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bittorrent

Comcast Makes Me Gag

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The Electronic Frontier Foundation (or EFF) has found Comcast guilty of traffic shaping. This is a practice where Comcast intentionally slows down your internet connection. The program they used to detect this shaping is an open-source application called WireShark. Apparently, Comcast feels that they need to interrupt some of their customer’s connections a bit if they think the customer may be using lets say BitTorrent to download perfectly legal Linux Distros. Or, maybe the customer is like me and sends tons of data up and down… legally and legitimately… in the course of business.

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A Torrent of Comcast BitTorrent Conspiracies

Stephanie (AKA Script) is also having issues with Comcast:

In reference to your Ustream video about Comcast. I too am an unfortunate Comcast subscriber. I was wondering are you using Comcast Home or Business service? The reason I am asking is that I have a feeling that those of us who use home service are going to be pretty much forced to buy the business service in order to maintain the downloading speeds that we are use to. It’s just a hunch but I have noticed an increasingly high number of Comcast business TV ads lately with the promise of 12Mbps download speed. I am curious about your take on this. Because I think the motivation behind flagging certain users is driven by some monetary gain not because they want to necessarily care about the spread of torrents.

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BitTorrent for Windows Media Center is Coming!

There’s no code to look at right now, but I’m surprised this news hasn’t been picked up anywhere (that I can see)? The author says that there’s currently no download available, but it’s still an amazing application to look forward to – especially if it beats Ted. Here’s some of the features the dev is planning, per the Aufero blog:

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MoveDigital is Moving Forward

You’ve probably seen the news – Senator Edwards is using BitTorrent to distribute video now! Like Dave says, it’s a big deal. I didn’t realize that Gary Lerhaupt had the Senator lined up when he emailed me about his new MoveDigital service last night. Not sure if the following points are available anywhere else, but… here are seven things you can do with MoveDigital (as relayed by Gary himself):

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Travis Kalanick on File Sharing with RedSwoosh

There’s no question that sharing audio and video files consumes massive amounts of bandwidth, both for downloading and uploading of files. BitTorrent remains the most popular way to share files among peers, but it’s not without flaws. The upload system is either on or off, you can meter bandwidth, but as long as there’s a request the stream of data keeps flowing no matter what else your computer is currently doing. RedSwoosh offers a compelling alternative to BitTorrent, with a more intelligent system for sharing. When you click on a “swooshed” link you’re prompted to download the RedSwoosh client, which offers smart download management to make sure file transfers aren’t getting in the way of other activities like Skype calls or other network intensive activities. Chris recently spoke with Travis Kalanick from RedSwoosh about how their technology works, why it’s a more efficient system for delivering files than other options and how RedSwoosh benefits both content distribution systems and the people who download.

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Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner

Opera is one of those Web browsers that you’ve just gotta try for yourself. For the longest while, it was relegated to the bottom of the pile for most desktop software fanatics – with ample Web browsing alternatives to be found in either Mozilla or plain ol’ Internet Explorer. Then Firefox took the world by storm, Maxthon matured, and Opera decided to change its business model (giving away its desktop browser without advertisements built-in). Today, Opera announced and released v9.0 of their desktop client – and they decided to do it in Microsoft’s own backyard. Seattle was awfully convenient for me, too! I arrived just in time to see Opera’s CEO Jon von Tetzchner arrive by boat. Must’ve taken him months to get here in that thing. If you’re looking for a Web standards-compliant browser that ships with everything (including a BitTorrent utility and the kitchen sink), give the completely free Opera a swing. Listen to Jon’s own words:

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Cease and Desist

It seems that both Jake and I are now officially members of the prestigious “Cease and Desist Letter” club. We are not saddened by this turn of events, as it was wholly expected – and neither of us had ever received a “Cease and Desist Letter” before. We would much rather have received a printed form to print out and hang on our walls for posterity, but the email from Microsoft to remove the Windows Vista BitTorrent tracker will have to suffice. My question is: does the Windows User community care, either way? Should we have even bothered to do it in the first place?

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Windows Vista BitTorrent Tracker

Okay, we’ve done it: VistaTorrent.com. I’ve set this up with Jake Ludington, so that (a) people can use BitTorrent to download Windows Vista Beta 2, as they’re likely using BitTorrent to do it anyway; (b) people will now have an official MD5 hash to check against any Windows Vista (Beta 2) ISO files they might download elsewhere; (c) we can help Microsoft, based on earlier reports from them and subsequent complaints from users. We’re only doing this to help, knowing that nobody wants to wait 4 weeks for a DVD to arrive when the ISO could be downloaded so much quicker through peer-to-peer networks (with a MANDATORY MD5 CHECKSUM comparison). If you send anybody anywhere, it’s all on VistaTorrent.com. This is not a crack, this is not a hack, this is not software piracy – it’s unofficial mirroring with official validation.

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