Sooti's File Sharing And Technology News & Reviews

New Website out

2010-02-22T04:09:00.001+02:00

This blog will be back online now

USA Here I Come

2007-11-22T16:36:00.000+02:00

By Sooti

I will be posting all future posts for the next year about, from the US, since i will be living there for about a year, working and experiencing the "American dream" (and finally high speed internet) for my self, i will continue to update about Israeli P2P related issues, and will open a new blog updating my life's progress in the states, I will post here some new tutorials as well.

Israeli Copyright Law Updated After 96 Years

2007-11-22T16:28:00.000+02:00

By Sooti

After Being outdated in favor of file sharers, the Israeli copyright law has been updated after 96 years (last time was 1911 by the british mandate), the old copyright law prohibited duplication of physical media (tapes) and was not updated to the digital age, but now the Israeli government has updated the copyright law, but is this the beginning of law suites against file sharers in israel? probably not, hopefully the Israeli government and the music organization 'ALIS' will learn from the failed suit em all attitude the RIAA took against file sharing users, in my opinion another wave of law suits against websites will come, but i don't believe that 'ALIS' will suit file sharing users, but time will tell.

A.L.I.S Shutsdown Major Israeli P2P Sites

2007-10-08T10:44:00.000+02:00

By Sooti

Last month, The Israeli Copyright Organization, also known as 'A.L.I.S', got a court order to shut down servers hosting some of the major Israeli p2p file sharing websites including:

myakuza.net
xvoom.co.il
donkey.co.il

All hosting links to files hosted by users on the ed2k network, although it is a major blow to the Israeli p2p community, there are new 'Direct download' websites becoming very popular in the download community do to the high speed and simplicity of the sharing method. There are also to Israeli bittorrent private community's at the moment

Downrev.net
Esooti.com

So there are always alternatives.

Sootech Is Back!

2007-10-08T10:40:00.000+02:00

By Sooti

After a long period without any posts or updates, the 'sootech' blog is back! with more updates about p2p file sharing, israeli tech and p2p news, and general world technology news.

Israeli Music Fedration Agains DRM Removal

2007-01-01T17:12:00.000+02:00

By Sooti

The Israeli version of the RIAA has decided to go pro DRM, just like the RIAA did up until now (they are starting to distribute DRM free mp3s).
In the last few months a new Israeli copyright law has been cooking up, since the current one is considered outdated as it was set during the British occupation of Israel in 1911, and is not updated according to the government and the 'music federation' to the new generation of copyright uses as p2p. now the 'Music federation' wants to add a DRM law, that outlaws any removal of the DRM from CD's, mp3's etc. many Israeli's fear that this law may outlaw any downloads and start sewing users for downloading songs instead of buying first (most Israeli's would buy the albums if they weren't $20 a piece), many versions of the law have been revised, one of them was to include specifically p2p, Israeli internet users began a petition and the law was not offered, most Israeli's want a CD tax, that would compensate artist for not buying the cd, and people on cheaper prices on CD's, but it's hard to know if the goverment will go RIAA style on Israeli's or learn from their mistakes and try to find another solution to get money, that is appropriate for the 21st century.

Israeli Copyright Bill Open To Changes

2006-10-30T13:14:00.000+02:00

By SoOTi

Last week I reported that Left wing political party "meretz" dropped their anti-p2p copyright bill, now, in a brave move, Meretz leader 'Avshalom Yalin' has offered to open the bill to changes by citizens, who can send the local Israeli newspaper "Maariv" suggestions to change the copyright bill, according to Maariv, the interesting suggestions will be sent to Avshalom by email, and maybe inserted into the final draft of the bill, if proposed again. This is a brave move towards music fans who use p2p networks, it is an opportunity to avoid the stupid tactics of the American RIAA, who is on a suing campaign of it's consumers, and has gained nothing, but losing it's reputation.

Israeli Anti p2p bill falls

2006-10-19T15:23:00.000+02:00

By SoOTi

As reported a couple months back, left wing party 'meretz' proposed a new copyright bill, that states that any copyrighted work transmitted over the Internet will be considered a crime, and new limits will fall on the Israeli ISP's to prevent p2p traffic, at the moment Israeli copyright laws are outdated, and do not include virtual transmission of copyrighted material, which is a complicated issue, because it is not physical trading but virtual file trading, therefore it's not included in the Israeli copyright law yet, the record companies in the country have sued p2p websites posting e-donkey links to copyrighted material, but with limited success, as the amount if Israeli p2p sites doubled in the past two years since the law suites against the p2p operators.
After 'Meretz' proposed the bill, many p2p users protested against the ignorant law, signing more then 5,000 people on a petition against the anti-p2p law proposed, after getting this petition and a lot of criticism on the party, 'Meretz' had no choice but to drop the proposal if they want to get any votes next election (not likely), but it's just a matter of time before Israeli becomes the USA in it's law suites against music lovers, as Israeli is one of the highest p2p users in the world, especially in the emule network.

New Domain name: esooti.com!

2006-10-12T21:32:00.000+02:00

The new domain for this website is: http://www.esooti.com
hopefully i'll have more stuff there soon besides this blog...

GoogleTube? It May Turn Out a Nightmare

2006-10-12T21:25:00.000+02:00

Google's takeover of video-sharing website YouTube may look like a nifty business move. For the company's legal team, however, it may soon turn into a long and nasty nightmare.

Upgraded finally to 2.5MBPS/256KBPS connection

2006-09-26T12:54:00.000+03:00

By SoOTi

Boy, have i missed out on speed, until now i was on a 1.5/96 connection which was later upgraded to 1.5/150 for free by the Israeli ISP's, i then decided it was time to move an ISP, and upgrade to 2.5/256 connection (still low by international speeds), one thing good i can say about Israeli ISP's is that 90% of them if not more do NOT throttle BT, since it's not as big as emule here, if once i got 30kb/s on a torrent which was with say 50 seeds and 300 leechers on my old 1.5MB Isp 'netvision', i now get 100kb/s on average on ISP 'bezeq international', bezeq is the biggest ISP in the country, it also has the most bandwidth therefore allowing even heavy downloaders to enjoy good speed, and i got a sweet deal too :-)

Universal to end HD-DVD wav?

2006-09-21T08:01:00.000+03:00

Sony's hacking audio cd's still causing problems

2006-09-21T07:57:00.000+03:00

Israeli ADSL ISP's finaly raise upload speed

2006-09-21T07:47:00.000+03:00

By SoOTi

Since Monday morning, main ADSL Bezeq, which controls the infrastructure of the ADSL IPS's has decided to upgrade the speed, for free to a "great" 10% of the download speed, even though this comes as a blessing it still sucks compared to abroad, this means that most people with 1.5MB/96KB ADSL will have now 1.5MB/150KB which is still not great, but will still help, since the upgrade, i moved to ISP 'Bezeq' and have felt a great increase in speed on both my old ISP and new one with 'Bittorrent', i now get a steady rate of 100kb/s without a sweat and can still surf without heavy slowness.

iTunes goes down hill? no burning Bob Dylan songs?

2006-09-05T19:41:00.000+03:00

ALIS P2P Raid Round II

2006-09-01T14:57:00.000+03:00

By SoOTi

9 Months after the Israeli version of the RIAA, "ALIS", raided all the top Hebrew file sharing web sites, it's at it again, think of it as a gift for the Jewish holidays, and they are threatening to go in the way of the RIAA by suing their customers.
9 Months ago, the Israeli Federation for musicians and artists or ALIS in Hebrew, raided the leading edonkey file sharing website 'Lionetwork.net', and took them to court, claiming they had copyright material on the website, although in reality, there were only links to the edonkey network files, and won, forcing them to remove all links to copyrighted material and to pay a huge fee, same happend with another 3 or 4 other websites. now ALIS is threatening to not only sue the new p2p websites that have replaced the sued ones, but also to go after p2p users in the next step, it's a sad thing that ALIS doesn't learn from the notorious RIAA's mistakes, in general the Israeli copyright law is very outdated, and only refers to cassettes, allowing one copy for personal use (backup copy), but has no reference to virtual files, not to talk about links to files, and files that are not even located in the country... i would say that at least 80% of Internet users engage in some form of file sharing, most of them use emule, kazaa and some bittorrent (like me), If ALIS closes down websites dozens more will spring up like mushrooms after rain, if they sue users, only a few may appear in court, and this move will make the Israeli's even more mad, and stop them from buying albums at all.

Windows Vista is going to cost $450!

2006-08-30T17:08:00.000+03:00

The next generation DVD format war continues...

2006-08-30T17:05:00.000+03:00

Yet Another Attempt to Throttle Bittorrent

2006-08-30T17:04:00.000+03:00

Ironical, it's in Israeli company who created the device for the isp's

Another Israeli ISP Joins Bandwidth Limiting

2006-08-30T16:59:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

Customers using the Israeli ISP 'Internet Zahav', have reported getting emails notifying them, that they've passed the 10GB monthly limit, and that the company has the right to disconnect them if they do not lower they're monthly use, this is only a few months after another Israeli ISP, 'netvision', started calling it's customers to notify them that they've passed they're 5GB monthly limit(!), this is yet another stupid move by the Israeli ISP's, in addition to not upgrading they're Internet bandwidth speed (1.5MB download is the average in package in Israeli, and is about $12 a month), it also has began trying to stop users from downloading in the amount they do (file sharing is most of the traffic), i can only feel bad for the two Internet company's, that are about to loose hundreds of good paying customers who want to enjoy unlimited, an controled internet for they're hard earned cash, i believe many customers of 'netvision' and 'Internet zahav' will move to 'barak' or 'bezeq', i find the whole Internet business in Israel bizzar, for a country second in the Internet connections per citizens (south Korea is first place), it sure has terrible deals (highest package is 1.5MB/256Kbs, highest upload is 512kbs).

Don't Download This Song Says Weird Al

2006-08-23T15:05:00.000+03:00

The 'Meretz' anti p2p bill

2006-08-23T14:25:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

Israeli left wing liberal political party 'meretz', is trying to pass a new bill, that will prevent any person in the country with an Internet connection to download/upload any copyright material, but wait, we're not talking about the usual file sharing law, in this case, it's a law against any program meant to download/upload copyright material, but here's the problem, among other problems with the bill, it is very easy to circumvent the law by simply claiming the software is not "maid" for copyright file sharing, and by doing this, the law is useless, but what if we include all programs that allow us to share copyright files? will if that law would pass, it would make connection to msn messenger, icq and basically 99% of the Internet illegal.. such a stupid bill 'Meretz' is trying to pass, I find it ironic, that during elections, 'Meretz' promised to fight for more civil rights, and here they are trying to pass an anti file sharing law, that would do nothing but damage the artists, which as it is barely make money (unlike the USA, here the Israeli version of the RIAA, 'AKUM', takes a huge amount of the profits, that are low as it is).

Get ready for the 'Blaster' Windows Virus

2006-08-13T11:52:00.000+03:00

A US firm says a worm attack, possibly on the scale of MSBlaster and centering on a critical security flaw patched by Microsoft, this week, is imminent.

"It is a certainty that malware creators will be working over-time to make a worm out of this latest vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows Server Service. When that happens, it will definitely test the ability of organizations to effectively patch and protect systems," says nCircle's Minoo Hamilton.

"If effective propagation mechanisms are used, it could very well be on the scale of MSBlaster, and I would expect something any time - it could be coming in two weeks or it could be in two hours. This is as close to the worst-case scenario as we've seen in the last three years - a threat that is eminently wormable."

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday warned Windows users to apply the latest Microsoft fix after the company said a hattacker could use it to, “take complete control of an affected system" - making it possible to install malicious programs or to change or delete data.

“Due to the nature of this particular vulnerability in Windows, the worm is likely to be widespread, fast-moving and could cause significant network downtime.,” says Hamilton.

“Peak infection could happen within hours.”

Is Copying a Crime? Well...

2006-08-10T08:43:00.000+03:00

Europeans launch online 'talk back' war against Israel

2006-08-08T16:29:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

I don't usually get in to politics, but since this has to do with online news, I will bring it up, all over the net, under every post on the conflict between Israel and the terrorist group known as 'Hezbollah", i noticed hundreds of raged Europeans which frankly have no clue on what is really going on besides the propaganda lies fed by the BBC and CNN, which are trying desperately to make Israel come out as dirty as possible, just as a child who wants to see a fight go on, worms up people against a certain person, when that person might not be the one who started the fight..
I wonder how much people raised there voice against the massacre of Albanians in 1999, which occurred after NATO bombed Serbia, killing thousands! not dozens like in the Kana, Lebanon case, thousands, but it is most interesting that any other country who bombs on perrpis and kills in the name of "the war on terrorism" gets no opposes, and no 'talk backs' but only when Israel is involved, defending it's self against a group that seeks the total destruction of Israel, and the taking over of the Palestinian people, so that the Arabs will rule the entire middle east, no one says a thing to defend our right to live here, for 2000 years Jews were persecuted and murdered by the millions and when we come back to our home land, people attack us and judge us... we will not fall, we will survive, just as we did back in 1967 when we were attacked from all over and won a glories victory, are army will keep fighting, and no fake pictures by Reuters and falls reports by CNN and BBC will stop us, until the Hezbollah gives up, and stops attacking our cities and returns our soldiers.

The Fake Reuters photo

Google warns aout "unsafe" sites

2006-08-07T18:09:00.000+03:00

We are all "thiefs", according the MPAA

2006-08-06T23:25:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

I Stumbled on to something very interesting today while surfing on the MPAA's website

"Whether you download a movie from an unauthorized source or sell counterfeit DVDs on the street, you are a movie thief whose crimes carry serious legal consequences of which you should be aware. Federal and state laws and international treaties exist to stop people from stealing valuable copyrighted material. Pirates all over the world should know that law enforcement entities are committed to protecting copyrighted material because creative works such as motion pictures and television are as valuable as any other type of property.

The MPAA and its member companies have a multi-pronged approach to fighting piracy, which includes educating people about the consequences of piracy, taking action against Internet thieves, cooperating with law enforcement authorities around the world to root out pirate operations, and encouraging the development of new technologies that ensure movies can be made available legally over the Internet and other digital media. As an industry, we are working hard to protect our creative works."

Attacking their costumers like that is not a smart idea, i mean how in the world can you call a person who sells a lame quality DVD/CD of a movie (usually the person has connections to organized crime), and me and you, regular law abiding citizens? i think it's going low calling the people who pay for the good movies in the cinema and filtering others "thieves"...

New Warez 3.0 p2p APP

2006-08-06T01:44:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

So some of you may be familiar with the warez client and some might not, the warez client was a client based on the 'Ares' Network, it was a decent p2p program but now too good, especially because of the fact that it had lots of adware included, well it's back, and with a whole new network call 'ip2p', which is kind of like DHT on the 'Bittorrent' network, a bit of a mix between 'Bittorrent' speeds and all in one search engine between users, i took it to the test, and must say it's decent, sadly it's still in beta form, and lacks users (100,000 so far), but I'll give a detailed review next week, so stick around.

The End of LimeWire Near?

2006-08-06T01:24:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

Will the RIAA is on the loose again and trying to sue more of it's clients (and failing like always), and now it's turning one more to p2p software suing, this time, the famous Gnutella p2p file sharing app 'LimeWire', the RIAA it seams, is suing the company for copyright infringement, which is probably a pointless act, but with the RIAA, it's all about the $$$ (money), so if they when, we're talking about at least $115 million dollars... which basically covers all the RIAA claimed "loses", but have no worrier's guys, it won't end there for the ever greedy fantastic four.

Kazaa owner's DRM plan

2006-08-05T01:50:00.000+03:00

The entertainment cartels have been using the mainstream media to announce a so-called “victory” over Kazaa, the ill-famed p2p application which was one of the first (if not the first) systems to introduce spyware to the Net, and which was viewed by the p2p community and, until recently, by the cartels, as a pariah.

Developed by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, Kazaa was sold to Australia's Sharman Networks, which has been under attack in Australia by the Big Four Organized Music cartel for allegedly facilitating file sharing. The company is also being sued in the US by fellow p2p application company StreamCast Networks.

p2pnet was virtually alone in reporting the announcements of the “defeat” as, in fact, a major triumph for Sharman.

Leading the assault in Oz was Michael Speck, the ex-etective sergeant who used to run the Big Four's Australian MIPI (Music Industry Piracy Investigations ) which among other things, organized the operation to sue Sharman on behalf of Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan, Germany).

Sharman had, meanwhile, been doing its level best to ink a deal with various elements of the entertainment industry so it could promote its TrueNames DRM application, touted by Altnet, the Brilliant Digital Entertainment (BDE) company powerfully associated with Sharman.

BDE boss Kevin Bermeister was doing the melding, with entrepreneur Mark Dyne in the background.

Now in three interesting and related events:

1) Bermeister heralds his plan for world Consumer Control on a page hosted by no lesser body than Big Four 'trade' organization the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industries) ;

2) Speck joins Altnet, claiming “I'd be working away from my moral position if I didn't support a technology that I believe is a quantum leap forward ... against unauthorised infringing activity,” says ZDNet Australia; and,

3) With indecent haste after Sharman's 'defeat' by the cartels, BDE disinters a plan first mooted in 2003 under which Kazaa and Altnet jointly released a bundle of file-swapping software apps, complete with a new “high-security peer-to-peer network and a program that will pay users to be a part of it,” as CNET News wrote at the time.

“Bermeister was instrumental in creating the modern version of Kazaa, introducing Sharman Networks CEO Nicola Hemming to the original creators of Kazaa in the Netherlands,” it said. “Hemming's original plan for the file-swapping service was long intertwined with Bermeister's vision of using it to distribute authorized conent [sic], although Bermeister denies being one of Sharman's as-yet-undisclosed investors.

“The Altnet CEO has spent a year talking to executives at the large content companies and claims to have won some friendly ears among new media executives. However, concerns about litigation and Kazaa's ultimate legality blocked any deals.”

Not any more.

Altnet says its Global File Registry, “stands ready to provide online content management and protection for all responsible participants in the digital marketplace”.

And the company's newest employee, Michael Speck, states,”Global File Registry will improve online distribution channels for content owners, while empowering consumers by increasing the number of legitimate access points to the content they choose.”

Empowering consumers? Not while Sharman and the cartels are on the earth.

According to Altnet [read Sharman], Global File Registry is the cornerstone of its, “online content protection and digital crime prevention” strategy. “Developed by experts in online distribution, content protection and anti piracy activity, Global File Registry (GFR) is a giant leap forward for content owners and law enforcement agencies to control piracy and criminal activity on the Internet,”

Anti-piracy?

“GFR is a consolidator of infringing file intelligence, enabling co-operating participants to electronically defend the legal rights of copyright owners and law enforcement authorities without impacting the privacy of users,” says Altnet, going on, “GFR leverages the Altnet TrueNames patent portfolio by locating TrueNames (unique identifiers) in a centralized database so that known infringing files can be acted upon.”

TruenNames was once described by Freenet creator Ian Clarke as a lame duck.

GFR will work its magic by “protecting” users from “inadvertent or spontaneous criminal or civil digital infringements” by “preventing downloading of known illicit files”.

This is extremely interesting given that most of the approximately 19,000 men, women and children currently being victimized by the Big Four's RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) were Kazaa users. And many of them say they had no idea that, when they were using Kazaa, they were also enabling the “inadvertent or spontaneous criminal or civil digital infringements” because they hadn't closed off the Kazaa download directory.

And they hadn't done that, they say, because Sharman/Kazaa failed to provide clear information that this was essential to prevent inadvertent infringement. Nor did Sharman/Kazaa provide clear, easily understandable instructions on how to take the directory offline.

Be that as it may, even with the corporate entertainment cartels implicitly backing Sharman and Altnet's most recent lame duck, GFR, the chances of it and/or and Kazaa suddenly gaining credibility are zero.

And with Sharman and its friends now close to the cartels, which have been single-mindedly attacking their own customers, we haven't seen reports, anywhere, of what will happen to the huge amount of personal and other information Kazaa holds on its users and former users.

Meanwhile, Kazaa ceo Nikki Hemming is continuing with her lawsuit against p2pnet, a tiny, one-man site based on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Sharman, too, was suing p2pnet, but dropped out.

Hemming is alleging libel, specifying a p2pnet story which quotes an Associated Press report of court proceedings in which Hemming was questioned about the sale of her "multimillion dollar Sydney mansion." The p2pnet post also contained a reader's comment, and Hemming is demanding the identity of the poster.

However, p2pnet didn't, and doesn't have that information and, says p2pnet founder and editor Jon Newton, “Even if I had it, I wouldn't hand it over. Because although this seems to be a case where Sharman, with all its millions, is suing me, a web site operator whose barely able to support himself, p2pnet and his family on income the site derives from advertisements. But really, it's about freedom of speech in Canada.

“If Sharman wins, everyone with a blog, or who posts to a blog in this country, will be in serious danger because under Canadian libel law, in effect, defendants in defamation cases are presumed to be guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent.”

Newton is currently in Toronto for a Freedom of Online Speech round table to be held at the Centre for Social Innovation, 215 Spadina Avenue, Suite 120, between 3 and 5 pm tomorrow (August 5). It'll be followed by a fund-raising concert at the Rivoli on Queen Street, starting at 9:00 pm.

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
~Mahatma Ghandi

CinemaNow's DRM-to-DVD burning "irresponsibly defective"

2006-08-04T13:28:00.000+03:00

When the iTunes Music Store was launched, one of its biggest selling points was the ability to burn downloaded songs to a CD for use in any standard CD player. When the iTMS added TV shows and movies to its stable of media content, many hoped that DVD burning was only a click away. Sadly, however, this feature was not made available for people who had purchased videos from the iTMS.

The addition of DVD burning features to the CinemaNow movie download service, therefore, was hailed as somewhat of a breakthrough. While not all movies were available in "Burn to DVD" format, it at least seemed as if the movie download industry was stumbling roughly in the right direction. However, a new analysis of CinemaNow's Burn-to-DVD service shows it to be nearly useless for real-world use.

An anonymous engineer examined CinemaNow's Burn-to-DVD specification and was shocked to find that it deliberately introduced errors in the Digital Sum Value (DSV) checksum values. The errors are introduced by the CinemaNow software in order to create a DVD that is difficult to copy. Unfortunately, the "protection" errors fall near or beyond the tolerance of most standalone players' built-in error correction algorithms. Thus, a movie purchased from CinemaNow and burned to a DVD is likely to stutter or even fail to play on many standalone DVD players.

The engineer summed up his comments on the CinemaNow system with the following statement: "I'm against people being fleeced by this kind of crap. How can you sell someone content on media that is so heavily compromised, especially on a format that so heavily relies upon its error correction system to maintain playability? It's mind boggling!"

Mind boggling indeed. The CinemaNow Frequently Asked Questions page notes makes no mention of the fact that their burning system may cause problems with some players. Interestingly enough, the link on that page to the "Burn to DVD How it Works" page is broken—instead of displaying how the service works, it simply leads back to the main page of the site. As if that wasn't enough, the page goes on to explain to their customers that the CinemaNow service will only work with Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6, and Media Player 10, and that the downloaded movies will not play on an iPod or PSP.

With so many restrictions, incompatibilities, and bugs, why would anyone purchase a movie using this system? It's not like the movies are significantly cheaper in digital form than on DVD—prices range from ₪40 ($9) to ₪66.09 ($15). It seems as if the movie and television industries are not taking the digital download market seriously. The music industry, lead by the iTMS, is showing record growth in the digital download market. Given the slowdown in DVD sales and the rather lackluster launch of the new HD DVD and Blu-ray movie formats and players, perhaps the movie industry ought to reconsider their approach.

Blueray DVDHD Technolgy Cracked

2006-08-04T13:20:00.000+03:00

Hasn't been even officialy released and it was already cracked and ready to copy to XviD (or the next thing to come along ;-) )

The original encryption designed for DVD movies, called CSS, was so easy to break that the programming code required to do so could fit on a t-shirt. Once it became clear that arresting people for wearing t-shirts wasn't practical, the movie industry decided that the next generation of high-definition optical disc formats needed a much tougher encryption scheme, called AACS.

Still, any form of encryption is only as strong as its weakest link. This was made clear earlier this year when the Xbox 360's extremely strong encryption scheme was bypassed by a modification to the firmware in the DVD-ROM drive. Now, according to the German technology magazine c't, it seems as if the strong protection on both HD DVD and Blu-ray movies has been worked around by not attempting to crack it at all.

The solution was surprisingly low-tech: the user simply hit the PrintScreen key. The screen capture feature of the operating system allowed each frame to be digitally captured exactly as it was displayed on-screen. Since it would be impractical to sit around advancing movies frame by frame and hitting PrintScreen all day, a script was used to automate the process. Each frame resulted in a 2 MB image. The computers used were fast enough to capture 30 frames per second, enabling real-time capturing of the movies without dropped frames. For a 90-minute movie, this is 162,000 frames, or approximately 324 GB in total storage, so if you try this, make sure you have lots of free hard disk space! The sound tracks must be captured separately and then re-synched with the video, so this is by no means a trivial process.

The magazine said that it has verified the capability with Sony's first Blu-ray PC (the VGC-RC 204) as well as Toshiba's HD DVD-equipped notebook, the Qosmio G30. Both of these computers use a new HD version of the popular WinDVD playback software to display high-definition movies. The "security" issue has been confirmed by Toshiba, and the company plans to issue a software and graphics driver update that will presumably disable the PrintScreen functionality. According to Toshiba, this version of WinDVD does not violate the security stipulations in the AACS license agreement, therefore the software update should be optional for users. However, in theory new movies could switch license keys, requiring a software update to restore movie playback functionality.

Still, the old adage remains true: if a computer can display something, some sort of software can capture it. If it's not PrintScreen, it might very well be something else.

Israeli ISP Upload Sucks! Why??

2006-08-04T03:23:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

Although many years have passed since adsl was introduced, and Israel being one of the top Internet per person users, the Internet rate in the country just plain stinks, with a max of 5mbits (for an outrages price!) and a max upload of 1mbit (for about $60/m!), i ask why?! why can't the Israeli ISP's invest a bit of quality into the service and upgrade, most of the world has minimum 5mbits download that comes with 2.5mbits of upload, while most Israeli ISPs offer only 1.5mbits and a mislay 96kbs upload for a reasonable price, and ironically Israel is one of the top file sharers in the world... so where is the logic?

Kazaa Caves In To Movie And Music Industry

2006-08-04T03:22:00.000+03:00

It's finally happened. Anyone who used Kazaa during the early days may remember the client's lengthy EULA (End User Licensing Agreement), which contained verbiage regarding its eventual transition to a pay service. In fact, the reason why this FastTrack client had a 128 bitrate limit was to help promote the application as a potential authorized service rather than an absolute piracy tool.

However this bitrate limitation was to be short lived. Any hopes for meaningful negotiations with the entertainment industry faded as Sharman Networks became one of the many P2P firms facing litigation. In addition, its chief FastTrack rival at the time, Morpheus, contained no bitrate restriction. Realizing that freedom of bitrate equated to better quality music, Morpheus became the FastTrack client of choice.

Within a year, Kazaa no longer had the bitrate restriction that inhibited the sharing of higher quality music. Sharman Networks also consolidated its power over the FastTrack network after Morpheus was mysteriously booted from the network - the exact details of which remain unknown.

Kazaa was now the undisputed king of FastTrack and becoming the largest P2P networks in file-sharing history. With millions of individuals online, it was the de facto standard for obtaining information online. However this glory would be short lived, as Sharman Networks became an international target for the entertainment industry's global campaign to root out unauthorized commercial file-sharing development.

In both the United States and its home country of Australia, Sharman Networks has been fighting a two front battle to keep its service online. In the United States, its plight was hindered by the June 2005 Supreme Court ruling, which in a unanimous decision remanded the MGM vs. Grokster to the lower courts - and also ruled that such services could be sued for copyright infringement.

Shaman Networks faired somewhat better in Australia where it battled the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association.) Justice Murray Wilcox dismissed five of the seven lawsuit points against Kazaa in September of 2005. However, he did rule "...the respondents authorized users to infringe the applicants’ copyright in their sound recordings." Legal proceedings have since been caught up in appeal, contempt hearings and other lengthy procedure – perhaps in an effort to buy the P2P firm more time.

It appears that time is on the side of Sharman, as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the ARIA has announced a ₪440 ($100) million settlement - the most any P2P firm has ever paid. As comparison, BearShare and Grokster paid ₪130 ($30) million to settle, while iMesh got away with only ₪18 ($4) million.

“This is another important victory in this historic case,” said Dan Glickman, MPAA President and CEO. “Since the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision a little more than one year ago, we have seen a surge in new opportunities for consumers. Today’s settlement announcement represents yet another milestone in the progress the content and online communities have made in coming together to meet consumer demands while still respecting the rights of content creators.”

As part of the settlement and transition to a "legal" service, Sharman Networks must prohibit sharing of copyrighted material, install "robust" filtering technology, introduce a legitimate business model, and pay the substantial sum of ₪440 ($100) million.

Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) Director Mr. Stephen Peach said, “Kazaa’s operators have accepted responsibility for their illegal activities and have paid the price for the harm caused to artists and labels. This historic outcome justifies action taken by Australian and international record labels to fight internet music piracy. This very successful result sends a powerful message that copyright infringement will not be tolerated.”

There's little doubt the entertainment industry has reined in a P2P network that at one time was the largest file-sharing community with over 4.5 million users. Yet since that time, Kazaa and the FastTrack network has degraded. The lack of meaningful updates to the protocol and the application has allowed other more sophisticated technologies to surpass this network. FastTrack's population has been cut in half in reaction to the RIAA's lawsuit campaign and because of the application's inherent inadequacies. What's left is a shell of a P2P network, and a remaining population that will likely not react well to filtered content. While the entertainment industry champion's this ruling, at best this may be a Pyrrhic victory as the P2P world have long left Kazaa and FastTrack behind.

Another SoOTi Group Scene Movie Release

2006-08-04T03:18:00.001+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

Movie sharing group SoOTi Released the movie "The Naked Gun" to the p2p networks last week, in full 5.1 Channel surround and excellent picture quality, after noticing the lack of a good quality release, next up is the movie 'Forrest gump', says SoOTi Group leader.

SoOTi Underoath DVD Stats

Altnet's Anti-Piracy Tool

2006-08-04T03:18:00.000+03:00

It’s Altnet against the world. And they’re ready to tackle the ever growing proliferation and mainstream adoption of unlicensed file-sharing. How will Altnet succeed where the RIAA, MPAA, CRIA, the Congress of the United States, and Media Defender have failed? With their new effort; GlobalFileRegistry.com (GFR.)

Altnet as many will remember is the “stealth” P2P network that piggybacks FastTrack. Accessible via Kazaa, the network is designed to promote authorized content, which is typically visible as the first queried results. Altnet may also be remembered as the claimed inventor of “hash link” technology (also known as the “True Names” patent.) This technology is used in various forms by virtually all modern P2P networks. It utilizes the unique finger print of a file to accurately identify a legitimate file from a bogus one.

Whether or not Altnet is the actual creator of this technology, their claim takes on new significance with the release of GFR. Back in 2003, Altnet’s CEO Kevin Bermeister hinted that legal action may be taken against developers that utilize similar technology.

"Altnet is very focused on the infringement of the TrueNames patent and we believe that many of today's active peer-to-peer applications may be in direct violation," Altnet CEO Kevin Bermeister said in a statement.

Although no litigation ever came to fruition, Kevin’s concern now has perspective as GFR uses Altnet’s hash technology to fight online piracy. It should be noted that Michael Speck, former head of Australia’s Music Industry Piracy Investigations, was appointed to manage Altnet’s enforcement programs. Mr. Speck gained international attention as one of the main impetuses against Sharman Networks, Brilliant Digital and Altnet.

GFR is a centralized index of hash links that content owners can populate. It can be used by a wide range of individuals (such as law enforcement and search engine administrators); however its primary target audience is content owners and P2P developers. When a content owner, say Sony-BMG, finds their latest musical act prereleased or otherwise distributed on a P2P network, an authorized agent can index the file(s) on GFR. However simply logging into GFR and indexing the unauthorized work is not enough.

The P2P client must also communicate with GFR to recognize the filtering technology. For example, the indexed file is a useless gesture if the P2P client doesn’t implement GFR’s proprietary “P2P connector.” This second half of the technology communicates with the GFR server, and filters unauthorized content. According to the GFR website, this client side portion of the technology can be implemented in a wide range of clients, such as eMule, BitTorrent (mainline) and Limewire.

In a nutshell, GFR is a client and server side technology. Unauthorized content is indexed via “hash link” technology, which then communicates this information to the client. The weak link in this idea is that both sides need to implement the same technology. Sony-BMG can index every last piece of work in their collection, however if the client does not utilize the technology, there’s no way to filter any content.

This initiative may work well with commercial P2P applications (possibly Kazaa) and offers excellent media propaganda for the entertainment industry; however it appears GFR is just another hollow attempt to tackle online piracy. The reality of file-sharing remains the most populated and popular file-sharing networks are controlled by open source clients and protocols. FastTrack (Kazaa), eDonkey, iMesh and their ilk have all be subjugated by the entertainment industry, but the effort is like tapping water out of the Mississippi River when everyone’s drinking from Lake Michigan.

Is File Sharing A Crime?

2006-08-04T02:44:00.000+03:00

By SoOTi
All though the music and movie industry tries hard to prove that file sharing is evil, allot of people are waking up to the truth after being blinded for years by the music and movie industry. as we all know, every decade the music industry and the movie industry claim that a new technology is a threat to their existence and therefore must be stopped, you may remember the MPAA vs VHS case, claiming that recording off the television would be the end of the movie industry because no one would pay anymore but record it straight of the TV, but off course, they were wrong, and today the industry still rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year!
in other cases the music industry sued cassette recorders, voice recorders and other devices in the claim that it will bring their end, but what a surprise, it didn't, why? because although people may download a song or album or movie off the Internet, if the movie is truly a good memorable movie or the music album is one the person will always Cherish, they will buy it (if they don't overprice, like they do in allot of cases), i myself have bought lots of movies and music albums i truly thought were good, and most people do, i mean, are millions of people really thieves? does the industry actually lose physical merchandise they spent money on? the answer is no. so you may ask yourself, why are they suing people if they aren't guilty? good question, the answer to which is MONEY, that's what the big four music companies are all about, getting crappy artist (90% of them), and trying to market them as a product with an overpriced tag, but guess what? thanks to the Internet and sites such as Myspace and various p2p networks the users are turning to the smaller record companies who truly appreciate their artists and think mostly of art rather than cash like it should be, and some are selling 100,000's of records, and the big four music industry cartels are not happy that smaller companies are getting profit, because for decades, small record companies were a local city's scene and not many people would hear about small bands, but now bands of small record companies such as Christian Rock Band 'Underoath' (which the RIAA tried to buy off but with no success) and band 'Coheed and Cambria' (Which sadly signed with Sony, although the music still sound's great), yes focus, p2p is not a crime, it is a way to preview and filter out junk movies and music albums that record and movie companies try to advertise as good by misleading trailers and music singles.

Alt. Rock band 'Dashboard Confessional' 2006 album leaks

2006-06-19T20:31:00.000+03:00

By SoOTi

The album, that is due to be released on the 27.6.2006, has leaked to the p2p file sharing networks, mainly noted is the 'Bittorrent' network..

Israeli Anti-Spam 'Blue Frog' Fell... 'Black Frog'?

2006-06-12T17:19:00.000+03:00

By SoOTi

About two months ago, Israeli Controversial Anti-Spam Company 'Blue Security', the 'Blue Frog's' developer, gave up on the product, after several hacker attempts, from spammers.. let's face the facts, blue frog had a huge vulnerability, it had a main server, just as p2p application 'Napster' had back in 1999, and just like Napster, this brought it to it's knees.. but for some, an end is just the beginning, just as decentralized p2p apps came out after 'Napster' fell, So does 'blue frog'.

according to 'Cnet news' a group of programmers called 'Okopipi', is developing an anti-spam program, very similar to the blue frog, in which it scans the emails the user marks as spam, and determines the source of the spam, it then uses users computers to send complaints to the server, one complaint per spam email, so if 10,000 'Black frog' users get spam from the same spam server, 10,000 complaints to that spam server, the spammer is forced to either stop spamming the members, or face server overloads and removal by server owners. the difference between this program and 'Blue frog' is that this one is p2p based, which means it is impossible to take it down, do to the fact the server is not located in a specific location, but is maintained by the users.
It looks like 'Black frog' is the next step in anti-spam warfare, and we will be updating you on this.
A beta version should be released around mid august.

Israeli ISP's Continue To Give Bad Service

2006-06-12T17:05:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

Sorry for not writing for a while, i was quite busy with the army.. but I'm back, with more news.. as most of you may know, it's soccer (or football) season in most of the world, and many people are using they're Internet to watch the games for free, sadly, the Israeli ISP's are blaming that fact, as the reason Internet has been slow in the past few days.
I for one am quite sick of the lack of progress in the Internet service in this country, with 512kb/s being the fastest upload (for a very high price) and 5mb as the highest download rate (again, special over price), only in Israel do you get the worst Internet packages, where in most of the world 5mb for download is standard, here it's 1.5mb, and allot of time, the ISP's have "problems", as they call them.
bandwidth capping, line trouble, and hidden terms and agreements is just the beginning for these cartels known as 'Bezeq', 'Barak', 'Netvision', '012 Internet' and a couple more...
It's time to start fighting back, if your an Israeli Internet user, send your ISP a complaint about these problems, and demand to solve them. It's the only way we'll ever get any progress with the ISP's in this country.

New SoOTi Releases

2006-05-05T14:10:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

The release group called 'SoOTi' has released new metrial to the net, including the exlucive dvd of the famous christian rock band 'Underoath', from they're special edition album of "they're only chasing safty", and it can be found on the verious torrent sites.
Also released is an exlucive demo of a new 'emocore' band called 'This Means You', an Israeli band that i believe has a great future in music.

Another Live messenger 8 leak!

2006-04-22T15:40:00.000+03:00

As Reported by the website Mess.be, Another beta of the popular new Microsoft messenging client called 'Live messenger' has leaked, this time it's version 8.0.0683.00_Branches, it has a new interface that finally looks good, compared to the older beta versions. it also includes some new features:

The revamped dashboard shows the new "In a Call" status which can be automatically enabled when starting a Windows Live Call (an internal link to this page reveals the availability of this feature in Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States first).

- Next to the e-mail, Sharing Folders and Space icons, you'll see a new calendar/clock icon which is in fact just a link to the Windows Live Today popup. BTW: I have Messenger Plus! Live, hence the Plus! icon.

- Extra security options, eg. "Encrypt contact list data so that it is not accessible outside of Windows Live Messenger" With other words: don't let someone steal your buddies!

Download it here

Israeli ISP 'Netvision' Limits Bandwith?

2006-04-21T15:17:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

As exposed by the Israeli news site 'ynet', Israeli ISP 'Netvision', has said to have a hidden 5GB a month limit. what made it hard to believe, was the fact that this was one of the big 3 ISP suppliers in the country, so money for bandwith shoudn't be a problem for them (unlike ISP 'Actcom', that is a small ISP supplier, that limit's users bandwith fo to limited bandwith).
ISP 'Barak' encourges it's light bandwith user to upgrade to a limited bandwith account for only 39 NIS, Plus they give a 5MB connection in return. but all other ISP's do not limit bandwith in anyway.

In a call i made to 'Netvision', the answer was, because the "heavy" users take up most of the bandwith, and that the avrage user doesn't go over 5GB, but if that was so, why by verious polls, is 70% of the Israeli bandwith P2P programs, could most users stay in the limit of 5GB??? I'm in great doubt. but the good news is that since i commited to 6 months for 39 NIS for a 1.5MB connection, the price will not change until that period is over, in which i will no doubtly move to another ISP, that has no limits on bandwith.

SababaDC - Outmax Your Bandwith

2006-04-15T01:26:00.000+03:00

By SoOTi

I've gone back to using the file sharing program called 'SababaDc', basicly it's a DC++ client, but very optimized, i use version 674c, the new one is 674i, but the old one works best for me, for metrial over 3 weeks (new then that i use uTorrent), it's great! especially for TV shows, whole seasons are so much easier and faster the bittorrent, i recommend moving to 'SababaDc' if your client is slow

SababaDc Program, using up all my bandwith (1.5MB connection, which is about 200kb/s max)

Israeli ISP 'Barak' does block ports!! (MY TEST!)

2006-04-11T22:25:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

If you look a few posts back you see i suggested that Israeli ISP 'Barak 013' may be shaping traffic of p2p ports, well, after my own experience and several complaints i heard from people, i moved to ISP 'Netvision', and have tested the ports using p2p programs such as dc++ client "Sababadc" (On barak no more then 50kbs on Netvision 130kbs), uTorrent (20-30kbs on barak 50-70 on netvision)

So i recommend to all Barak usrers to move to ISP netvision, it also has a higher upload of 128KBS compared to 96KBS on barak, which has a huge impact in speed on clients that are based on upload speed such as 'Bittorrent'

Underoath June 2006 albums leaks, fakes flood the p2p network

2006-04-11T22:06:00.000+03:00

By Aaron Randelman

Christian Rock band 'Underoath' announced on website that the new album, titled "Define The Great Line", has leaked to the p2p networks by someone inside the studio, where they were recording it, the band made it clear that the stolen material was NOT the complete album, and is missing several minutes and has false titles, and missing instruments. The interesting thing about the whole story is, that later, torrent sites were flooded by fake torrents containing blank tracks, the uploaders used known release group names that have released they're material in the past including this group, SoOTi. this is one of the first times i have heard of fake torrent leaks, kazaa is a known place for fakes and RIAA corrupted files, but i have never heard of a record company (my guess), flooding the network with fakes... i recommend waiting until the official album is out and buying it OR downloading it and buying it if you like it.

Reviews Coming Up!

2006-03-23T20:11:00.000+02:00

Hopefully I'll get to writing a full scale review about the low end, cheap 'Sandisk m230' soon, and also a detailed review about the pros and cons of the Sony PSP. Stick Around!

Firefox 2.0 Alpha Released!

2006-03-23T20:02:00.000+02:00

By Aaron Randelman

Mozilla has released an alpha version of their successful Internet browser Firefox, I am publishing the link here to the download, but beware, it messes up your extension because they are not officially compatible with anything above version 1.5, so it's your risk

Download Firfox 2.0 alpha - Windows 98/NT/XP

New sootek website

2006-03-18T04:30:00.000+02:00

i opened today my new domain: www.sootek.com
i'll be updating it soon.

Please check out this band!!

2006-03-16T13:53:00.000+02:00

If you havn't heard the band 'Man Alive', you havn't heard of good punk rock, here is an mp3 i've uploaded especialy for the visitors of this blog.
and hey, you can write a comment once in a while to show your support,
Aaron.

Download man alive - Say what you want mp3

Number Of Downloads:

Israeli ISP 'Barak' blocking ports?

2006-03-11T00:16:00.000+02:00

By Aaron Randelman

It looks like Israeli ISP 'Barak' has begun blocking ports in the past few months, evidence of this comes from reports of users using the Israeli port of DC++ called "sababa dc", most reporting port problems come from barak users, it seems that barak has blocked most non standard ports, in order to shape traffic and prevent overload on it's lines such as happened a few months back with an overload of p2p users on this ISP, effected ports seem to be open, but give a rate of 5-15 KB/s, and no more. i myself am on barak too through a wifi connection in my home, and i must say that this is sadly true, all though barak denies it.
the good news is that in order to cover up port blocking barak has left some of the highly used ports open and not shaped (rate limiting), i am currently using the 'counter strike' standard port 27015, since there are many people who use this port, for this game, Barak doesn't want to show it's shaping traffic so leaves it open and free for fast gaming (i guess), so for all those having speed problems, try this port, i have been using it for the past week with 'utorrnet' and it has worked with an average of 30-70 KB/s! (which is great considering my upload rate is only 7 kb/s)

By the way, speaking of the program 'utorrent', i recommend it to all bittorrent users, it's only about 200kb in size(!) and takes about 4.7MB of ram! and is faster in my opinion then 'azureus' and the other heavy torrent programs!

get utorrent here

SoOTi Torrent Releases Begins

2006-03-09T23:51:00.000+02:00

Sorry for not updating in a while, I've been quite busy.. but have decided to return something to the great file sharing known as 'bittorrent', i have begun to release mostly rare material to the various bittorrent sites, mainly christian albums, such as "Underoath - They're Only Chasing Safety (SPECIAL Edition)" which can not be found on any other torrent site, i will not post it here, for legal reasons, but you can look it up on mininova or torrentspy, all my releases include SoOTi in they're file name.

however, one torrent i will post here, it is of my good friend, Adam Rosenfeld, who had a indie rock band called 'mutant john', he has approved to upload the album to bittorrent, here is a link to the file, please download it and enjoy, they are a great band.

Mutant John

Aaron.

Sooti's Anti Spyware Lineup Review

2006-02-24T16:30:00.000+02:00

Sorry for not updating for a long time, i was quite busy... among other things thinking what to review next... so here it is

The Best of Free Anti Spyware Software - REVIEW

What do you think of when you here the word 'spyware'? i know what i think of, pests, memory hogging, Trojan horses, spying tools that collect our information for advertising companies to bombard us with ads. i bet you ask yourself, is there any good free solution that won't cost $50 to use?
The answer to that is a definite YES!
I collected and tried the following free anti-spyware products over the past few months to bring you people the ultimate review on which ones are the best and in what.

Best In Scanning Resaults In My Tests:
Spyware Doctor 3.2

(Note: From Spyware Doctor Version 3.5 You may only scan in the free version and not repair spyware infections, i recommend going for version 3.2, as it has everything as the full version has except real time protection)

When it comes to scanning for spyware, this program is no joke, it scans everything from top to bottom, although it scans for longer then any of the other products brought here, it gives the best results by my tests, and removes all the infections with no problem, and includes a mode to remove on windows startup if the infection refuses to be removed. i always use spyware doctor when i want a deep scan. it also supports live updates to the database, althoughe, these must be done manualy, as the free version does not support scheduled updates.

On the down side, it takes quite a big portion of memory and CPU, and is quite slow in scanning.
I Recommend this program for all those who need a good spyware scanner, that have plenty of memory, if you don't have at least 256MB of ram or more, i would stick with some of the next options.

Rating: ***1/2 - of *****

Fastest Scanning:
Spybot Search & Destroy

One of the first programs to come out in the 'anti-spyware' software list, it's totally free of charge, and works great. it has an extensive database that can be updated, an "immunize" option, and very fast scanning, that gives very decent resaults. also this program barley takes any ram (does take a decent amount of CPU though).
When it comes to speed, this piece of software rules, i reccomand this for all those who want a free, low consuming but with many features anti-spyware program.

Rating: **** of *****

More to come in Part 2 of this review

Best file sharing software review

2006-02-07T20:16:00.000+02:00

By: Aaron Randelman
(Note: this article does NOT encourage copyright infringement, please use this software for legit purposes!)

Many people get confused when it comes to choosing a good file sharing program, with pretty much networks to choose from and a big amount of software, it's no wonder, I'm here to help you choose the best file sharing program, for your needs, based on my own reviews and experience.

Important things to ask yourself before using a file sharing program:

1. What is my sharing needs (popular music, non popular music, movies, software)?
2. How fast is my internet connection and computer?
3. am i willing to share my downloads with others or not?

Answers:
1. check the 'recommended for...' section under each file sharing program review

2. if your computer has less then 256MB of ram and/or less then 700mhz, i suggest going with a light program (see 'system requirements under each program review)

3. sharing is really important when using 90% of these programs, it's not called 'file sharing' for nothing, i believe only kazaa will suite people which have a low upload speed or just don't want to share (or come on!)

The Programs:
Here is a list of programs i've tried with a short review on each one:

Kazaa lite:
All though there is a non 'lite' version of kazaa, there is no major difference between them expect the important fact that 'kazaa lite' does NOT include any spyware, as apposed to the original kazaa that is infested with them.

This program uses the 'fast track' network, the interface is very simple and is very light, which means good news for slow computers, downside is that these days the fast track network is flooded with fake files (mostly planted by the RIAA - Record Industry of America Association), viruses (do not use it for software, i would say at least 70% of the software is virus infected!), and not a lot of fresh content, or at least in decent quality.

Bottom line: this program is great for music that is less then two months old, especially smaller bands (because most of the big ones are flooded with fake screechy sounding files to annoy users), and year or older movies. also it's great for computers that can't handle heavy software or slow connections that can't share (or just aren't willing to).

Recommended for: Users that don't need to much, that want a simple program that will give them basic music sharing downloads without all the fuss of bittorent for example or heavy programs that will jam up their computers

system requirements: computers with at least 333mhz and 128MB of ram

Download: Click here to download kazaa lite
Click here to download kazaa lite patch (fixes problems in kazaa lite above)

Limewire:
Another pioneer in the file sharing realm, Limewire was one of the first 'gnutella' network based file sharing software, built in java, this software has grown quite popular lately, especially after all those 'RIAA' law suits against 'Kazaa' users, and also people that are just sick of the fast track network being full of fakes and viruses. lime wire is a very stable and advanced open source gnutella program, some of it's features include, fast results, spam filter (important these days since lately the gnutella network has begone to suffer from ad files, with popular keywords to draw people to download them), fast downloads, partial file sharing, direct sharing with friends and family, and more.

Bottom line: Limewire has a decent download speed of between 30-60kbs on average (sometimes more, sometimes less), and has an excellent selection of movies (even movies released on DVD two weeks ago!), when it comes to music, this program rocks, gives excellent relevant results, and fast downloads, also, on average, the files have higher quality then kazaa for example, which on average most files are with a sampling of 128kbs while Limewire has allot of files, especially new ones with 192kbs on average (mp3).
this program is great for people with a good appetite for movies and music, with quality downloads. if you intend on download lots of full albums, this is NOT the software for you, it's a pain looking song by song, for that i recommend the program Azureus, that utilizes the Bitorrent network (see Azureus review). the software is open source and has no ads, there is a PRO version of Limewire that gives faster search results and has more connections but it costs money (see Limewire website for info).

Recommended for: Users that need a good and fast selection of music but also a decent amount of movies, and have decent computers to handle the heavy ram load (about 60MB of ram on average!)

System requirements: computers with at least 700mhz and 256MB of ram.

Download: Click here to download Limewire basic

Azureus:
Based on Bram Cohen's 'bittorrent' network, this java based client is the next generation of it, it uses the same basic principle as the original Bitorrent, expect more advance. the basic idea of the 'Bitorrent' network is the bandwidth saving idea, the process begins with someone who wants to publish a file or folder, he creates a torrent file and a 'tracker', a tracker makes track of all the downloaders (also known as 'lechers' on the bittorent network') and of how much each person downloads and uploads, the important thing in this client is the sharing, you MUST share, no share, no download, basic law, the more you upload, the more you download (you get a higher bandwidth priority with other people download or 'seeding'). the first person who starts the share (who publishes the file) is called a 'seeder' because he seeds the network, for example if 20 people download from that 1 person, they will be not only downloading from him, but from the other 20 who are downloading, for example, if X downloaded 75% of the file, and 'Y' 20%, 'Y' will download also from the seeder and also from 'X's 75%. once the other downloaders finish downloading, they become seeders themselves, and the rate of distribution grows rapidly. this network however does not have a built in search engine that searches users, but rather websites that publish these 'torrents', you do a search click the file, you recive a small file called a 'torrent' and the you use the client to download the wanted file or folder throughe the client
The Azureus client has a built in backup network incase the 'tracker' file is down, it findes users seeding the files requested.

Bottom line: This client is great for full high quality music albums and especially brand new movies and TV shows, for people who must be always the first to see movies or hear music first, music downloads are usually very fast, while movies average on 30kbs on my 1.5M connection, but if you have a higher bandwidth you most likely have a higher upload speed (mine is only about 13kbs max! i use 4kbs for azureus and get 30kbs on average, the higher the upload the higher the download speed).
there are many other bitorrent clients, but in my opinion and experience this one is the fastest and most stable and ofcourse spyware free.

Recommended for: users who download lots of full music albums (especially rare ones, which are quite easy to find and download on bittorent), and people that want the newest video content, without fakes, viruses and slow speeds. also this client is probably the best for software downloads, it has a huge selection and 99% of it is virus free.

System requirements: computers with at least 700mhz and 256MB of ram (recommend 512, as this program can suddenly eat 128MB easily).

Download: Click here to download Azureus

Filepipe p2p:
This program is very special because it connects to multiple p2p networks and in my opinion does it the best, it connects to the fast track (kazaa), gnutella, ares and openft networks, all together you get access to almost 5 million users(!), for rare music singles this thing rocks!!! you can find songs i didn't know even got out! and the download speed is decent (30-60kbs average) but besides music, i can't honestly say this program is much better for anything else, speeds are not fast on movie download and software is bad...

Bottom line: use this software as an addition to one of the above clients, if you can't find a rare song, search here, it's simple and search results are speedy and amazing. (beware that this software comes with some adware, use a program like 'Adaware' to remove this and the program will run adware free.

Recommended for: rare music singles and some albums

System requirements: computers with at least 700mhz and 256MB of ram

Download: click here to download Filepipe

my website

2006-02-07T17:10:00.000+02:00

for those who don't know, i have another great tech review website, check it out now, aaron randelman

How to: Convert Your noise 6230 Into The ultimate cellphone multimedia player

2006-02-02T18:18:00.000+02:00

The Nokia 6230 is in general a great phone, it's not too expensive (around $250) and has a great value for it's price, but why not turn it into the ultimate mp3 and video (mp4) player?
Yes, it plays video, we all know that, and yes it plays mp3s and you can use the earphones that come with the phone, but let's face it, the headphones included pretty much suck, the conversion program that comes with the 6230 for video conversion does a bad and long job (bad quality, long encoding time), and you can't connect your phone to any stereo system or use your own good set of headphones... Or can you???

I'm gonna teach you here how to turn your phone into the ultimate multimedia player for very little if any money!

What you need:
*A Nokia AD-15 Adaptor
This great 3gp converter

*This mp3 conversion tool (if you want to covert 160kbs mp3 files and up to smaller files without touching a bit of the quality)

*And a pair of good headphones (with common 3.5mm connection), invest in a good pair or you won't notice any difference in quality

Optional Stuff:
*A memory card of 128MB and up, i use 128MB and use the mp3 conversion tool above, that way i get CD quality music, with MB per minute results, 128MB is enough for approximately 2 hours of good quality music, which is not bad, i recommend going for the 512, the nokia 6230 supports almost all of them and it's not that expensive, and will be enough for more then enough mp3s and videos, etc.

*A cheap $10 (or less) mmc USB memory card reader, reads the card like a 'DiskOnKey' but much faster then the nokia connections

What to do:
1. Buy the Nokia AD-15 Adaptor or a similr one (from nokia's pop-port to 3.5mm, but make sure it's true stereo and not mirrord mono!)

2. for music use the mp3 converstion tool above, simply drag an mp3 that is over 128Kbs and under 'lame options'

3. under 'custom settings enter:
-V6 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 17 -b112

4. now click encode and your on the way

5. (optional) insert your mmc memory card into the card reader and drag and drop the compressed mp3s

or

6. use the nokia bluetooth or usb connection to copy the songs onto your memory card

7. connect the Nokia Ad-15 adaptor to the pop-port (the bottom of the phone)

8. connect your pair of 3.5mm headphones to the adaptor

9. enter the music player and click on play

10. set the equalizer to your favorite settings

Enjoy!

Optimal video settings for the 6230:
In the program I published above, there are two modes when selecting the 6230 for encoding video with this program:
Normal quality and high quality
for slow moving videos (none action) i recommend using the normal quality, it is fast and quite small and still gives out excellent results on quality

for fast videos use the high quality mode for Crystal clear picture at 5MB per 4 minutes of video

(tip: if you want a whole movie, cut the movie into segments of 20 min. each and encode them, look up google for splitting movies, a good program is 'avisplit')

once encoded copy onto the memory card and open using gallery on 6230.

Enjoy your new multimedia player and phone!

Nokia 6230 vs. 6230i Mobile Review

2006-01-27T23:30:00.000+02:00

<--6230 VS 6230i-->

By SoOTi

The decision was not easy, it really is hard to believe that a simple 'i' is the difference between these to quite different phones, they may look the same, but have many different features and qualities, for the good and the bad.

Interface - when it comes to the interface there is a clear winner, the nokia 6230, why you ask? well, the Nokia company decided to add 'themes' to the 6230i, which on one hand may look nice and pleasing to ones eye, but really slows down the interface (at least on the Hebrew 3.40 firmware), scrolling the menus on the 6230i is frustratingly slow and unusual, yes, it has the same simple menus that only nokia knows how to make, but the themes and the system is just slow... it's a big shame, but the older nokia 6230 takes it BIG, the menus are swift and clear, and very easy to scroll.

Features - When it comes to features the 6230i takes big, with a 1.3 megapixal camera, double resalutions (208x208) and more...

Camera quality - come on, can't compare, 6230i's are clear, double sized and crisp even in night (here is a 6230i photo sample and here is a 6230 photo sample)

Bugs And Known Problems - The main problem I have with the nokia 6230i, is that it's VERY buggy, slow menus, often resets, and a general feel of slowness in many realms including video. I must note that the 4.44 firmware that i have in my nokia 6230 is almost buggless (there is even a newer 5.35 firmware which fixes more bugs), and runs smoothly with rarly a reset (manly in the browser if any), the 6230i's 3.40 firmware also has a very bad bug (also in the new 3.50 firmware as i heard) that makes the ring 'Ascending' even when it's not on the mode, that means that even if you put the ring volume level on 5 it starts from 3 or 4, now I don't know if this was intentional or not (heard nokia put it on purpose to prevent hearing damage if the phone is near your ear when it starts ringing), but it makes it quite difficult to hear it, and in general the 6230's ring is louder (I'm talking about 'truetones' like MP3S NOT ringtones), i would say the 6230i has a LONG way before it's bug free

Overall - As funny as it may sound if your not looking for a 1.3 megapixal camera on a small phone i would go with the 6230 instead of that 6230i, it's less bugs, smooth menus and just plain and good enough for anyone, especially business people who need speed on there menus rather then slowness, so i would go with the "old faithful" known as 6230, and forget the 'i'

Specifications -

6230i specs
6230 specs

Recommended software of the week!

2006-01-26T21:59:00.000+02:00

Silverjuke

if you're like me, you love music, lots of music, I'm talking at least 7GB of music on your hard drive, and you want to play it with out getting bored of the same tracks over and over again, with the same old interface...
why not try this wonderful program called "silverjuke", it's free (most features at least), and plays great, looks like a jukebox and plays like one too, it has many ways to randomize music, and supports covers, kiosk mode (great for diners etc.), and more, check this software out now!

My Rating:

Download

MPAA 'bootlegging' charge

2006-01-25T19:26:00.000+02:00

TAKEN FROM p2pnet.net:

p2p news / p2pnet: 'This Film is Not Yet Rated' is a documentary investigation into the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) film ratings system and its "profound effect on American culture," said its director, Kirby Dick, last December.

Now Dick is accusing the MPAA of making an illegal bootleg copy, says the Los Angeles Times.

"The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated 'This Film Is Not Yet Rated' without the filmmaker's permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating," says the story.

"The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated 'publicity stunt' to boost the film's profile."

The MPAA is itself a past-master at PR stunts which are picked up by the mainstream media and reproduced as fact, the New Century Media farce being an example of one such.

In it, the MPAA said it seized ₪140 ($30) million in illegal stampers and DVD. But it transpired that the ₪140 ($30) million figure was pure imagination, no ‘pirate’ product was seized and "False allegations" have "slandered our name and reputation and damaged the business that my husband and I spent 14 years to build," said Jennifer Yu, New Century Media’s owner.

'This Film Is Not Yet Rated' will be shown at the Sundance Film Festival tomorrow night and it, "examines what Dick believes are the MPAA's double standards for rating explicit depictions of sex on the one hand and gruesome violence on the other," says the LA Times.

The documentary asks if:

Hollywood movies and independent films are rated equally for comparable content
Sexual content in gay-themed movies is given harsher ratings penalties than their heterosexual counterparts
Extreme violence is given an R rating while sexuality is banished to the cutting room floor
Hollywood studios receive detailed directions as to how to change an NC-17 film into an R, while independent film producers are left guessing
Keeping the raters and the rating process secret leaves the MPAA entirely unaccountable for its decisions

"Michael Donaldson, a lawyer representing Dick, has written the MPAA demanding that it 'immediately return all copies' of the film in its possession, and explain who approved the making of the copy and who within the MPAA has looked at the reproduction," says the LA Times.

It has MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards saying Dick spied on the members of the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration, "including going through their garbage and following them as they drove their children to school".

"We were concerned about the raters and their families," the story quotes her as saying.

The MPAA copy of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" was "locked away," and wasn't being copied or distributed.

new movies released at my site

2006-01-25T19:24:00.000+02:00

check out my free movies site! it has some nice movies for download with the file sharing programs availible.