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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?"
Microsoft developed BITS 3.0 many months ago and included it with Vista. It allows for what Microsoft calls "peer caching."
Rob
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.
No sig
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.
Others have pointed out your straw man, but nobody has pointed you to this, so I thought I might.
"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.
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.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
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.
Shouldn't we be used to that by now?
-- Cheers!
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.
...I'm payed well though... You are paid well. Only rope or other cordage is payed.If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
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.
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.
I don't read AC A human right