Chris Pirillo » bittorrent

Comcast Makes Me Gag

Chris — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 21:25:44 +0000

Comcast Makes Me Gag is a post from Chris Pirillo

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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.

This is kinda sad. It’s kinda scary. It’s kinda sickening. Well… it makes me…

Yeah. It’s “Comcastic”.

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A Torrent of Comcast BitTorrent Conspiracies

Chris — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:04:30 +0000

A Torrent of Comcast BitTorrent Conspiracies is a post from Chris Pirillo

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.

Well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend running a business on any kind of connection that Comcast provides!!! No way. I recently “upgraded” my residential plan to business merely because I could attain a marginally better upload rate. Comcast didn’t force me to make that decision.

However, they’re still mistreating many their customers.

I download torrents from legitimate sites especially a lot of FLAC’s and I also distribute FLAC’s from myself and other indie artist who allow their music to be shared. This indiscriminate profiling of users based on a filetype or protocol they use, is tantamount to racial profiling (something I know a bit about) and it really angers me. Anyway I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the possibility that Comcast might be doing this for monetary gain.

Oh, but… Comcast hasn’t admitted to any wrongdoing on their part. It’s their service, and they can do with it what they wish – but when they don’t tell customers what’s going on, we get a little pissy.

Because of politics and payoffs, you’re stuck with what you’ve got. This is not a system ruled by free enterprise. It’s all about control – and Comcast is pushing a drug that you simply cannot shake. They’re getting to be the only dealer in town. Qwest is just as bad around here; I’d move to FIOS in a heartbeat, but because of the same anti-competitive, anti-consumer regulations… I can’t get Verizon’s service in my area.

BitTorrent for Windows Media Center is Coming!

Chris — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 08:38:06 +0000

BitTorrent for Windows Media Center is Coming! is a post from Chris Pirillo

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:

Aufero uses about fifty sources for its information gathering, a lot of it is irrelevant but over time it gathers more relevant information about present and future. For instance it definitely is worth scheduling the download of “Magnum P.I. ‘trailer’” (scheduled for release sometime in ‘07) already today.
Notification of relevant events through mail when you are not in front of your TV.
Automatic download of videos on your Wish List as Torrents becomes available (give it some hours to monitor activity after something is released)
Aufero is written completely from scratch with the sole purpose of being a Vista Media Center application.
Seemlessly play non-WMV (eg. XviD etc) on XBox360 using Aufero’s media library (requires TVersity)

Dude. This sounds awesome. Right now, my scheduled torrenting is somewhat of a kludge. I really should get my ol’ Media Center set up again, eh? Maybe I’ll try that beta of Windows Home Server and see if that works well enough…

MoveDigital is Moving Forward

Chris — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:08:48 +0000

MoveDigital is Moving Forward is a post from Chris Pirillo

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):

Sign in with your Prodigem account or create a new account (all Prodigem users get a free year of service).
Upload your files to be served as direct downloads.
Convert your video and audio to mobile phone format (3GP) so that they can be streamed directly from your MoveDigital mobile page.
Create torrents of all your stuff.
Use the rectangular Web widget (the rectangle to the left of each file you upload) to easily reblog your links. The HTML for the embed can be found from the Share button.
Once you you have your widget on your blog, people can click the Share button to directly add bandwidth into your account to help you out (each 5GB they add, adds 1 to their own account) – aka social bandwidth sharing.
Enjoy the fact that bandwidth on our service acts like prepaid cell phone minutes with unlimited rollover. That is, it doesn’t recycle at the end of the month and it only disappears when you use it. Moreover, for direct downloads we only charge you for bandwidth for files which are completely transferred. If someone stops half way through, no bandwidth is considered used (though torrent and mobile hosting are done per byte).

Travis Kalanick on File Sharing with RedSwoosh

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 22:11:28 +0000

Travis Kalanick on File Sharing with RedSwoosh is a post from Chris Pirillo

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.

Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner

Chris — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 01:04:28 +0000

Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner is a post from Chris Pirillo

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:

Cease and Desist

Chris — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 23:07:43 +0000

Cease and Desist is a post from Chris Pirillo

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?

Windows Vista BitTorrent Tracker

Chris — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 23:46:52 +0000

Windows Vista BitTorrent Tracker is a post from Chris Pirillo

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.

We are fully prepared to kill the seeded torrent upon request, but would appeal to Microsoft’s better senses – if Microsoft isn’t going to do it themselves, isn’t it better that someone trusted is doing it for them?!

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

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chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

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