Cool sports for hot Moscow summers

When it’s hot in the city, not everybody wants to revel in the sunshine.

But help is at hand for those melting in the heat, with winter sports and watery activities available to help cool down in the sweltering summer.

And the chilled-out can brush up their sporting skills along the way, tackling anything from wind-surfing to curling at low temperatures.

The easiest way to shake off the sweats is probably to dive into one of the outdoor swimming areas authorized by City Hall.

But there are more adventurous ways of taking to the water.

Katerina Ryabova took up wind-surfing on a trip to Egypt, and was delighted to be able to continue her hobby at Strogino, to the north-west of the city.

The open water is popular with windsurfers and wakeboarders, even if a short season from June to September limits how much action can be enjoyed.

“I go to a small station, there is bigger one too – it has more equipment but the rent is more expensive there,” Katerina told the Moscow News.

And weather conditions are also not always favorable, she added, so surfers should better check the wind before sailing off.

“You can only go there if there’s enough wind (not less than 15 knots or 8 m/sec) becauseotherwise it’s useless,” she added.

But newcomers beware – windsurfing can be an addictive hobby. Having already checked out the Red Sea Katerina recently took a trip to Venezuela to explore new beaches.

Although the last bits of snow melted down in Moscow months ago, winter sports lovers don’t need to pack away their ski-wear.

“The feeling is cool by itself when it’s summer and you’re walking with all that winter gear and can’t really believe you’ll put it on in a minute,” Darya said about her visit to Snezh.com, an all year round centre for winter sports

“And when you get there – you just bundle up happily because it’s just so cold there!,” she told the Moscow News.

Darya is a keen snowboarder, but skiers will also be very welcome to the always wintery site.

However, experienced downhillers might find the experience a poor imitation of a real slope.

“You spend 15 minutes on a lift and going downhill takes just 1 minute,” Darya complained, though she added that a short slope was ideal for some

“I think beginners and free-stylers [snowboarders and skiers] should enjoy it,” she said.

Meanwhile, with the website contrasting a street temperature in the high 20s with an indoor -5C, it is at least reliably cold.

nezh.com also has facilities for ice-skaters and hockey players, although its not the only option for would-be Plushchenkos and Ovechkins.

There are central options in Gorky Park and on top of the Yevropeisky mall – where last year’s heat wave saw famed figure skater Ilya Averbukh putting his young hopefuls through their paces.

Meanwhile, if your shopaholic friends get you hot under the collar, the

MEGA malls at Belaya Dacha, Tyoply Stan and Khimki also have ice rinks operating even in the hottest weResembling housework on ice, and a quirky Winter Olympic hit, curling has a cult following in Moscow despite trailing behind hockey and figure skating in terms of coverage.

And since 2002, devotees of stone and broom have had their own venue in Moscow.

All equipment will be available at the location and instructors will be ready to give advice on the best way of sliding down the icy “sheet” to pushing the “stones” towards the “house” at the other end of the track.

And “sweepers” will be shown the proper way of using their “curling brooms” to get the highest scores for their team.

The temperature inside the “Planeta Lda” (Ice planet) club is kept between +5 - +7 degrees, according to the club’s website – making curling one of the coolest sports in town.ather.

Internet Pirates Find 'Bulletproof' Havens For Illegal File Sharing

Internet pirates are moving away from safe havens such as Sweden to new territories that include China and Ukraine, as they try to avoid prosecution for illegal file sharing, according to experts.
For several years, piracy groups that run services allowing music, video and software to be illegally shared online have been using legal loopholes across a wide range of countries as a way of escaping prosecution for copyright infringement.In the last year there has been a significant shift, say piracy experts, as the groups have worked to stay beyond the reach of western law enforcement.The change is rooted in the evolution of "bulletproof hosting", or website provision by companies that make a virtue of being impervious to legal threats and blocks. Not all bulletproof services are linked to illegal activities, but they are popular among criminal groups, spammers and file-sharing services.Rob Holmes, of the Texas law firm IP Cybercrime, which has worked to close down several bulletproof operations, said successful hosts were now starting to get stronger. "Some of the more popular ones have become more strongholds than they were previously," he said. "It's an industry and it always will be. When you think about it, bulletproof hosting is just a data version of money laundering."Late last year a Swedish court found four men guilty of breaking copyright law through their links to the Pirate Bay website, one of the internet's most notorious gateways for pirated films and television shows.That decision prompted many piracy services to seek jurisdictions beyond the reach of western law. Pirate Bay moved its web servers to Ukraine, while another popular file-sharing service, Demonoid, which started in Serbia, also relocated."Before going completely dark in October [2009], Demonoid physically moved their servers to Ukraine, and remotely controlled them," said John Robinson, of BigChampagne, a media tracking service based in Los Angeles. "Ukrainian communications law, as they paraphrase it, says that providers are not responsible for what their customers do. Therefore, they feel no need to speak about or defend what they do."Not every controversial service has fled beyond traditional jurisdictions, however. Some problematic hosts still exist in the US, such as the infamous host McColo, which was based in San Jose, California, and remained in operation until last year.Pirate Bay, after its brief excursion to Ukraine, is now run out of a Dutch data centre called CyberBunker, which is based in an old nuclear facility of the 1950s, about 120 miles south-west of Amsterdam.Research published last year showed that most bulletproof hosts are located in China, where criminals are able to take advantage of low costs and legal loopholes to avoid prosecution.Despite officials in Beijing talking in tough terms about computer crime – hacking potentially carries a death sentence in China – the authorities rarely co-operate with other countries to take action against hi-tech criminals. As a result, just a handful of firms in China are responsible for hosting thousands of criminal enterprises online.A study of online crime conducted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in the US showed that more than 22,000 websites which sent pharmaceutical spam were hosted by six bulletproof servers in China.Richard Cox of Spamhaus, a British organisation that watches spammers and monitors bulletproof hosts, said it was almost impossible to stop expansion of such services. "At the moment there are a number of individuals who are setting up bulletproof hosting sites in China," he said. "No matter how big a part of the Chinese network we block, the administrators there just do not care."Not every controversial service has fled beyond traditional jurisdictions, however. Some problematic hosts still exist in the US, such as – the infamous host McColo, which was based in San Jose, California, and remained in operation until last year.But the long-term impact of offshore hosting is becoming more problematic as investigators worldwide try to cut the links between criminal groups and protected internet servers.One notorious gang of hackers, known as the Russian Business Network, after disappearing for two years amid scrutiny from the authorities in Moscow, has also reportedly returned to action. The group started as a bulletproof host in St Petersburg but had connections to a wide range of criminal activities online. Widely known in the computer security community, it is being investigated by the FBI. The Russian authorities, meanwhile, have been keen to foster greater communication to stop the spread of criminal activity online.Some are hopeful that greater co-operation between international governments will help prevent the development of new piracy havens, but others suggest that it is unlikely that a complete block on such activities will ever be possible."There will always be a place to run to," said Rob Holmes, of IP Cybercrime. "Each time a law passes, or a new country creates some kind of stumbling block for them, they'll always find another place to do this. It goes back to the speakeasies in the 1920s – when one place got busted, they would just congregate in another place."