Bridging Torrent and RSS

PEP source code by NoInfo · 2005-09-21 02:19 · Score: 4, Informative

PEP is less than 400 lines of PHP. Here's the source code for the curious:
http://prodigem.com/code/pep/pep.txt

(from the PEP home page)

--
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Re:PEP source code by B5_geek · 2005-09-21 02:49 · Score: 1

Thank-you very much for the link to the source code. I am not a coder, the closest I get are simple bash scripts to automate stuff on my servers.

2 things that I noticed while looking at that file;

(1) how awesome GPL really is. Sprinkled throughout are snippets of code that was borowed from other sources (with links back to original docs).

(b) Why do differenct programming languages use different codes to "comment-out" areas?

It wasn't untill 6 months ago that I found out REM doesn't work anymore!!

So we have:
# for bash scripts
/ for HTML
REM for basic

Can't we all just get along and WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
=)

--
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Re:PEP source code by thedustbustr · 2005-09-21 02:55 · Score: 1

Can we get this on the slashdot front page? Article links get cached through bittorrent, and with the slashdot effect, we will be downloading the files lightning fast and freenet-style latency won't even be a problem with a custom tracker specialized for serving small files. Of course, it doesn't work when nobody reads the articles anyway.. :)

--
This sig is false.
Re:PEP source code by tolan-b · 2005-09-21 03:01 · Score: 2, Informative

Slight correction:

# : For Bash, PHP and many others

// : For most languages with C like syntaxes (Including PHP as that's the example we have here)

/* something */ : Ditto

 : HTML
Re:PEP source code by pmjordan · 2005-09-21 03:04 · Score: 3, Informative

Sorry to be pedantic, but the comment syntax for HTML is actually , as it is in XML, and also SGML, since that is the 'big daddy' of both markup languages. SGML and HTML actually have more than just that, but:

The Wikipedia Article on comments gives you a list of the comment syntax of quite a few programming (and markup) languages, so I won't make an inferior attempt at doing so here.

~phil
Re:PEP source code by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 03:36 · Score: 1, Informative

# for bash scripts

# for almost every interpreted language on UNIX. You have to ignore the first # because of the shebang, so it's just as easy to ignore it on every line.
Re:PEP source code by PedroKiefer · 2005-09-21 06:11 · Score: 1

C comment syntax is `/* comment */`, but most compilers accept the C++ comment style which is `// comment`
Re:PEP source code by mlyle · 2005-09-21 08:54 · Score: 1

// is now a blessed part of C thanks to C99.
Re:PEP source code by Thuktun · 2005-09-21 09:11 · Score: 1

 : HTML

To be pedantic, SGML and XML.
Re:PEP source code by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 12:54 · Score: 0

Oh man! Is there a Ruby On Rails version? Because then it would the greatest piece of code ever, because it would be a Ruby on Rails app!
Re:PEP source code by tolan-b · 2005-09-26 00:14 · Score: 1

And HTML :)
Re:PEP source code by Thuktun · 2005-09-26 11:45 · Score: 1

HTML is an application of SGML. XHTML is an application of XML, which is basically a more convenient subset of SGML.

anybody... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 02:20 · Score: 5, Funny

have a torrent for this?

seeds please.

Video? by Saiyine · 2005-09-21 02:25 · Score: 1

found in the del.icio.us popular video feed

I can't see any videos there, should be any? It's just a compilation of popular del.icio.us links, just like Oishii but built internally.

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So, for us who can't code by RealisticCanadian · 2005-09-21 02:26 · Score: 3, Funny

Am I correct in believing we will soon have an even greater wealth of torrents readily available to the users of the World?

If so, three words for the *AA's: Yer Fucked. Cope.

:^D

--
A couple fans told me that my last journal entry was mint; give it a shot. Hope you like.

Hmm... by FlyByPC · 2005-09-21 02:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

Automatically-downloaded RSS, distributed over the Net;

Automatically-initiated Bittorrent downloads;

...Is it just me, or with the addition of a few local scripts, does this sound like a virus-writer's favorite fantasy? They need to make sure there are some very good safeguards on this!

Then again, with Genetic Algorithms, perhaps this is the next missing ingredient for cybersentient life...

--
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.

Re:Hmm... by glesga_kiss · 2005-09-21 02:44 · Score: 4, Informative

This was done like a year ago and there have been no issues so far. Remember, most folk will be downloading non-execuatable media, and any binaries will not be automatically executed on download. Downloading pirate binaries has always been "at your own risk". Really, this is no more dangerous than the same number of users manually clicking the link. Neither way is less vunerable WRT viruses.
Azureus and other BT clients already have RSS readers, using Regex's to match media in the RSS xml. This rules for TV series that are currently airing, it's great to return home to two or three new episodes each day. Many BT sites have RSS feeds, however the only one that got it right was btefnet, who had the inteligence not to post the same media twice. Most other sites have moron users who will post a 200 meg version of the file, followed by a 50 real media rip that no one wants but wastes our bandwidth because we get it anyway!! Throw in ratio sites, users dropping in 4 gig "season 1 dvd rips" and you can see why I stopped using it in the end. We just need a BT site that "gets it". Answers on a postcard please...
Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 02:51 · Score: 1, Informative

They're out there, but much less high profile than btefnet.
Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 03:00 · Score: 0

Did you just string together a few clever-sounding words in an attempt to make yourself sound smarter than you really are? It worked, I suppose, you are at 5, Insightful right now.

Automatically-downloaded RSS, distributed over the Net;

Yes, that's the way RSS works. It's downloaded on a schedule. Over the Internet. Nothing new there. Downloading on a schedule isn't a sin, it's just data, not some magical program that auto-executes.

Automatically-initiated Bittorrent downloads;

This bit is pure delusion, because this tool does no such thing. Even if it did, the protocol by which you download something isn't terribly important, it's still just data.

...Is it just me, or with the addition of a few local scripts, does this sound like a virus-writer's favorite fantasy?

Fantasy being the operative word. "With the addition of a few local scripts" - obviously, because simply downloading data files is hardly likely to result in anything worse than a full partition.

Newsflash: combine anything with "a few local scripts" and it can be "a virus-writer's favorite fantasy". The few local scripts is the problem, not the fact that you can choose to download something on a scheduled basis.

They need to make sure there are some very good safeguards on this!

Like what? A big notice saying "WARNING! IF YOU HAVE ALREADY DOWNLOADED AND RUN SCRIPTS FROM A VIRUS-WRITER, THEN THOSE SCRIPTS MAY BE ABLE TO DO SOMETHING WITH THE DATA YOU DOWNLOAD!"?

Then again, with Genetic Algorithms, perhaps this is the next missing ingredient for cybersentient life...

Ahh, I see, you are a sci-fi nerd, not a computer nerd. This is a discussion involving people who know things about computers. You don't qualify.
Re:Hmm... by moj0e · 2005-09-21 03:55 · Score: 1

To solve or party solve this problem is to couple it with a service such as orkut. Then we could certain users who we would automagically download from. So when a friend of mine on orkut who likes sitcoms finds/uploads a good show, it would get it from him. He would be careful not to upload dupes. Even better still would be an email or SMS that would allow me to choose which ones I would like to DL : )
Re:Hmm... by chhamilton · 2005-09-21 05:00 · Score: 1

An easier solution is to just write something on the client side. Something that maybe scrapes all of the feeds, uses intelligent parsers to group together all of the dupes (and ignore entire season releases, etc), and then uses some selection criteria to grab the best quality (video quality, number of seeders, etc) torrent out of a pool of dupes. Match that with simple filter syntax (no need to use RegExps... series titles are 'normalized' behind the scenes, and matched that way), and you have a quick and easy poor man's TiVo.

Even better, it works with any RSS feed, and can scape some popular torrent sites as well. It then gives you a simple interface to browse it's generated database, and see what's out there. It can be launched and left running in the background and will just merrily go about doing it's job. Inspired by another project out there called TvTad, but fixing many shortcomings.

It's called FetchTv and it's written in Ruby, and when I get off my lazy arse I'll put it on SourceForge. In the meantime, if anybody's interested, let me know and I'll share it. (I warn people: it's fully functional, but not necessarily user friendly at this point)
Re:Hmm... by zerocool^ · 2005-09-21 05:30 · Score: 1

The "RIGHT WAY" (tm), if you ask me, would be to have a bt site that offers a subscription to whatever "channel" you want to get distributions from. For example, if you want to make sure that you get in on the ground floor when the next Ubuntu stable is released, you should go to Ubuntu's site, download a tiny little file, and drop it into your hypothetical RSS/Bittorrent hybrid program (or even better yet, just cut and paste a URL or whatever into the program, which it then checks for updates). Then, when the new version is released, ubuntu updates the feed. When your hypothetical program sees the new rss news, it will use what is found in the RSS release to connect to a tracker and start downloading off the torrent.

The same, of course, could be done for channel "Family Guy Episodes" or "XXX Anime" or whatever.

~Will

--
sig?
Re:Hmm... by Xarius · 2005-09-21 06:03 · Score: 1

We just need a BT site that "gets it". Answers on a postcard please...

Yo, let's start one! Slashdot style moderation of torrents, karma and whatnot. Send me an e-mail! ;)

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C17H21NO4
Re:Hmm... by F_Scentura · 2005-09-21 10:01 · Score: 1

"...Is it just me, or with the addition of a few local scripts, does this sound like a virus-writer's favorite fantasy? They need to make sure there are some very good safeguards on this!"

RTFA, it wouldn't spread under any normal implementation.
Re:Hmm... by CalcMan · 2005-09-21 10:18 · Score: 1

Sounds like a cool system you have going there, I'd be interested to see it.
Re:Hmm... by F_Scentura · 2005-09-22 10:43 · Score: 1

"Then again, with Genetic Algorithms, perhaps this is the next missing ingredient for cybersentient life...

Ahh, I see, you are a sci-fi nerd, not a computer nerd. This is a discussion involving people who know things about computers. You don't qualify."

Yes, anyone who compares an automated script to skynet's becoming self-aware *really* needs to step a bit closer to reality.

Just another pollutant by rahlquist · 2005-09-21 02:36 · Score: 3, Insightful

Much like breathing outside, having scripted automatic downloads of 'anything' in a feed isnt a great idea IMNSHO. Sounds like walking out the front door and having the exhaust from a diesel blown in my fact just because I said I liked trucks.....

--
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Re:Just another pollutant by jacksonj04 · 2005-09-21 02:49 · Score: 1

However, rigging it to automatically torrent any movies or sounds linked in a /. article would be a good idea, hmm?

--
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Re:Just another pollutant by Skye16 · 2005-09-21 02:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sure, for everyone who isn't behind a strict firewall.

:(
Re:Just another pollutant by jacksonj04 · 2005-09-21 03:16 · Score: 1

But it would hopefully reduce the load on the servers. Not to mention the fact you could then start watching the new RSS feed for any interesting tech videos without the usual rabble on /.

--
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Re:Just another pollutant by Bogtha · 2005-09-21 03:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

having scripted automatic downloads of 'anything' in a feed isnt a great idea IMNSHO.

Did it ever occur to you that feeds themselves are scripted automatic downloads?

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Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Re:Just another pollutant by rahlquist · 2005-09-21 04:16 · Score: 1

Did it ever occur to you that feeds themselves are scripted automatic downloads? Allow me to expand. The feeds are tiny in comparison to the average podcast or video stream. A RSS feed is chosen by a conscious decision to download a little bit of data at a regular interval. Joe Schmo sets something like this up and we could have 1000's of people downloading gay p0rn when a web site gets hacked, etc..

--
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
Re:Just another pollutant by Bogtha · 2005-09-21 04:52 · Score: 2, Informative

A RSS feed is chosen by a conscious decision to download a little bit of data at a regular interval. Joe Schmo sets something like this up and we could have 1000's of people downloading gay p0rn when a web site gets hacked, etc.

Firstly, if somebody hacks a website, they can put gay porn on it anyway. This script doesn't change that.

Secondly, if you are objecting to the fact that people can be tricked into downloading unwanted videos instead of simply unwanted pictures, then a) you can do that with normal web pages anyway, and b) it's enclosures that do this, not this script.

But most importantly, you seem to be viewing this as some kind of tool to automatically download things via BitTorrent. That isn't the case. This is a script that sets up a normal web page, with normal BitTorrent links, that just happens to get the original data from an RSS feed.

As far as end-users are concerned, they don't go anywhere near the RSS feed. This just looks like an average SuprNova style web page to them. There's no automatic downloading by end-users.

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Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha

Terrible writeup by Bogtha · 2005-09-21 02:43 · Score: 5, Informative

Okay, to clarify a few things:

Enclosures are basically the RSS way of providing a link to an external resource instead of having a normal entry. Think podcasting - basically an RSS file with links to MP3s instead of textual entries.

What this tool seems to be intended to do is take an RSS feed, download all the external resources from it, then generate and seed torrents for each external resource.

For those of you thinking that this is a way of distributing RSS feeds via BitTorrent, think again - the feeds are distributed normally, and this doesn't let existing feed readers do anything new with BitTorrent, they'll still be downloading both the feeds and the external resources though HTTP.

So basically, this would take a podcast, download the MP3s, and generate/seed torrents for each of the MP3s. The torrents would then appear on this PHP page for people to download, but feed readers wouldn't know anything about it and carry on operating exactly the same as normal.

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Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha

EPIC 2014 by USSJoin · 2005-09-21 02:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

This, IMHO, totally rocks. Seriously: the computer now handles its own slashdot effect, intelligently. Truly, this allows for media-centric societies (like EPIC 2014) to be propogated; when we don't get that "Too many connections, MySQL fails miserably" message with popular content (even on normally-unpopular webpages), we are able to much more quickly diseminate information of interest to all of us.

Kudos to the developers; I, for one, am impressed.

Re:not-so Terrible writeup by lerhaupt · 2005-09-21 02:53 · Score: 2, Informative

Just to clarify, Prodigem comes with a torrent feed for each user. So once all your enclosures have been converted to .torrents, you can provide people with your new feed. For example, http://www.prodigem.com/torrents/rss/pep_delicious .xml

So it nearly happened... by samjam · 2005-09-21 03:12 · Score: 4, Funny

Someones job has been replaced by a small PHP script.

Shell script to follow :-)

Sam

--
blog.sam.liddicott.com

Re:So it nearly happened... by HeliumHigh · 2005-09-21 06:40 · Score: 1

Ohh, go AWAY!

And yes, I do own the shirt :)

Re:Video? by Thuktun · 2005-09-21 03:17 · Score: 3, Informative

Superb hosting 4800MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, $7,95.
Kunowalls!!! Random sexy wallpapers (NSFW!).

Would it be asking too much for you to keep your sig to your sig?

Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS by ausoleil · 2005-09-21 03:19 · Score: 4, Interesting

Automation of Bittorrent was inevitable. More or less, torrents become the functional equivilant of the automated podcast gathering programs.

Things is, most podcasts are original content. Much of the 'torrents, and let's be honest, are not, and they are not exactly sanctioned (meaning they're pirated works.)

Gee, do you think that the MPAA legal goons will be among the early adopters? Think that they will have the RIAA folks for company?

Bet the farm on it.

Come to think of it, one must wonder when or if the adult industry will resort to infringement lawsuits to protect their unique content...sure there has been a scant amount of it, but eventually, someone is going to pay big for those Jenna Jameson clips. (LOL.)

Re:Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS by superpulpsicle · 2005-09-21 03:29 · Score: 1

Bittorrent is not exactly friendly. Even with all firewalls disabled I get too many of the "now connecting to client" messages. 95% of my downloads don't ever connect.

I have rerouted to use no proxy, and straight box connected to the internet wide open everything. Either there is too many stale database entries or I am not using the best program out there.
Re:Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS by -brazil- · 2005-09-21 04:03 · Score: 1

A crappy client is one explanation, in which case I recomment Azureus. It's a resource hog, but it works well.

Of course it could also be that your ISP doesn't like P2P and blocks the default ports of popular P2P protocols.

--
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Re:Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS by Ganamar · 2005-09-21 04:57 · Score: 0

"adult industry ...... unique content" BWAHAHAHAH! *ahem* You haven't actually seen much porn, have you?
Re:Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 11:52 · Score: 0

I have been getting my torrents automatically downloaded from The Pirate Bay through RSS for a while now. Before that it was Suprnova.
It's nice not having to manually search for torrents.. they just start downloading when new stuff is ready. People want this so bad that even before PirateBay provided their own RSS feeds just recently, lots of 3rd parties were providing ironic "pirate" RSS feeds.
Re:Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 12:25 · Score: 0

maybe the content you are downloading is that way, however in REALITY. there is petabytes of legal data all over the place.

stop going to pirate sites and you will notice
Re:Oh, How The Litigators Are Gonna Love THIS by boxofjack · 2005-09-21 13:58 · Score: 1

There are no little girls or single mothers amoungst the early adopters. Litigation will not procede until these key demographics hop on to the bandwagon.

What about enclosue of type torrent? by SuperKendall · 2005-09-21 03:27 · Score: 1

Could a site have an enclosure that referred to a torrent feed? Would any readers support that?

I think that's what will really make torrents take off, when in the browser and elsewhere torrents are supported internally so you click on a link and the video (or whatever) just starts downloading, sharing the torrent while the download is in-progress. I thought Firefox was working on that in fact...

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

I would like to envision a future internet... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 03:29 · Score: 2, Insightful

... where virtually _all_ content that is viewable on the web is distributed in the same manner as bittorrent content - where your web browser shares all content (including images, and any other embedded objects that may display, such as video or audio [with the exception of realtime live streams]) that is on the web page(s) that the browser is open to (usually uploading the whole time the reader is spending viewing the page). Browsers would contact the server to initially request the page, and then contact other peers to download the actual content.

It would completely eliminate the slashdot effect, would likely have the general positive effect of improving people's download speeds, and would have the upshot of making it impossible for any leglislating body to make software like bittorrent illegal without making the internet itself illegal.

Re:I would like to envision a future internet... by Alizarin+Erythrosin · 2005-09-21 05:51 · Score: 1

Do you realize how long it takes for my BT client to actually contact and connect to enough peers to start downloading a file at greater than dialup speed? I can download the entire /. front page before that happens.

And you want me to do that for every single image on a site? I'd go insane!

--
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Re:I would like to envision a future internet... by mark-t · 2005-09-21 06:28 · Score: 1

The slashdot effect that I believe the grandparent post is referring to does not affect slashdot itself, so much as it affects the loading speed of pages with large amounts of content, such as high resolution images, or videos, which are typical for pages that end up experiencing the slashdot effect when they are linked to from stories here.
And in all fairness, if all web browsers observed the protocols as the grandparent described, it wouldn't take long to contact enough peers to start downloading at all, because there would in general be so many, particularly for popular websites, which are, when all is said and done, the ones that could benefit the most from distributed content serving. So that said, I guess the webserver would still be able to provide the full content to anyone that requested it, as long as the server load wasn't too high.
It's not like it'd actually happen though, you can rest easy.

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Re:I would like to envision a future internet... by joemawlma · 2005-09-21 06:52 · Score: 0

I thought of this idea myself a while back, but unfortunately I cannot program well enough, and no one who can will listen to the idea.

This is an excellent idea and it should be done on a site by site basis, but only as backup.

Everyone who connects to a particular site's front page would receive the data from the original server. This is because it would be annoying to wait for the tracker to connect and get a site's front page each time you open your browser and go somewhere new.

But as you are browsing the site, you are also connecting to the torrent tracker and immediately downloading/upload ALL content of that website from peers while you have your browser open to that site. When you switch websites, you switch what you are uploading/downloading. Of course, all transfers would stop when you close the browser.

So as you switch between pages of the particular website, the first place the browser looks to retrieve the data is from the completed downloaded torrent files of the website. And if you have not yet received from peers whatever you are requesting from the site, the SECONDARY place to get the info is from the original server again.

Eventually you will have downloaded all the contents of the websites you browse regularly and upload them to others each time you are at that site. And you obviously will only need to receive the changes that have been made since the last time you visited.

Of course, all kinds of optimation could be done using this idea from the webmaster's end.

Unfortunately, this would eventually start using a lot of users' disc space, but I'd bet by the time something like this is implemented on a large scale on the internet, you will be able to get a 1TB HDD for $69.99.

So once again thanks to (the future of) bittorrent, the more popular your site is, the less bandwidth you end up using. Slashdot would be CURED!

Distributing RSS feeds via BitTorrent (+ LiveCD) by onetruedabe · 2005-09-21 03:41 · Score: 1

For those of you thinking that this is a way of distributing RSS feeds via BitTorrent, think again - the feeds are distributed normally, and this doesn't let existing feed readers do anything new with BitTorrent, they'll still be downloading both the feeds and the external resources though HTTP.

But when your RSS Feed can reference its own ".torrent", couldn't your news aggre-reader automatically hand that off to a BitTorrent engine underneath?

The perfect world: LiveCDs with Lots of RAM and no permanent storage. Boot; connects; listens; shares. And as soon as you unplug it, it's memory is wiped. (It would take considerable forensics to retrieve, that's for sure...) :- D

Tick Tick Tick Tick boom by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 03:54 · Score: 0

/.ed Progidem (too many connections). Perhaps they shall bribe Bram Cohen to add signup through Torrents ;)

SwarmStream? by Doc+Ruby · 2005-09-21 04:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

Does anyone know how to make a swarm network like Torrent deliver chunks in a more sequential order? Even if locally they're unpredicted, maybe a "superchunk" order, where, say, each megabyte arrives in order, but the kilobytes within it fill in in an arbitrary order. That's what's necessary for Torrents to stream media like video on demand. If there are enough servers in the swarm (say millions), enough will likely be online at any time (say thousands) with the chunks that enough sources can respond (say hundreds) to ensure that every superchunk can be delivered "on cue" (pun intended), delivering a stream with minimum accumulation latency that can be compensated by a few-megabyte (milliseconds) buffer.

--

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make install -not war

Re:SwarmStream? by shadowmatter · 2005-09-21 04:27 · Score: 2, Informative

Try CoolStreaming. Although I haven't seen it in action, some of my friends have (mostly while visiting Europe or Asia), and they say the quality is near-perfect. And this isn't a stupid academic exercise -- it's a real implementation, with up to 10,000 simultaneous users recently. The academic paper, providing the general algorithm, can be found here. Google for more on the implementation.

- shadowmatter
Re:SwarmStream? by SlayerofGods · 2005-09-21 04:31 · Score: 3, Interesting

You can do this in bittorent, you'd just need to tell your client to grab the pieces in order (I don't know if there are any that do this... but it would be possible to program it to do so)
Problem is however it will seriously degrade the ability of the network to provide the last pieces if everyone does this since that's when it's most likely someone will D/C.
Using random pieces ensures that the network will have a good amount of all the pieces and not a lopsided amount of the pieces towards the start.

Steaming over a swarm is problematic anyway because of varying connections speeds. You'd need to buffer so much ahead in case you hit someone with a slow DL speed or someone D/Cs in the middle of you downloading that chunk that it would basicly be just like downloading it anyway ;)

--

Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Re:SwarmStream? by Doc+Ruby · 2005-09-21 05:02 · Score: 1

It all sounds pretty exciting. I just hope that the CoolStreaming.org website isn't representative of their SW's quality. Because it's badly broken in so many ways. Apparently "they've ended their experiment", but that's no reason to leave the lab bench cluttered with broken detritus. Which suggests that perhaps there's a more public-oriented org waiting in the wings to package this new protocol right - or maybe just these guys on their next reemergence.

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make install -not war
Re:SwarmStream? by Doc+Ruby · 2005-09-21 05:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Does the BT protocol already have a "mode" or config that already tells server peers to deliver packets in order? Or is the reprogramming you're talking about something that would work only with all reprogrammed torrent agents at opposite ends of the connections?

FWIW, the "superchunk" protocol architecture I described is designed to address exactly that latency problem, which is the entire shortcoming of existing torrent apps.

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make install -not war
Re:SwarmStream? by Dare+nMc · 2005-09-21 05:39 · Score: 1

http://participatoryculture.org/bm/ is somehow able to do that with torrents.
also not exactly what you asked.

with azuerus, if it's multiple files, you simply set a priority on the first file, and those chunks will come first (in the view files in the torrent section.)

It would be much more useable if that was included in the torrent seed file (possible?).
Re:SwarmStream? by SlayerofGods · 2005-09-21 05:42 · Score: 1

The reprogramming would only need to be done at your end.
Basically right now your client program just requests the files in random order (well quasirandom because I believe it also uses the availability of a chunk to determine when it should download it) so they're delivered in random order.
All you'd need to do is tell your client to ask for the pieces in order. Simple as that.
But like I said before... even though it's possible, it could (will) hurt the network if it becomes popular; so there probably (hopefully) aren't many clients that do this.

Also even 'superchunk architecture' won't save you if you hit a slow client that will take 1 min to deliver a piece that's due to be played in 45 seconds.
If fact it will make the problem worse then if you just played it chunk by chunk, because one slow download inside a superchunk will hold up the entire thing from being played.

--

Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Re:SwarmStream? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 05:57 · Score: 0

Does anyone know how to make a swarm network like Torrent deliver chunks in a more sequential order?

That defeats the whole distribution scheme: that there's always someone out there with a piece of the file that you want. If everyone were getting the first couple of bits then everybody would be waiting for them, and those people couldn't efficiently share out their data.

For a streaming format, like MPEG, you can view content as it is downloaded except it will be choppy.
Re:SwarmStream? by burns210 · 2005-09-21 09:02 · Score: 1

You would want it to prefer the in-order chunks, but if the availability of chuck X++ is two low (slow, availability issues) then you would fall back to the generic BT random order.

Re:Distributing RSS feeds via BitTorrent (+ LiveCD by lakin · 2005-09-21 04:05 · Score: 1

You probably could distribute RSS via torrent, but i dont think you would gain much. You still need to fetch the .torrent from the rss webserver, so it is still getting lots of connections. Sure, the .torrent will be smaller than an xml file, but using the apache gzip should make them closer and wouldnt need a tracker or torrent client seeding.

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Paul

next step by psbrogna · 2005-09-21 04:13 · Score: 1

Excellent. We're on the verge of a universal distributed file system that's scalable and resilent.

Now we just need a sensable self-organization scheme so we can accurately locate things.

Re:next step by volkris · 2005-09-21 07:40 · Score: 1

I think you seriously overestimate the features of this little toy.

There's quite a long step from a program that republishes files it finds on the internet and a global filesystem. In fact, they're almost nothing alike.

Re:Distributing RSS feeds via BitTorrent (+ LiveCD by onetruedabe · 2005-09-21 04:26 · Score: 1

You're using a lightweight protocol (RSS) to pass around small bits of data (.TORRENT)

Using Enclosures isn't the way to do it -- rather, you should be including that content in-line.

But "linking" to a shared resource is a lot more like what the "Enclosure" tag was meant to be. In effect, if you replace the "http:" with "torrent:" your Enclosures would be that much more efficient.

What you're *NOT* doing is sending creating ".torrent" files of RSS content. What would be the point? All that XML is short-lived; it's designed to exist only until a new version appears, which could be any minute. You wouldn't want to have to build up SEEDS of FEEDS for a quickly-changing blog or news site. Only for persistent online storage.

:- D

Not Unique by KeithIrwin · 2005-09-21 05:44 · Score: 1

Look, there are at least 12 other BT + RSS clients. A dozen. The idea has been done. About a year ago I put together a list which was canonical at the time, but at this point, I know of at least three others that I hadn't gotten around to adding to the list.

So, although I've got nothing against this one, it's not as if having one more client changes anything. The article makes it sound revolutionary. If nothing else, both Torrentocracy and Videora have been posted on Slashdot previously.

Keith

Oops. Sorry. Misread. by KeithIrwin · 2005-09-21 05:46 · Score: 1

I'm sorry. I misread the article. This isn't about the client end, its about the server end, and good, easy-to-use solutions for that are basically non-existent, so this is a step in the right direction.

Keith

Was that English? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-09-21 05:50 · Score: 0

Can anyone please translate the summary?

Thanks.

load on the servers by da5idnetlimit.com · 2005-09-21 07:22 · Score: 1

right now the problem they have is the load on the torrent tracker...

the one they show for demo is already on "too many connections" mode...

So, a bittorrent to access the tracker to get a torrent ?

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It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker

Re:Video? by IpalindromeI · 2005-09-21 07:23 · Score: 1

The new rage these days is pasting your sig into the post, so that astroturfers can put as much stupid advertising in as they want. Plus, you can't just turn sigs off to get rid of them. It's a win-win! Oh, wait.

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Promoting critical thinking since 1994.

Yawn by volkris · 2005-09-21 07:45 · Score: 1

Yawn.

I wish there was a way to mark a slashdot posting with "uninsightful." Why is it that almost every single bittorrent-related posting to Slashdot is completely lacking in any sort of real advancement?

BitTorrent RSS feeds by AmVidia+HQ · 2005-09-21 09:04 · Score: 1

As an analog of prodigem's automatic torrent creation, http://isohunt.com/ provides search feeds over RSS of most BitTorrent resources over the internet. So you can search for a TV show for example and be updated on the newest eps in the RSS feed.

Cheers

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VIVA1023.com | Political Fashion.

PeerCast by pixelcort · 2005-09-21 18:34 · Score: 1

http://www.peercast.org/

This does the whole live-stream multicast over P2P thing. Suprisingly, it sometimes works.

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http://pixelcort.com/

81 comments