News and stories

UK ISPs join up for piracy crackdown

England's six largest ISPs have all joined together with the government to "clamp down" on unauthorized downloading of music and movies.

Estimates have suggested that 6.5 million British citizens have downloaded unauthorized files over the last year and that piracy will cost the music industry £1 billion over the next five years.

The new clamp down will begin with thousands of warning letter informing alleged users that their illegal activity has been detected and that they are now being monitored.

The Governments business department will sign the industry agreement soon with BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse.

All the ISPs have committed to developing legal file-sharing services, with perhaps the option of users paying extra per month to the ISPs to download unlimited legal music.

There was no word yet on what sanctions would happen to persistent online pirates but ideas that have been thrown around are the so-called "three strikes" law or additional broadband fees for heavy users.

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Homo Erectus 2007 DVDRip XviD-aAF

An another movie sequel of probably infinite serie National Lampoon’s called Homo Erectus has been released by group aAF. Once again, it’s a pretty stupid comedy made in a really short time with really cheap and gross jokes. I guess you have to be totally smoked to laugh with this movie. Anyway, it’s here for [...]

Google launches Knol, Wikipedia competition

Google opened its website Knol to the public on Wednesday, allowing people to write about their areas of expertise under their bylines in a twist on encyclopedia Wikipedia, which allows anonymity. “We are deeply convinced that authorship — knowing who wrote what — helps readers trust the content,” said Cedric [...]

Taken 2008 SUBBED DVDSCR XviD-VoMiT

Guys from VoMiT released a new dvd screener of action thriller Taken. This film set in Paris was filmed by French filmmakers, however, the audio is English and most of the actors are British or American. This release offers a decent quality, but there are hardsubbed Chinese subtitles on the image, which is little annoying. [...]

DVDFab Platinum v5.0.6.0 Multilingual WinAll Cracked-WRATH

DVDFab Platinum is alongside ConvertXtoDVD most popular software here on rlslog. It’s updated constantly just like mentioned ConvertXtoDVD. WRATH group released latest stable v5.0.6.0 build although v5.0.6.5 is already available on publisher’s forums, but that one is beta build. Description: DVDFab Platinum is the most powerful and flexible DVD copying/burning software. With 8 copy modes, [...]

Apple has killed audio quality, says Neil Young

Rock star Neil Young made some interesting comments at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech Conference yesterday including his suggestion that music sound quality has been "dumbed down to Fisher-Price toy levels" since the inception of the iPod.

Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway, Young said. Quality has taken a complete backseat - if it even gets in the car at all.

Young spoke out about the poor audio quality of the most popular audio codec, MP3, and also talked about his "long-term, multimedia archiving project of his entire career" which will be available as a series of Blu-ray discs. Young hopes his project will become the basis for an alternative digital platform with higher quality sound.

The artist spent most of his time expressing his feelings at the decline in audio standards and put the blame mainly on companies such as Apple who he feels have "an increasing focus on convenience versus quality."

We have beautiful computers now but high-resolution music is one of the missing elements, he said. The ears are the windows to the soul.

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Xbox Live starts offering original short films

Microsoft has announced that they will begin offering original, comedic short films made by horror producers to Xbox Live users beginning in the fall.

The pilots will be available for free and the idea was conceived by filmmaker James Gunn, known for writing "Slither" and "Dawn of the Dead."

The software giant is joining up with the Safran Digital Group to produce the exclusive shorts.

According to WorldScreen, "those working on short films for the new offering include James Wan (Saw, Death Sentence), David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), Lucky McKee (The Woods), Andrew Douglas (The Amityville Horror) and Marcus Nispel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th)."

A few of the known titles that will be available for download or streaming are "Doggie Heaven (Woof!)", "Humanzee!", "MEATDOG: What's Fer' Dinner," "Blue Like You" and "The Miracle of Phil."

"We're excited to launch the Xbox original content with these world-class directors, who are all tremendously talented and at the cutting edge of their craft," Safran said. "Their youthful and innovative approach is the perfect combination for this unique digital venture with Xbox 360, and we expect to see some very creative, horrifying and hilarious shorts as these masters of horror present their comedic vision.

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Samsung introduces HDTV with 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio

Samsung has announced a new series of LCD HDTVs including the company's first ever with a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

The new 950 display line combines improved LED backlighting with "improvements to the panel and image processing" to hit the high contrast ratio. The 950 also is the first LED-lit model from Samsung to have a 120Hz refresh panel.

The new HDTV also has a built-in Ethernet jack that can stream media from PCs and consoles. Users can also use any DLNA media hub or Samsung's own popular WiseLink Pro. USB ports are built in to allow digital content to be played locally.

The 950 series has four HDMI ports with CEC automation support and will be available in 46-inch and 55-inch models. The units will cost $3,200 USD and $4,200 USD respectively when they hit retail shelves in August.

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AT&T releases iPhone 3G sales numbers

AT&T has revealed today that they have sold twice as many Apple iPhone 3G units upon launch then they did a year ago with the first generation iPhone.

The carrier also noted that it had over doubled its smartphone users year-on-year from June 2007, from 8 percent to 18 percent.

Although official numbers have never been published by AT&T, the general consensus is that 270,000 first generation iPhones were sold in the opening weekend so AT&T's latest comments suggest at least 500,000 iPhone 3G units have been sold in the US by AT&T.

AT&T also reported that they added 1.3 million new subscribers, pushing its user base to 72.9 million, making it the largest carrier in the US over Verizon.

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Speed Racer R5 XViD-BaLD

Hey Guys! Another R5 version of Speed Racer appeared about 2 hours ago in the scene. The iVE version was nuked on my nets for [NUKED/field.shifted_i38.tinypic.com.11kzcbq.jpg]. So the BaLD release seems to be the real deal Synopsis: Hurtling down the track, careening around, over and through the competition, Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is a [...]