Wachu talkin 'bout?

Finally! Google Starts Selling Books

2006-03-13T16:46:00.000+11:00

Found a very interesting article today about how the whole Google Books project (formally Google Print) is going to shape up in the near future. Apparently, Google plans to offer authors who submitted their books to the Google Books project an option to let readers purchase their whole book, letting the authors set the price themselves. The purchased books, however, can only to be read through the users browser (in other words, customers won't be able to save a local copy of the book to their hard disk or even print it out) and will most likely use the soon-to-be-introduced Google Payments system to facilitate the transactions.

Sydney, Australia: The Greatest City in The World

2006-03-08T15:01:00.000+11:00

This is a small tribute to the greatest city in the world: Sydney, Australia. The city which I conveniently happen to reside in.

First, ofcourse, come the formalities. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House...

The Sydney CBD isn't too far away either...

Now who ever said that us Aussies are all about the outback?

Now let us head over to the 'burbs...

You guys like our back yard?

Last but definitely not least, Sydney University. I have been studying here 4 days a week for 2 years (I just started my 3rd year yesterday) and can still never get enough...

Anyone going on holiday should definitely come down and visit. You won't regret it.

Market Share of TV Release Groups

2006-03-05T23:22:00.000+11:00

This is an analysis of the popularity/market-share of the various TV release groups. The sample data was taken from all the eztv releases since June 5, 2005 up to today March 6, 2006. This totals 1728 releases. Below is a pie graph showing the market share of the 15 most popular release groups.

This is the full list:

1. LOL - 34.55%
2. LOKi - 11.17%
3. TCM - 8.39%
4. XOR - 7.52%
5. FQM - 3.65%
6. UMD - 3.59%
7. CRiMSON - 3.07%
8. RiVER - 2.78%
9. TBS - 2.66%
10. CTU - 2.03%
11. NBS - 1.97%
12. FoV - 1.91%
13. ORENJi - 1.91%
14. OMiCRON - 1.50%
15. BiA - 1.27%
16. MiRAGETV - 1.27%
17. GOTHiC - 1.16%
18. TvD - 0.93%
19. aAF - 0.81%
20. BamHD - 0.81%
21. 442 - 0.75%
22. SFM - 0.75%
23. DeFaCto - 0.52%
24. m00tv - 0.46%
25. TVL - 0.46%
26. MiNT - 0.35%
27. STFU - 0.35%
28. HAGGiS - 0.29%
29. VYS - 0.29%
30. hV - 0.23%
31. LATERAL - 0.23%

32. DIMENSION - 0.17%
33. ABT - 0.12%
34. iNCiTE - 0.12%
35. iND - 0.12%
36. iNK - 0.12%
37. PiX - 0.12%
38. SAiNTS - 0.12%
39. VSS - 0.12%
40. WTV - 0.12%
41. Aph3x - 0.06%
42. EXT - 0.06%
43. F5 - 0.06%
44. FAR - 0.06%
45. fix - 0.06%
46. FTP - 0.06%
47. FUCT - 0.06%
48. FuX - 0.06%
49. FuX0r - 0.06%
50. HQTV - 0.06%
51. HY - 0.06%
52. JFKXVID - 0.06%
53. KWYJIBO - 0.06%
54. mVzTV - 0.06%
55. NK - 0.06%
56. Rolex - 0.06%
57. STi - 0.06%
58. SWiNE - 0.06%
59. Tiffy - 0.06%
60. TVA - 0.06%
61. UWH - 0.06%
62. W4F - 0.06%

A few interesting observations emerge from this study. Firstly, we see that the fabulous guys from the top 3 release groups provide just over 54% of all the TV programmes available through eztv. We can also observe the incredibly large number of release groups serving the TV Scene. This hopefully means that if, despairingly, one or more of them get taken down, there will still be enough to carry the weight.

Please note that this analysis just focused on the release of TV shows after they aired on American (and sometimes British) TV. It does not take into account the release of DVD rips of TV shows. Nor does it take into account the releases from VTV or the now discontinued CTV. However, since eztv has the most releases, and most shows that are carried by VTV and CTV have already been released by eztv, I felt that they were adequate for this analysis.

Furthermore, sometimes LOL releases its shows under the name of "TV", as in "Everybody.Hates.Chris.S01E04.HDTV.XviD-TV." I have thus counted "TV" releases as LOL releases.

In closing I think we should just be incredibly grateful to these guys for risking their butts to provide us with these shows. After all, its not there fault that the American TV Channels have missed an incredible financial opportunity and created a tremendous market failure as a result. There is still hope, however.

Mischa Barton Paris Hilton beef

2006-02-24T17:00:00.000+11:00

I always love to read thesuperficial blog.. great humor, faboulous stories, even better reader comments. So I thought that I'd start my blog off by linking to a story that I found particularly entertaining. Its about the Paris Hiltonish self-proclaimed beef that she has with Mischa Barton, the less hotter co-star of Rachel Bilson on the O.C.

Mischa apparently fell out of Paris's circle of friends when she began dating Kimberly Stewart's ex-fiance, Cisco Adler. Barton was initially confused about all the animosity, but eventually just called Paris, among other things, "insecure and hungry for publicity."

One of the comments on that blog decided to elaborate:

You sure the article didn't say, "Mischa fell out of Paris' legs"?

Because firstly - those things are always open, and I'm positive lots of things fall out of there every day - old tires, telephone books, wads of cash, wads of other stuff, and people much larger than Mischa Barton.

And secondly - I'm pretty sure Paris Hilton doesn't know what a circle is.