P2P: June 2005 Archives

nigella.jpgJust for fun I thought I'd upload Nigella's interview off NPR, which I found via her Wikipedia article. It's at points rather moving, and she gestures in a way that I find quite wrenching.

I had been reading up on her in part because I've been watching very early episodes of HIGNFY, and they seemed to take great delight in pillorying Nigel Lawson, her father, who was, or had just recently ended his tenure, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. I don't wonder that she would have turned out as conservative as she probably is. Or that her appearance on HIGNFY so many years later would have had the tenor it did. Though certainly it could well be the case that nothing had really anything to do with anything.

So yes, sure you could listen to the stream but this way you can keep the file - though you could as easily rip the thing with NetTransport, as I did. You'll probably have to register first, and then say hi to me, so I can make you a VIP.

Image from the BBC, found via my new favorite thing, the MSN image search.

This was really just the last straw:

The Supreme Court ruling is set to have a devastating effect on P2P networks. Though hobbyists may continue to write file-sharing software away from American jurisdiction, reputable investors are likely to steer clear of any commercial P2P operations for fear of legal repercussions there. The legitimate uses for P2P technology will suffer a severe setback and developers of any future technologies will have to consider possible illegitimate applications before unveiling innovative software or gadgets.

Those "hobbyists" are the ones who actually do most of the work of software authoring, whether for pay at their day jobs, or as contributors to Open Sauce Projects. To be honest I'm glad that corporations can no longer participate in the grubby business of bundling spyware into half-assed P2P apps. As critical as I can be of Open Sauce, when it comes to the eyepatch-jockey stuff, there's really no beating them. If you want the bleeding edge stuff, you're doing to find it in eMule and Azureus, not from Microsoft.

One of ISOHunt's taglines pithily sums up the reality of the situation: "Where did half the internet's bandwidth go?"

If people are moving to using crippleware services, that's up to them, but the overwhelming majority (let me say that again: overwhelming majority) of what is going on is still going on far beyond the ken of geriatrics. People who say otherwise are just plain lying and spreading FUD - or worse, don't even know they're lying.

There are times when you might think the Economist is simply trying its best to steer a moderate course through extremity; but sometimes they are just cluelessly, and comically, out of touch. And they had to annoy me with that fucking hair.

One word, 3 letters: Arr.

Calls itself, and tags its files, as CTV - though the url is http://centraltracker.org/. Importantly, it has The Inside, so yay. If you need me to explain what Azureus is, or what a plugin is, what the RSS plugin is, or what RSS is - then god help you, I'll bash your fucking skull in. The feed url is http://centraltracker.org/rss/index.php.

Obviously The Inside has made me much more receptive to my rewatching of Wonderfalls.

My planned setup is to have a gateway, probably the old computer, with a large disk added on. This gateway would run all the things you'd expect, the P2P apps, probably Skype if I can be bothered, and it would always be on. Which is fun, except I don't want to have to be physically in front of it to manage it, since that would sort of defeat the purpose of using it as a file server for my media etc.

Hence the wonder that is Azureus' Swing Web Interface, a remarkably easy to install plugin, where I can just go to the gateway address, ie: 192.168.0.1 and append :blah for the relevant port. Most important is the fact that now the clipboard monitoring works, when it didn't before, which is a godsend. And with the RSS plugin, a number of things don't even need prompting. Unfortunately I've yet to bother to find a suitable TV site that links torrents in their feed. The web interface doesn't seem to allow you to configure the RSS plugin, but that's not strictly necessary.

eMule's web interface has also leapt forward, in the sense that you can use the simple web interface, with gzip enabled, and the page loads with incredible prompt. Everything is much streamlined, so adding links etc. is much more fun. But eMule has been playing a smaller role than it had done.

So other than swapping a few disks and the graphics card, everything should work out to be quite ideal. Hopefully my notebook is spanked up from lying in a box. Though at some point I might just spring for the Dell, or an Intel powered iBook (yes, the reality distortion field's effects are slow to fade this time).

Oh, and dyndns.org's official client is really good, and remarkably easy - even the tray icon "is *so* fetch". Thank goodnes I no longer have to pirate the older one I was using. Whatever it is, it just works now, so hoorah.

Now what's the chances that SBC (or whoever) will be offering 25 mbits by the time I get there? Anyone?

Eyepatch Jockeys

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There's no point being coy about it - if you're a fan of "extended trial periods", this is definitely a place you'd enjoy for all of the latest. You have to register, but that's harmless, and it's better than the search engines that cover these things. Basically very good for up to date stuff. And pretty reliable as well. Though obviously there are things that you can't beat P2P for. These guys very conscientiously deal mostly with direct downloads, from what I can tell. I think they used to be at a slightly different url, but then these things are always moving.





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About this Archive

This page is a archive of entries in the P2P category from June 2005.

P2P: May 2005 is the previous archive.

P2P: December 2005 is the next archive.

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