How To Pirate

Some times I just can’t help myself; I was tooling around the Internets the other day, and I came across this wondrous video about how to fight, LARP-style (Live Action Role-Play). Basically, these guys formed a “pirate guild” and swordfight like pirates in the park. It’s pretty entertaining stuff. To be honest, I was only watching to make fun of them at first, but, now it kinda looks like fun; don’t expect to find me in that park LARPing any time soon; I mean, come on, lets be real here, junior high is over. Laser tag… maybe, but LARPing takes things too far. Anyhow, check out these how to fight videos out, there are actually some good (real) fighting techniques mixed in with the LARPers.

How To Fight

So the other day I decided that I was going to learn how to draw, so that I could make a logo for this blog. Didn’t work. It turns out that my internal draw.exe is corrupted or something. I don’t even know why I tried to be honest, I can’t even write in cursive; my pirate logo ended up looking more like one of the California Raisins (remember those ugly claymation turds). If there is one thing that I know to be true, it is this: I will never be able to learn how to draw. Check out this link if you think that you have it in you, as for me, I will leave the drawing to the professionals in the mall kiosks.

How To Draw

Earlier this year, Real Networks announced Real DVD, a “mainstream” software for making fair use legal digital copies of your DVDs; By no means is Real DVD revolutionary, in fact, there are quite a few better and free DVD ripping solutions on the Internet. The MPAA claims that Real’s software violates the Digital Millennium Anti-Consumer Act, and has convinced a [tech illiterate] judge to block the sale of Real DVD. The message on Real’s Website currently reads:

“Due to recent legal action taken by the Hollywood movie studios against us, RealDVD is temporarily unavailable. Rest assured, we will continue to work diligently to provide you with software that allows you to make a legal copy of your DVDs for your own use.”

Lets be clear about this, Real’s software is crap compared to all of the free solutions because they bent over backward for the MPAA. It does not “break” any copy protection, in fact, it ads more, making the product sucky. The lesson to take away from this is: if you are going to bend over for the MPAA, use lots of lube.

I have a NetFlix subscription; I don’t currently copy their DVDs onto my computer, though I easily could. There really is no reason, if I want to see a movie again, I will just put it on my list again, no hard drive space wasted. After hearing about this, I will certainly start ripping every DVD that comes my way, as a form of protest.

In order to help anyone along who may not be up to speed on DVD piracy, check out these how to pirate videos. You will be doing your patriotic duty.

How To Pirate Videos

Gone are the days of having to eat one’s own leather shoes to stave of starvation, and no more making stew out of the bones of the still-born. For better or for worse (better, really), today’s Pirate primarily eats microwave friendly delectables whilst navigating the Tubes. If you were to tip your keyboard upside-down right now, would bits of fried food litter your desk? I would like this moment to call on modern pirates to get back to our roots, if just for a moment. Now before you go running off to find a still-born fetus to make a stew, let me make another suggestion: The Seafood Pirate Stew. I found a video about how to barbecue a pirate stew the other day, and I thought, “What the hell, this could be a blog post.” Remember, just because you are a pirate, doesn’t mean you don’t have to eat well.

Are you wondering how to pirate movies, or just watch DVDs that you already own on your iPod, tired of your notebook computer running out of juice halfway through your flight? HandBrake is the program for you. I remember when DVDs were great, back before Sony and the MPAA were trying to cripple your computer with rootkits and burdensome DRM software. If you want to go back to simpler times, download the latest version of HandBrake, insert your [assuming it’s yours] DVD, choose your download settings, for instance, the “iPod/iPhone” setting will format for your iPod. Warning: HandBrake is a smart program, and it will use all available system resources to burn as fast as possible, so you will be forced to spend some time in meatspace. I have found that a 512ishMB file looks great on iPods and decent on my computer.

Why you should use HandBrake:

• HandBreak is able to ignore most DRM

• Easy-to-use interface

• Mac/Win compatibility

• Watching movie files uses way less battery life than spinning a DVD

• It just feels good to be a pirate

If you need more tips on how to pirate, including how to rip DVDs,

check out: How To Pirate

It has come to my attention that many pirates-in-training out there are looking to download YouTube videos. As a pirate, I understand the need to posses content, rather than merely watch; It just so happens that I have the perfect tool for you: DownloadHelper -the best thing to happen to FireFox since… well, ever. Simply install the DownloadHelper FireFox plugin, then when you are watching a video on YouTube or any other website, click on the DowloadHelper tool in your browsers toolbar, you will see an option to download your video. It’s just that easy. You can also use this trick to download (read: pirate) streaming music off the web as well, its a great way to be a pirate and finally download all of those rare remix tracks that iTunes and the RIAA don’t want you to have.

Of course there is more than one way to skin a cat, and there is a plethera of ways to pirate video on the Internet. For more pirate advice checkout: How To Pirate

I decided over the weekend that I want to pirate the Game Spore that Electronic Arts recently released. It’s been awhile since I have even played a computer game and I am looking forward to checking Spore out. I am planning on pirating Spore in the next couple days and will write about where and how I get the game. I wouldn’t buy this game but I am willing to check it out it for free and it might end up being cool. One reason I like pirating is because I hate wasting money, I have bought games and hated them before, downloading games for free is where its at…

The Pirate Bay is one of the most well known and is the largest torrent trackers and it keeps growing in popularity. I know the Pirate Bay is one of my favorite places to get files, its easy to find quality programs, music, etc. One of the best and most basic features is how the allow the users to post comments under the torrent, by reading the comments you can usually find out if a torrent is worth downloading or not. -Bill

The Pirate Bay reached a new milestone, as they now have more than 3 million registered users. On top of that, they track close to 15 million unique peers. The largest BitTorrent tracker just keeps growing and growing, and there is no sign that this will be put to a halt anytime soon.

When this article is published, The Pirate Bay now tracks nearly 1,288,514 torrents and 14,786,539 unique peers. As a comparison, in December 2006 they tracked 576,080 torrents and 4,274,698 peers, so today’s figures represent quite an increase.

September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Are you ready for International Talk Like A Pirate Day this year? I see this day as a pre Halloween sort of and like hitting the bars with my Mates for beers is a tradition. This year International Talk Like A Pirate Day day falls on a Friday so you know a lot rum drinking and partying is going to take place over the weekend. Impress your friends and the ladies this year with your Pirate slang ARRGH! this funny video here will teach you, How To Talk Like A Pirate.

The game Spore looks like its up for grabs on torrent sites like the Piratebay for example. What was Electronic Arts thinking when they released a game with DRM?

Maxis’s Spore has been in the news a lot, but since the game was released earlier this month it has seen an increase in critical articles.

Big Champagne, a peer-to-peer research firm, has estimated that as of Thursday afternoon (September 11th), the game has been torrented over 171,402 times. This is one of the quicker rates of pirating a new game, and the rate of downloads is increasing. The 24-hour period between Wednesday and Thursday saw 35,000 of those downloads - roughly 20% of the torrents.