacy censorship technology internet howto tools reference activism surveillance)

I came across an interesting article which articulates much of my own thoughts on the entire Microsoft Internet Explorer antitrust saga. The article on a blog JCXP which I came across for the first time. The blog seems to be by MS fanboys supporters is calling for a boycott of Opera Soft, makers of the amazing Opera browser. The article, Opera Boycott: Clearing up a few things is actually a follow up article to the initial call for boycott.

I have some thoughts on the points presented in the second article but before that the disclaimer: I’m not a MS supporter or an Opera hater. In fact the two primary browsers on my laptop was Mozilla Firefox and Opera. I dislike IE (at least 6 and 7) primarily because of the headaches they have given me and the PITA they have been to the whole design and web-development industry. This article is not an evangelizing of IE or MS but broader thoughts on the anti trust calls when an organization starts to succeed and gains significant market share.

With that out of the way, I quote a part of the article:

"But it’s against antitrust laws!". Good to know. I’ll gladly admit I know very little about European antitrust laws (ie. barely anything). All I know, and this has been my stance since the very beginning, is that Microsoft has (or should have) every right to include their own Internet Explorer web browser as the only and default option in Windows. This applies to any and all companies on any matter, not just Microsoft. If Microsoft were to file an antitrust complaint agaisnt[sic] Apple for including Safari as the default browser in OS X, I would be just as peeved. Many have been saying that Microsoft has been taking advantage of its dominance of the market by bundling IE with Windows and that they are forcing it on customers. I do not see how that is true in any way. Nothing has changed in the last 15 years. Internet Explorer has been an integral and key feature of Windows ever since Windows 95, before Microsoft "dominated" the market. It’s not like Microsoft only recently started bundling IE with Windows, it has been there all along.

This is a view point I agree with whole heartedly. Why should an organization which has succeeded so wholly and entirely on their own suddenly be branded as cheaters? If this is the case, than is it not applicable for _all_ utilities being bundled with an OS, any OS (calculator, graphics program, image viewer etc). Isn’t Apple being anti-competitive by bundling Safari (and only Safari) with OSX? Or consider this – If Intel manufactured CPU cooling fans and they were bundled with the CPU, would they be behaving anti-competitively? Even though there are a zillion other brands and types of CPU cooling fans available for the buyer to choose

Let’s take another example: IPods are the most popular portable media players. They work primarily with ITunes which is what is bundled with those devices. Additionally, installing iTunes also forces a user to install QuickTime (a very bad media player and bloat ware IMO). Is that not forcing the consumer out of a choice?

Yes, there is Winamp, GTKPod and hundreds of other apps which can be used to manage the iPod and view the media files. But they are NOT bundled with the iPod. Why should they? Apple should and is free to bundle what they want with THEIR product. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. And if you still buy it, don’t install it (ITunes that is. QuickTime unfortunately is SHOVED down everyone’s throats by ITunes. Ugh)In the same vein, there are lots of other browsers available on the Internet, most of them definitely better than IE. But that does not mean that MS should start bundling everyone of those with it’s OS. You don’t like the components, then either don’t buy Windows (there is always Linux) or don’t use the browser.

I am not saying that MS is all holy. If they use their influence to force computer makers to install their software or to pressurizing them against installing competitors software then they should be taken to task. That would be an abuse of monopoly, NOT including their own software in their own product.

Coming a bit late but I wanted to jot down my thoughts on Opera Unite. My first thought, it is an awesome concept with the potential to change the way the Internet is used and also a huge boon for the us users, but in a different manner than envisaged by the Unite team. But I also feel it is a bit lacking as I will explain below.

As everyone knows, the current trend is in the world moving towards more larger social networks with growing interaction with new people, exposing more and more of their data for the whole world to consume. It is fundamentally a great thing because we move more and more towards the "global village, small world" concept. But it is also a fact of life that social networks are increasingly targeted by unsavory characters who look to gather data for malicious purposes (identity theft, spreading malware, pedophilia etc) or for collecting irrelevant data about prospective relationships (potential employers, spouses – especially in arranged marriages in India and neighbors).

With the increasing consumer awareness and legal requirements in some countries, these social networks have started to provide increasing privacy controls to ensure that your private data remains just that, private. But that is still an add-on. And most importantly, the social network has your data with whatever they feel like doing and keeping it for however long they want to.

This is were I think Opera Unite is a huge game changer. Imagine creating your own private social network, under your complete control. Only those you wish will have access to your data and only to the limits that you specify? Sounds good? It sure does to me.

So what is Opera Unite? It is essentially a web server implemented within the browser which allows other users to access any web-services that the web-server owner wishes to provide. Users find your system via a proxy (at operaunite.com). So a user visits an operaunite.com link (for example, mine is ajaxed.operaunite.com, not functional currently) and she or he is redirected to the web server which is running on my system inside Opera and access any service which I have enabled and allowed them access to.

And as a first cut, Opera Unite has decent privacy controls which allow the only specific or users with the right authorization to access those services via passwords embedded in the service URLs. Unite also comes with a few default services like photo sharing,  chat, file sharing etc.

So what’s my issue with Unite? The proxy I mentioned above. For two reason:

1. It is a  single point of failure
2. It is not truly anonymous/private (in terms of a F2F, Darknet or even a similar concept which is still being researched)

How can this be achieved? One idea is to use a DHT. The clients can locate other servers on their own without the need of a proxy. I don’t know how feasible it is but someone cleverer than me can probably give more insight into it.

Alternatively, the proxy running on operaunite.com can be an optional download available for users to run as a part of a bigger network of proxies (something like say Tor) to allow similar levels of anonymity. But I cannot say how amenable Opera would be to this.

In any case, I think Opera Unite is a great application and a very good step forward for new forms of communication and data sharing on the Internet.

Update: As mentioned by commentator Marky and this Reddit thread Opera already has the means to do what I proposed above. So this is even better than I figured Yay to Opera

Read a trippy short story recently – Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store. It is a short science fiction-fantasy about, hmm, Books

The story is written in a nice easy style at a good pace. It features takes on the recession, layoffs, google and other topics with a hint of geek romance thrown in..

The story is pretty nice story but I disliked the evangelizing of Google. Except for the part extolling Google, the story was good and different.

Oh yes it does.. It was just sometime ago that I was going through the whole application process. And now it seems to be that time again.

Work had been hectic the past few weeks. Completed a major task at work so things are better now and seem to be slowing down now.

Got a new MP3 player, a SanDisk Sansa Fuze. It’s flash based and really cool. My colleague thinks it is very cute (yes she is a girl )

I’ll soon be joining a short course called Social Entrepreneurship Outreach Program (SEOP) by a group known as Center for Social Initiatives and Management (CSIM).

Oh and I’ve been reading quite a few books as usual. Quick list of books I’ve read recently:

• Making Money – Terry Pratchett
• Thief of Time – Terry Pratchett
• Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
• Smoke and Mirrors – Neil Gaiman
• Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – Niel Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
• Watchmen – Alan Moore
• The Discworld Graphic Novels: The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic – Terry Pratchett
• Johnny and the Bomb – Terry Pratchett
• The Color of Magic
• Monstrous Regiment – Terry Pratchett
• The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons

Oh and I think there were a few more but I don’t remember. I’m sure you can imagine why
These are in the past 4-5 months (except the Watchmen Graphic novel)
More later.. Hopefully..

Moved my domain from Dreamhost to Hawkhost. Will be some downtime while the DNS propagation goes through.

Dreamhost had been giving me problems with email, most commonly with Webmail. Also the site faced a fair amount of downtime. Hence the switch. Let’s see how’s Hawkhost

The new season of the fastest sport in the world starts today in Australia. The usual teams are there but the surprise package is a new team, Brawn GP which replaced Honda from last year.

A lot of rules have changed, some for the better (Slicks, improved aerodynamics) and others for the worse (fugly rear wing, higher nose cone etc). That said, as the first race just starting, it looks to be a very promising season..

So I’ve been busy. Old news what!

Past few weeks have run away like seconds.

Two trips – Jaipur for a wedding and Pondicherry for a holiday. More trips likely this year with one definite. Want to try and go to Goa at least once this year. Could not go last year which sort of broke my promise to myself to go there at least once a year.

Work has been hectic and killing. But is sort of fun because I am in charge. BM coding has slowed down too slightly since folks at home so am always with them. This sucks because I have a lot of stuff I want to do but do not have the time to

No time for photography. Reading has slowed down too. Sleep seems to always hover around me but not for enough time.

Time seems to be flying away. Apparently relativity is hot around me but without the pretty girl.

Found this lovely video of a addictive song and an beautiful voice. Have listened to it at least 15-20 times in the past 2 days. I think it was a very good discovery. Nice songs on the singer’s (Emily Wells) myspace page too. I think I really like her voice and her unique style of singing. Will keep track of her.

(Direct link to the video if the above embed does not work correctly)

Birthday was celebrated in the trip to Jaipur. Turned out to be a fabulous day capped off by an awesome party; not due to my birthday but the bachelor’s party of the groom whose wedding I was attending there. His wife is lovely. They are staying with us for this month so yay..