The Pirate Bay, perhaps the world’s most popular BitTorrent tracking site, was recently dealt a serious blow in court, but that certainly hasn’t caused them to change their scurvy ways.

The founders of the Pirate Bay were fined $3.5 million when a Swedish court found that their site caused a loss of revenue for movie studios including Sony, Columbia Pictures, and Warner Bros.

However, those crazy Swedes have flatly stated that the movie studios won’t be getting a dime. Instead, they’ve hatched a plan that will actually cost the studios some money, and they’re calling it the “Distributed Denial of Dollars” attack.

The plan encourages all people who’re in support of their cause to donate a “internet-avgift” (Internet fee) of 13 cents, and send it to the Danowsky law firm, which represented the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in the Pirate Bay trial.

Now here’s the rub: because the law firm only has 1,000 free money transfers, if enough Internet users send a fee to them, it will actually end up costing the Danowsky firm and other music companies to handle and process all the payments.

The result? The Pirate Bay doesn’t pay a dime, they set a precedent for all future corporations-vs-internet-innovations trials, and the entertainment industry gets laughed at while they foot the bill. That’s just chalk full of win.

“What Image Swirl does is it really organises automatically image search results into groups and sub-groups,” Google product manager Aparna Chennapragada told AFP.

“It’s not just the face, the colour, the visual features of the images; we look inside the image and ask how they relate to each other on a pixel level.”

Swirl uses algorithms, metadata, and facial recognition software to distinguish between structures, places, people, and even time of day in digital images.

For example, an Image Swirl search using the keyword “Washington” triggers a results page with pictures packed into subsets including the White House, former president George Washington, and actor Denzel Washington.

Clicking on any of the subgroups opens a window into additional “sub-clusters” of pictures categorised by factors such as angle, time of day, and whether an image is a close-up or a panorama.

Computer algorithms

Online image search has traditionally delivered results pages lined with thumbnail pictures that people sift through individually.

“As humans we can easily tell which images should be grouped together by looking at them,” sad Google software engineer Yushi Jing, who worked on Image Swirl underlying technology.

“The real question is can we train computer algorithms to identify common features in images and then categorise them. It’s not perfect. We may have mistakes, but we hope to improve this system as we move forward.”

People can dabble with Image Swirl at Google Labs. Feedback will be used to improve the tool with the ultimate objective being to one day incorporate it in the California Internet giant’s public search engine.

“We are committed to how we look at and understand visual information and organise it for our users,” Chennapragada said. “This is the holy grail of computer vision.”

Google launched image search in 2001 and later added a “similar images” feature to hone-in picture hunts.

With the Phillies clutching a win on Monday night with a 8-6 win, they are 1-9 straight up in their last 10 games, while the Yankees will want to put both hands on the World Series to gain their 27th World Series victory.

Pedro Martinez will mark his third appearance, and Chase Utley who caused most of the offensive fireworks in the last game with early runs, never seem to go beyond that in later innings. Yankees on the other hand, have done it the other way round, not getting many in the 1st innings, but severely giving the knockout punch to the opposition later in the game.

Though the World Series 2009 Game 6 has the Yankees trying to clinch, the Phillies are regarded as having a little edge, due to Martinez and Pettitte’s situations. Martinez is on regular rest, and is coming off a solid effort inGame 2, which was only marred by two home runs. But the big question in the World Series 2009 Game 6 is about Andy Pettitte, and his abilities on three days rest.

Charlie Manuel was bashed for not putting in Cliff Lee on three days rest in Game 4. But because he didn’t, he has Martinez set on regular rest for Game 6. Joe Girardi, on the other hand, decided to use C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Andy Pettitte all on three days rest, and it could haunt the Yankees now.

After a gem in Game 2, Burnett collapsed on three days rest in Game 5. There have been reports that Pettitte is worn out, yet there are no other options for the World Series 2009 Game 6. The Phillies know they can get to Pettitte, as he gave up three runs in the second for Game 3

In the World Series 2009 Game 6, Joe Girardi, Charlie Manuel, Howard, Teixeria, Pettitte, Martinez and both bullpens will be under the gun more than ever. The red-hot Johnny Damon and Chase Utley will be looked upon for more November magic as well. But there is cold air coming into Yankee Stadium tonight, and if there is a Game 7, rain and snow could be a factor tomorrow – if that’s when Game 7 is played.

six years have passed since the World Series reached a Game 6 and the Yankees wins 7-3 and win the Series in 6.

Messy substances can include whipped cream, mud, shaving foam, custard, baked beans, pudding, chocolate sauce, peanut butter, Japanese-style lotion, paint, oil or gunge/slime, etc. A subject will often be pelted with cream pies or sit on cakes. Wet substances are mainly water but can also include other liquids such as fruit juice, milk or alcohol (usually beer).

Bodily fluids such as feces, urine, semen and female ejaculate are not considered part of WAM. The former two are typically considered coprophilia and urophilia; the latter being somewhat mainstream in pornography.

The popular sex column Savage Love has mentioned WAM. In one article there was a reply to a letter from the roommate of someone who masturbates with condiments. Dan Savage, the writer of Savage Love, did not condemn the fetish in that incident but instead only condemned the fetishist for using condiments used by others.^[2]

Wet and messy fetishism made mainstream news when a teacher was disciplined for searching for WAM related terms on a school computer. An article about the incident described what the teacher was looking for as “bizarre”.

The television show Attack of the Show did a piece on a pie fetish showing different pie related videos including eating pies and being hit by pies. They inaccurately labeled all of the videos as Vorarephilia, when in fact videos shown included videos related to WAM and Saliromania.

2004 film A Dirty Shame featured a woman who enjoyed WAM, described as “an English fetish”. This scene was filmed with input from the British Splosh! magazine.

Sploshing is featured on an episode of CSI: New York which aired on November 4, 2009.

This isn’t the first time T-Mobile users have had issues. Just about a month ago, T-Mobile Sidekick users had their data services out for a week. Yes, a week without Internet, AIM or email. Some lost their contacts. This outage caused an outrage, and all Sidekick users were given a free month of data services added onto their accounts once the outage continued on.

This latest outage doesn’t just shut down Sidekick users though. Apparently, the whole system is offline. T-Mobile had the following statement about this most recent T-Mobile outage:

“T-Mobile customers may be experiencing service disruptions impacting voice and data. Our rapid response teams have been mobilized to restore service as quickly as possible. We will provide updates as more information is available.”

Christie got a 49% vote and Corzine got 45% . About 98% of the precincts were counted. Christie is a former U.S> attorney who campaigned on being unsatisfied with the way Corzine performed during the season.

According to some analysts, the poll was the first test of the popularity of the Obama administration.

Christie , who overcome negative coverage of his campaign due to the involvement of his brother, Todd Christie.

who was Todd Christie?

He was the CEO of Spear Leeds & Kellogg…which is one of hte five biggest trading firms on Wall Street and was found by SEC to have engaged in illegal trading practices from 1999=2003. SO when the SEC investigation became public knowledge in 2003, Todd Christie was forced out of his position.

Washington State election results

The city of Spokane also will vote on three positions Spokane City Council and four other proposals that include funding for a Community Bill of Rights, a Bill of Rights of Spokane, and a new Bond Fire. The votes are most important to the city will take place in the coming years, Spokane voters begin to see the results as the counting of votes begin to be informed of the polling stations.

Cloward and Piven’s article is focused on forcing the Democratic Party, which in 1966 controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, to take federal action to help the poor. They argued that full enrollment of those eligible for wellfare “would produce bureaucratic disruption in welfare agencies and fiscal disruption in local and state governments” that would “deepen existing divisions among elements in the big-city Democratic coalition: the remaining white middle class, the white working-class ethnic groups and the growing minority poor. To avoid a further weakening of that historic coalition, a national Democratic administration would be constrained to advance a federal solution to poverty that would override local welfare failures, local class and racial conflicts and local revenue dilemmas.” They wrote “the ultimate objective of this strategy (is) to wipe out poverty by establishing a guaranteed annual income… (via)the outright redistribution of income.”

The authors pinned their hopes on creating disruption within the Democratic Party. “Conservative Republicans are always ready to declaim the evils of public welfare, and they would probably be the first to raise a hue and cry. But deeper and politically more telling conflicts would take place within the Democratic coalition,” they wrote. “Whites – both working class ethnic groups and many in the middle class – would be aroused against the ghetto poor, while liberal groups, which until recently have been comforted by the notion that the poor are few… would probably support the movement. Group conflict, spelling political crisis for the local party apparatus, would thus become acute as welfare rolls mounted and the strains on local budgets became more severe.”

taken from wikipedia