Why I love Wired Magazine: How to Pirate like a Pirate

Pirate Like a Pirate
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September 19th may be Talk Like a Pirate Day, but why just talk the talk when you can walk the walk? And why restrict yourself to one day a year? Here's how to plunder the high seas of the internet for some priceless booty. Just be careful, lest the scurvy dogs (aka The Man) catch ye and have ye walkin' the plank.
Contents[hide]
1 Download Torrents
2 Hit the Blogs
3 Convert the Audio
4 Covert the Video
5 Mod Your Console
6 Hoard Your Booty
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Download Torrents
The hub of all things pirate on the internet is The Pirate Bay. The Swedish torrent site hosts links to files from all over the world, so whether you're looking for anime or games, death metal or Stax soul, Bollywood or Hollywood, it should be your first stop. Just remember -- the more mainstream it is, the better chance you'll get it quickly. Esoteric titles will take some digging. Mininova.com is a good second stop.
You'll need a fast connection and a proper client. Mac users should try Transmission. Everyone else should try µTorrent or the official BitTorrent client.
New to BitTorrent? Here's a How-To.
Hit the Blogs
If it's music ye seek, there are heaps of MP3 blogs out there. They range from barely legal sites that host a couple of tracks for a short period of time to full-blown dens of sin that point to full album downloads -- often before the albums are officially released.
To find individual tracks, start with the MP3 search service Hype Machine.
To find a full album, try searching for the artist and the album title plus the term "blogspot." Google's free blog hosting service famously takes a hands-off approach to policing content, so the vast majority of MP3 blogs are hosted there. Again, the newer content is easier to find, but you'll often uncover ancient gems ripped from rare vinyl, too.
Once you find a good MP3 blog, check out their blogroll or the list of their favorite sites. It's usually a list running down the right side of the page. These guys link to each other often, so click around.
Convert the Audio
Sometimes on BitTorrent, you'll encounter audio ripped as FLAC or SHN. These are lossless audio formats and they preserve the full audio fidelity of the orginal CDs. But they won't play on your iPod, so you'll have to convert them.
If you're on a Mac, there's an app called Max that can rip FLAC/SHN straight to MP3. If you're running Windows, you can use the free tools like Magic Jelly Bean SHN Shortener or the official Flac tools (which will also work on Mac and Linux) to convert your files. Some tools will only convert your FLAC/SHN files to WAV audio, which is still CD quality. You can easily dump those into iTunes and convert them to MP3s.
Covert the Video
Download a few torrents of movies and you'll quickly find your self navigating a strange swamp of AVI, MOV and WMV files. If you want to watch the movies on your computer, grab VLC. It's a free software player than can handle just about any file format.
Many modern DVD players can also play just about any format you throw at them, so try burning a disc loaded with AVIs or MOVs -- you may not need to convert anything.
Movies that show up wrapped in VIDEO_TS folders won't need any conversion. Those are straight DVD rips -- just burn and watch!
Otherwise, AVIs and WMVs can be converted using the freeware program Avi2DVD for Windows. Mac users can try ffmpegX which can turn your AVI files into MPEG files -- the standard video format for DVDs.
If you want to put everything on your iPod, iPhone, PSP or other device, your best bet is Handbrake. It's a free program that works on all platforms, and it will convert, resize and compress your video to play on whatever device you carry in your pocket.
Mod Your Console
Thoes games you find in the torrent sites won't play in your standard issue console. You'll need to mod your Xbox or PlayStation to unlock that capability. This usually involves the installation of a "mod chip," and requires somebody with access to the illicit chip, a soldering gun and a whole lot of know-how. Enterprising kids in your area are willing to offer their services for a small fee (check craigslist).
Some consoles, most notably the Xbox, can be "soft-modded," which lets you customize the box to run all sorts of software without having to crack open the case. A great resource for both methods is i-Hacked. Just remember to kiss your warranty goodbye.

Hoard Your Booty
A few weeks in, you'll have heaps of booty. You'll need a large and seaworthy vessel to store all of that digital content, so pick up an external hard drive or a big, nasty NAS -- a network attached storage device.
Wired's Gadget Lab recommends the Sentry Safe QA0005, a fireproof and waterproof hard disk enclosure that is seemingly impervious to damage.
Wired also recommends the Drobo, a Linux-powered virtualized storage device (read: fail safe) that, based on current drive size, is expandable to up to 8 terabytes. It also wins with its easy set-up, hot-swappable drives and a sleek design.