MacBook Air hands on #1, originally uploaded by Dan_H.

The new MacBook Air, announced at the 2008 MacWorld keynote last Tuesday the fifteenth, is, in short, pretty awesome (and really pretty).

I’ll now go over a few things I deem more important and relevant (especially with respect to my white MacBook) than other things about this. I’m not going to talk in detail about the illuminated keyboard, for example, because even though it’s really cool (and I’ve always wanted a keyboard like that), it doesn’t “make or break” the Air. If you want to know more, though, I recommend and encourage you to check out John Gruber’s fairly thorough and decent review.

So without further ado, here are its dimensions:

• Height: 0.16-0.76 inch (0.4-1.94 cm)
• Width: 12.8 inches (32.5 cm)
• Depth: 8.94 inches (22.7 cm)
• Weight: 3.0 pounds (1.36 kg)

This is already pretty impressive. My white MacBook weighs five pounds, so a decrease to only three is actually really good. Mine is also one inch thick (”thin”), but the new Air is only .76 inch at its thinnest.

As for the screen, it’s 13.3″ widescreen just like all white or black MacBooks. I find this is a really good size for a portable. It’s enough to handle everything you need (especially with Exposé), and it’s not oversized by any means.

With the design of the Air, Apple decided to save some space with some fairly wise decisions. There is no DVD or CD drive, and there is only one USB port. (There is also no Firewire port, but I’ve never had to use the one on my MacBook.) As an alternative to a built-in DVD drive, Apple now offers a slim USB SuperDrive (DVD writer) as well as an easy way to map a DVD drive on another computer (an iMac, for example) as a bootable network drive. The latter of the two, however, is not really a viable option for watching DVDs, since wireless now is not that fast. I would opt for carrying around a USB SuperDrive. It’s not that big, and it’s not like I actually use my MacBook’s DVD drive most of the time anyway. In any case, I find that, overall, the space-saving design here is great.

The MacBook Air is cool, no doubt.

The real question lies, for me, with whether or not I want to deal with a little extra hassle—limited ports and a loose SuperDrive to carry around when I think I might need it (which, I admit, is not very much of the time). For now, I think I find my white 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook sufficient and practical. The built-in ports and DVD drive are almost always fine; I never really have to worry in any way about them. Sure, the standard MacBook is not as light and thin as the new Air, but it’s already pretty thin (one inch!) and not heavy at all. So, for now, I think I’ll stick with the MacBook where I’ve already put my money. In the future though, the new Air is definitely an option (a really cool one), especially if its price drops, which I’m pretty sure it will.

In my previous article here, I discussed how The Pirate Bay (TFP) was given IFPI.com (for their own purposes), which was formerly under the control of the actual IFPI. Last Tuesday, October 23, OiNK (formerly OiNK.me.uk) was shut down by the IFPI and the BPI, in association with the Dutch police who seized the servers in the Netherlands.

OiNK.cd was a private invite-only torrent tracker with strict torrent uploading rules, especially for music. For example, music was generally compressed as MP3 or FLAC, albums needed to include tracklists, had to have a minimum of 192kbps as bitrate (with the exception of V2/APS LAME encodes), and could not be transcodes. The V0 LAME encode was encouraged. The result was an extensive very organized, easily searchable library of music torrents. Granted, this was not the best source of music for every type of music. For Japanese and other East Asian music, there are sources that filled in the gaps that OiNK left, but the torrents of those categories that were on OiNK (more than other similarly broad trackers) were well-seeded. Likewise, for trance, OiNK was certainly not the best place for the latest releases. However, it still offered something close to a musical paradise.

The owner of the site (who also goes by OiNK) was arrested, although now he is out on bail. OiNK.cd, for most of the past week, was “replaced with a ‘93-webdesignish advertisement” (quoted from enjoys.it). The domain’s nameservers have since been changed to point to those of TPB. Here’s what it looks like as of this writing:

OiNK himself has been arguing that OiNK.cd only provided a way of accessing what people were sharing on their personal computers, in the same way that Google indexes a vast collection of arguably objectionable material. The online Daily Telegraph quotes OiNK regarding the issue,

“As far as I am aware no-one in Britain has ever been taken to court for running a website like mine. My site is no different to something like Google.

“If Google directed someone to a site they can illegally download music they are doing the same as what I have been accused of. I am not making any Oink users break the law. People don’t pay to use the site.”

The replacement of the prior notice on the website by the waffles and relevant link correspond with OiNK’s philosophy. “These are the waffles that taste really good according to google.” This link goes to a search engine results page, which, as the top result (at least right now) links to a blog post by one of the most prominent people involved with TPB that links to a lot of torrent trackers. OiNK shows that, even though his tracker is down, the page can still link to a Google page linking to dozens of trackers, making a lot of downloadable content more easily accessible.

As reported by TorrentFreak, people, including The Pirate Parties of the UK and the Netherlands, have condemned the IFPI’s actions in taking down OiNK as retaliatory since TPB is currently holding IFPI.com:

The British and Dutch Pirate Parties have issued a joint statement condemning the actions as retaliatory, and questioning the ethics of choreographing it, and letting representatives of the victims participate in the investigation. How many times do they let the father of a murder victim work on the investigation of the Murder?

They also condemn the police forces for allowing the presumption of innocence to be discarded, in that the domain of the website, has been effectively hijacked, and replaced by a page insinuating guilt on the part of the site owner. The ‘Presumption of Innocence’, better known as “innocent until proven guilty” is a cornerstone of law both in the Netherlands and UK. Surely, if anyone should have put a temporary website under the Oink domain, then it should have been the Cleveland police, or the Dutch police, not the record label owners union. I think this condemnation and allegation is not without logic and reason.

It’s a shame that such a thing could happen. I do not mean to say this in blatant support of “piracy” as defined by the oligarchical music corporations, but the need for the industry and politicians to come to their senses about culture and their broken distribution model remains increasingly apparent. An interesting rant that I haven’t even completed reading at this point discusses this issue extensively.

Mainstream news about this, including the IFPI’s very own press release, include a bunch of factually incorrect information about OiNK and its shutdown (although there are some truths and half-truths), so be careful.

There are a lot of interesting things going on regarding this pretty major event. Its effects are actually extremely broad, and most have yet to be seen. Stay tuned.

So the UK-based International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) recently forgot to renew their domain name ifpi.com as early as March. This is the result.

Basically, a domain squatter and admirer of The Pirate Bay (TPB), one of the popular BitTorrent indices that arose out of the ashes of the late Suprnova, snatched the domain soon after it expired under the IFPI and donated it to TPB. They’re now proceeding to create, with the domain, their own site promoting an “International Federation of Pirates Interests.” It’s pretty ironic that one of IFPI’s most infamous enemies now has control of one of their domain names (well, it’s not theirs anymore!).

An Ars Technica article reports that the IFPI is now trying to claim the domain back through the World Intellectual Property Organization and ICANN. It looks like TPB might not win this one, but they’re trying to, in any case, using the argument that it has no commercial interests and that it means not to confuse people actually looking for the “real” IFPI site.

Funny! But seriously, best of luck to those in support of free culture!