Microsoft Reinvents Bittorrent

Anon E. Muss writes "Microsoft has a new Secure Content Downloader tool that sounds an awful lot like a Bittorrent clone. It's described as a 'peer-assisted technology' where '[e]ach client downloads content by exchanging parts of the file they're interested in with other clients, in addition to downloading parts from the server.' Right now MSCD is just a time-limited preview, intended to support downloads of select Microsoft beta releases (e.g. Visual Studio 2008). If this test goes well, Microsoft will probably start using MSCD for all their large downloads. How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"

Comments

bllizard, wow patcher

[gad_zuki!]

People have no problem with this and blizzard. Expect the double standard to kick in in 3.. 2.. 1..

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not a Blizzard customer, but if I were, I would have a problem with it.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[secolactico]

People have no problem with this and blizzard. Expect the double standard to kick in in 3.. 2.. 1..

Are you kidding? Whenever a patch came out, the chief complaint in the forums was the bittorrent downloader. Blizzard even lists alternative (third party) download sites on their patch page because of this. Besides, they didn't re-invent bittorrent. They stated from the beginning what protocol they were using.

I see nothing wrong with MS doing this just like I see nothing wrong with bittorrent.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[jdelator]

Why is the majority of slashdot so anti-microsoft, they sound all sound like whiny 15 year olds that think they are cool since they know how install linux on their machine.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Shados]

they sound all sound like whiny 15 year olds that think they are cool since they know how install linux on their machine

Thats because thats exactly what many of em ARE. (Well, maybe a bit older than 15, but I'd be interested in statistics on how many of the people that post stuff like that even have a full time job...)

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[JimDaGeek]

How is it a double standard if someone doesn't want to support Microsoft while wanting support a company they like, such as Blizzard? If MS were a better company with better practices, supported standards better and didn't abuse their monopoly position, I am sure there would be a lot more supporters on the side of Microsoft.

Me personally, I won't give any of my bandwidth to Microsoft. Let them pay for it. Now if Microsoft wanted to pay me to use my bandwidth, I would consider that option.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Emetophobe]

If I remember correctly, Blizzard actually hired Bram Cohen to design their custom bittorrent client for updating WoW. What was your point again?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[cyphercell]

Well I have a full-time job, and if M$ version is as network intensive as bittorrent is I'm going to be pissed especially if we have no other options.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Doctor Crumb]

Um, blizzard uses bittorrent, they did not embrace-and-extend their own protocol.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are a government organization (perhaps a state University) where by doing this you are paying for the commercial company to utilize your uploads.

A reason they shutdown all access to anything Blizzard for a few weeks around Thanksgiving a few years ago when I was going to school. The IT people saw the high outgoing bandwidth from users, usually they would just cut but they investigated. Found source, talked to local lawyers, lawyers told Blizzard that they can't be using their network(state run/taxpayer supported) to offset their bandwidth costs. (School's AUP said you can't use the network for any commercial purposes. The user web browsing was the user instigating the activity so they couldn't blame the business, and the school didn't care. If the user was running a business and was using their network connection to manage things remotely they would have a case against the user. )

Or something like that.

Some people do have a problem, people who pay for used bandwidth will have a problem unless they feel generous. As a home user (or even some business users) where they have unlimited(oh how loaded this word is) up/down usage they might not care.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[jorghis]

It's not a double standard for me. I think the blizzard downloader is terrible. You have a huge group of people who cant figure out how to set up their firewall to actually get the whole peer to peer thing working even when everything else is fine. That group is bound to be even larger when you go to all windows users. What percentage of the population will really be able to figure out what ports they need to be able to open on their router and how to do it? And thats assuming that the user is even allowed to modify such things.

Then Blizzard turns around and gives the patch away on FilePlanet, a site you have to pay for if you want to be able to actually download the thing directly. Paying another fee just to be able to download every time there is a patch when youve already got 15 dollars going to them every month? I always thought that was bogus.

Really, I dont care about whoever using my bandwidth for whatever (as long as its legal) but there is no way MS is going to release a downloader as bad as the blizzard downloader for their regular updates. It always surprised me that Blizzard gets away with that mess. I mean how expensive is it to actually pay for the bandwidth? I cant imagine it costs as much as all the tech support for that stupid downloader, the dollars lost in customer dissatisfaction, the R&D for the downloader, etc.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[cromar]

I work 40 hours a week doing .NET programming. The reason a lot of people hear dislike Microsoft is because of their horrible track record of stifling innovation, using their monopoly to crush opposition, and consistently releasing inferior products after their announced release date is long past. And that's merely the tip of the iceberg.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm... I am 52 years old..

I have used ELF Monitor, Atom OS rom (including BASIC), BBC Basic OS rom, Arthur, RiscOS 2, 3, OS/2, Windows 1.1, 3.1, 95, 98, ME (sort of), NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Sun Solaris (several versions), Novell Netware 3.11, 4.12, 5.1, 6, 6.5 and Linux. I have managed Novell/Windows/UNIX networks (single or in combination). I have learned several languages like BASIC, LISP, COBAL, FORTH, Pascal, C, C++, Java etc.etc. I have started programming in low-level hexadecimal machine code when there was no higher language available (at least not affordable)..

I Like Linux most. It's the choice on all my systems at home...

Now - you call me childish? Hmmm... fools are everywhere I guess...

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[schon]

Others have pointed out your straw man, but nobody has pointed you to this, so I thought I might.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[jorghis]

"How is it a double standard if someone doesn't want to support Microsoft while wanting support a company they like, such as Blizzard?"

The definition of a double standard is to apply one standard to judge two groups differently for the same infraction because of issues external to the matter at hand. In this instance you want to condemn MS and give Blizzard a free pass because of your stance on open standards. (this seems a bit dubious, every standard Blizzard has is closed, they have sued people in the past for trying to make servers that do the same thing as battle.net and so forth, but I digress) So what you are doing is prettymuch the classic example of a double standard, judging one group differently than another for the same infraction because you dont like them for whatever reason.

I am not sure if you were being sarcastic or not by asking how applying different standards to different groups based on whether or not you liked them constitutes a double standard. If you were joking then my bad. :)

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually boasting about all the programming languages you've learned and systems you've managed is pretty childish.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[lpontiac]

In the comments from Slashdot's initial reporting of Blizzard's P2P delivery back in 2004, there are plenty of "great!" comments, but also plenty of comments from people who had a problem with Blizzard doing this.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[hpavc]

The issue here is that you can download a custom tuned for you serial number / customer id portion from microsoft and get the rest of the binary shared crap elsewhere.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[nakkenakuttaja]

For me personally the answer is simple: Nothing gives me more pleasure than reading serious Microsoft bashing. It's really one of the main reasons why I read Slashdot. And I'm 46 years old. Being anti-Microsoft is a universal feeling for all generations, genders, races etc. It really brings our minds and hearts together no matter if you are 15 or 46. And often saves my day and it makes me feel so good inside!

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[that this is not und]

I work 40 hours a week doing .NET programming.

No matter what your chronological age, that has to get you whining like a 15 year old.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[that this is not und]

What percentage of the population will really be able to figure out what ports they need to be able to open on their router and how to do it?

Don't worry. Microsoft will probably come out with some active tools that automatically punch the holes through for the user. And leave them open.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[bealzabobs_youruncle]

No double standard, Blizzard sucks for doing this as well, one of the reasons I left WoW. Additionally, Blizzard isn't re-inventing Bittorrent or possibly slipping in a proprietary format. There is quite a bit of difference.

I would also contend that Blizzard has a better security record than MS, and while not spotless, a better record in regards to customer rights and privacy.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Don Negro]

Bram didn't write that or ever work for Blizzard. He worked for Valve for a while, which might be what you're thinking of.

Blizzard's downloader is based on an early version of the open-source BitTorrent client.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[NeilTheStupidHead]

0... ^>^ I actually have a huge problem with Blizzard's distribution system for patches. My ISP shapes their traffic and it can take hours for a small four megabyte patch to download. If I go directly to their site and download as a standalone file: about a minute. A distributed download system is a good idea both for Blizzard as it saves them bandwidth and for most of their customers as they get their patches faster (especially when it comes to large patches), but the standard download model has to be available for those who cannot use this type of system.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[shinma]

Not only do people whine about "subsidizing" Blizzard on top of paying their monthly fee, Blizzard makes patches available via alternate means.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[cromar]

Sure, there're other things I'd rather be doing. I'm payed well though, and I didn't have to move out of town to find a job.

It's actually a really cool place. We are part of a major research university in the Midwest and only take on projects which have some aspect of public good. So far I've designed a large web application to automate the paperwork of a part of our state's public school system. (In VB.NET, no less. I didn't so much want to whine as shoot myself in the face.) Now, I'm working (as part of a group) with our state's Medicaid data to find ways to reduce costs through preventative care.

So, yeah, .NET is not the greatest. But, that's not the entirety of my job :)

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[PopeRatzo]

Nothing more childish than calling people "childish".

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[krelian]

How is it a double standard if someone doesn't want to support Microsoft while wanting support a company they like, such as Blizzard? If MS were a better company with better practices, supported standards better and didn't abuse their monopoly position, I am sure there would be a lot more supporters on the side of Microsoft.

Me personally, I won't give any of my bandwidth to Microsoft. Let them pay for it. Now if Microsoft wanted to pay me to use my bandwidth, I would consider that option.

So you don't like MS because their practices are not moral in your POV, but you are willing to help them if there is a little bit in it for you. That's like a double stan... never mind.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[pixelpusher220]

I'd have no problem with MS *using* bittorrent either. Unfortunately MS is claiming this is their own home grown technology that they invented.

I surely hope Bram Cohen patented his little invention...

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[the not-troll]

As I am not playing WoW, and thus don't patch it, I have no double standard. Thus, let me say: As I use Linux, I won't use this program, so I won't subsidize Microsofts bandwith. So the question whether I'd have a problem with subsidizing Microsofts bandwidth doesn't make any sense in the first place. But if I were using it, I doubt I'd have a problem with that - I'd have bigger ones. After all, I'd be using Microsoft software.

Just wanting to steer against any perceptions of the unsuspecting reader that the /.-community might be homogeneous in any way. Oh, wait...

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Mr. Freeman]

It's not necessarily a double standard. Microsoft is viewed as a huge evil corporation because it uses a huge amount of questionably legal and just shitty tactics. Blizzard is not.
Thus, blizzard is viewed as a cooperation using bittorrent to distribute a widely wanted file whereas Microsoft is viewed as trying to cut costs by forcing users to distribute the data themselves.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[heinousjay]

This conversation is now stuck in an infinite loop of stupidity.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Usekh]

Whichever mod marked this up insightful needs to get a clue. There have been complaints about the Blizz bittorent since the very first patch. So yeah people have a problem with it.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

No - he's providing perspective. He's showing credentials and experience. He's challenging the meme of the 15yr old, inexperienced kiddie. But hey - that detracts from the "lolwzers u r luzerz" message you'd prefer pushed here. I can understand why you'd make such an attack.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[milkmage]

dude.. you should stay away from any ISP that throttles your traffic.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[_Sprocket_]

Why is the majority of slashdot so anti-microsoft, they sound all sound like whiny 15 year olds that think they are cool since they know how install linux on their machine. Because Microsoft does bad things. Sometimes that's lost on many so-called IT professionals. Heck - sometimes its lost on the MS bashers.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Wildclaw]

Sounds like the real problem you are having is with your ISP and not with blizzard. Only evil packet (protocol) shaping would prevent you from downloading a mere 4 MB file in a few minutes, even if you aren't uploading anything. Fortunally blizzard has alternative ways of downloading patches, but it really shouldn't be nescessary. Bittorrent is not much different than a http/ftp download, except that it is also possible for clients to exchange parts of the file/files between themselves when the server is overloaded.

This is why real net neutrality is so important (and I am talking about real net neutrality, not the fake one that some are advocating that still allows packet shaping).

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[tsa]

Shouldn't we be used to that by now?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Lost Engineer]

I surely hope Bram Cohen patented his little invention... Hmm I could find but

this

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Tatarize]

If it weren't for hatred of Microsoft the geeks of the world would crumble. They would have no uniting cause and start turning on each other. Nobody need be reminded of the Startrek-Starwars wars. Mutual hatred is the only thing keeping this patchwork bunch of basement dweller from LARPing with real fireballs.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Captain Splendid]

You know, some of us hate Windows because we've had to use it for a loooong time. And in that time, we've seen and used alternatives, that while still not perfect themselves, start casting the "Windows Experience" in a less than favourable light, especially when you contrast it with Microsoft's PR and FUD.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even have the first clue as to what "embrace-and-extend" means?
Idiot.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[kriss]

Actually, it sounds like they're blocking rather than shaping and missing some of the traffic. But agreed, it's an ISP problem, not a protocol problem.

It does, however, not really have much to do with the political (and revenue related) aspects of network neutrality that has been discussed in droves. And as for 'real'.. well, that ain't it, guv.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Duhavid]

Why is the minority of slashdot so pro-microsoft that they cant hear criticism of Microsoft without
feeling a need to label the people making the criticism as "whiny 15 year olds...".

The issue ( and it seems a valid one to me ) is twofold

1: Microsoft talks about how innovative they are, but they don't
        invent things, they copy. And this is an example of it.

2: Microsoft talks about "respecting IP" and how open source people
        dont respect it. Well, I have a hard time seeing them copying
        bittorrent as "respecting IP". If there are patents or copyrights
        in place and no licensing agreement, then that really crosses the line.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, of course. Microsoft's product is almost certainly inferior in every conceivable way.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Hymer]

Oh Yes we do... Blizzard's p2p is blocked at my firewall. If Blizzard wants me to distribute their patches they have to pay me something for it.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I work 40 hours a week doing .NET programming ... consistently releasing inferior products

Something doesn't fit there. There are a lot of things you can trash MS for, but their development tools are absolutely top notch. I work with ASP.net 40 hours a week, and it's amazing just how bad it makes PHP, J2EE, Rails, and most of the other frameworks out there look in comparison.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bender Unit 22]

Let me end it.

You sir, are worse than Hitler!

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[mrsteveman1]

The real problem is that MS intends to turn this into a system totally encumbered by DRM.

Another expected build in, Microsoft will probably implement a way for "content owners" to remotely delete the metafile and all data if they so choose, regardless of how valid their claim is. I also fully expect traffic shaping to ignore this new protocol while throttling bittorrent.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[fredklein]

...lawyers told Blizzard that they can't be using their network (state run/taxpayer supported) to offset their bandwidth costs. (School's AUP said you can't use the network for any commercial purposes

I didn't know that Blizzard was a student at the school, and therefore bound by their AUP.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[T-Bone-T]

You want another bit of the iceberg? Some of Microsoft's users are just as bad. I ran across a smart suggestion to include a clock on the Login screen and several people couldn't see any reason to have one. They werea all "That's stupid. I have a clock on my cellphone." This guy got totally shot down for a smart suggestion, not by Microsoft, but by Microsoft users.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Dun Malg]

...I'm payed well though... You are paid well. Only rope or other cordage is payed.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[tepples]

you should stay away from any ISP that throttles your traffic. What do you suggest that one should do if both the cable company and the phone company throttle one's traffic, or if the monopoly ISP on campus throttles one's traffic?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Moodie-1]

At least he/she knows "there're" and "entirety". Two pluses against one minus.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome sir, to the demographic that slashdot is primarily not. The problem is, the dumb kids make all the noise. Including the stories that are submitted.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Blakey Rat]

In what way is Microsoft "embracing" BitTorrent? Isn't this article specifically about a *different* protocol Microsoft developed for their own use?

How did your post get marked "insightful?" Is mentioning "embrace and extend" alone worth an "insightful", even if it makes absolutely no sense in context?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[burns210]

nu uh!

(its funny. Laugh.)

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Blakey Rat]

You realize that the Blizzard Downloader has a checkbox on it that says "do not use P2P" right? (At least, the Macintosh version of it does.) If you don't like it, just turn it off. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a complaint that took 10 times longer to type than it would take to just turn off the feature they're complaining about.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Blakey Rat]

Let's take a look:

Microsoft does bad things: 5% of Slashdot articles
Microsoft does perfectly innocent things, but Slashdot declares them bad: 95% of Slashdot articles.

Of course Microsoft does "bad things." The problem here is that, on Slashdot, the term "bad things" is basically defined as "Microsoft does it." It's self-fulfilling. Hell, when Microsoft gave a free 3-year warranty on Xbox 360s, somehow that was construed as a "bad thing" on Slashdot...

The bashing here is entirely out of control. It makes the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field look tiny in comparison. All you need to do is type "embrace and extend" or "FUD" and you get an instant +5 insightful.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Reaperducer]

the Blizzard Downloader has a checkbox on it that says "do not use P2P" right? (At least, the Macintosh version of it does.)

Blizzard makes Photoshop?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Blakey Rat]

Yes, but this article has nothing to do with any of that. All they've done is made a new download system for big files. Big whooping deal. Adobe did that a few years back, and you didn't see any Slashdot article about how evil it was. So did Valve and Blizzard and tons of other companies.

Microsoft bashing is fine-- when Microsoft actually does something bad. When they release a minor support utility, it's just stupid. And it makes everyone involved look like this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020722h. gif

It's pathetic.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[jorghis]

Have you ever tried turning it off? It will take an ungodly amount of time to download. For all practical purposes they are forcing you to either use peer to peer or download directly from a third party.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[milkmage]

my bad - you're smart enough to shop around. I live in the SF Bay Area - so there are tons of options for me. I will not use the telco for the very reason we're talking about. I forget there are lots of places where you don't have options other than the big ISP's.. and you're basically at their mercy.. same goes for a campus network. in my case, the telco provides the copper from the CO to my door - nothing more - my ISP is a different company.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[RobertLTux]

helpful hint for those that get tagged by this FireFox 2.0 has a spelling checker builtin that can be set to check all input fields (and if you are not using FF 2.0 then you are
1 on an OLD system
2 using a Mac and have a system level spell checker

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Blakey Rat]

If you're that opposed to BitTorrent, you'll either just have to cope with it, or stop playing WOW.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[_Sprocket_]

Microsoft does bad things: 5% of Slashdot articles
Microsoft does perfectly innocent things, but Slashdot declares them bad: 95% of Slashdot articles.

Made up figures don't mean anything. Having said that... it always seems to be a judgment call. There are plenty of screwy things that Microsoft does and always a contingent claiming double-standards, religious zeal, reality of business, ignorant-basement-dweller, and whatever other non-argument they can to justify or detract from the issue.

I don't buy your figures. But I do agree that there are certainly times when articles or comments are beyond the pale. Microsoft does occasionally get skewered over non-issues. I'm 100% behind calling those out. They detract from the real issues.

Which issues are "real" is probably the point where we would disagree.

Of course Microsoft does "bad things." The problem here is that, on Slashdot, the term "bad things" is basically defined as "Microsoft does it." It's self-fulfilling. Hell, when Microsoft gave a free 3-year warranty on Xbox 360s, somehow that was construed as a "bad thing" on Slashdot... Great example. You say "free 3-year warranty on Xbox 360." The critics noted design flaws, a history of denying said flaws, and said "damage control." Is this one of your 95%?

The bashing here is entirely out of control. It makes the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field look tiny in comparison. All you need to do is type "embrace and extend" or "FUD" and you get an instant +5 insightful. Sometimes. The bashing does need some sanity checking. However, it's not as simplistic as you claim.

By the way - cute use of colorful terminology while decrying other's over-use of catch phrases. Reality distortion field indeed.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[_Sprocket_]

This is what happens when you hit "submit" instead of "preview" and don't catch an error with quote tags. D'oh. Oh well.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

Good, then P2P networks using that protocol can spring up and not be blocked by ISPs.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Skillet5151]

What is the purpose of a clock on a login screen? Sounds like an early symptom of featuritis.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[kestasjk]

I agree that .NET is excellent, and I'm a huge fan of C#, but if you want to get something that's about as good as VS.NET Express for PHP, Java, Perl, Python, and a large range of other languages (with debugging, project management, etc) check out Eclipse.

It's a nightmare to set up debugging with PHP, which is why many cave in and buy Zend Studio Pro for $299, so I wrote this text which helps walk people through it.

Now I don't feel the huge gap between IDEs for open languages and .NET languages.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

COBOL, not COBAL.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

I do have a problem with Blizzard being DMCA-wielding jackbooted thugs and having sued the bnetd maintainers, but could give two shakes about their use of bittorrent.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[T-Bone-T]

Personally, I believe a clock should always be visible no matter where in the OS you are. There's the clock gadget and clock in the taskbar but why should you have to log in to see the time? All they have to do is replace Vista [version] with the clock. Who cares what version it is?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Thing 1]

Is mentioning "embrace and extend" alone worth an "insightful", even if it makes absolutely no sense in context?

When I receive the proper embrace, I extend. If all goes well, we extinguish the lights?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

You meant their great track record of stifling innovation, didn't you?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[cyphercell]

Who cares what version it is?

Tech support.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[T-Bone-T]

You wasted your time. That was a rhetorical question. I know I have Vista Ultimate. I don't need it telling me every time I log in.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[FishWithAHammer]

Under Linux especially, Eclipse feels terribly slow and piggish. It's a decent IDE on Windows, but...you've got Visual Studio there, for free.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Firethorn]

I don't see why it's that big of a deal. Without the P2P option, blizzard would need a far larger server patch farm, increased bandwidth costs, etc...

Which means your subscription would have to be higher or blizzard wouldn't be able to provide as much content.

If this gets widespread enough, I could see larger ISPs contracting to have a permanent peer server on their network.

The idea would be that they keep their pipeline a little clearer by sharing out things like blizzard updates, microsoft patches. This keeps QoS higher, keeps their customers happier without the expense of upgrading their leased lines.

As it's on their own network, bandwidth availability is essentially unlimited. Individual subscribers can download at the full line speed of their connection.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[AdmiralJamrep]

As a matter of fact MS thought of this (for a time anyway)...some of the early Longhorn alphas had a clock on the welcome screen.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[zippthorne]

Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily use a word list that corresponds to where you live.

At least, mine doesn't. FF 2.0.0.5 on Ubuntu Feisty keeps telling me that "color" should be colour and "Firefox" should be Firebox (or Fire fox). Which would peachy if I lived in original York, and ate fish and chips all the time.

Sadly, the world I live in has a lot of "new"s in the names of places, so we had to drop as many superfluous "u"s as we could.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Kickasso]

Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily use a word list that corresponds to where you live.

You know you can actually install a dictionary for your little colonial dialect^W^W^W^Wseveral major spelling variants of English, do you? Either centrally with your package manager. or locally with the FF extension manager.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a problem with the wow patcher. It's a piece of junk. It doesn't let you throttle upload bandwidth which means it floods my upstream and pretty much kills my connection every time I use it.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Nullav]

I surely hope Bram Cohen patented his little invention...

Does it truly matter at this point? After all, that it has been used means that MS can't patent it.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It's true that it only takes a relatively competent 15 y.o. to install Linux, but it takes a much higher degree of competency to set up, administer, and cope with Linux day to day. And while I don't personally enjoy MS bashing as much as some seem to, I can sympathise with those who do. MS products do tend to pale in comparison with products from those in competition with them (there are exceptions, like MS office). Slashdotters' views of MS are even more negative than the average MS customer, because they are aware of alternatives, they know their track record, and have deeper knowledge of the behind-the-scenes tech. There are also shared ideological beliefs that MS flies in the face of.

But all that is obvious. In fact, judging by your lack of appreciation for these opinions, I would hazard a guess that is, in fact, you who are inexperienced and big-mouthed.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[shaitand]

'Why is the majority of Slashdot so anti-Microsoft, they sound all sound like whiny 15 year olds that think they are cool since they know how install Linux on their machine.'

Because unlike the greater population the Slashdot crowd is a bit tech heavy. There are no shortage of people reading Slashdot who understand the technical merits of Linux vs windows. That is why most advocate Linux.

As for actually being anti-Microsoft, how can you be into technology and not hate Microsoft? How can you care about software and not hate Microsoft? Microsoft is a monopoly, they used every shady trick in the book to secure that monopoly and continue to do so, looking at anti-trust fines as the cost of doing business. This has crippled the software industry and set it back decades

Microsoft uses proprietary protocols and formats to prevent interoperability. Hell, their operating system even nukes the MBR on your harddrive during install without a prompt because they don't acknowledge that other operating systems even exist. If someone reverse engineers for interoperability purposes they extend or modify their proprietary protocols. Anyone who wants a choice is going to be against a company that does this, especially when the company is a monopoly. The fact that their proprietary protocols often start as standards and Microsoft often claims their completely proprietary implementation of that standard as a step toward interoperability is just a slap in the face.

No matter how insecure and buggy their software is, there is no doubt Microsoft has released some great technology. If only Microsoft had developed some of it. Instead they buy it and rebrand it. This would normally be okay, except that once Microsoft owns the technology it sits and collects dust on a shelf. They update the rebranding now and then but the core technology doesn't improve in Microsoft's hands.

Last but not least, Microsoft has paid Slashdot shills. That's enough reason to hate anyone. Apparently they know a lot of technology decision makers frequent this site. To conserve mod points they seem to like changing history by going back and moderating on stories that are no longer on the front page. To avoid meta-moderation they use underrated and overrated.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Hal_Porter]

Maybe he means Kobolds. He does monitor elves after all.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Woek]

Very good point!

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[ABCC]

Damn I just ran out of mod points, but here's a +1 Funny/Insightful. Pity the ISP that wants to perform deep packet inspection on patch tuesday!

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[ABCC]

I don't see how your .Net programming explains how they stifle innovation.... is it mind numbingly boring?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[dctoastman]

I'll give you a verbal modding up. Visual Studio is the standard to which every other IDE is judged. I'm not a Microsoftie by any stretch, but I am an unabashed fan of Visual Studio.

I had a chance to do a bit of contract work using C# and ASP.NET 2.0. First time working in that environment (I'm usually C++/Win32 API (when in windows of course)), and I was impressed by it.

It made me consider moving over to C# for application development as well.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe it it important to note what they do that is a bad thing. Vista is a Bad Thing. Zune is a bad thing (even if it only affects the four people that have one). Stealing bandwidth, which some people have to pay a lot for, is arguably a bad thing. Draconion anti-piracy measures that they know will only harm paying customers while any script kiddie who wants to can get at their products easier, is a bad thing. IE is a bad thing. Now look at the good things. Gates donates to AIDS research? A good thing, definitely, but it doesn't affect me because I already know how to use a condom. MS does *whatever*? Oh, that's nice, it even helps me out a little, but I'd much rather you fix the Bad Things. Another reason their 'good things' aren't praised is because the bad things have totally turned off most Slashdotters such that they don't even use Microsoft products unless they have to, and thus cannot use the good things, which almost always bring another bad thing with them.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[shannara256]

Sorry, you failed to end the discussion. Quirk's Exception specifically states that any attempt to use Godwin's Law to end a thread will be unsuccessful.

Plus, calling someone "worse than Hitler" is very childish.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Kalriath]

I once sent them an email asking when I could expect my cheque for my provisioning of my bandwidth to distribute their patches. They sent me a link to FilePlanet.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[bryan1945]

"Microsoft uses proprietary protocols and formats to prevent interoperability."

This happened to my team over this weekend. 4 of us from different companies have a presentation and related paper this coming Tuesday. One guy got his in mid-afternoon Friday since he was vacationing over the weekend. Well, he forgot to down convert from Word '07 to '03. The rest of us did not have '07 so we couldn't incorporate his work until 5 PM today we he re-sent it.

Not too big a deal, but it was damn annoying doing work Sunday night, all because MS has to have a new format.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[cyphercell]

How often do you call tech support? Seriously, the version number isn't there for you, it's there for your grandparents/siblings/parents/bosses/coworkers/etc . honestly, if I'm talking to someone on the phone and all they can do is tell me the time, I'm gonna wind up biting my tongue until it bleeds.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Cyberllama]

I think someone should point out, somewhere in here, that Blizzard's downloader isn't just a bittorrent clone, it literally is bittorrent. Bram Cohen didn't patent it, he released it under the MIT license which is less restrictive even than the GNU license (doesn't require modified source code be released). Thus large corporations like Vivendi are free to modify it and use it for their own purposes as Blizzard has done.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bert64]

Try a different ISP then, your current one clearly doesn't service your needs.
I'd suggest you leave, and tell them why. So long as there is local competition among ISPs, make use of it!

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bert64]

Your in a poor area...
A lot of us are much better off, the telco may provide a physical cable but another ISP provides the actual service... I have a choice of many different ISPs offering different speeds, service levels, prices etc...
Really you should campaign for your area to get the same level of freedom enjoyed elsewhere. Why should someone suffer because of where they live?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bert64]

As they already do with HTTP proxies...
That's the beauty of standard protocols, you can cache it...
Someone needs to work out a way of transparently proxying bittorrent, so that if several users of an ISP download the same chunk, it only goes through the backbone link once...

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bert64]

The login screen should be customiseable, so the system admin can define exactly how it looks.
A lot of companies would want to customise the login screen, so that it displays their logo and displays an appropriate message, and perhaps a clock too. Also remove the vendor advertising.

Similarly, on a remote login, there should be no indication of what OS is running for security reasons.. It should display a warning banner stating that the system is private and that unauthorised access is prohibited etc, but should not give away potentially useful information like the OS type and version. This is another area where standard protocols are good, a telnet banner saying "login:" could be anything, but a remote desktop service will always be windows, even if it doesnt say so specifically or disclose the version.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bert64]

Giving the 3 year warrantee wasn't a bad thing in itself, however the fact that their product was so unreliable in the first place that it forced a for-profit company to extend the warrantee period than lose potentially more.

The only reason they would have increased the warrantee period, is because they analysed the situation and came to the conclusion that the lost business from having such an unreliable product would cost them a lot more than offering a 3 year warrantee and repairing large numbers of the faulty products. It certainly wouldn't ever have been done for the good of the customers.

The story was that their product is so much less reliable than other products in the same market.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bert64]

Donating to AIDS research isn't such a good thing in microsoft's case once you look at it more closely...
Yes, they donate a lot of money, but it often comes with strings.
A lot of that money comes back, because the gates foundation also owns stakes in many of the drugs companies producing them. These companies also keep drug prices artificially high through the use of patents, to the detriment of the AIDS sufferers.
So effectively (not sure of the exact numbers, this is a generalisation to make the point) for every $10 "donated", $9 goes to a drug company owned by the foundation, $8 of which is profit which comes back and $1 goes on the raw materials to make the drugs, so they only "lose" $2. Also there are often preconditions of the donations, such as where they will buy drugs from, so real charities (that is ones funded by donations from the general public and non profits) will end up spending their money with the same companies.

All of this buys a lot of good PR, relatively cheaply. If they were truly charitable, the donations could be made anonymously.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Bert64]

Boasting? Or qualifying his position, demonstrating that he isn't a 15 year old with no experience, and listing those experiences so you can evaluate his opinion more thoroughly.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Ilgaz]

I surely hope Bram Cohen patented his little invention... Hmm I could find but

this If he won't patent or sue MSFT, why did Bittorrent decide to be complete evil corporate losing all torrent fans? Serious, their "official" client is banned from some credible privacy concerned trackers. I am not saying pirates, you don't have to be pirate to be anxious about your privacy.

Currently whole bittorrent.com IP Block, Bittorrent official client and the uTorrent versions after they acquired it are banned from closed trackers, privacy concerned trackers and some p2p anti corporate community (via IP blocks).

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Blakey Rat]

The only reason they would have increased the warrantee period, is because they analysed the situation and came to the conclusion that the lost business from having such an unreliable product would cost them a lot more than offering a 3 year warrantee and repairing large numbers of the faulty products. It certainly wouldn't ever have been done for the good of the customers.

You can prove this statement with some kind of evidence?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Firethorn]

I believe that the bittorrent protocol already has means to detect whether or not it's on the same network segment, and shares packets in that segment by preference.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[snoyberg]

Shouldn't we be used to that by now?

And that makes it ok?

That said, I think this is a silly thing to be upset about.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[bagofcrap]

This is why real net neutrality is so important (and I am talking about real net neutrality, not the fake one that some are advocating that still allows packet shaping).

Except that packet shaping makes sense when voip is added into the mix. And gaming. And anything else thats highly latency sensitive, but not as much bandwidth sensitive. Net Neutrality is really about shaping based on origin/destination, not type. As in, voip traffic that goes through my cable modem via Comcast, and goes to Vonage should be treated the same by Comcast as if that same traffic was being sent directly to Comcast.

Now packet shaping can also be used to cause bit torrent, and only bit torrent traffic to be unusably slow, but the core of net neutrality's conflict is voip, because of the money involved on both sides. Comcast sells 'digital phone service' which is voip done inside their box. Vonage sells voip, and you can also get a Linksys router that will give you a normal telephone jack if you give it internet. The whole conflict arises and becomes such a big deal when Comcast's Voip service works fine, and Vonage's doesn't, and the only reason for that is because Comcast is deprioritizing the Vonage traffic simply because its Vonage. And its business competitor.

Real net neutrality needs to allow packet shaping _somewhere_ because of limitations in technology, but that packet shaping rests on the end user, on the Linksys box that does Qos for you, on the... Comcast box that does Voip. And thats where it gets muddy. You can't legislate Comcast, the company, cannot packet shape, because it is required. You need legislation to specifically Comcast's servers cannot packet shape. How do you get legislature to understand that very specific nuance when the next line on a net-neutrality bill is 'oh yeah, $50 million to company $FOO for pork-barrel'

Point is, allowance of packet shaping is needed, but there is nuance to what should be allowed.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Cramer]

credible privacy concerned trackers

Then they aren't even remotely credible. This is 100% pure paranoid, vengeful bull****. Mainline is written in python. There's no hiding what it does. uTorrent has always been closed source; so no one has ever known exactly what it's doing. Yet, it's only banned once Bittorrent, Inc. buys them. Lame. Now, there are lots of reasons to ban various versions of uTorrent, but "closed source" and "who owns them" aren't on the list.

The bans are a political statement. It has next to nothing to do with "privacy". (there's no such thing when it comes to bittorrent.)

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Allador]

Unfortunately MS is claiming this is their own home grown technology that they invented. Where exactly do they make this claim? I cant find it anywhere.

In fact, by my read of the tool, the language seems to suggest that everyone will know what 'peer-assisted' means in this context, that this is a well-known technology.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Allador]

What would be the point? No need to embed DRM into the system, just use it ship DRM files if you want DRM, and you get exactly what you're talking about with no extra development costs.

One nice thing they do seem to be including with the system, is the ability for publishers to cryptographically sign the download, as part of a trust chain. This lets any client confirm that the file being downloaded is precisely the original file (minus of course hash/signing collisions, which is a well-understood problem in this field).

This problem is the primary reason why MS has never been willing to ship their products via bittorrent or similar. There's no way for the non-technical end-user to ever know that they're getting a legit product. They're just as likely to end up with a windows install that has been completely trojanized from the get-go.

This appears to embed the hashing/signing of the product right into the whole experience, which is very nice for non-technical end-users.

I'm not sure if you consider this functionality DRM, but I certainly wouldnt. There's already plenty of DRM to go around, they can just use it to ship .wmv files, and no no tech needed.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Allador]

The login screen should be customiseable, so the system admin can define exactly how it looks. This is possible in Windows, and has been as far back as I can remember, best part of 10 years at least, IIRC.

You basically write a new GINA that looks like whatever you want, and then delegate to the windows gina for the actual authentication.

You can see this on corporate systems that are using custom 2-factor authentication, like smart cards or fingerprint scanners. They'll have a different logon screen, usually with advertising for the company who wrote it.

It's not trivial, as it requires competent C++ developers, but its completely doable.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/05/Sec urityBriefs/

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Allador]

Well, I have a hard time seeing them copying bittorrent as "respecting IP". Why? Is bittorrent patented? Did they copy the source code and violate the license its distributed under?

I believe its under the MIT license, so its BSD style. Thats even assuming they looked at the code, and just didnt implement a well-understood idea.

In general, in this industry, there are very few genuinely new things. Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who've gone before. If you really believe what you're saying, then you'd never support development of an concept that has ever been thought of before.

In fact, I believe the basic concept used by Bram Cohen had made the rounds in academia before. Does that make Bittorrent bad?

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Duhavid]

"Well, I have a hard time seeing them copying bittorrent as "respecting IP".
Why? Is bittorrent patented? Did they copy the source code and violate the license its distributed under?"

    I don't know.

"I believe its under the MIT license, so its BSD style. Thats even assuming they looked at the code, and just didnt implement a well-understood idea."

    I am not saying they did anything illegal, my point is that
    for all the rhetoric about "respecting IP", they didn't
    ( so, what does that mean? Well, they could ask the author if
        they mind it being reimplemented. And yes, I understand they
        may not have been legally required to do so, depending on the
        copyright and licensing issues, but there is still a touch of
        the hypocritical to just lift it, in my opinion. But I recognize
        that my take on this is not standard ).

"In general, in this industry, there are very few genuinely new things. Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who've gone before. If you really believe what you're saying, then you'd never support development of an concept that has ever been thought of before."

    I think you mistake me. I recognize well that there are few truly new things.
    But that is me, see, I am not out patenting things and putting stuff in the
    media about how others don't respect my IP. Microsoft is doing both, and I
    was just pointing out what I see as hypocritical.

"In fact, I believe the basic concept used by Bram Cohen had made the rounds in academia before. Does that make Bittorrent bad?"

    Depends on how Messr. Cohen got to implementation. If he took a bunch of ideas from
    people in academia and implemented it without regard to how the people with the
    original idea thought about it, I would have the same issues.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Wildclaw]

The only time I have latency problems on my connection is when I am trying to do gaming at the same time as I am using p2p. (Others using up their bandwidth doesn't seem to affect me, probably because my ISP seems to shape total bandwidth of users -- which is the neutral way to shape)

Anyway, there are a couple of ways to make sure that my gaming experience is smooth.

1. The ISP prioritizes the gaming packets or depreoritizes other packets. The problem with this method is that the ISP gets to decide which data is important and which is not. As seen with the post I first responded to, ISPs simply can't be trusted with that responsibility.

2. I don't use up all my availible bandwidth on file sharing, and use speed limiting that is built into the file sharing program. This is an easy way to fix the problem which I usually use. By always keeping some spare bandwidth, latency sensitive services work as expected. The problem with this method is that I can't use all my bandwidth. Also, if the availible bandwidth varies too much, I have to keep changing the p2p speed limit.

3. Programs/Hardware requiring low latency should use a Packet Scheduler built into the Operating System/Local Router. That way the user has the power to decide what is important instead of the ISP.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[cyphercell]

Microsoft does perfectly innocent things, but Slashdot declares them bad: 95% of Slashdot articles.

Donating to AIDS research isn't such a good thing in microsoft's case once you look at it more closely...

That was AWESOME!!!

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[butchcassidy1717]

AMEN plus if MS whats to steal another idea and label it as their own what else is new. Billy Boy has been cloning software and repackaging it all his life.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[danomac]

I believe that the bittorrent protocol already has means to detect whether or not it's on the same network segment, and shares packets in that segment by preference.

That doesn't sound right to me... that would largely create segregated clusters of peers that don't talk to each other. That would likely hurt the swarm rather than help it.

I do recall discussions about a piece of hardware ISPs can use to lower their bandwidth load, but I don't know if this actually exists. Even if it did, it would affect the swarm in a negative way as well.

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Anonymous Coward]

Puh-lease. ISPs aren't blocking bittorrent because it's used for piracy, they're blocking it because bandwidth costs them money and they're selling you what they don't have!

I'll take the CableOne.net AUP for example:

The Cable One network is designed for typical usage by a computer user seated at his or her keyboard. Computer activity resulting in excessive or sustained bandwidth consumption such as from unattended computer activity may burden the network and such usage may be restricted. It is therefore essential that you comply with the current bandwidth, data throughput, file storage and other limitations on the Services. Users must ensure their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Cable One, Inc.) an unusually large burden on the network itself. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One provisions all customers with up to at least Standard Speeds or higher. Nearly all customers will experience Extended Speeds and remain provisioned at that level. Customers who exceed threshold limits remain at Standard speeds during the enforcement period. The enforcement period begins mid-afternoon and continues until approximately midnight. For example: A "Residential" customer getting extended speeds who consumes 675 MB during the measurement period will automatically change provisioning to Standard Speeds until midnight of that day. Cable One may, without notice, modify the speed, interrupt, or prohibit such data traffic. We also collect data on customer traffic pattern usage through the use of traffic management software. The analysis is provided as broad categories of usage and enables Cable One to modify, when necessary, the amount of bandwidth you have available for any general category of use if, in Cable One's sole judgment, your bandwidth consumption is excessive generally or in any particular category. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Cable One, Inc.'s ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services. Cable One residential or commercial customers may not resell, share, or otherwise distribute the Services or any portion thereof to any third party without the prior written consent of Cable One, Inc. For example, you cannot provide Internet access to others through a dial up connection, host shell accounts over the Internet, provide email or news service, send a news feed or redistribute Cable One Internet service via wireless network. The CableOne.Net residential service offering is a consumer product designed for your personal use of the Internet. For example, the service does not provide the type of security, upstream performance and total downstream throughput capability typically associated with commercial use. You may not run a server in connection with the CableOne.Net residential service, nor may you provide network services to others via the CableOne.Net residential service. The CableOne.Net residential service includes personal Web Space accounts for publishing personal Web pages. Examples of prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, running servers for mail (pop3 & smtp), http, https, ftp, irc, dhcp and multi-user interactive forums. For information about commercial Internet pricing, please see http://www.cableone.net/internet

Sorry about the wall of text, that's how they formatted it. Anyway, they're saying in plain english that they don't want anyone doing anything that's not "web surfing" with their high speed connection. They don't expect you to watch VIDEO or anything, but I have a

Re:bllizard, wow patcher

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

True, it's about the bandwidth -- but who are the ISPs more likely to feel safe screwing with? A bunch of people transferring movies with bittorrent, or the thousand lawyers of the Microsoft empire?

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Neutral.

Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

This will show that p2p/torrents have a legal use.

Re:Good for them

[RAMMS EIN]

Or, more likely, Microsoft will try to spin it such that it looks like Bittorrent == evil pirates whereas MSCD == fair and honest distribution system.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "only when done through closed source software and controlled by a multi billion dollar corporation with strong ties to the media/entertainment industry and government agencies"

(irony) captcha= "corrupt" (/irony)

Re:Good for them

[Meccanica]

Exactly what I thought- therefore, why not just rebrand bittorrent clients as MSCD clients? Everyone wins!

Although, the RIAA/MPAA will still claim to be losing.

A Brilliant Plan occurs to me!

1. If all or most of current bittorrent networks could be 'changed' into 'MSCD' networks

2. Upload a bunch of fake 'torrents' using the 'old' technology as a trap (a reversal of the very same technique that the RIAA types have tried using).

3. Hammer them with legal action and bad PR over attempting to obtain + distribute child pornography or something horrible like that

4. ?????

5. Profit

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the majority downloading the patches have probably faked their way around Windows Genuine Advantage.

Re:Good for them

[Comatose51]

Well at my last job, I wasn't allowed to install BitTorrent to download Linux ISOs because the more senior admins brought the FUD and said it's the same a Napster and all the other P2P clients. I argued that it was a protocol akin to FTP and it fell on deaf ears. I'm sure they will have no issues with this since it's officially sanctioned by Microsoft. SysAdmins can be just as bad as the PHBs.

Re:Good for them

[jorghis]

Kind of like how the anti-MS crowd will come out with some spin like "Or, more likely, Microsoft will do XYZ" where XYZ is something bad every time MS puts out some kind of interesting software? Of course there is zero evidence MS is going to claim that their version is any different from bittorrent from some kind of a moral point of view, everything they have said on the subject is technical in nature. But lets not allow that to get in the way of anti-MS groupthink!

Re:Good for them

[simontek2]

How long till it gets "abused"? 2 weeks? I seriously bet someone will come up with a way to use it other than MS intended. Then the MAFIAA can go after a big corp with lots of money. I still love the fact that the RIAA has been known to use pirated versions of MS software.

Re:Good for them

[KwKSilver]

Ahem. Instead of

whereas MSCD == fair and honest distribution system.

I think you meant to say: "whereas MSCD == fair and balanced distribution system." Seems more fitting, anyway, all things considered.

Re:Good for them

[v1]

I've been waiting for one of the big players to jump on this bandwagon. To be honest, I was hoping Apple would be the first big player. They like to hop on new tech and have a knack for guessing correctly. Even if MS is first, at least this will light the fires at the other shops. As it is now, software updates are fairly fast, but I'm sure that costs them a lot of coin to keep at those levels. This won't necessarily provide faster downloads for you and me, but it will cut their bandwidth costs significantly, and I'm sure that's what it's all about - not better service but instead a slimmer bottom line. In the end that's supposed to make things cheaper for the consumer, but one has to wonder how much that actually works out.

Not that there's anything wrong with it really. The title of this article makes it sound like this is going to cost you and me more. Very vew people pay for their upstream on a metered basis. I sure don't. The only downside to this I foresee is if you have sucky upstream (look at all the 3gbps/(128 or 256)kbps rates on some popular cable lines in the US!) then maybe your download speed for updates and soforth will actually go slower now that the peers don't send you pieces as much because you are not sending fast to them. If this starts happening, MS is bound to try to lock them out of tampering with the fairness settings so that all peers get a "flat rate" and there is no "tit for tat" logic in their protocol, but then you'll get ppl that hack their updater so they get monster downstream and don't have to send any upstream, and then the war begins... This will only work for MS so long as they keep their updater locked up tight. (tho they are known for doing fairly well at that)

Re:Good for them

[jorghis]

Well, that actually makes quite a bit of sense. Why would you need to download and install bittorrent just for a few ISOs? If I were them I wouldnt want a product which is used extensively for downloading copyrighted material running around on my network either. Way too many liability issues. If we stop and look at this honestly for a moment I think everyone realizes that 99% of bittorrent use is in violation of copyright laws. The same isnt really true of FTP. So even though from a technical standpoint their limitations may be the same, in practical use you are much more likely to see someone with a bittorrent client grabbing copyrighted material off of the internet.

If I was your boss I would be wondering why you cared so much, its not like it takes a long time to download the ISO, you probably wasted more time by trying to get permission to install another piece of software.

Re:Good for them

[jadin]

why not just rebrand bittorrent clients as MSCD clients? Everyone wins! Horrible horrible idea. Think about how MS uses existing standards. IE's HTML for example. If bittorrent became MSCD clients. There's nothing to stop them from hi-jacking the protocol altogether making non-MS versions crippled, incompatible, or even non-existent.

As a secondary thought hopefully their product isn't so good that people flock to it, stealing so much market share they get greedy and start charging for it. MSCD Express for free. MSCD for the "real" paid version.

Please, keep them separate.

Re:Good for them

[Anonymous Coward]

What I don't understand here is why would you want to download Linux ISOs with Bittorrent? Was it some small distribution that didn't have good direct http/ftp downloads? Or was it right after a new release of some distribution, when the direct downloads could be a bit overloaded?

The only reason I have ever seen for downloading a Linux distribution with Bittorrent has been to save bandwidth costs for the ones offering the direct downloads. But never have I really experienced problems in finding a fast http/ftp source. Maybe I've just been lucky.

Re:Good for them

[Waffle Iron]

its not like it takes a long time to download the ISO

You've obviously never tried to download a major distro in the first couple of days after release. You can waste a lot of time just trying to find a mirror that will let you log in, not to mention babysitting your system to see if your FTP session gets dropped by an overloaded server. OTOH, since bittorrent arrived on the scene, I've never had any problems getting ISOs at the full speed if my net connection, even on the release day. Downloading huge files from a bottlenecked source is just uncivilized.

Re:Good for them

[L0rdJedi]

And of course you just have to have the latest Linux distro on the day of release. Can't wait a week for it to get distributed to the mirror sites now, can we?

That's probably what your boss was thinking too.

Re:Good for them

[Waffle Iron]

I am the boss.

Re:Good for them

[Meccanica]

It was a terrible joke. I don't think it's even in the same time zone as a good idea.

Re:Good for them

[Allador]

This won't necessarily provide faster downloads for you and me, but it will cut their bandwidth costs significantly, and I'm sure that's what it's all about - not better service but instead a slimmer bottom line. Actually, it probably will provide faster download times, at least during peak download times.

Thats the primary purpose of systems like this, not to deal with regular day to day downloads, but to deal with massive spikes during peak downloads. When for the first couple days after a release, your network traffic can be 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than at any other time.

When that happens, very very few companies can afford enough bandwidth to keep up. MS probably could, but this will likely provide a better user experience.

I bet that this is also just future proofing Microsoft's ability to distribute more over the net in the future (less retail) without raising costs too much or providing a terrible user experience. For example, I dont care how much MS pays for bandwidth, no one is going to have a good time if you have 50 million people downloading 10GB OS flats over a couple days.

This is really much less interesting than everyone is making it out to be. It'll just be one of those things that makes life easier for everybody in the long run.

Patent

[bigtomrodney]

Any word on them trying to patent this?

no surprise

[botkiller]

Microsoft, ripping off your ideas since the 80's, then repackaging them with prettier colors.

Re:no surprise

[Pretendstocare]

Microsoft, ripping off your ideas since the 80's, then repackaging them with prettier colors. or with less pretty colors

Re:no surprise

[botkiller]

Wow, why was I moderated troll? I know I mentioned MS ripping things off, but I seriously doubt that that justifies listing me as a troll.

Re:no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's more like this.

MS: Ripping off ideas and repackaging them (and sometimes failing).

Apple: Ripping off ideas and repackaging them with pretty colors.

Re:no surprise

[Nero Nimbus]

The "prettier colors" part is highly debatable.

Re:no surprise

[Millenniumman]

repackaging them with prettier colors. Bright, pastel, purple and green?

Re:no surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Imitate or innovate... that is the question. Microsoft lives for the former...

Re:no surprise

[Allador]

Did you invent and patent swarm distribution technology?

Are you aware of anyone on the planet who has?

If not, then no one is ripping off anyone, much less your ideas.

This is the equivalent of saying the Firefox ripped off IE by making a web-browser. (yes, I know its absurd, so is the OP).

Flamebait much?

[RightSaidFred99]

Wow. This is the worst kind of pandering.

BitTorrent didn't invent P2P. And the idea is used by many other applications including games. The last article with a premise this ridiculous I've seen was the "Hotmail drops 98.88% of all attachments, MS to be broken up and fined $10 billion dollars for fraud!" article.

Seriously, what is the point of this nonsense article, just to get the groupthink all riled up?

Re:Flamebait much?

[rm999]

Also, the comment "How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?" is ridiculous. Yes, I know Slashdot is a biased source, but when they make it that blatant I get really annoyed.

No one is forcing anyone to use this p2p technology. If you have something against it, just don't download things from Microsoft. Common sense...

Re:Flamebait much?

[OmegaBlac]

Seriously, what is the point of this nonsense article, just to get the groupthink all riled up?

Well it is SOP to have at least one of these articles at least once a day here. Hell, I wouldn't be able to make it through the day without the daily 2-minute Microsoft Hate.

Re:Flamebait much?

[cyphercell]

If you have something against it, just don't download things from Microsoft. Like security patches?

Re:Flamebait much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bittorrent may not have invented P2P, but this new Microsoft Secure Content Downloader appears to have directly copied the Bittorrent model of P2P. It has an index file with chunk hashes, a central file server (tracker) and you automatically seed to other clients in the "cloud" (swarm). The main difference (as far as I can tell from the few details they give) seems to be that the tracker also functions as a seed, something easily done with Bittorrent as well.

The point of the article is to point out that Microsoft is yet again ignoring a perfectly fine, widely accepted and used technology, choosing instead to invent their own version with no obvious benefits. Microsoft's endemic NIH syndrome harms the user by taking developer time away from fixing bugs and adding useful features, and by reducing interoperability.

Re:Flamebait much?

[rm999]

Yes, I guess what I was implying is don't put yourself in the situation where you have to download things - i.e. don't buy their products.

I think this is moot - who the hell is so offended by p2p technology that they refuse to use it? The only valid concern I can think of is that you don't want a server running on your computer, which all bittorrent style schemes require (I believe). Additionally, some ISPs *technically* forbid it.

Re:Flamebait much?

[cyphercell]

at my work bittorrent basically will saturate the network depending on the popularity of the files, usable bandwidth dies, and the PCs are effectively turned into torrent bots. If that suddenly happened to every machine on the network (thinking SPx), I would be f*cking livid.

Re:Flamebait much?

[eonlabs]

Bittorrent did not come up with p2p. They did come up with swarming. The idea is if everyone downloads once and sends once, the net cost to the main server is 1 upload. Granted, it doesn't work to the theoretical limit, but it's pretty damn good at conserving bandwidth.

If bittorrent is patented... which it doesn't appear it ever can be, then this would be a problem. If Microsoft claims they invented it, that's pretty major BS, but that's it. If this stays visible as a variant of p2p file sharing, then it will hold some ground for the rest of the industry. Maybe the best thing to do is to use this to point out that p2p has solid legal uses and value.

Re:Flamebait much?

[makomk]

BitTorrent didn't invent P2P, but this is basically a clone of BitTorrent - using a "secure description" of the file downloaded from a central site to verify pieces, and exchanging pieces with other users downloading the same files as you. Previous P2P software worked somewhat differently, as I recall.

Re:Flamebait much?

[that this is not und]

At your work, each individual workstation independently downloads all the update bits-n-pieces individually?

Re:Flamebait much?

[Tony Hoyle]

This is very common... in fact I'd contend that it's the norm - I've seen it in very large companies (1000 clients+).

Re:Flamebait much?

[EveLibertine]

That is ridiculous and it's definitely not the norm in any of the circles that I run in. Software Update Services is the solution to that problem, and I'd wager that it is probably in place at most companies with over 200 computers. From the client side it appears that the computer is just downloading software and security updates from microsoft as usual, but really they're being downloaded from an internal server. Furthermore, WSUS allows you to approve or deny updates, allowing your tech support or whoever to test them before they bork your cnc machine's software and whatnot.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/wsus/default.as px

Re:Flamebait much?

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, the swarming concept was used much prior to Bittorrent, by for example edonkey2000.

Re:Flamebait much?

[aralin]

Yes, I know Slashdot is a biased source, but when they make it that blatant I get really annoyed.

Do you realize that as long as you will make comments of this sort in a reaction to a biased articles like this one, it will increase the discussion volume for such articles and they will be more desirable for the slashdot editors to post? The one thing you can do to get less biased and trollish slashdot is to refuse to comment on article which you think is a poor editorial work no matter what the topic. Don't comment, don't read the discussion, just skip it.

Re:Flamebait much?

[Phroggy]

Seriously, what is the point of this nonsense article, just to get the groupthink all riled up? Yep.

Re:Flamebait much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bittorrent did not come up with p2p. They did come up with swarming. The idea is if everyone downloads once and sends once, the net cost to the main server is 1 upload.

No it didn't. Gnutella and ED2k had swarming before BitTorrent even EXISTED. What BitTorrent did was make it so that a small footprint application could be used to download the file. It does this by offloading a lot of the work onto the tracker. The same deal could be had with Gnutella clients, but nobody wanted to have to run a program which by definition needs to find peers, negotiate onto a dynamic network, and possibly route search traffic, and do all of that to download a single file.

BitTorrent is nice, and it certainly has proven useful, and most definitely has pioneered the use of distributed networks to disseminate large files, but simply because it's the first p2p protocol you know of that swarmed does not mean it was.

Re:Flamebait much?

[cyphercell]

Yes we use WSUS, but just one instance of bittorrent can cause problems for certain sections of the lan. Now if this were implemented through some stupid service pack who's to say whether or not all of our workstations don't become little craptastic update servers. I guess my basic point here is that M$ will not put a single public patch server on our network, period.

Re:Flamebait much?

[eonlabs]

Thank you both, I stand corrected.

But that brings up the other point...

If bit-torrent isn't the original, who the fuck cares if microsoft is ripping on it.

Re:Flamebait much?

[Blakey Rat]

Ok, this is a long thread, considering that nobody at Microsoft has stated that they plan to use this program for software updates. Nobody. At all.

Right now, it's being used to download a large beta. That's it. The page doesn't say "oh BTW this will be used for software updates tomorrow." If you can find where it says that, then maybe we're looking at a different link. Do you really think Microsoft would just shove this into Windows Update without even stopping to think of what impact that would have on their clients? Do you think, maybe, just maybe, it's possible for Microsoft to create one method to download large, optional files (like betas) and use a different method to download small security updates? Do you think that might be in the realm of possibility?

Cripes. How about we keep the discussions within the realm of fact instead of this hypothetical "well what if Microsoft did X..." thing that continues on for pages.

Re:Flamebait much?

[TrappedByMyself]

Seriously, what is the point of this nonsense article, just to get the groupthink all riled up?

Well, with competition like Digg around, Slashdot is obvously going with the philosophy "If you can't beat em, dumb it down"

Re:Flamebait much?

[cyphercell]

Right now MSCD is just a time-limited preview, intended to support downloads of select Microsoft beta releases (e.g. Visual Studio 2008). If this test goes well, Microsoft will probably start using MSCD for all their large downloads. How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

You're right this part of the summary is crap.

If you use MSCD from behind a corporate firewall, you may be unable to download content, and may adversely affect other clients' ability to download content.

This from the article, is a whole bunch more realistic. My bad.

Re:Flamebait much?

[Blakey Rat]

If you use MSCD from behind a corporate firewall, you may be unable to download content, and may adversely affect other clients' ability to download content.

This from the article, is a whole bunch more realistic. My bad.

Congratulations. And that has... what to do with Microsoft using it to deliver updates, exactly?

Re:Flamebait much?

[mvdwege]

And your comment is the worst kind of shilling.

Microsoft is acting as if it is being totally innovative by implementing a scatter/gather download mechanism, while they are just reimplementing an old idea. And every time they do so, idiots like you come out of the woodwork to point out that others do so too. Well DUH! That's the root of the complaint.

And as for your groupthink shot: if many people are disagreeing with you, it might just be that you are flat-out wrong.

Mart

Re:Flamebait much?

[cyphercell]

Now you're just being pretentious, oh and no one gives a shit about your hedgehog review, so why plug it?

Re:Flamebait much?

[RightSaidFred99]

Haha. Ooooh. Yeah! I'm shilling, as we know anyone who disagrees with the ridiculous nerds around here is just a shill.

Microsoft isn't "acting as if it is being totally innovative". You made that up, as did the submitters of the article. The download tool barely goes into the technology and nowhere do they pretend they "innovated" the idea.

The fact is that you're just a pathetic, bitter, fat, smelly, UNIX nerd Microsoft hater and as such nobody in the professional world cares about your ridiculous, biased opinions. Being a professional who uses both Linux and MS products, I prefer to offer a more balanced opinion than bitter little jackasses like you.

Re:Flamebait much?

[Blakey Rat]

Now you're just being pretentious,

No; I'm trying to determine the relevance of your reply. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with what I said. At least I didn't descend into personal attacks, like you did just now.

Re:Flamebait much?

[cyphercell]

Well then let me thank you for your congratulations on my ability to read. Really that wasn't some snide remark riddled with elitism? I apologize if I was mistaken but honestly you do see how I could mis-interpret

Anyways, as you suggested let's get this out of the gutter. Microsoft is fully aware of the limitations of this technology, even suggests it shouldn't be used on certain networks. If they are warning people about it, it would be awfully stupid of them to make it the only venue to download anything. After poking around a bit even the 2008 visual studio beta is available directly.

Re:Flamebait much?

[cyphercell]

P.S. why don't you write reviews for a game site like http://www.gamefaqs.com/ instead of posting them to your blog?

Re:Flamebait much?

[Blakey Rat]

I'm not a professional game reviewer, and I really don't have any desire to be a professional game reviewer. I'd sell the reviews to some huge site if they really wanted to pay for them, but I don't have any desire to give up my day job (so to speak.)

You'll notice I also don't even write very good ones; I don't include the developer or publisher, or the ESRB rating, or the retail cost, or even the platform. (I think all the reviews there are Xbox 360, though, but I have some PC ones coming.)

You gotta put something in the sig, right?

Thanks for expressing interest, though. Someone mark this Off-Topic.

Re:Flamebait much?

[Allador]

Microsoft is acting as if it is being totally innovative by implementing a scatter/gather download mechanism, while they are just reimplementing an old idea. In what universe does using a good technology mean you are 'acting as if it is being totally innovative'?

Can you point me to anywhere in the universe of *.microsoft.com that they claim this is innovative or their own invention?

Sounds to me like they're just being intelligent and using a good idea. A good idea that isnt patented, and is licensed under an MIT style license (at least early versions).

Typical anti-MS /. bias

[EvanED]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

Exactly how many articles has /. run on BT before? 47 thousand? And how many have had a comment like this? Zero?

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between normal bit torrent clients is that the user can share or not share, and how much they share, on their end. I'd RTFA but it gives me an error right now. Is this new client for M$ something under the control of the owner of the computer? Or will M$ be determining how much of your bandwidth is going to be used to subsidize their bandwidth costs?

If as the user of the computer, I can decide to share patches/updates or NOT share them, then it's a fine and dandy addition. But if it's going to be using my bandwidth for it's own purposes regardless of my wishes, then that's just another reason to consider alternative OSes.

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[TubeSteak]

I don't think it's just anti-MS bias.

It's a legitimate question to ask why a multi-billion dollar international corporation can't afford to sign up with a Akamai or some other edge provider.

Using the app, you'll still be able to pull from MS's servers.

I can understand why MS would want to do this (the bottom line), but I can't see why they'd need to.

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Several of the ones about commercial / advertising based services have had complaints that it's leaching. This is different from free porn and Fedora releases in that it's not done from the good of the distributors heart. It's about fixing MS's F*#@ ups. Having said that I personally think it's a perfectly acceptable commercial arrangement as long as they list it up front and use more or less equal amounts of bandwidth per download. Why is it that whenever people criticise other companies it passes withiout comment but all MS criticism seems to get flamed?

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[flacco]

the question was: "how do you feel about subsidizing MICROSOFT's bandwidth costs?"

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[sedmonds]

It seems like you have to turn it on, so you can choose not to be uploading whenever you want. You can also change the upload/download bandwidth consumed but there aren't many choices. 256Kbps/1Mmbps, 256Kbps/2Mbps, 512Kbps/512Kbps, 512Kbps/4Mbps, 1Mbps/1Mbps, 1Mbps/8Mbps, 2Mbps/2Mbps, 4Mbps/4Mbps, Unlimited.

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

I would feel strongly enough that I would not use the tool willingly. M$ is a VERY profitable company, and they defend their right to operate in this manner vigorously, as the law requires. Let them pay for their own bandwidth. I already subsidize my ISP's biggest users, many of whom are other for profit entities. Online advertisers and the sites that profit from ad revenuse couldn't extist or suck money from each other without end users accepting the cost of broadband, which is the only thing that makes downloading Flash ads and MB's of grafx tolerable.

If P2P technology were built solely into the M$ automatic update engine alone and I were a WindOz user, I wouldn't have a choice. Instead M$ is distributing a stand-alone P2P file shaing app and competitor of the other P2P downloaders. This begs the question, "Why?"

Consider the possible benefits to M$: more thorough user profiling, file tracking, perhaps even fee based copyright protection or "better" targeted ad distribution. I have no doubt that the clever folks at M$ are considering more than bandwidth saving alone.

"To each according to their collective's ability, from each according to their unmitigated, ignorant desire."
--- The New Net Order ---

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[EvanED]

They don't need to. I already pull faster rates from large MS downloads than almost anyone else.

And they would want to for the obvious reason.

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[Anonymous Coward]

I already pull faster rates from large MS downloads than almost anyone else.

I've read that a couple of times, but I don't know what information it is meant to convey.

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because none of them involved MICROSOFT using it to subsidize their bandwidth costs, you fucking idiot.

Re:Typical anti-MS /. bias

[Allador]

It's a legitimate question to ask why a multi-billion dollar international corporation can't afford to sign up with a Akamai or some other edge provider. They do. They have since the very beginning of these sorts of content distribution networks.

Do an nslookup on www.microsoft.com. The answer will leap out at you.

This sort of thing is a supplement to that. And these sorts of things are usually used to deal with brief peak demand, not day to day regular demand.

Re:How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's c

[slughead]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's cost?

AWESOME! They're going to pass their savings onto me, right!? ...

How do I feel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indifferent, that's how. Is that question at the end of the summary supposed to imply that it's ok for linux distributions and WOW to use bittorrent to lower bandwidth costs, but it's not ok for Microsoft to do the same? Ah, but of course. This being slashdot, anything Microsoft does is subject to criticism.

Grow up for fuck sake!

Microsoft porn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, now the only porn will be Gates and Ballmer in thongs. Blech.

You want to know how I feel?

[coren2000]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

I feel nice
like sugar and spice
I feel nice
like sugar and spice
so nice
so nice
I got you.

Re:You want to know how I feel?

[RegularFry]

Well, I feel pretty.
Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty and witty and bright!
And I pity
Any girl who isn't me tonight.

So there.

side effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this make it harder for the giant ISPs to charge
Microsoft (as a content maker) directly for access to
the ISP's customers?

Old news

[Pluvius]

Microsoft developed BITS 3.0 many months ago and included it with Vista. It allows for what Microsoft calls "peer caching."

Rob

Re:Old news

[RAMMS EIN]

``It allows for what Microsoft calls "peer caching."''

Did you mean: *kaching*?

Re:Old news

[Winckle]

No that's the KDE version.

Subsidizing MS bandwidth?

[poptones]

Aren't we already?

It's not Bittorrent. It's better.

[SilentChris]

MS didn't reinvent Bittorrent. They built something better: Avalanche. It's more efficient and (I know this phrase is weird to use around MS, but...) more secure. Read the research papers (they touch on BT, its advantages and disadvantages). I imagine most of this stuff is on its way into standard BT, if it hasn't been worked in already.

"How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"

Frankly I don't give 2 shits as long as they don't patent the hell out of it (and sue existing P2P solutions). But this came out of MS Research, so I doubt that'll happen (one of the only decent groups at MS).

By the way, MS has been messing around with P2P for years. How do you think Xbox Live works? Every time a game is played multiplayer, at least one Xbox/Xbox 360 is hosting. Not a single MS server hosts a game. Question this all you want (why pay $60 a year then?) but the fact of the matter is that from a technological standpoint, it works well.

Double standards?

[jb.hl.com]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

The same way I feel about Canonical's. Or Fedora's. Or Gentoo's. Or Blizzard's. Or Demonoid's. Or iPodNova's. Or the eDonkey network's. Or ThePirateBay's.

It's P2P, remember, the thing everyone here loves? And now there's more of it! Must be a good thing. Although I'm sure if Microsoft started handing out free chocolates and flowers, before going on to start selling Linux distributions and releasing the entire code of the Windows kernel under the BSD license, you'd find some reasons to kick up a fuss about that, as well.

Re:Double standards?

[EvanED]

...before going on to start selling Linux distributions and releasing the entire code of the Windows kernel under the BSD license, you'd find some reasons to kick up a fuss about that, as well.

They'd probably go and release it under the old version of the BSD license, with the advertising clause, just to keep it GPL-incompatible and prevent mixing with the Linux base.

Those bastards.

Re:Double standards?

[jb.hl.com]

Now that would be hilarious. Watching some Linux fanboys, who previously claimed that Windows' code was insecure and buggy, pissing and moaning about not being able to use Windows' insecure and buggy code in Linux.

Cmon, you KNOW that'd be priceless.

Re:Double standards?

[Poromenos1]

Not really. Canonical/Fedora/Gentoo/TPB give me stuff for free, so I chip in with bandwidth. I don't like Blizzard doing that, if I'm already paying $15/mo they should at least host the thing on their own servers. Same for microsoft, if I'm paying it, they should distribute it properly instead of counting on me to do it.

Re:Double standards?

[_Sprocket_]

Must be a good thing. Although I'm sure if Microsoft started handing out free chocolates and flowers, before going on to start selling Linux distributions and releasing the entire code of the Windows kernel under the BSD license, you'd find some reasons to kick up a fuss about that, as well. I'm game. The day they start doing that - let me know. Maybe I'll readjust my skepticism for a company that's given me so many reasons to be skeptical. It's worked for IBM - it could work for Microsoft.

Until that day - apples and oranges... strawman... etc, etc.

Re:Double standards?

[ResidntGeek]

So do you pay lots of money to gentoo, demonoid, and thepiratebay, then?

(If so, I think you're doing it wrong.)

Re:Double standards?

[jb.hl.com]

Considering that TPB etc can probably make up for their bandwidth continuously via advertising revenue, whereas Microsoft has to continue paying for bandwidth for you long after you plonked down $200 for Windows XP and no more, isn't that point a little bit moot?

Re:Double standards?

[Draek]

Although I'm sure if Microsoft started handing out free chocolates and flowers, before going on to start selling Linux distributions and releasing the entire code of the Windows kernel under the BSD license, you'd find some reasons to kick up a fuss about that, as well.

chocolates cause obesity, flowers can be bad for those allergic to pollen, *selling* Linux distributions isn't as good as giving them away, Windows' source-code is probably a huge pile of unreadable hacks, and we all know the GPL is better than BSD.

so yeah, Microsoft would have to do much better than that to avoid *my* criticism ;)

Re:Double standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

i didn't know that _you_ had to _pay_ for the vs2008 beta 2.

Re:Double standards?

[ResidntGeek]

How is it moot? You pay Microsoft real, actual money, with which they buy food and healthcare and Ferraris, and in return they provide a software product, and some bandwidth with which to fix the bits they fucked up. That's not too much to ask for. Microsoft definitely should not be using their customers' bandwidth to provide THEIR patches. There's just no excuse for that.

Re:Double standards?

[lordtoran]

Mixing Windows source code with the Linux base? That's really far-fetched. After all, they're fundamentally different architectures. The only use for the Windows source in Linux would be to execute legacy applications that don't run in Wine, but then, the license doesn't matter.

Re:Double standards?

[dami99]

Hint: Linux distros - Free, unless you have a service contract in which case you are not going to use torrents to download from these companies. (Unless you choose to)

Non-sequitur much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the summary makes it clear that it's not the idea of p2p but the idea of tit for tat block exchange between the peers during a single mass file download which microsoft stole ... sorry "innovated".

Better download integrity, yes please.

[Dr_Barnowl]

Since I downloaded the last MSDN library no less than 9 times and each time got a corrupted file (yes, a 1.9GB corrupted file), I would have welcomed an official MS P2P download route - one of the more useful feature of BitTorrent on large files is that each chunk is hashed, and thus has good integrity.

Instead, there was just an MD5 checksum buried in the small print on the page, which is no help at all. The checksum validation in the install routine can detect that the archive is corrupted. Ok, it's nice to be able to tell if you got a pirate zombie MSDN library (presumably with some pages containing subtle advice on how to implement code with security holes - now we know why Windows is so insecure....) But what I really needed was a download protocol that provides for more error correction than HTTP.

Go, I say. Even if everyone disables the ability to upload, and all the data still comes from MS, it's still an improvement.

Re:Better download integrity, yes please.

[TheSunborn]

Are you by any change running on an motherboard with an nvidia chipset, using active armor(Or whatever they call the included firewall?)

Because that's the only thing I have ever seen, that could corrupt a tcp/ip download.

Re:Better download integrity, yes please.

[Anonymous Coward]

HTTP is over TCP/IP, which has error correction. Sounds like a chkdsk /F /R is in order.

Re:Better download integrity, yes please.

[Dr_Barnowl]

It is an nvidia board, but the firewall component isn't on ; I have a router running OpenWRT for that.

I have it from people inside MS (via a friend on a C# IRC channel) that this was a known problem with their download setup. I wasn't the only person in my peer group to be experiencing this problem. In the end I gave up - I'm not cutting edge enough that I care too much, MSDN from 6 months ago is usually good enough. I was just trying to scratch my geek itch - you know, the "latest version" one.

Re:Better download integrity, yes please.

[Dr_Barnowl]

Downloaded it onto three different drives (one of them a flash drive) mounted in two different machines, all of which are showing no signs of disk wear. Also downloaded it across two networks, one belonging to a national government infrastructure, one of them being my ISP at home.

Each file showed corruption throughout the file, each file had a different, incorrect, MD5 hash - I actually went so far as to write a "chunkhash" util to hash chunks of the file to see if I could construct a single "good" file from the 9 corrupt ones. After reviewing the output I decided it was hopeless - there just weren't enough blocks where the hashes matched on more than one copy of the file to stick it together.

Plus the actual confirmation that there was a problem through a mutual friend at MS kinda gave it away.

Re:Better download integrity, yes please.

[Tony Hoyle]

Since I downloaded the last MSDN library no less than 9 times and each time got a corrupted file

Why would you download it? It arrives on a DVD through you door...

Most of the MSDN download stuff is for legacy stuff that nobody has copies of any more, or occasionally a new product that hasn't hit the mailout yet. The MSDN library doesn't really qualify.

MSCD BitTorrent Extensions???

[Cassini2]

Any chance MSCD has a Microsoft API? Microsoft loves those extentions. Maybe MSCD can be made to do BitTorrent too ...

Microsoft are legendary innovators

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is jealous because Microsoft invented the series of tubes in the intarwebs.

Right...

[DaveCBio]

Because no one else ever thought or developed a protocol with distributed file transfer. If MS is doing something they must have copied it from someone.

Re:Retard much?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is forcing anyone to use this p2p technology. If you have something against it, just don't download things from Microsoft. Common sense...

The fact that they are the only source for updates/fixes for their products makes your suggestion kind of stupid, don't you think?

Microsoft Reinvents Bittorrent

[John Hasler]

> How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

It's good that they are using their own protocol. That way those who have no use for anything from Microsoft will be in no danger of inadvertently doing them a favor.

Re: Microsoft Reinvents Bittorrent

[Inferger]

You're doing them a favor each time you don't download something from their site by saving them bandwidth.

IRC convo...

[Anonymous Coward]

nolhay: latests news from slashdot...
nolhay: Microsoft Reinvents Bittorrent
nolhay: ROFL
Cirindius: lolliskates!
Shoopuf: nolhay: lol no way, lemme check my RSS I gotta see this :P
nolhay: yeha
nolhay: im serious
Shoopuf: nolhay: I haven't read it yet but my guess is if they were to reinvent bittorrent it would keep personally identifiable information and logs about each peer.
nolhay: of course
nolhay: and it would only work with microsft approved torrents
nolhay: and you would have a 25 char key to enter for each torrent you want to DL
Shoopuf: nolhay: and it would come aero-skinned and use 100% of CPU and add 10 registry entries to the logon process

proprietary formats...

[kc2keo]

They will probably make their version proprietary. If lots of people start to use this (which I doubt) then we might have problems with the formatting that program uses and the people who do use it will deal with vendor lockins, fees, and DRM.

Personally I am not really worried about it. I hope it is a financial loss for them.

--kc2keo

Re:proprietary formats...

[Allador]

Did you even bother to read the article?

It's always been proprietary. It always will be proprietary.

What vendor lockins, what DRM, what are you talking about? It's a tool to let MS distribute MS software to more people, using less server/client bandwidth, and also to handle peak load issues.

This is not a general purpose bittorrent client. It uses a certificate based chain of trust to ensure to end-users that the file(s) they've downloaded are precisely the same as those sent out by the publisher.

This is also almost certainly going to stary forever a closed system. The only people who can add content to it are MS, or those they allow.

I think you should go read the article. Right now it has exactly one purpose, and only one piece of software can be downloaded, VS.NET 2008 beta.

Secure ?

[Yvanhoe]

How much secure ? I smell a new vector for adware / spyware / trojan infections here....

Re:Secure ?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"I smell a new vector for adware / spyware / trojan infections here...."

That's your upper lip.

I wonder if they'll patent this....

[Newer Guy]

Reminds me of what Disney does...

1. Steal an idea.

2. Use it.

3. Patent it (so no onelelse can use it, INCLUDING the one you stole it from!

4. Profit!

How do I feel? How do I feel?

[kimvette]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

Uh, let me see:

Microsoft treats paying customers like criminals with their recent (last five years or so) policies but it does nothing to curb professional pirates

Microsoft is one of the wealthiest companies in the world.

Microsoft can easily afford the bandwidth for hosting their product downloads.

How do I feel about it? Sorry, I won't be participating. If they make their policies more customer-friendly and open up the source for Windows, or at least become more friendly to open source, sure, I'd use it to download and I'd let it seed for a bit.

When I download SuSE or Kubuntu or CentOS I let the torrent seed for at least a few days.

This makes me want to download Microsoft patches several times when I need them just so I eat up more of their bandwidth.

Re:How do I feel? How do I feel?

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes me want to download Microsoft patches several times when I need them just so I eat up more of their bandwidth. How old are you?

Re:Retard much?

[rm999]

No, not at all. If you don't like a product, including the distribution system for patches, DON'T BUY IT.

Common sense.

And what's wrong with this?

[gakguk]

You can subsidize people looking for more porn or crap handycam rips of just released movies from theaters, but you shouldn't help fellow developers looking forward to get their hands wet with new hot technology as soon as possible, ha? What a crap way of bashing MS. I'm a consultant, helping and working for people using tools and technologies from Microsoft. I'm really excited with all the new stuff coming with VS2008 / Framework 3.5 and having already downloaded VS2008 Beta2 VPC image, I would prefer getting it from a distributed network if I knew it.

Far be it for me to disagree with Microsoft.

[khasim]

From that article that you linked:

Peers do not need to find specific pieces in the system to complete, any subset encoded piece will suffice.

Huh?

Also, no peer becomes a bottleneck, since no block is more important than another.

In bittorrent, no block is more important than any other.

And the only bottleneck in bittorrent is when a specific block is only available from a single seed with limited bandwidth. The moment that block is uploaded to another machine the bandwidth expands.

Finally, network bandwidth is efficiently utilized since the same information does not travel multiple times over bottleneck links.

I'm not understanding that either. You need updates as to who has what. This will be changing constantly as different peers download different blocks.

One possible solution is to use a heuristic that prioritizes exchanges of "locally rarest" pieces. But such local-rarest policies often fail to identify the "globally rarest" piece when peers have a limited view of the network.

Why would you need to? All the client has to do is connect to as many peers as necessary to find each block a minimum number of times. The only time there is a problem with this is when there is only one seed with limited bandwidth.

There is no way that a "globally rarest" will appear more often in your peer group than it does globally. This seems more of a seeder issue than a swarm issue. And it has been solved with the "super-seeder" enhancements. The seeder feeds more blocks to the guy who seems to share them the fastest.

Re:Far be it for me to disagree with Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Peers do not need to find specific pieces in the system to complete, any subset encoded piece will suffice.

> Huh?

If you don't even understand basic linear algebra, are you sure you should be critique work you're not familiar with created by several PhD holding researchers at one of the world's premier research institutions?

Re:Far be it for me to disagree with Microsoft.

[makomk]

Yeah - subset encoding is generally used for things like Freenet or Usenet, where there's a distributed store with a risk of some pieces dropping out or not reaching the user. It looks like it does actually have some theoretical improvements over BitTorrent, but I'm not convinced they'd have enough benefit to be worth the increase in complexity and CPU usage.

Re:Far be it for me to disagree with Microsoft.

[makomk]

They've done some clever tricks so that your peer can send you some data without knowing what you already have, and it's still pretty much certain to give you a corresponding amount of new information about the file. (Actually, it isn't as clear-cut as they'd like to make out, since peers are limited by what information they already have). Unfortunately, this makes it very difficult to verify if your peer has given you genuine data. They're actually using a new technique (always a bad sign) which requires the tracker to have a full copy of the file being shared and perform a special hashing operation over it for every peer that connects. (If they just do it once and reuse the result, this results in a serious security vulnerability, since the method relies on no peer knowing any other peer's verification data.)

Re:Far be it for me to disagree with Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't even understand basic linear algebra, are you sure you should be critique work you're not familiar with created by several PhD holding researchers at one of the world's premier research institutions?

Thanks for the explanation. Oh wait, you didn't provide one. I see now that all you did was make some pompous statement. Now perhaps you could come back and explain how in the hell a "subset encoded piece" is part of "basic linear algebra."

Re:Far be it for me to disagree with Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Avalanch is conceptually similar to a combination of BitTorrent and PAR2 http://parchive.sourceforge.net/. Instead of requiring that each block in the file be received, some (or all?) blocks are actually just values that plug into linear algebra equations that allow reconstruction of the original file. Once you have received enough unique blocks, you can run the data through the equations and get the original file (you don't need specific blocks).

Re:Far be it for me to disagree with Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that what they are doing is similar to:
- Compute M blocks that are (random?) linear combinations of your N original blocks
- Distribute the M blocks to various peers

The advantage of this being that :

With bittorrent, a single one of the N blocks being rare will slow/delay/prevent completion for all peers.
With this, as long as any N (of the M blocks) are non-rare, peers should be able to complete easily.

The real difference is .. ?
  - Maybe Nothing? (If less than N blocks are available (across the network) in either scheme, downloads will eventually stall)

  - If the server sends out lots of different blocks (M >> N), there is (one would hope) a smaller chance of having less than N blocks 'around'.

---

Combination Methods (Avalanche, Fountain Codes, etc):

- If there are P blocks missing (N-P blocks available), then if the server sends out any P more unique blocks, the network could eventually complete (assuming people keep sharing...)

Original Block Methods (Torrent, emule, etc):

- If there are P blocks missing (N-P blocks available), then if the server must send out those P blocks for the network to eventually complete (assuming people keep sharing...)
(and if the server is (naively) randomly sending blocks, it may take a while for those blocks to be sent -- some servers are smarter than others...)

Wonderful. What If It Gets Hacked?

[NeverVotedBush]

Just imaging a huge P2P network of Microsoft software - and if someone figures out how to pervert it with trojans, viruses, keyloggers...

With Microsoft's lousy security track record, can you imagine the gold mine this will be for anyone that wants to mass distribute malwear? Nothing like lots of machines in the wild hosting "official" Microsoft software, patches, etc.

Think it can't happen? Think again.

Re:Wonderful. What If It Gets Hacked?

[ConceptJunkie]

"Malwear"?

Is that like hostile pants or something?

Re:Wonderful. What If It Gets Hacked?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol "lousy security track record" its MS, they are on 100's of millions of computers. If any other company was on as many computers they would have the same lousy security track record

Re:Wonderful. What If It Gets Hacked?

[VENONA]

It's a stripes and plaids kind of thing.

Re:Wonderful. What If It Gets Hacked?

[lordtoran]

I would appreciate that, because it would keep the lamers and fakers off Bittorrent.

Re:Wonderful. What If It Gets Hacked?

[Allador]

With Microsoft's lousy security track record, can you imagine the gold mine this will be for anyone that wants to mass distribute malwear? Nothing like lots of machines in the wild hosting "official" Microsoft software, patches, etc. As far as I'm aware, MS has a perfect security track record in distributing updates to their system.

The system uses a certificate based chain of trust to sign the downloaded files, so only legit files will come through. Basically exactly the way that windows update works now.

Re:How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's c

[ricree]

Neutral.
I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.

How *do* I feel?

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel like reviewing the rules on my hardware firewall.

here's how I feel

[botkiller]

"How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?""

Kinda dirty and used, but no different from how I felt after installing Vista.

Yet another innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been a while since that symbolic link innovation 3(?) years ago.

Way to go M$!

W3C standard?

[MobyDisk]

Is the Bittorrent protocol a W3C standard yet?

Re:W3C standard?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean a RFC right?

Re:It's not Bittorrent. It's better.

[Catil]

Bram Cohen (Bittorrent inventor) commented on Avalanche on his blog two years ago and said that he thinks "the paper is complete garbarge."

However, the Wikipedia article on network coding lists a lot of fields where this techology might be useful, so I guess it's not really garbage after all, but neither the holy grail of p2p.

Three things about your "double standard"

[pallmall1]

So what you are doing is prettymuch the classic example of a double standard, judging one group differently than another for the same infraction because you dont like them for whatever reason.

There are three big reasons among many others why microsoft is judged differently than businesses which are not convicted monopolists (as if that's not enough in itself).
1. Embrace.
2. Extend.
3. Extinguish.

Re:Three things about your "double standard"

[jorghis]

And what on earth does that have to do with the issue at hand? They are coming out with their thing here, they arent "Embracing" bittorrent. It always amazed me how people will use the whole embrace extend extinguish thing when they are talking about a new MS product. Embrace, extend, and extinguish is meant to refer to a company embracing a standard they want to destroy for whatever reason. If they were extending the bittorrent protocol you would have a point.

But again, what on EARTH does any of this have to do with it being acceptable for one company to use your bandwidth when you are streaming files from them but when another does it they are 'stealing' your bandwidth or whatever?

Its like some people on here think that because MS was judged to legally be a monopoly that means they cant do things that are perfectly normal for other companies to do. I swear one day I will read on here that MS shouldnt be allowed to be registered in a phone book or something because they are a monopoly and should be held to a different standard. Utilizing a swarming protocol does not equate to abuse of monopoly powers.

Re:Three things about your "double standard"

[Casualposter]

I think that this is simple. Blizzard makes games that are bought and installed and it is pretty obvious that they are installing a bittorrent like client that will consume some of your band width at fairly predictable intervals. And you have the option of not letting blizzard use your bandwidth. Microsoft has a history of lying about what it is doing, or simply not acting with any regard to the user's good. Microsoft could very well add a bit of legal jargon to the EULA granting themselves permission to use your band width if you run their operating system. They are already doing this with automatic downloads and all of the talk between microsoft and the windows installations. It is a small stretch to simply help themselves to your bandwidth. And in this case, what can you do? Nothing. Windows is the dominant OS, not some cool game you can install. So if you are lucky enough to be running some non-microsoft operating system, then this is not your issue. But for many people, whose time is valuable and whose internet connection is limited by quirks of money or geography, having Microsoft help themselves to a portion of it is very bad. Bad in the road rage sense of the word. It feels like theft. What Blizzard has done which is almost identical, is ok because it is a choice.

Re:Three things about your "double standard"

[jorghis]

Nice FUD. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they ever have or ever will do that with windows updates. You are just making wild speculation. I suggest you read the article to see where this is actually being used. Just like in the Blizzard example they are using it for some products that noone "needs" to use the way they need to use windows. So it is essentially the same thing.

Re:Three things about your "double standard"

[Almahtar]

Nice FUD. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they ever have or ever will do that with windows updates.

Just like 640k of ram should be enough for anybody... Now I know that's a flamebait remark that is unrelated at first glance, but it's meant to remind us that the future holds many surprises.

The GP doesn't strike me as FUD because he mentions specifically that it's "quite possible" -- which it is, remember what the word "possible" means -- that Microsoft could do that. I am willing to upgrade possible to plausible, and watch the FUD accusations fly. Just look at it this way - Microsoft has thrown some pretty crazy stuff into their EULA in the past and people have, without reading it, just hit "I agree" because they (think that they) need Windows so "yeah, whatever, I agree, next, next..."

You are just making wild speculation. I suggest you read the article to see where this is actually being used.

Where it is being used now has nothing to do with where it will be used in the future. That's what makes moves like this strategic. If Microsoft were to do what the GP said (and I'm not saying they will... calm down), they could site this move and say "see? See how acceptable it was then?". When you do something drastic like forcing customers to use their bandwidth to distribute updates (which once again I'm not saying will happen, but defending that the GP is NOT FUD), you ease into it step by step. You use technologies and practices that have already been accepted so it doesn't seem like a big step.

I'm not trying to validate the GP's claim, but I'm very much invalidating your claim that it's FUD. Microsoft has never acted in the best interests of its customers and because of that any move it makes should be met with speculation about what comes next. Failure to do so will result in losing yet more money and freedom. At this point far too many people have erred on the side of trusting Microsoft, and the results have been very bad for the technology economy world-wide. I say we lend credibility to voices critiquing and suspecting Microsoft's motives. They were right in the past, and we failed to listen.

Re:Three things about your "double standard"

[Allador]

So allow me to summarize your post:

Even though they're not doing it right now, and the documentation on the system says differently, there exists the possibility that Microsoft might attempt to use this in an unethical way in the future.

So even though its not happening now, its theoretically possible it could happen.

So you're going to assume it IS happening, and base your actions on this (faulty) assumption, with no regard to the reality of the situation.

Is that about right?

No difference here

[davmoo]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

Exactly the same way I feel about subsidizing anyone's bandwidth.

If its an open source project I have no problems with it, and do it all the time. I'm a Mandriva Club member and regularly host various forms of the Mandriva distributions on a server with a fat pipe.

If its a closed source project or something that costs money, then those companies who distribute it by leaching bandwidth from others are just that, leaches. Actually, I take that back...they aren't leaches, and I should find a new comparison. Even leaches have a use in the medical world...leaches in the bandwidth world have no use.

But will they patent it

[TLouden]

Seeing as there is clearly no prior art, will M$ patent this 'new' technology and charge users extra to use it?

I know the song..

[Anonymous Coward]

Bittorrent NT , then Bittorrent Xp ....

This isn't news!

[chahsiubow]

I've been getting my M$ products from peer distribution for years!

Tag this "NIH" - it's textbook

[toby]

As usual, there's no sensible reason in the world why Microsoft could not have used the open, existing, tested, commodity protocol.

Re:Tag this "NIH" - it's textbook

[Allador]

Maybe because a 'protocol' has zero to do with the article, or the software they released.

In addition, they could not use BT because there's no mechanism to stop random people from seeding the world with trojanized windows versions. MS needs a way to ensure that the only software downloaded from this system comes from MS and is legitimate.

BT is a solution without a problem in this case. Or at best, with only a small part of the problem.

I suppose the real question

[Dachannien]

is, did MS write their P2P software to preclude people getting in on the downloads without WGAing first? Because that's the biggest reason why they wouldn't be able to use BT out of the box.

Re:I suppose the real question

[Catil]

That could have been an argument indeed but I think there is another obvious reason as well.

Microsoft did always avoid to use any important technology made by a third party and rather reinvented the wheel instead to have absolute control over it.
The oint is that every time a new lucrative idea based on an existing technology breaks through, it is important for them to already have that basis, in order to quickly copy and implement that new idea themselves. That's what many of the big players do, anyway.

The result is that there is barely any type of application that is not, in one form or another, available from Microsoft.

Re:I suppose the real question

[Dachannien]

Microsoft Raisin Bran: 1.5 scoops of raisins (fixed to two scoops in Service Pack 3)

BitTorrent promotes competition for clients

[radarsat1]

So far most of the comments on this story have been about the pros and cons of helping MS with their bandwidth. There have even been a couple talking about some technical differences. But for me, the biggest difference is none of that. The coolest thing about BitTorrent is that it is a known, open protocol. What this means is that there are something like 10 to 20 clients out there you can download, so we end up with great programs like Azureus and uTorrent. Of course I haven't read much about this new program from MS, but I imagine they won't be releasing the source code for it. (I may be wrong of course!) What this means is that to use their shiny new protocol, you have to use THEIR software. You will have _no_ choice, and there will be _no_ room for developing new features. I find this terribly limiting compared to what can be accomplished with something open and popular like BitTorrent. What will you do if the protocol is very efficient and useful, and yet you are forced to use a crap client that you don't like? Reverse engineer it? That's a pain in the ass compared to having a working, open protocol that is well-documented and there are several open-source solutions to reference. And I won't even begin to discuss the likelihood of seeing an OS X or Linux version of their client...

I think I'll be sticking to BT unless something better comes along that actually has a useful (i.e., open) license. One wonders about the motivation for developing this when they could have just used BT to distribute their patches and downloads. Is it just NIH, or something more?

Re:BitTorrent promotes competition for clients

[Shados]

Of course, I doubt that MS will have that client used for anything but their files, so in the end, its not like its even competing with BT at all.

Re:BitTorrent promotes competition for clients

[Allador]

Did anyone read the article at all?

This is not a general purpose P2P tool. It is also not a new 'protocol' that microsoft came up with (though this may be based on avalanche, this is really irrelevant).

It's purely a software tool to let MS more efficiently download software & updates to people efficiently, while guaranteeing that only genuine MS software builds (ie, no trojanized windows versions) make it into the swarm.

This is not a protocol, not a new style of p2p, not a general purpose download/distribution client. It's a download assist tool for MS software, made by MS.

Re:It's not Bittorrent. It's better.

[mochan_s]

Some consider network coding theory to be garbage as well, so maybe it's still garbage.

Akamai

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like more bad news for Akamai which they used to speed-up their downloads. Their stock got a already huge blow after it got downgraded by 3 analysts last week.

not a "troll" at all

[oohshiny]

Microsoft is charging a lot of money for their software; there is absolutely no reason anybody but Microsoft should pay for the bandwidth related to their software updates.

From a practical point of view, no matter how "secure" the protocol may be, if this thing is running on a host as part of a P2P network, it is essentially broadcasting to the world that (1) the host is running Windows, and (2) that it's not up to date with its patches. That's not a smart thing to broadcast.

Re:not a "troll" at all

[Blakey Rat]

It is a troll. Tons of companies already do updates in this fashion, and Slashdot's never done an article with the flamebait question "How do you feel about subsidizing Blizzard's bandwidth costs?"

Not to mention it's not as if BitTorrent invented P2P, or even P2P involving files split up into little chunks. That technology was all around before. Microsoft isn't "re-inventing P2P" any more than BitTorrent was in the first place.

and (2) that it's not up to date with its patches.

That's pure conjecture. Right now the tool is slated to help download beta software releases. What makes you think they'll use it for Windows Update? You don't know that, you're just making it up so you can present a "problem" with this software.

This article is nothing but flamebait, and your comment only adds to the flamebait with the "what about patches?" junk you pulled out of thin air.

Re:not a "troll" at all

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a troll. Tons of companies already do updates in this fashion, and Slashdot's never done an article with the flamebait question "How do you feel about subsidizing Blizzard's bandwidth costs?"

That's not a flamebait question, it's a legitimate question. It's just that few people give a damn about Blizzard.

That's pure conjecture. Right now the tool is slated to help download beta software releases.

I was getting at the fact that using P2P in this manner communicates configuration information; whether it's patches or beta software doesn't matter.

and your comment only adds to the flamebait with the "what about patches?" junk you pulled out of thin air.

No, you're simply too clueless to understand. And you're a Microsoft apologist as well.

Re:not a "troll" at all

[Blakey Rat]

I was getting at the fact that using P2P in this manner communicates configuration information; whether it's patches or beta software doesn't matter.

Doesn't BitTorrent do the same thing? I don't see how this is any different.

No, you're simply too clueless to understand. And you're a Microsoft apologist as well.

I don't like Microsoft. But I hate wild speculation and bullshit a lot more. I might be too "clueless to understand" why you made up bullshit, but the fact is that you did make up bullshit. So I'll call you on the wild speculation and bullshit now, and reserve my comments on Microsoft for when, you know, they actually do something bad. Instead of just releases a harmless minor utility tool.

Re:not a "troll" at all

[oohshiny]

Doesn't BitTorrent do the same thing? I don't see how this is any different.

No it doesn't do the same thing. Bittorrent is used by many people for many different kinds of content at many different times. The fact that two machines talk tells you nothing. And the content is usually not software anyway.

This is completely different. Let's say a Microsoft IIS beta comes out and they distribute it with this. I make my machine part of the network and I get a lot of connections. For each of those IP addresses, there's a good chance that they are running a previous beta release and that they are going to upgrade to the current release. If there's a security problem in one of those two releases, I get a juicy list of potential attack targets hand-delivered.

But I hate wild speculation and bullshit a lot more.

There is no "wild speculation"; the idea is simply stupid.

MOD PARENT UP

[Scottoest]

Man, I wish I had mod points.

Every time a double standard comes up when Microsoft is involved, I always start seeing "convicted monopolist" pop up frequently. Yeah, they are a convicted monopolist. What does that have to do with this issue? Nothing.

Microsoft is creating a new protocol for downloading products and patches from them, that sounds suspiciously like BitTorrent. Blizzard does the same thing, except they actually use BitTorrent.

People use the monopolist angle as demagoguery to justify hostility towards many things Microsoft does, which have nothing to do with "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish", or even their monopoly status. This story is but one drop in a vast ocean.

- Scott

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Skillet5151]

Every time a double standard comes up when Microsoft is involved, I always start seeing "convicted monopolist" pop up frequently. Yeah, they are a convicted monopolist. What does that have to do with this issue? Besides their lack of ethics? Gee I dunno.
It would be logical to think that has to do with every issue they're involved in.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[jorghis]

It really is not logical to look at things that way though. You can make a case against any large organizations ethics.

What you are doing is kind of like a democrat proposing a policy and then someone yelling "Well your party used to support slavery so I dont think we should listen to anything you say."

Or when Google tries to get its way with net nuetrality the telecoms shouting "Well you guys are censoring content in China so I dont think anything you want with net nuetrality should be granted."

Or when Apple tries to sell you a sell phone you could say "You guys had that options scandal where you defrauded shareholders, if I buy this iPhone I will be supporting corruption!"

See? Can you find any organization of any size that you cant use that sort of logic against? This is why the legal system and just about everyone with common sense looks only at the issues at hand rather than using their preexisting biases and stereotypes.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Aceticon]

Here's me simplifying the examples in your post for you:

I'm suspicious of the intentions of group X when they say Y since the did something (bad) Z in the past

That's pretty much basic human opinion forming and using in action:
- Evaluate past actions and form an opinion on the Actor
- Estimate the possible impact/intentions of the current actions of the Actor with the help of the opinion one has of said Actor

Usually it's more complicated that just forming the opinion from a single action of an Actor:
- Normally we look at multiple action and their consequences.
- We also often form our opinions from the opinions of trusted sources.
- Time past since the actions in question will invalidate the opinion (as per the Democrats and slavery example above).
- Future actions of the Actor or new insights/information on the past actions that formed our opinion can change the opinion.

Opinions are important because we're human: people are limited in that they lack the mental brainpower to (re)evaluate all the information on the actions/events on all the important actors in such a way that one can make timelly decisions on those actions/events. Opinions guide us into interpreting events/actions and making decisions on them when we lack the whole information and/or lack enough time or knowledge to evaluate all the information we have.

This is why the legal system and just about everyone with common sense looks only at the issues at hand rather than using their preexisting biases and stereotypes.

[Note: i'll disregard your "everyone with common sense" part as being argumentative and hardly a scientific consensus]

Opinions are of course only an indicator - suitable as a directional pointer but hardly adequate as the only means to make a decision that has wide implications: you might invite or not someone to a party based on your opinion of that person but (should) not take a decision on whether to convict or not somebody to 25 years in jail purelly on opinion.

This is why the legal system does not pass judgement based on opinion and instead takes the long way (and has special powers) to obtain as much information as possible about the actions/events and using large amounts of time and manpower (not to mention people with specialized knowledge) to interpret that information.

Unfortunatly none of us here on /. have the large amounts of time, manpower and the judicial powers to obtain all the information on Microsoft's most recent actions so as to reach a perfectly fair conclusion on what they're trying to accomplish: the best we can do is use our opinions formed on our interpretation of Microsoft's past action (and also based on the opinion of others) as a rough guide towards evaluations MS' latest action, then (maybe) dig a little bit on the publicly available information on this action and then form a conclusion and present it.

No important actions results from our conclusions and everybody is free to examine and re-interpret them at will so i don't see why they should not be shared and looked at by others even though they weren't arrived at via a full blown "due process".

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[jorghis]

"""Unfortunatly none of us here on /. have the large amounts of time, manpower and the judicial powers to obtain all the information on Microsoft's most recent actions so as to reach a perfectly fair conclusion on what they're trying to accomplish: the best we can do is use our opinions formed on our interpretation of Microsoft's past action (and also based on the opinion of others) as a rough guide towards evaluations MS' latest action, then (maybe) dig a little bit on the publicly available information on this action and then form a conclusion and present it."""

And therein lies the problem with debate on slashdot. For any topic there are enough readers that there will be a minority who is familiar with the issue at hand and has a strong understanding of it. But if you read the posts 90% of the arguments and counterarguments are primarily "company X shouldnt be allowed to do Z for unrelated reason Y". Rambling about how MS shouldnt be allowed to use swarming protocols because of some monopoly stuff in the past is just one example of that.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[kryocore]

You remind me of the South Park episodes "Go God Go" and "Go God Go II", where they are not at war with eachother over which religion is correct, but agree on the religion, and are at war over what to call the religion, saying "your way of thinking is not logical".

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[l3v1]

It really is not logical to look at things that way though. You can make a case against any large organizations ethics.

I think your point is just plain wrong. I say we can and should have opinions about companies' behavior in the market, against each other, related to customers and in general, and I say we shall freely rely on those opinions when judging a company's certain new moves, be them either technology-related or else. My take is that past actions could and should have their consequences in the judgment [by the public] of the company's future moves. No comapny should let to do as they see fit, even if laws and lobbies and money can make every move to be taken as legitimate.

Regarding the current issue: of course MS wants their own version of bittorent-like technology: they want control, and they can't have control over bt, thus they do as they always do, create their own, proclaim it as being revolutionary, gather users, and take over the competition by sheer numbers.
 

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Allador]

Regarding the current issue: of course MS wants their own version of bittorent-like technology: they want control, and they can't have control over bt, It's not quite that simple. What they cant control has nothing to do with BT, but with the legitimacy of what is getting transferred. It's the classic problem that a software company has with swarm downloading. Using the standard media-sharing tools, there's no way they can guarantee that the downloaded copy of Vista is an actual copy of Vista and not something massively trojanized.

I realize you can include hashes of the files, but thats a complicated extra step for end-users using techniques and technology they dont understand. Using a swarming technology, with a little bit of cryptographic signing and a chain of trust, they can ship a standard app, that downloads files, and guarantees to the user that they're getting what they are bargaining for.

... thus they do as they always do, create their own, proclaim it as being revolutionary, gather users, and take over the competition by sheer numbers. Where do you get any of this?

Where did they proclaim it as being revolutionary? Can you link me?

And what competition are you talking about? They're giving the software away as a tool to make distribution of their other software easier. MSCD and BT can live right alongside each other with no problem whatsoever. They use similar technology to serve different purposes.

Your arguments make no sense.

Long overdue

[melted]

They've been working on this FOREVER. I remember seeing little wireless Shuttle cubes strewn all over the campus 3 or 4 years back. Good to see another Microsoft Research technology end up in a product.

MS-ified bittorrents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Relieving MS's bandwidth problems is nothing to whine about if you're a MS-luser who is benefiting from MS wares. What is worth worrying about is what else their "peer-assisted" software does. Does it collect information on your computer? Does it have some sort of rights management built in?

new port to block

[Dan667]

Sounds like I will have a new port or something to block. Yippy!

Let me explain the difference.

[twitter]

The difference between a M$ fake-torrent client and a free P2P user is that a free P2P user has a choice about what to download. The M$ client will soon be used to download "patches" and other M$ cruft, which will pass that part of the cost of windows onto ISPs and subscribers. You will excuse me while I say that I don't want to subsidize M$'s lack of efficiency. Their client will also be "trusted" and refuse to download anything that could threaten the MAFIAA in any way - which is pretty much everything but what you can buy from M$ music services and squirt to your Zune.

Re:Let me explain the difference.

[dedazo]

For all your creative spelling and gloom-and-doom predictions, exaggerations and misrepresentations ("lack of efficiency", as in Windows Update?), you astoundingly manage to miss the wee fact that Microsoft intends to use this as a specialized content swarming technology for their own products, for people who use Windows. Just as you can't download "stuff" using Windows Update. If you need to use a P2P technology to download the latest Britney Spears album, I'm sure you'll be able to use the one of your choice. uTorrent works fine on Vista, if you're interested.

And yes, I'm sure it will be "trusted" in the sense that it will work correctly by signing packages with certificates and so on, the same way Windows Update works today. As far as I know no one has ever managed to defeat that protection.

"Blocking" other P2P clients would involve restriction of ports at the network provider level, which pretty much ensures nothing that uses TCP/IP would work on Windows. So I must conclude that your prediction of how "M$" will disable other P2P applications is just for laughs, much like that "M$ music services and squirt to your Zune" bit.

Re:Let me explain the difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid you've been trolled. Look at twitters history, he is obviously a MS shill (seriously) trying to make their opponents look bad (like crazy raving and ranting lunatics basically)

Re:Let me explain the difference.

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to the day when every copylefted site can take full advantage of a http over p2p structure, and leave copyright in the dust, where it belongs. My proposal is as follows:

IP v6
TCP
Encryption Protocol
Anything (p2p- web server is tracker/seeder only- everyone hosts their own sites)

ethana2 here, sticking it to the man.

Financing bandwidth costs?

[Jugalator]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"

I don't feel against it at all. As opposed to certain ISP's that don't let you use the bandwidth you pay for freely and not setting stupid "limits", mine actually includes that in my regular flat monthly fee! *gasp* So if this makes them even faster, hey, it'll even be an advantage!

Re:Financing bandwidth costs?

[Tony Hoyle]

It won't make them faster. If you've ever had the misfortune to use the blizzard downloader you'll know how slow it is.

All it does is shift bandwidth costs from microsoft onto the ISPs and ultimately the consumers.

Correction

[thatskinnyguy]

M$ has an date with the Wicker Man... There! Much better!

As usual, MS misses the point

[rastoboy29]

People don't use p2p because they like p2p--they use it to get what they want.

If we could legally download movies without having to install crap software really fast without using bittorrent, we would do it.

And if we're looking to download the latest Ubuntu iso, we don't need an MS alternative.

Blillizard Sells an OS?

[twitter]

No wonder the M$ trolls are saying bad things about them. No? oh now I see the difference.

When M$ integrates this trash into their OS to reduce costs, they will quickly move to eliminate all other "untrusted" P2P in the same way they have attacked other "competitors" on their platform. They will also look for legal assistance, claiming stupid stuff like "free computing" is for "pirates" and criminals. They have been telegraphing the message for years, so bend over if you are still using Windoze.

Re:Blillizard Sells an OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2002/20020722h. gif

Ha, Windoze. Cos it's sleeping, rite?

JFC.

yes, they are!

[commodoresloat]

They have this great new program going on where they will pay you for forwarding email. They will pay you $245 for every person you forward an email to, and then another $243 for every person who forwards that email, and so on. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a check!

Subsidizing bandwidth costs?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?""

Hello?
Many Slashdotters have been calling for Microsoft to embrace Bittorrent to distribute their software. If they did that, then you'd be "subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs", so how is this any different? Anyway, the only ones "subsidizind Microsoft's bandwidth costs" are those that download the software.

Seems that the "subsidizing bandwidth" remark was tacked on to add some lame MS-bashing that would help ensure that slashdot accepted the story and/or score brownie points with those particular slashdotters on the low end of the intelligence bell curve. Pathetic.

Unverifiable security is no security at all.

[jbn-o]

It's more efficient and (I know this phrase is weird to use around MS, but...) more secure.

Isn't Microsoft Secure Content Downloader proprietary software? If so, how did you verify the security of the software? So long as this is proprietary, its security is unverifiable and the software is untrustworthy by default, quite unlike many BitTorrent programs.

The Freedom Standard

[twitter]

It's P2P, remember, the thing everyone here loves? And now there's more of it!

No, now there's a crappy, non free M$ toy for all of those people M$ has scared away from P2P all these years. You can be sure it will do what M$ does, not what the user wants and that M$ crank up their message about dirty bad pirates and bittorrent. Remember the third E, Extinguish. M$ has not even bothered to embrace and extend this time, they have simply reinvented. You will soon have less of what you love not more of it. More obnoxiously, you will get to subsidize the cost of their anti-competitive and inefficient practices. When they switch over their "upgrading" software to this they will be shifting the vast cost to ISPs and you and other people who's choice will be Bill's way or the Highway.

Software is easy to judge when you have a clean set of principles, like the four software freedoms.

Re:The Freedom Standard

[jb.hl.com]

I was waiting for you to show up, twithead...

You can be sure it will do what M$ does, not what the user wants and that M$ crank up their message about dirty bad pirates and bittorrent.

Of course it does what Microsoft wants, it's intended for large downloads of their stuff (e.g. updates). Not that I've ever heard Microsoft complain about BitTorrent, or that this has anything whatsoever to do with piracy.

Remember the third E, Extinguish. M$ has not even bothered to embrace and extend this time, they have simply reinvented.

Um...yeah, they have their own swarming P2P implementation. You might as well claim that every single piece of software that fulfils any role previously filled by any other piece of software is simply another "embrace, extend and extinguish".

And again, how could this "extinguish" anything, considering it's intended purely for Microsoft's own downloads, not for the latest camrip of The Simpsons Movie off The Pirate Bay?

When they switch over their "upgrading" software to this they will be shifting the vast cost to ISPs and you and other people who's choice will be Bill's way or the Highway.

Um, yeah, like Debian shifts its vast costs for hosting APT caches and ISO images to mirror sites and ISPs (via BitTorrent).

You've just proved my point about double standards. Well done.

(By the way, "you"? "Bills way or the highway"? I chose the highway, idiot, I'm a Mac user.)

Re:The Freedom Standard

[dedazo]

No, now there's a crappy, non free M$ toy for all of those people M$ has scared away from P2P all these years.

It's really becoming a pain to have to point this out twitter, but this technology is intended to be used for updates to Microsoft products. I just fail to see where you made the jump from that to Microsoft somehow attacking or harming other P2P technologies.

As usual, your entire post reads like Fox News copy about the Democratic Party. Soundbytes, oblique references and catchy phrases designed to make sure everyone who reads it simply loses track of the original topic.

just this ..

[Anonymous Coward]

running microsoft must be a nightmare.
maybe it's time for mr. gates to see the light,
ditch the borg staff and join the free open community.
after all, bit-torrent was invented in a IRC chat-room.
and that was like 12 years ago; not to complain
so sad, so sad ...

Re:It's not Bittorrent. It's better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I didn't realize that Bram Cohen was such an arrogant ass.
God forbid anyone try to improve on his invention. Afterall, if the improvements were really worth anything he would've invented it himself with Bittorrent 0.1!!

What an asshole. Even the comments to his blog entry are ripping him.

While continuing to rake in ....

[Anonymous Coward]

.... billions ....

You're all missing the point

[initialE]

Many of you guys have been complaining about ISP traffic shapers cutting into the use of P2P applications. The more legitimate solutions that use P2P, the harder it would become for them to justify such actions.

Blillizard?

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell can you spell Blizzard as Blillizard?? I understand "dissasster" and "coppies" and all the other ones you consistently misspell, but "Blillizard"? Seriously?

I just hope...

[JustNiz]

that this kills all the stupid p2p-throttling that services providers do but deny.

Depends

[stinerman]

How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?

I don't have a problem so long as they're passing along the savings to the consumer. I have a feeling they won't though. Even then, I've never bought any Microsoft software, and I don't think this is going to change my mind.

Firefox example.

[twitter]

"Blocking" other P2P clients would involve restriction of ports at the network provider level, which pretty much ensures nothing that uses TCP/IP would work on Windows.

You must have missed this two days ago, where M$'s IE7 does something stupid to Firefox. That's a nice example of how they can make you not want to use an application, even before you buy into Visat's unsigned program nightmare. Combine the two methods, and your general PC is really just another network appliance.

Re:Firefox example.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mental. You're completely mental. That's the only explanation I can come up with for this post.

Re:Firefox example.

[Almahtar]

Much of Twitter's posts are strongly worded, and to people that haven't spent the time researching they can see really off base. Now I'm not nearly as strongly-outspoken as Twitter is, but I have to say I really can verify the fact behind almost all the stuff he/she posts. Honestly the people that get called crazy are half geniuses that people are too ignorant to listen to and half crazy people... Twitter is one of the former. If you want to talk about mental, take a look at a few MS fanboys that defend Microsoft without getting paid a cent, even though Microsoft would RAPE them (figuratively) if it would earn them a few more dollars... and (figuratively) already has.

Re:Firefox example.

[Anonymous Coward]

Much of Twitter's posts are strongly worded, and to people that haven't spent the time researching they can see really off base. Um, Twitter is the one who doesn't spend the time researching. To borrow your half-and-half, half of Twitter's comments are badly sourced and incorrect, and the other half are personal opinion passed off as fact.

You need to stop confusing what you want to hear from someone and the truth.

Re:Firefox example.

[dedazo]

I'm sorry twitter, are you actually suggesting that Firefox's failure to verify input is somehow Microsoft's fault? Wow, that's a new low.

You're going to have to come up with an actual example of Microsoft "disabling" an actual third party application because they feel threatened by it, which is the insinuation you made in your original post. Otherwise, may I interest you in a nice warm cup of STFU?

Re:Firefox example.

[dedazo]

They're not "strongly worded", they are nothing more than clever combinations of lies and misrepresentation of facts peppered with impressive-sounding buzzwords, infantile creative spelling (and bad spelling at that) and lots of irrelevant or downright misleading links. twitter has been at this for long enough that he's figured out the perfect "mod me up!" formula, and this is key because the day he doesn't get modded up is a bad day indeed for him. He lives for his mod points.

For example, he has a journal entry right now that lists his "M$ Vista sucks" bullet points. He claims that the FAA "saved millions by leaving other M$ OS behind". If you actually bother to load up that story, it is nothing more than a RedHat press release, and the FAA migrated to Linux away from another *nix platform. "Windoze" was never even involved. Most of the other links are similar lies and blatant misrepresentations, probably added in the hope no one will bother to click on them. The rest are nothing more than opinion pieces, which hardly validate his tired "M$ is dying" mantra.

You must be thinking about his rants about the *IAA and "big dumb companies", which I will admit sometimes are actually on target.

Oh, and I'm not sure if you can discern the difference between defending Microsoft and pointing out someone is just lying. If you consider that to be an "MS fanboy" then I suppose you can put me in that category. I'd dare anyone to find a single post I've made here where I actually behave like a fanboy in heat. I use their products and I have my own problems with Microsoft, but I don't wank off on teh interwebs with FUD and disingenuous lies to further my "join us or die" agenda.

The first victim of a twitter post (not counting grammar and spelling) is the truth. After that, it's all downhill no matter what you say.

Re:Firefox example.

[Allador]

Oh, and I'm not sure if you can discern the difference between defending Microsoft and pointing out someone is just lying. Or ignorant.

I swear, the vast majority of the time I post is when people are spouting off about stuff they dont have a clue about. They make an assumption (wrongly) about how they think windows works, and then go off on a tirade about how evil that is.

But then it turns out that they just flat didnt understand the underlying technology, and their whole post was just a waste of entropy.

I can only read this stuff for so long before I feel compelled to insert some reality into the discussion. Not that it does any good. *sigh*

And as for Twitter .... either a genuinely mentally unstable person, or someone with a very hidden agenda. Very few non-professionals are so good at making what they say sound so good to the ignorant, while being based on utter garbage, and having no substance or backing whatsoever. Smells like a pro to me, but thats just speculation. Could just be someone I would consider whacky, who thinks they're doing the right thing for the world. *shrugs*

Re:Firefox example.

[Almahtar]

The first victim of a twitter post (not counting grammar and spelling) is the truth. After that, it's all downhill no matter what you say.

Ok that is a hilarious statement. I'll remember it for next time I want to bash someone. Yes, I'm not that creative on my own.

Anyway, I'll keep your opinion in mind - I'm not around /. all that much, so I can't speak for the credibility of various members, but I'll make sure to research Twitter's stuff a bit extra given your warning. Thanks.

I think Mike Gunderloy said it best...

[slapout]

"In other words, Microsoft is reinventing BitTorrent because, you know, the open source version has cooties."

Patent?

[flyingfsck]

So has MS patented bit torrent yet? As a company that continuously innovates, they really deserve one for this break-through...

Well....

[hitmanWilly1337]

As long as they don't try to go out and patent it, its fine by me. Also, I'm imagining some of the messages from it...You are downloading win_vista_dvd_rip.iso. Cancel/Allow?

Do we already forget bnetd?

[tepples]

Microsoft is viewed as a huge evil corporation because it uses a huge amount of questionably legal and just shitty tactics. Blizzard is not. O RLY? And what about UMG owned by the same parent company?

Sandbox for probabilistic measurement of security

[tepples]

Isn't Microsoft Secure Content Downloader proprietary software? If so, how did you verify the security of the software? Someone probably ran it in a sandbox and noticed that it had no questionable behavior. Run it long enough, and the probability that the lack of questionable behavior is due to chance approaches 0. Continue to run the program in a sandbox, and you contain the damage caused by systematically unforeseen circumstances such as malformed input.

Limitation of a 16-bit hash

[tepples]

HTTP is over TCP/IP, which has error correction. Sounds like a chkdsk /F /R is in order. TCP's 16-bit hash detects errors only 65,535 out of 65,536 times. There are on the order of 2 million packets in a download that big.

Re:Limitation of a 16-bit hash

[Dr_Barnowl]

It was waaay more corrupt than that.

Plus of course, it can't defend you against the server actually sending garbage - doesn't matter how good your connection is if the server is sending random monkey output instead of Shakespeare.

So?

[Thaelon]

I'm not microsoft fan, but who cares?

Using torrent methods for distributing files over the internet is a good thing. The more people that need the file, the faster it goes for everyone. Hats off to the inventors because almost nothing else in the world works out that way.

If this makes it faster and easier for people to download the stuff they want, then what is the problem? Use the downloader until you're done downloading, then turn it off. If they don't allow that, then I'd be pissed.

Re:How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's c

[Anonymous Coward]

AWESOME! They're going to pass their savings onto me, right!? ...

Of course. If you use their P2P technology you'll get a free copy of Windows. :-)

Avalanche is now alive!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The concept behind Avalanche is very powerful and it is based on network coding and some very neat security algorithms. A few years ago there was a lot of debate about whether the technology was even feasible, but it seems that MS has finally proven that one can get it to work. Avalanche was created by two researchers are Microsoft Research Cambridge (Pablo Rodriguez: http://www.rodriguezrodriguez.com/ and Christos Gkantsidis http://research.microsoft.com/~chrigk). These guys have done a great job. Congrats.

It's not that silly.

[rastilin]

There are some differences between me and Microsoft, between Blizzard or Canonical and me as well. Besides the being given stuff for free angle.

Microsoft: Datacenters worldwide
Me: Just this computer.

Microsoft: Probably pays less than 5c per GB.
Me: Pays $2 per GB.

Microsoft: Previous yearly profits exceeding 100 million.
Me: Previous yearly profits exceeding 0 million.

With these discrepancies between us, you can see why I might feel bitter about being shanghaied into paying Microsoft's server costs. More to the point, I don't like Microsoft, it's no hypocritical to help people or companies you like and to feel ambivalent about being forced to help people or companies you don't.

+5 Informative

[manastungare]

This time, Bill Gates is actually giving away money if you forward messages! I kid you not, they have to pay their customers (well, OK, their customers' favorite charities) to get people to use their software.

Then, take it to the next level

[WindBourne]

Quit reading it here. Simply record a MS user, and play it back as a MP3.

Why are these G*& D*&^ ads coming up?
Honey, Why are you buying a 5000 doll on my Credit card number?
Why am I getting all this F&^%ing spams?
What do you mean that I gave you disease? A Virus? What the H*&L are you talking about?
Why do I have to reboot? I just installed a simple program.
Another F*&^ing 1000 to fix this computer?
Why does Microsoft charge me 500 for the same thing that they charge chinese $3 and give away to illegal aliens and Al Qaeda?
Oh, What the F*&K? I have this Pretty blue screen, but I can not get anything to move.
Who me? Yeah, MS makes me VERY productive and at a cheap price. I would suggest that you check out their web site that explains why I spend all this money. What is the URL? Well, just google for it. Currently, my computer is on the fritz. It must be all those Linux hackers that cause this to me.
And you can even compress that above 2 hour issue down to 5 minutes and replay it. Same Stuff, new day.

I don't have a problem with this...

[s_p_oneil]

...but I sincerely hope they gave Bram Cohen a well-deserved bonus. He came up with a truly great invention that helps smaller companies and individuals host content (without BitTorrent, it would've cost way too much), and he decided to share his invention with the world for free.

MS doesn't have to pay him anything, but if they don't they lose a chance to gain a bit more respect from people. They're not struggling to pay their bills, and if they save money from his invention, they should toss him a bone.

Re:I don't have a problem with this...

[Allador]

Bram Cohen did not invent swarm distribution technology.

There were a number of previous p2p software that laid the path to what is now bittorrent. And academic research before that.

This is basically the same thing as saying that Apple invented portable solid-state music players just because they're the most successful. Or saying that MS invented Operating Systems just because they're the most successful.

Re:I don't have a problem with this...

[s_p_oneil]

Good point. I wasn't sure, but I had serious doubts that he had come up with the idea by himself. However, I do believe that the details of the BitTorrent protocol itself were created by Bram, and for various reasons his protocol took off like wildfire when no one else's did. His BitTorrent client implementation has always been terrible, so that's not it.

Perhaps it was the tracker system that makes it easy for seeders anywhere to host large files on web sites? It's not exactly revolutionary but even if he didn't really invent anything, he put a lot of work into it, he was the first person to make it palatable to the masses, and he chose to give it away freely.

I think he did a great public service there, and I don't mean by enabling people to distribute pirated content. Every time I download a new OS distro or a new 500MB game demo to try, I have Bram to thank for not having to make the choice between waiting forever or paying for access to high-speed servers. If I was a small company that wanted to host large files, I would have even more to thank him for. I'm still waiting for TV companies to jump on the bandwagon and distribute videos containing ads online using BitTorrent.

Automatic Updates, BITS and WSUS

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this technology would be useful with something such as WSUS (windows server update services).

It was nice of m$ to allow us to run our own WSUS servers and only have to download the updates once. Once we have the updates, we can distribute to other child servers lighten the load on the parent server. Even still, who would have a WSUS server at EVERY site? Especially if you have dozens of branch offices with only 10-20 workstations.

This technology will be very useful in allowing the workstations to share files on their local segments and lighten the load on the WAN.

My two cents

[Almahtar]

I didn't read the grand parent, so I could be speaking in some ignorance here, but here's why I would gladly donate some bandwidth to Blizzard but not Microsoft. Disclaimer: I don't use any blizzard products, so I'm really not a fanboy. Promise. Blizzard hasn't been very nice about open standards, true. But I've no knowledge of them destroying existing standards by "embrace, extend, extinguish". I have not researched this, so I speak in some ignorance here, but there's only so much time in a day and I can only do the best I can with the knowledge I have. If I decided I wanted to play WoW or (insert blizzard game here) I'd probably research a bit on their credibility before I made a call of that nature. Since I'm sure far more people on /. have had to use Microsoft stuff than Blizzard stuff, I have no doubt more people have been exposed to their selfish and destructive tactics, so it's no surprise to me at all that people on /. would be hesitant to help Microsoft by donating bandwidth. Most of us have paid the MS tax on numerous times unjustly - I won't bother boring you with my experience on that. Needless to say in my opinion they have plenty of money for bandwidth and have, through "the system" obtained some of my money without my really wanting or needing their stuff. I have no interest in subsidizing their bandwidth bills, given that. An additional distinction - Microsoft made their own version of bit torrent in this case. Bit torrent already exists - why not just contribute any improvements they have, instead of trying to push their own product to compete? If it's inferior or equal, they may as well have just used Bit Torrent. If it's better, they could have helped the rest of the world out by contributing their changes. If that's the case, we're all missing out because they have once again shown no interest in the benefit of John Q. Public. That kind of thing always happens with Microsoft, and it's a great reason to laugh every time they claim to have contributed to the quality and progress of technology and seem like a philanthropist. In short Blizzard may be no different from Microsoft - I couldn't tell you, but maybe they aren't. Most of the people on /. know a lot of Microsoft's dirt and have every right to bash Microsoft because of that. Crying for poor Microsoft because everyone here is less informed of a less important company is an exercise of the obvious and melodramatic.

CRAP! No formatting

[Almahtar]

I forgot there's no autoformat on /. comments. I meant to say:

I didn't read the grand parent, so I could be speaking in some ignorance here, but here's why I would gladly donate some bandwidth to Blizzard but not Microsoft.

Disclaimer: I don't use any blizzard products, so I'm really not a fanboy. Promise.

Blizzard hasn't been very nice about open standards, true. But I've no knowledge of them destroying existing standards by "embrace, extend, extinguish". I have not researched this, so I speak in some ignorance here, but there's only so much time in a day and I can only do the best I can with the knowledge I have.

If I decided I wanted to play WoW or (insert blizzard game here) I'd probably research a bit on their credibility before I made a call of that nature. Since I'm sure far more people on /. have had to use Microsoft stuff than Blizzard stuff, I have no doubt more people have been exposed to their selfish and destructive tactics, so it's no surprise to me at all that people on /. would be hesitant to help Microsoft by donating bandwidth.

Most of us have paid the MS tax on numerous times unjustly - I won't bother boring you with my experience on that. Needless to say in my opinion they have plenty of money for bandwidth and have, through "the system" obtained some of my money without my really wanting or needing their stuff. I have no interest in subsidizing their bandwidth bills, given that.

An additional distinction - Microsoft made their own version of bit torrent in this case. Bit torrent already exists - why not just contribute any improvements they have, instead of trying to push their own product to compete? If it's inferior or equal, they may as well have just used Bit Torrent. If it's better, they could have helped the rest of the world out by contributing their changes. If that's the case, we're all missing out because they have once again shown no interest in the benefit of John Q. Public. That kind of thing always happens with Microsoft, and it's a great reason to laugh every time they claim to have contributed to the quality and progress of technology and seem like a philanthropist.

In short Blizzard may be no different from Microsoft - I couldn't tell you, but maybe they aren't. Most of the people on /. know a lot of Microsoft's dirt and have every right to bash Microsoft because of that. Crying for poor Microsoft because everyone here is less informed of a less important company is an exercise of the obvious and melodramatic.

Re:CRAP! No formatting

[huckamania]

"Most of us have paid the MS tax on numerous times unjustly - I won't bother boring you with my experience on that. Needless to say in my opinion they have plenty of money for bandwidth and have, through "the system" obtained some of my money without my really wanting or needing their stuff. I have no interest in subsidizing their bandwidth bills, given that."

You are an admitted accomplice to an illegal monopoly. You could have chosen to NOT pay the M$ tax and yet you have sided with a known illegal monopoly, numerous times. Do not blame "the system" for giving your money away. You had alternatives. You could have spent more and bought an apple or taken the time to build your own system. There were plenty of good choices for an OS, like BeOS (still have a copy at home), NeXT, OS/2*.

It's people with your kind of attitude that enabled Adolf Hitler to rise to power.

---

* Technically, I think OS/2 was part M$ so you can maybe ignore that one.

Re:CRAP! No formatting

[Almahtar]

"You are an admitted accomplice to an illegal monopoly. You could have chosen to NOT pay the M$ tax and yet you have sided with a known illegal monopoly, numerous times."

You, sir, are a troll. Are you a citizen of a country? Does your country use MS products? Do you pay taxes there? Hrmm... Let's try another example. Have you ever attended a school? Did that school have a computer lab or a student union building? What OS was running on the computers in that lab? Whose tuition was funding that school? Hrm...

Do not blame "the system" for giving your money away.

They did exactly that, Dr. Presumptuous.

You could have spent more and bought an apple or taken the time to build your own system. There were plenty of good choices for an OS, like BeOS (still have a copy at home), NeXT, OS/2*.

Apple is no better than Microsoft, thanks for doing your research. As for BeOS, NeXT, and OS/2, those are not realistic alternatives these days thanks to archaic 3rd party applications and no support for modern hardware. Try recommending Linux or BSD next time.

It's people with your kind of attitude that enabled Adolf Hitler to rise to power.

That's in no way true, but thanks for the trolling. You gave me a good laugh. Ignorance and arrogant judgment are the way to solve any problem! Yay!

... f***inh monkey.

Re:CRAP! No formatting

[Stanistani]

>Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it... Believe nothing.

/genie Your Wish Is Granted. Especially for your posts.

Perhaps we're overcompicating

[Almahtar]

I'll simplify it the way I see it.

Microsoft has proven time and time again not to care at all about my needs or my well-being. Honestly they've cost me a lot of money not just by their lack of interest in my needs but the way they've crushed the products that actually did serve my needs, and they did so illegally.

So while the anti-competitive practices may seem unrelated, they really are. I have personally suffered on multiple accounts directly because of Microsoft, be it their neglect or their business practices. Since they don't care about my best interest, I have no interest in theirs.

If Microsoft takes my money but blatantly ignores my needs, I don't want to help them in any way at all, and that includes bandwidth. I'll give them the same attitude they've given me: you want to distribute your software? You muscle up and pay to get it distributed. Don't ask me for help unless you're paying me for it.

Nice...

[ghostbar38]

And the downloads includes DRM as well, right?? Come on, is M$, they must have something under the table...

Almost right?

[Almahtar]

I get a free product from Canonical or Fedora that they paid millions to develop. The least I can do is contribute bandwidth.

I have no feelings on Blizzard because I don't use their stuff.

As far as Demonoid or eDonkey or ThePirateBay - Once again I'm paying nothing for a product that's worth something, the least I can do is help others get it.

Now we get to Microsoft. They have raped the market for decades, and I've been forced to contribute to their profit on many accounts despite the fact I don't use any of their stuff, ever.

I see a marked distinction. On a few counts, I get something I didn't pay for. On Microsoft's, I pay for something I don't use at all.

Re:Then, take it to the next level

[Hucko]

Ha ha! My wife had just finished crowing about how much better Windows was than linux, (I forgot to load some stupid codec I never use.) hopped on her laptop and did a virus scan. Yep, virus and trojans. I said nothing as I am a reasonably smart man.

Discussing the MSCD bits

[Anonymous Coward]

Has any developer really managed to get the Microsoft Secure Content Downloader and added new content to the list of what can be shared?

I download it because I don't pay for it.

[Dr_Barnowl]

You can download the MSDN documentation gratis. Since I don't pay for a subscription, this is the only legal avenue open for me to get it. The online documentation just isn't as slick in terms of search, and of course, if the server or my network connection have any problems I can still refer to the material.

Access to a full MSDN media set is indeed very useful. Or at least, it was in the past. Since I now avoid most of Microsofts infrastructure products (database servers, that sort of thing), I have no need to pay for it. You can get an acceptable IDE for free (either Express or SharpDevelop), and you don't have to pay for the compiler (it comes with the base install of the .NET Framework). If you wanted, you could develop .NET code with notepad and a command line. The only thing the paid-for editions of Visual Studio add are shortcuts - all the stuff that used to be obfuscated behind cryptic formats (like VB6 forms) is now produced by the IDE auto-authoring source code, which means it's nothing you can't do by hand (if you're mad enough). If I was writing for a major enterprise? Sure, the $1800 would be worth it if it saved me a little time.

fine with me

[QunaLop]

If I'm downloading something from anyone, then I have some sort of need for it, a.k.a. I have a use for it. If a new distributed download system reduces the cost and increases the speed at of fulfilling the need then I am all for it. I fail to see how anyone might have a problem with this, especially as it will most likely be an opt-in/out scheme.

lordy B !

[Danzigism]

wow this is insane.. sounds like a direct copy of bittorrent indeed.. is bandwidth really a problem for microsoft? are they running out? or not capable of getting the best and fastest? bandwidth does seem to be a precious thing nowadays.. and no i don't feel good about them using my bandwidth.. if i pay them money for an OS, then why the fuck are they trying to take more from me?

Re:Retard much?

[Oktober Sunset]

This doesn't help if you have already bought it, and then they change the service later.

Anyone foolish enough

[The Cisco Kid]

to purchase or use MS software is already used to getting screwed over by MS. Why should this be anything new?

You can choose to continue to do it the way MS wants you to, with little to no control over how your own computer operates, or you can ditch MS and their 'we-know-whats-good-for-you' attitude entirely, and use software that lets you control your own computer, that,incidentally, is often completely free of charge as well.

For Goodness' Sake

[turgid]

That attitude combined with the complete lack of any argument based on factual reality is the reason why the Human Race hasn't been back to the Moon since 1972.

We live in a twilight world of pointy-haired arrogance, ignorance and misinformation.

Re:Sandbox for probabilistic measurement of securi

[jbn-o]

There's no substitute for source code analysis and proprietary software doesn't magically become more trustworthy over time. Programs can be made to run different branches of code on different criteria, including different dates and times (a time you can't know to test for) or on some cue from a remote site (which you can't predict). Running a program in a sandbox will not necessarily let you execute all the code nor will running a program in a sandbox somehow reduce the chances untrustworthy code will execute. Only source code analysis can produce a verifiable claim of safety.

Metalink, anyone?

[ant_tmwx]

Sounds a lot like Metalink, covered here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/25/144209

Exactly!

[FatSean]

A popular torrent, even if you restrict the settings on your client, and put a hurt on the average cablemodem connection. I have to turn bittorrent off during the day, otherwise even very low data rates hose the latency on the VPN to work.

How soon until you're required to seed a new patch for X hours in order to download it in the first place, sucking up your bandwidth that you paid for.

...and for containment.

[tepples]

nor will running a program in a sandbox somehow reduce the chances untrustworthy code will execute. But it can contain the damage caused by untrustworthy code. Please give an example of a behavior that you would consider untrustworthy so that I can understand your line of reasoning.

Only source code analysis can produce a verifiable claim of safety. Define "source code that is suitable for analysis". Why does a disassembly not count?

Re:...and for containment.

[jbn-o]

I don't need to contain any damage caused by proprietary software because I don't run proprietary software, but it is nice to see that you tacitly agree that proprietary software is inherently untrustworthy. I run sandboxes for other reasons. What I can't inspect myself I would rather trust the community to do so (or hire them to do so on my behalf) than to trust the monopolist who wrote the program. So I avoid trying to workaround a lack of freedom by running software that respects my freedom in the first place.

I never said "source code that is suitable for analysis" so besides misquoting me I don't know what you're talking about. What I actually said was quite clear. Disassembly isn't legally available all the time; many proprietary licenses explicitly disallow that derivative work.

Re:...and for containment.

[tepples]

I don't need to contain any damage caused by proprietary software because I don't run proprietary software How well is LinuxBIOS working for you?

Only source code analysis can produce a verifiable claim of safety. Define "source code that is suitable for analysis". Why does a disassembly not count? I never said "source code that is suitable for analysis" so besides misquoting me I don't know what you're talking about. Let me rephrase without misquotation: A useful definition of "source code analysis" relies on a useful definition of "source code". So what do you define as "source code" for the purpose of "source code analysis"?

Disassembly isn't legally available all the time; many proprietary licenses explicitly disallow that derivative work. Then subcontract the work to someone who lives in a country that explicitly refuses to enforce contract terms that disallow that derivative work. I seem to remember such provisions in section 50A through 50C of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (UK) as amended.

Just don't use eclipse for C++ development

[ClosedSource]

For C++, it's like developing in 1990.

Legal: "P2P is BAD!"

[Anonymous Coward]

The moment this kicks in the use of Windows Update will be illegal in Finland.

All thanks to "Lex Karpela": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_amendment_to_the _Finnish_Copyright_Act_and_Penal_Code

Re:Legal: "P2P is BAD!"

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably misunderstood the statement:
"Unauthorized file sharing can be punished as a crime, even though it wouldn't be done for profit."

When a company like Microsoft distributes its own software using peer-2-peer that is an example of "authorized file sharing". MSCD is providing an example of that: it is being used to distribute Visual Studio.
Users, when installing the software, are authorizing it to share parts of the already downloaded content with other users.
There is nothing in the law that is against that.

What is happening is that it looks like a lot of people here are just writing bashing Microsoft without even using the Microsoft Secure Content Downloader. Had someone tried it, they would perceive, as I did, that it improved download time, and in the end I got the file that I wanted earlier than I expected.
This also may be a good demonstration of legal use of peer-2-peer technologies, what would be good for all players in this space.

They need extra time to bug this one for the feds

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya gotta realize, it takes some time to put in all the NSA back doors.

closed and a mess i see

[Anonymous Coward]

Genuine Advantage anyone?

Heavy monitoring...?

Peer ban due to hacking, read a-la-xbox...?

No thank you.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's recent security track record has been nearly perfect. On properly updated systems there have been 0 major virus/worm epidemies for the last 3-4 or so years, even though the XP for instance has services like BITS enabled by default (if you turn on the updates, that is required as well actually).

Re:How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's c

[triso]

Neutral. I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me. Almost like Democrats/Liberals/Labour eh?

Re:It's not Bittorrent. It's better.

[AceJohnny]

MS didn't reinvent Bittorrent. They built something better: Avalanche. It's more efficient and (I know this phrase is weird to use around MS, but...) more secure. Read the research papers (they touch on BT, its advantages and disadvantages). I imagine most of this stuff is on its way into standard BT, if it hasn't been worked in already. "Something better"? I haven't followed Avalanch, but for I suppose it must've much evolved since it first, much derided by Bram Cohen, announcement?

bittorrent client...

[Firethorn]

That doesn't sound right to me... that would largely create segregated clusters of peers that don't talk to each other. That would likely hurt the swarm rather than help it.

That's why I said by preference

From what I understand, the bittorrent protocol tries to create a complete 'mini-swarm' in a given network segment, but sharing still happens between segments.

If part X is already on the network segment, it gets a lower priority to be sent to a different computer on that segment as compared to segment Y, which isn't on that segment. Clients, by preference, connect many or most of their connections within that segment.

These are all preferences and tendencies, not hard rules.