TVLinks Shut Down, Owner Arrested

By David Peralty
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

There are many ways to get your favorite shows, you can watch them at their scheduled time on television, record them with your PVR or VCR (does anyone use a VCR anymore?) or watch them on the broadcast companies website. If none of these choices work well for you, sometimes you can catch them on sites like TVLinks (tv-links.co.uk), where they link to illegally uploaded videos on various video hosting websites, which allows you to view them at your convenience.

I don’t want to focus on the legality of this whole thing, but for the many people that use such sites, a sad thing has happened: TVLinks has been shut down.

Not only has the site been taken down, but the owner, a 26-year-old man from Cheltenham, UK, has been arrested. Though he doesn’t host the content himself, only providing links to the material on major video hosting sites, he has apparently been charged with the “facilitation” of copyright infringement.

Personally, while I agree that the service wasn’t entirely legal, I think it provided a remarkable video on demand service for shows both on and off the air, and should continue to prove to studios, production companies, and cable providers that the audience demands to have their media at their disposal. I hope that the charges are dropped.

Also, as they have started to realize with both video and audio, consumers will get what they want, any way they can and companies can adjust, or try to bully people using the legal system. Unfortunately, bullying won’t get them very far. Proof of this is the number of such video linking websites, torrent websites, and private content sharing networks still out there today.

Now is your chance to chime in on the discussion. Was it right for the site to be taken down and the owner arrested? Will the removal of TVLinks stop you from watching television shows and movies online, or will you find another source?

Do you believe that the future of both video and audio is a complete multimedia on demand service? If so, how much would you pay every month to access any and every movie and song available in a massive library?

Please do not link to any video sharing, torrent or any other illegal or grey area websites as such comments will be moderated. Geeks are Sexy does not condone piracy, but we do believe that certain, currently illegal, models are proof that the handling of media is rapidly evolving and changing to a very consumer focused model.



HOW TO: Survive a zombie uprising

Halloween is quickly approaching, so now’s the perfect time to start learning how to survive a Zombie uprising. Here’s an invaluable guide that will teach you the best ways to avoid, evade, and if need be, fight your run-of-the-mill Zombie horde. Enjoy the show!

MP3 Spam starts appearing in inboxes

Can you believe it? After using YouTube, PDFs, and pictures, spammers have now turned themselves to audio files in order to send you their crap and bypass your spam filters.

Spammers involved in pump-and-dump scams touting penny stocks now are using MP3 music files to lure investors, a switch security experts say is the latest tactic designed to sneak the messages past spam filters.

According to e-mail security provider MessageLabs, the spam run began late on Oct. 17, with roughly 10,000 messages blasted out per hour. The e-mails include semi-random subject lines that matched the title of the attached MP3 file, which plays a short 20-60 second message touting microcap shares of a company called Exit Only Inc.

So the next time an email that contains an attachement named “getbiggernow.mp3” lands in your inbox, please don’t open it, unless you’re really looking to… Nah, forget it! :)

Stock Spammers Pump It Up With MP3 Files



How NOT to react when your laptop dies (Video)

Just imagine yourself in this situation.

You’re at a coffee shop and have been working on an extremely important presentation all night long. Suddenly, your laptop dies… just 10 minutes before you have to deliver. How would you react? Let the following video serve as a lesson about what NOT to do if this ever happens to you.

Funny IBM Enterprise IT commercial: THE SERVERS ARE TOO HOT!

With this Blade Server ad, IBM is obviously trying to bash HP, their main rival in the rack mounted server market. IBM claims that HP’s blade servers run way too hot, but of course, HP claims the contrary. Who’s right? I guess we’ll never truly know, unless we decide to test those servers ourselves.

Lifetime supply of beer for a laptop

Free beer!A New-Zealand brewer just promised that he would provide free beer for life to the individual who would help him get a stolen laptop back. The system, which apparently contains crucial enterprise information, has disappeared early this week when one of the brewery owners forgot to set the alarm before going at the end of the day.

Owners Paul Croucher and Nigel Gregory are desperate to get it back, so much so they are offering free beer to whoever dobs in the person responsible for the burglary.

It happened some time between 8pm on Monday, when Mr Croucher left the Depot St building, and 9am on Tuesday when he arrived back.

I know some of our readers are from New-Zealand, so you guys might want to keep your eyes open for this stolen laptop. Hmmm, free beer for life, that’s certainly a good deal! (but probably not for your health :))

Lifetime supply of beer for a laptop (The Daily Post)

HOW TO: make a GREAT first impression

Let’s face it, when going to an interview for a new job, first impressions are what count for the most in the hiring process. This is why you want to look your best at that first meeting, because we all know that you won’t get a second chance if you mess up. Here’s a short video tutorial that will teach you how to make the right choices in order to be liked by your potential employer.

Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy?

In the following video, social psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness “synthetic happiness,” and he says it’s “every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”