July 30th, 2009 by admin

Sono stati rese note i vincitori per gli Strand Critics Award 2009, i premi assegnati dalla nota rivista Strand Magazine, dalla quale sono stati tradotti e pubblicati alcuni racconti thriller apparsi sulle pagine di ThrillerCafe.it.

Nella categoria “Miglior romanzo”, a spuntarla è stato Richard Price, di cui abbiamo recensito ieri I Wanderers e che ha conquistato la vittoria con il recente Lush life (”La vita facile“).

La cinquina dei finalisti era composta da:
* When Will There be Good News? di Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown)
* Master of the Delta, di Thomas H. Cook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
* The Brass Verdict, di Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)
* Lush Life, di Richard Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
* Hollywood Crows, di Joseph Wambaugh (Little, Brown)

Per la categoria “Migliore opera prima”, l’immancabile Tom Rob Smith ha centrato un altro alloro con il suo Bambino 44.

Per maggiori informazioni, vi segnalo la pagina ufficiale del premio Strand Critics Award

Related posts:

1. “Strand Critics Award 2008″: i vincitori
2. I vincitori del Thriller Award 2008
3. Daggers Award 2008: i vincitori

July 30th, 2009 by admin

Protagonista oggi al ThrillerCafe Richard Price, scrittore e sceneggiatore premiato con l’Edgar Award per la serie The wire nel 2007. Recensiamo il suo primo romanzo: I Wanderers, cult degli anni 70 e uscito da poco per Giano in una nuova traduzione.

Titolo: I Wanderers
Autore: Richard Price
Editore: Giano
Traduttore: S. Bortolussi
Anno di pubblicazione: 2009
Pagine: 239

Trama in sintesi:
Il diciassettenne Richie Gennaro, Gran Capo dei Wanderers, è rispettato nel Bronx, ma ha delle grane con i “negri” dei Del-Bombers che si stanno alleando coi Pips, e a cui forse si uniranno anche i “cina” dei Wong. E questo è un grosso problema. I Wong sono dei pazzi: ventisette di loro, tutti chiamati uguale e tutti con un drago tatuato. Per bilanciare le fazioni, ai Wanderes bisogna che diano una mano gli altri italiani dei Pharaohs e gli irlandesi dei Rays. E forse neanche basterà. Per sistemare “negri” e “cina” messi assieme ci sarebbe bisogno di quelli di Lester Avenue. Hanno dai ventun anni in su e sono tutti o ex carcerati o affiliati della mafia. Di sicuro odiano i “negri”, ma il fatto è che sfortunatamente odiano anche chiunque altro…

Niente cadaveri, detective, assassini e crimini assortiti. Questo di Price è un libro insolito per i temi di Thriller Café, eppure trova ugualmente spazio su queste pagine perché di un Bronx così vivido, traboccante di violenza gratuita, di teste calde, risse tra bande e botte in famiglia, non si può certo tacere. Un romanzo che dipinge il lato grigio del sogno americano, quello degli italiani soprattutto, dei loro figli inquieti, che iniziano ad affacciarsi alla maturità con tanti dubbi, sporgendosi dalla finestra di un’adolescenza turbolenta segnata da pochi punti fermi: le gang, gli amici, la caccia alle ragazze. La sfilata dei duri a oltranza che devono dimostrare di esserlo, sempre e comunque, agli altri e a se stessi, mentre sotto la facciata grinzosa e temeraria si agitano paure e insicurezze.
Una storia in fondo di innocenza, narrata col linguaggio spiccio delle strade, i migliori dialoghi che forse abbia mai letto, e con la ruvidezza di una gioventù che se sogna lo fa solo in cuor suo, di nascosto per non mostrarsi debole.
Un romanzo che trascende il genere, come solo i grandi libri sanno fare. Che senza moralismi o giudizi di sorta racconta di come è difficile crescere. E come è difficile, in assoluto, la vita.

I Wanderers, di Richard Price: acquistalo su IBS!

Related posts:

1. La vita facile - Richard Price
2. “Ultima corsa” per Richard Stark
3. Il sudario di ghiaccio - Richard Montanari

July 30th, 2009 by admin

This summer TorrentFreak features the workstations and offices belonging to some of the leading figures in the BitTorrent community. In our first article in this series the founder of BTjunkie was kind enough to give us a little insight into his daily operations, and today we continue with isoHunt.

Founded in 2003, isoHunt is one of the oldest BitTorrent sites that remains around today. The site has millions of pageviews a day and searches through more than 2 million torrent files, which totals an impressive 1729 terabytes of data.

Gary Fung, the founder of the site, is in charge of daily operations from his hometown Vancouver in Canada. Below is a picture of Gary sitting behind his 2008 Mac Pro hooked up to a Dell 30″ LCD monitor (3008WFP).

What’s really keeping the site up and running is not his Mac though, rather the 14 servers located in Ontario, Canada. Below is a picture of the server rack currently in use. Gary told us that he is working on adding another cluster in Europe soon.

isoHunt is currently using four dual quadcore Opteron 2352’s for the web servers. The site’s database runs on three additional servers, two Opteron and one Intel Nehalem based. Four old dual core AMD nodes are used for various background processing, one Intel, dualcore Xeon is used by the search backend and two more for load balancing.

Below you’ll find another picture isoHunt’s server rack, all wired up. We thank Gary for sharing this with us, and we will continue our behind the scenes series this weekend with a brand new workspace of another torrent site admin.

Post from: TorrentFreak

July 30th, 2009 by admin

One of the problems with running a website or any Internet presence is the constant threat of malicious attacks. Almost everyone will recall the terrible mauling experienced by MediaDefender after their confidential emails leaked onto the Internet, and since then many anti-piracy groups and related companies have felt the wrath of hackers.

But of course, being hacked isn’t the sole preserve of these organizations, it can happen to file-sharing sites too. In November 2008 a hacker tried to gain control of Torrentz.com and at the beginning of June NowTorrents had its own problems.

Today we bring news of another sizable hack, this time affecting Italy’s most prominent BitTorrent site, TNT Village. A hacker targeted the 50,000 member site and made off with the site’s database.

The admin of TNT Village explains: “A son of a bitch was able to discover my password. With it in recent days he has removed the TNT database. I then proceeded to change my password but in the meantime he/they had taken some sensitive data to users, and yesterday they were made public.”

Indeed, a torrent of the stolen data has appeared on various BitTorrent indexes. The data contained within is largely in Italian but a source with an interest in security breaches told TorrentFreak that the archive contains very sensitive information.

The site’s database schema, the actual database with around 50,000 usernames, passwords and emails, a list of site donors and private messages have all been leaked.

The site has taken steps to limit the damage but concerned users should change their passwords immediately, at the very least.

Post from: TorrentFreak

July 30th, 2009 by admin

Last month the BitTorrent community was shaken up when GGF publicly announced that it would take over The Pirate Bay and turn it into a legal outfit. They said they would harvest computing resources from some of its users, money from others and pay off copyright holders and indeed some of the users with money from ISPs. It was an incredible plan.

GGF painted a bright future for the site and two weeks ago Wayne Rosso, ex-CEO of Grokster joined GGF in their ambitious project, hoping to close some deals with record labels and get investors excited at their plans.

However, Rosso has already quit his position, claiming GGF’s CEO Mr. Pandeya was not straightforward with him.

“We decided that we’re not going risk our reputation further,” Rosso told TorrentFreak. According to Rosso he and his partners never received the payments promised to them and Mr. Pandeya made several other promises he couldn’t keep either.

“The more time we spent with Mr. Pandeya, the less confident we were,” Rosso said, adding that he feels the funding required to close the deal is not going to be raised based on the current lack of workable plans.

Not all was bad though. The support and enthusiasm of at least one record label was something he had never seen before according to Rosso. Unfortunately, it now seems that this enthusiastic response was based entirely on false promises.

“I don’t think there’s going to be any money raised with GGF’s current (lack of) plans,” Rosso told TorrentFreak. Besides Rosso and his partners, the people who were supposed to finance the acquisition were also misinformed.

When confronted with the news, a Pirate Bay insider said they would give GGF a week to get insurance from the investors, otherwise the deal is off. Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told us that he doesn’t know what will happen to the Pirate Bay in the future, when the deal is off the table. Time will tell.

Post from: TorrentFreak

July 30th, 2009 by admin

Despite losing in court against the music and movie industries, The Pirate Bay continues to operate, a clearly unacceptable situation for the plaintiffs in the case. The verdict is subject to appeal and that could make the whole thing drag on for years yet.

Back in May the music industry plaintiffs - Universal, EMI, Sony and Warner - indicated they’d had enough and through their lawyer Peter Danowsky, applied to the court requesting it starts imposing additional fines on three of the defendants - Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi - for as long as they continue to infringe their copyrights. In addition the plaintiffs demanded that the Pirate Bay’s ISP ‘Black Internet’ stopped providing services to The Pirate Bay.

Now just a couple of months after the record labels handed in their request, it’s the turn of the movie and TV industry to join in.

Today a whole batch of companies including Columbia, Disney, NBC, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner are suing the same three individuals in Stockholm, demanding that the court stops the site from continuing to infringe their copyrights. In common with the music industry action, they also name The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth supplier, Black Internet AB.

Through their legal representative Monique Wadsted, the group named over 100 movies and TV shows they claim the site infringes copyright on, including Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy, The Simpsons, 24, X-Men Origins:Wolverine, Batman, Watchmen and Harry Potter.

“It’s another day in the whole soap opera of TPB,” Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak. “They’re suing us in Stockholm where none of us live.”

But the problems with the action don’t end there. After also incorrectly stating that the site is running on the Hypercube software, the movie companies seem to have a problem with their perception of who owns the site. The Pirate Bay hasn’t been owned by the three since 2006, when it was acquired by Seychelles-based company Reservella.

“They’re suing us over something which we don’t own,” Peter told us. “I think the most funny part of the whole suit is that they just write: ‘Reservella is a company run by Fredrik Neij - out of 40 pages of paper that’s all they have to say, and it’s so wrong. They have no paperwork to back it up even,” he told us.

Peter is of the belief that the music and movie industries are well aware that the site is being sold and simply want to make that as difficult as possible.

Post from: TorrentFreak

July 28th, 2009 by admin

Tornano gli incipit su ThrillerCafé: oggi, La fabbrica dei corpi, di Patricia Cornwell.

Davanti alla mia finestra ombre di cervi balenavano al limitare della scura boscaglia, mentre il sole faceva capolino dal confine della notte. Era il sedici ottobre. Intorno a me le tubature gemevano, e a una a una anche le altre stanze si illuminarono, mentre secche esplosioni da poligoni di tiro invisibili crivellavano l’alba. Ero andata a letto e mi ero alzata accompagnata da un sottofondo di spari.
E’ un rumore incessante, a Quantico, in Virginia, dove l’Accademia dell’FBI sorge come un’isola circondata dai marines. Ogni mese trascorrevo alcuni giorni nel piano di massima sicurezza, una zona dove nessuno poteva rintracciarmi se non ero io stessa a volerlo, né seguirmi dopo aver bevuto qualche birra di troppo in mensa.
A differenza degli spartani dormitori in cui venivano alloggiati i nuovi agenti e i membri della polizia, la mia suite era fornita di tv, cucina, telefono e bagno privato. E, benché fosse proibito fumare e tenere alcolici, immaginando che le spie e i testimoni sotto protezione normalmente segregati qui non fossero più ligi alle regole di quanto lo era la sottoscritta.
Mentre il caffé si scaldava nel forno a microonde, aprii la valigetta portadocumenti ed estrassi un dossier che mi aspettava dalla sera precedente. Se non gli avevo ancora dato un’occhiata dal momento del mio arrivo era perché non riuscivo più a costringere la mia mente a concentrarsi su materiale simile prima di addormentarmi. In questo senso, ero cambiata.

Related posts:

1. Kay Scarpetta, di Patricia Cornwell
2. Incipit - “L.A. Confidential”, di James Ellroy
3. “La cruna dell’ago”, di Ken Follett: incipit

July 28th, 2009 by admin

Il binomio arte-thriller, già apprezzato in Il tocco di Giotto o Il caso Raffaello, torna nel nuovo romanzo di Iain Pears, intitolato La pista Caravaggio. Protagonisti della storia ancora una volta Jonathan Argyll e Flavia di Stefano, impegnati in questo caso in un’indagine che riguarda un piccolo monastero di Roma e la notizia di un prossimo furto di un quadro attribuito a Caravaggio. Si tratta di una misteriosa tela in pessime condizioni e in via di restauro, che viene poi ignorata del tutto quando i ladri colpiscono. Scompare invece una piccola icona della Vergine, custodita in una modesta cappella a metà della navata e legata a un segreto che dura da secoli… Cosa si nasconde dietro il colpo? All’ex mercante d’arte e alla sua compagna il compito di fare chiarezza.

La pista Caravaggio, di Iain Pears: acquistalo su IBS!

Related posts:

1. “Il sesto colpo” battuto da James Patterson e Maxine Paetro
2. Il suggeritore - Donato Carrisi
3. Patterson, Sulle tracce di Mary

July 28th, 2009 by admin

Every day hundreds of thousands of clips are uploaded to YouTube, some of which use copyrighted music. Of course the major record labels argue that these illegal uploads are killing their profits as people buy less music when YouTube users add a track to a home made video.

Not everyone in the music business agrees with this assessment though. When the indie rock band Barcelona saw one of its latest tracks featured in a viral video with nearly a million views, they responded quite differently. They claim that the clip below actually boosted their album sales and concert visits.

So, instead of demanding that YouTube pull the video, the band posted a response to the ‘Kuroshio Sea’ video on the site, thanking their new found fans and the uploader who posted the original video.

“We’re so flattered to learn that it features one of our songs called Please Don’t Go,” Barcelona’s lead singer Brian Fennell says in the video response.

“We want to let you know that it’s been affirming in the last week to watch in the iTunes store a correlation with the sales of our record ‘Absolutes’, growing in the rock charts as a result of having the song placed in the video,” drummer Rhett Stonelake added.

Aside from the boost in record sales, the band says that they’ve also met some new fans who came to their concerts after seeing the video on YouTube. It is a great way of promoting music online, especially when it’s coupled to a great video.

Unfortunately for most artists, anti-piracy outfits such as the RIAA, BPI and IFPI are increasingly policing YouTube to get all copyrighted music taken off the site. One such artist to suffer recently is the unfortunate Calvin Harris, who clashed with the music industry lobby group BPI.

“IT’S MY FUCKING SONG YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARDS,” Harris wrote on Twitter when he found out that YouTube had removed a clip he uploaded himself, following a copyright complaint from the BPI.

“FUCK YOU ‘The BPI’ what have you ever done for anybody you useless shower of cunts,” he added. As if that wasn’t enough Harris labeled the BPI the “worst organization to ever walk the earth” and their online employees “massive retards.”

Like many other artists, Harris just wants his music to be heard, and he believes that putting a clip on YouTube might in fact introduce new people to his music. If people like what they hear, they might even buy his album or visit his gigs, much like what happened with Barcelona.

YouTube is free promotion for bands and artists, it has the potential to drive revenue instead of killing it. It is time for the major labels and anti-piracy outfits to listen to the artists for once, and perhaps ask them if they actually want to have their content removed or not.

Post from: TorrentFreak

July 28th, 2009 by admin

It seems increasingly likely that The Pirate Bay will be sold to Global Gaming Factory X and unless you’ve been on the moon - which maybe Fredrik Neij has - you won’t need reminding of thedetail.

Many have feared the sale would mean the death of half the world’s torrents, that BitTorrent would possibly come to a grinding halt. However, this is the Internet, the place where data flows at mindblowing speeds over vast areas, where the individual is empowered beyond anything previously imagined. A place where even the mighty Pirate Bay can be copied, cloned and replaced in an instant.

In a new move, right now every .torrent file downloaded from The Pirate Bay not only includes the announce URL of their own tracker (that will presumably be turned off after the sale), but also the announce URL of the newly launched OpenBitTorrent tracker.

When asked about the development, Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that they have always been willing to support open initiatives such as the OBT tracker, projects that make BitTorrent a little more redundant.

The addition of the new announce URL means that even if The Pirate Bay tracker goes down, all torrents downloaded from now on will continue to work by using the OpenBitTorrent tracker.

But of course that’s just a small part of the problem. A more pressing issue is preserving the archive of torrents that are already there on TPB - if the site gets sold and someone presses the wrong button they could be lost forever. Sure there are other fragmented places where some of them can be obtained, but no definitive archive.

But there will be shortly. Cliff Haerden, a web hosting provider from Belgium, contacted TorrentFreak with his video which shows a technique for making offline copies of all The Pirate Bay’s torrents - or indeed the torrents from any other accessible website. Cliff told TorrentFreak that after three night’s work he already has 730,000 of TPB’s torrents.

It’s inevitable that all of the torrents will turn up on BitTorrent at some point, then every BitTorrent user can have their own personal copy of The Pirate Bay archive.

Just don’t try to sell them for $7.8m, they aren’t worth that much without the domain name.

Post from: TorrentFreak