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Coming Soon, Mobile Torrents

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-still-don't-even-have-3g dept.

explosivejared writes "ZDNet is running an article on the "mobile implementation of the bittorent protocol which says 'Mobile implementations of the BitTorrent protocol are nearly certain to be part of whatever Google Android comes up with, and if not someone will have one for the open platform straightaway. Already a Windows Torrent product is on Version 2.0, and given the video capability of the iPhone it's clear Apple is not going to let this opportunity pass by. A Symbian Torrent program is on Version 1.3."

64 comments

  1. Link by saibot834 · · Score: 1

    And where is the link to the story?

    1. Re:Link by Threni · · Score: 5, Funny

      No one's seeding it. Some guy had 96.4% of the story but after a week gave up and got it on Soulseek.

  2. Linky? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    One of those hyperlink things I've heard so much about would be nice...

    1. Re:Linky? by siddesu · · Score: 1

      there you go:

      http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1742

      the rest of the links are in there.

  3. Worst summary ever by Constantine+XVI · · Score: 1

    A) I have no clue what the hell TFS is about
    B) I know we're not supposed to read TFA, but at least give us one!

    --
    "I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
  4. TFA by funfail · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1742

    --
    Search RapidShare and MegaUpload!
  5. Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by jbreckman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most of the time a mobile phone is sitting there, it isn't using it's antenna. What if something like the iPhone set up bandwidth sharing, so if there were a number of idle iPhones near you, and you were accessing a webpage, some traffic would get funneled through them and sent over wifi to you, making the whole experience MUCH faster. It would obviously only be over short bursts, and I'm not sure everyone would go for it, but it'd probably boost web browsing performance a lot. Almost like a torrent web browser... (I think thats why I thought of this right now)

    1. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by peragrin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How long do you think your battery would last under constant usage?

      haven't you ever noticed the difference between stand by and talk times?

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by jbreckman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Of course it'd hurt battery a little bit, but if done right, I don't think it would be too bad

      I don't know how often a data connection is initiated during "stand by" mode on an iPhone, but you could piggy back onto that. Or - again I'm speculating here - I'm guessing theres probably some unused bandwidth while you are talking that it could piggy back onto. So you'd get a boost from anyone already using their cell.

      Plus, in the true bittorrent sense, if you share your bandwidth, other people get their stuff faster, and if they follow the same rules, you'll get your stuff faster (and with less battery usage). So you'd REALLY only take a hit if you never used your iPhone to surf the web, but shared your connection with others.

    3. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Of course it'd hurt battery a little bit, but if done right, I don't think it would be too bad

      lol

    4. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by The+Mad+Debugger · · Score: 4, Informative

      You are extremely wrong. :)

      Usually phones don't do much of anything when they wake from sleep, especially if they haven't moved. The details vary from protocol to protocol, but normally they wake up only enough to listen for pages from the base stations, and then for only *very* brief periods. This is one of the basic challenges of modern cell network design: making sure the radio access network and the mobile have their clocks sync'd enough that the network knows when the phone will be listening.

      This is a huge part of making the battery life what it is. There's no "transmission" to piggback off of for battery life reasons, or if there is, it's as brief as possible to save battery life and bandwith. You wouldn't want that common signaling channel to be flooded with bit torrent traffic anyway!

      P2P on a 2G or 3G cellphone is just dumb. The total bandwidth of a given cellsite is limited to some fairly small number, and trying to run P2P is just going to make a lousy experience for everyone. Maybe with some 4G tech, the story would be different, but right now, if you really need to go download some crap off P2P do it at home.

    5. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullshit. The WiFi chip uses more juice than the phone's radio. It would have to be on all the time to listen for your neighbor coming over to borrow a cup of bandwidth.

      And more bullshit. Running BT over AT&T's network is just going to make the thing crawl, and force them into a position of charging for excess bandwidth.

    6. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by ILuvRamen · · Score: 1

      forget the battery, how long do you think your mobile carrier would keep you on with constant data usage. Currently you pretty much have to "be there" to use mobile phone bandwidth. Like I have to be sending a picture or downloading something with the phone open and in my hands. I used like 9 MB in a month. With bittorrent nobody just sits there and watches it so you can use maxed out bandwidth off the tower pretty much 24/7 in theory. And I remember a story here about how all cell phone companies can kick the highest bandwidth users off their network and suspend their contract whenever they want because it's part of the contract.
      plus, phones don't have much storage usually. I got a 1GB card in mine but not many other people do.

      --
      Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
    7. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget that it takes a lot less juice for a radio to listen than to broadcast. Standby is cheap because all it has to do is listen.

    8. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by threephaseboy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Except that as your parent stated, the phone is not even listening all the time when it's on standby

      --
      .
    9. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by hax0r_this · · Score: 1

      And if you really feel the need to do so, get an ssh client on your phone and use a command line torrent client on your home computer.

      That solves the whole storage issue too (not too many phones with built in hard drives last I checked).

      Then if you really feel the need to get at your media from your phone before you can sync it via USB, bluetooth or whatever else you might use then stream it. You can set your computer to transcode video to a low resolution on the way up to save bandwidth, and since you'll be watching it on a phone's screen anyway you shouldn't notice the difference.

    10. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed it did, which is why I didn't include that in my post. I wasn't posting a review of the parent post, I was merely adding a fact that was left out of it.

    11. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Usually phones don't do much of anything when they wake from sleep, especially if they haven't moved. The details vary from protocol to protocol, but normally they wake up only enough to listen for pages from the base stations, and then for only *very* brief periods. This is one of the basic challenges of modern cell network design: making sure the radio access network and the mobile have their clocks sync'd enough that the network knows when the phone will be listening.


      To put this in numbers, since I've had to wrestle with power management on a cellphone... usually you want say, 300 hours of standby time, and your battery may have 1.2Ah capacity. Do a little math, and the average current your cellphone can draw is 4mA. (GSM tends to be a little more power efficient due to TDMA - with CDMA, each station transmitting increases background noise so a station has to "break" through the noise - CDMA radios have to be very power agile since the amount of noise caused by other stations changes constantly).

      So in 4mA, you have to basically power up your receiver to wait for the base station ping, analyze to see if the station needs you to do anything (which can include finding another base station if several can service you - the base station may be getting full and thus wants to kick people to other cells if possible (if you're in the overlap region between cells, which is common in a crowded area where you may have base stations on every block)), then transmit a reply to tell the base station you're still with them (so calls can be routed there). A transmitter is wildly inefficient on power - if you need to transmit at 100mW, you may be drawing twice that in real power.

      The main processor itself (the one doing the UI work, aka the applications processor) is often completely stopped and put into a very low power standby state (but can be woken up fast - not instantaneously since its oscillators have stopped as well, but usually within 10+ms), again keeping in mind the 4mA budget. A lot of work goes into making sure this processor isn't woken up unless absolutely necessary (e.g., a phone call, or the user needs to use the cell phone) since keeping it on for 10+ms will easily blow your 4mA budget. This can include operating system fine-tuning to be "tickless" so the processor spends as much time as possible in the low power state. And it also includes shutting down SDRAM (put them into low power refresh mode). To help with this, as much "self-functionality" is pushed out to the other processors - the cellular radio (baseband processor + DSP) maintains the link with the base station, and since its load is relatively static, can be a low power (and thus slow) processor, the wifi module would again handle all the communications, perhaps even buffering packets so the main CPU isn't woken up on every packet of interest but can sleep a little more, etc.

      An application that requests CPU time for some reason can easily cut down the battery life significantly, from 300+ hours to just over 24 or 48. As people rarely if ever go for that long on standby, but instead use their phones (play music, games, etc), there's often a "days of use" style of testing, where the user plays music for X hours, checks e-mail or surfs the web on their phone, makes phone calls, interacts with the UI (playing games, checking notes, etc), and the goal is typically 1 to 2 days of battery life.
    12. Re:Sort of off-topic, but I just thought of it by Christophotron · · Score: 1

      No offense, but I think that's just a bad idea for many reasons. There are plenty of phones out there that support 3G or better, so why not just get one of those phones if you need to browse faster instead of using the iphone and its outdated technology. Or if you just love the iphone so much, either live with its inherent slowness or wait for a better iphone to come out. There's no need to clog up everyone's airwaves with bittorrent traffic just to make a few selfish people's iphones browse the web marginally faster. Maybe what you need is a proxy server to downsample and compress images and data so that you don't need to download as much when viewing a page. That way, everything loads a lot faster. Opera Mini already does this. I'm not sure if you can use Opera Mini on the iPhone, but perhaps you can set up Safari to use such a proxy. IMO, you should be glad your phone is just sitting there most of the time. That way, it doesn't have to eat through your battery and require charging every couple of hours, and it is available to you whenever you need it. Mobile phones are meant to stay on all the time so that you are available to be reached no matter where you are physically located. Having a phone that needs to be constantly plugged in means you might as well stay put and use a land line and a desktop or a laptop. IMO, the idea of bittorrent on a mobile phone is kinda silly in itself really. It's a waste of resources. Why wouldn't you download the torrent on your PC at home using its mostly idle internet connection that is meant for such intensive use? Then, you wouldn't have to worry about bandwidth or the battery life of your phone as much. You could even use SSH or a webui to queue the torrent and then download the files directly from your PC using an ftp client on your phone. Better yet, in the case of video or audio, set up a streaming server to downsample it and stream it to your phone on the fly. I'm not saying that bittorrent for phones should not exist, but it just doesn't make sense to me to try to use bittorrent on today's phones and networks. You can do a lot of cool stuff with a PC and if you put a little effort into it you can have a much more intelligent setup than a phone that tries to act like a PC by hammering the airwaves to torrent the latest south park episode.

  6. Why? by risinganger · · Score: 1
    Probably without exception the data plans here in the uk aren't cheap. I doubt this is much different to most countries right now. What 'unlimited' plans there are are just like the 'unlimited' plans we get from our ISPs - in other words there isn't anything unlimited about it. So BitTorrenting on a phone is likely to be an expensive proposition compared to BitTorrenting on a home pc.

    Next is battery life. The battery life on my n70 is crappy enough as it is. I really don't need to be draining it any faster.

    Instead of worrying about whether or not a phone has a BitTorrent client on it how about developers worry about making decent calender programs etc and phones that can synchronize with all the key OS's? Oh and if ZdNet are running an article how about a link?

    1. Re:Why? by webmaster404 · · Score: 1

      Actually some phones have wi-fi built in so you only need to use someone's open access point (the iPhone supports wi-fi) and use that. Torrents would be good, but there isn't much disk space in the phones to make it useful for data storage such as for CD ISOs and not for DVD ISOs in the least, 4-8 gigs is the max the iPhone has and most other phones give you 4 gigs at max. So until data increases, it doesn't have much practical purpose, expessaly when you can't get data off your phone in a normal way you have to use some proprietary way to get it off which ususally you can't use Linux (until someone finds a way to at least) and have to buy sometimes some proprietary USB cables. So until phones have large disk space and USB mass storage device support, Torrents won't be that useful except for some music and video.

      --
      There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
    2. Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Instead of worrying about whether or not a phone has a BitTorrent client on it how about developers worry about making decent calender programs etc and phones that can synchronize with all the key OS's?"

      I have 2 requests for easy phone software features

      1. guitar tuner. My phone has a mic and a speaker, why cant it be a guitar tuner?

      2. calculator with memory features. Why cant i use my phones calculator to keep a running total throughout the day? Why cant i use it to keep tabs on my current bank balance?

      Ill take either of these two features over a camera, mp3 player, thumb drive, voice mail, text messaging, ring tones, bit torrenting, web browsing, or even bluetooth.

      Actually at this point, id be willing to pay plenty extra for a phone that DIDNT have any of those whizbang features. I cant tell you how many times a day i flip open the phone to make a call & get "please wait - camera loading" because i accidentally pressed that damn button. The only thing text messaging is good for is spam, & who on earth walks around trying to read web pages on their 2" phone screen?

      Oh and btw folks, RING TONES SHOULD NOT HAVE LYRICS!!

      Have a nice day and get off my lawn you kids!

    3. Re:Why? by blackest_k · · Score: 1

      wmtorrent (trial version) works on my HTC universal and to be quite honest its not that good.

      It does work although very slowly. A popular torrent which normally would download in a couple of hours max about 350 meg took 24 hours and the phone needed to be kept on charge. The other major problem was that you need at least twice the size of the torrent as free space. If you tried it on a UK data plan, you would probably be able to do it maybe once in a month to be within your data allowance, unfortunately it's not allowed by my provider. Webpages and email seem to be almost all thats allowable.

      T-mobile have (cough) come up with mobile TV, well nearly, sort of. The basic package you can have on a day pass for £1 or £3.50 a month- well doesn't do a lot really. There is one live channel eurosport2 and several canned streams available at certain times of the day. Just like real tv, apart from you can't record it a particular program appears at a designated time and channel, but well its not really a program as such, more a clip followed by an advert for channel4's on demand service.... MTV wasnt much better after a few minutes a message came up on my screen saying the server was asking me to disconnect...
      The resolution is astounding I've seen higher definition thumb nails, without zooming in the picture was about postage stamp sized at maybe 10 frames per second. ..

      Then there is the connection. 3G is needed 2G doesn't cut it (it might try but its unuseable). Then there comes the real problem the 3G signal near me is good unfortunately the 2G signal is excellent. It is not possible to stop your phone connecting to the strongest signal, which tends to be 2G. This limitation of the connection makes the whole service useless for anything other than gee look what i can do with my phone, erm it'll work in a minute honest.

      Spur of the moment video then is not practical, wmtorrent might be enough to grab a few popular mp3's or the odd ebook torrent, you would be better off just grabbing an ebook from amazon or a legal download site that doesnt require specialised software to download (iTunes is out then). Or being prepared and getting mythtv to record your favourite shows and transcode them into Xvid or divX.

      Bit torrent isn't practical on a mobile, The average Torrent is bigger and slower than a mobile device can handle. There is a potential market for good quality downloadable content however no service has got it right yet.

      --
      Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
  7. Why Not? by bhima · · Score: 1

    Bittorrent is just another protocol to share data. Does it really matter what protocol is used to get the data?

    Besides, it's not like are going to be sharing 500 Terabyte HD movie collections with their phones... yet.

    --
    Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
    1. Re:Why Not? by risinganger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Does it really matter what protocol is used to get the data? I would say so yes. Would you log on to a remote client over the internet with telnet anymore or would you sensibly use ssh? Slightly off topic as far as examples go but it should get the point across.

      The BitTorrent protocol keeps connections open with multiple peers and periodic communication with a server. If I was mad enough to download a video or music file on my phone I certainly wouldn't want the phone spending the next several hours uploading on my behalf - the battery drain being a major factor. I think the BitTorrent protocol is fantastic. It is very efficient in using as much bandwidth as you can throw at it and serves its intended purpose of distributing the impact of serving large sets of data. There are more sensible protocols in existence though for devices such as phones.

    2. Re:Why Not? by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Funny

      Does it really matter what protocol is used to get the data?

      You're not a Comcast customer, obviously.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. Not with Canadian Data costs... by PhotoGuy · · Score: 1

    With the data rates we pay in Canada, it's probably not going to be much of a viable option up here for awhile.

    My phone is EVDO capable, but I make sure I turn it off (although I can't seem to connect with it anyway). If it did connect at EVDO speeds, it could rack up hundreds of dollars of charges in a few minutes, with the dollars-per-megabyte we pay up here.

    Here's hoping the Canadian government's push to open up the spectrum to new competition will help make these things a bit more reasonable.

    --
    Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
  9. WooHoo!! by jo42 · · Score: 1

    The carriers are absolutely going to love this. The amount of money they are going to make from data charges will be record breaking.

  10. Coming Soon? by rastilin · · Score: 1

    Azureus is written in Java. Anything that can run Java can therefore run bittorrent already. The only issue is memory use, you'd need to either optimize Azureus or have a phone with a chunky amount of RAM.

    Granted, that implies input and screen space, but it would run.

    --
    How do you kill that which has no life?
    1. Re:Coming Soon? by Eternauta3k · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't it have to be written for and compiled with J2ME?

      --
      Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
    2. Re:Coming Soon? by rastilin · · Score: 1

      I admit that is the flaw in my plan. However, if one has a sufficiently powerful platform, one doesn't need to use ME. Or one could provide VMs for both. The real issue is that Azureus uses up 98MB of RAM or so. My point is that it could be done and there are miniature computers with 256+MB of RAM and wireless available. They're just very expensive.

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
    3. Re:Coming Soon? by burris · · Score: 1

      So much for "write once, run everywhere."

    4. Re:Coming Soon? by Xiaran · · Score: 1

      Errr. What? Because a desktop application that runs on every major desktop platform(very well I might add) cant automagically run on a memory limited device then java is a failure?

    5. Re:Coming Soon? by rastilin · · Score: 1

      Yeah, it's not perfect but it's pretty close.

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
    6. Re:Coming Soon? by nahpets77 · · Score: 1

      In addition to the ram, you'd also need a WAY more powerful processor, and a lot more storage space on your phone to make it practical. You'd be basically turning your phone into a tablet PC, so why not just get one of those? Also, what about battery life? Azureus constantly running on your phone would drain it pretty quick.

    7. Re:Coming Soon? by rastilin · · Score: 1

      I don't know about more powerful processor. I suspect that Java's performance is often underrated as on this machine it seldom reaches 2% processor usage. Generally hovering around 1%. A 300mhz processor like the ipaq 1940 would be fast enough to run it fine.

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
    8. Re:Coming Soon? by nahpets77 · · Score: 1

      It's not Java that takes a lot of resources, it's Azureus; check out the resources it uses on a regular desktop machine in terms of RAM and CPU usage. If you wanted to run Azureus in the background without having it greatly impact performance, I would think a better processor is needed; not just more speed, but cache too.

    9. Re:Coming Soon? by rastilin · · Score: 1

      Nevertheless, it was Azureus I was talking about. 0 - 2% processor usage but a massive memory sink.

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
    10. Re:Coming Soon? by nahpets77 · · Score: 1

      I find your 0-2% CPU usage estimate for Azeurus hard to reconcile with my own experience, which is more like 15-30% (of course, this depends on how many torrents are open). The only torrent client I've used that has been in the <2% range is rtorrent. When I use ktorrent, which is a native KDE app, I get about 15% CPU usage, so I would guess that a Java app like Azureus would be on par or worse than that. A quick google search brought up some pages where users are complaining about Azureus CPU usage of 60% and up.

    11. Re:Coming Soon? by rastilin · · Score: 1

      Personal experience counts for very little. But I'd like to refer you to this screenshot anyway.
      4 torrents open, 27GB of data roughly.

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
    12. Re:Coming Soon? by rastilin · · Score: 1

      That was a silly mistake, sorry. http://img164.imageshack.us/img164/5008/memoryusems8.jpg

      --
      How do you kill that which has no life?
    13. Re:Coming Soon? by nahpets77 · · Score: 1

      Like I said, CPU usage is largely affected by how many torrents are open and how active they are. If you have torrents open that are using up a lot of bandwidth (~1MB/s), you should see your CPU usage climb, not to mention the IO activity to your disk. In any event, I think the 100MB RAM requirement pretty much kills any argument for using Azureus on a cell phone. ;)

  11. What's the point? by kieran · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe I'm being dumb, but I don't see the point of this. Files sent to a mobile are relatively small, even in the case of video due to the size of the screen, and mobile bandwidth is expensive. Bittorrent, on the other hand, is designed to save bandwidth for the server, not the client.

    It seems like a bad trade-off to save yourself cheap server bandwidth by spending expensive radio bandwidth.

    1. Re:What's the point? by cerberusss · · Score: 1

      Files sent to a mobile are relatively small, even in the case of video due to the size of the screen, and mobile bandwidth is expensive. Bittorrent, on the other hand, is designed to save bandwidth for the server, not the client.
      Not any more. I've got an HTC S710 a.k.a. HTC Vox and this baby has WiFi and a slot for MicroSD, which run to 1+ Gb. I think it's nice to snort a slow torrent through the phone during the night.
      --
      8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
    2. Re:What's the point? by palegray.net · · Score: 1

      Files sent to a mobile are relatively small now. My home computer had 64 MB of RAM in it several years ago, as well.

      On a different point, with all the news going around about ISPs screwing around with P2P traffic, how long before some wireless ISP comes out with a fantastic data plan, but starts choking off protocols as they see fit?

      Competition will eventually result in much broader availability of "unlimited" data plans for mobile devices, the same way competition allows MetroPCS to thrive in several major metro markets offerings unlimited local and long distance calling for $50 a month.

      --
      512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
    3. Re:What's the point? by kieran · · Score: 1

      When I say files sent to mobiles are relatively small, "relatively" is the key word. Sure, they'll increase in size over time, but bandwidth keeps getting cheaper and wireless protocols keep getting better, as does battery life. I maintain that they are and will remain relatively small compared to the sort of traffic a home PC gets, and more importantly the bandwidth available to fixed servers at any given price point.

  12. Torrent p2p? by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    Just hope they don't use comcast for any of their service.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  13. Yeah, right by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It ain't happening by Apple. Considering Apple made a deal with YouTube to convert all their videos to Quicktime, Apple is dead-set against allowing any industry standard CODECs on the iPhone. A bit torrent client would be totally useless on the iPhone -- nothing that I encounter is ever in Quicktime.

    Now, if and when hackers get some reasonable CODECs on the iPhone, then we'll be talkin'. Though, those same hackers will get bit torrent running on the iPhone as well, so I don't think we'll need to wait for Apple anyway.

    --
    Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    1. Re:Yeah, right by peragrin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Name one Industry standard Codec? quicktime is at least playable on linux, windows and OS X. unlike Say WMV where msft won't even release the specs for it, so OS X and linux users are out of luck period.

      besides Youtube uses Flash video where the individual codec doesn't matter so much.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    2. Re:Yeah, right by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From Wikipedia

      In October 2005, Apple Inc began selling H.264-encoded videos over the Internet through their iTunes Music Store.[11] Initially selling just television series and music videos, they expanded in September 2006 to sell films. On May 30, 2007 Apple announced plans to integrate streaming of YouTube videos into the Apple TV. In a later interview, Apple VP David Moody revealed that all of YouTube's videos are going to be transcoded to H.264 for higher compatibility and quality on the Apple TV. Starting in June, YouTube will be automatically encoding all new uploads with H.264. Their intention is to have the entire video catalog available in H.264 this autumn. Apple's iPhone supports H.264 Baseline Profile, Levels 2.1 and 3, at resolutions up to 480x320 or 640x480 and bitrates up to 1.5 Mbit/s and is capable of playing the YouTube video content.[12]

      Adobe will support H264 in its Flash Player [13].

      So you're saying that H.264 isn't an industry standard? As opposed to Flash Video?

      I guess Apple must have bought out Adobe as well, considering the next Flash Player will use (cough) "Quicktime".

      --
      How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
    3. Re:Yeah, right by emilv · · Score: 1

      You can play WMV files in OSX with the Flip4Mac codec: http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv_download.htm

    4. Re:Yeah, right by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 1

      I've had far more luck with wmv on linux than with quicktime. Unless there's DRM in it, WMV will always play for me. Quicktime seems to be somewhere around 70% of the time. That's great, and I'm not complaining, but it's enough to get me to groan on those times I see it as the sole format for something.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    5. Re:Yeah, right by peragrin · · Score: 1

      only WMV 9 and less. wmv 10 and 11 are only barely supported and none of the DRm files. which are the ones created standard and needs to be turned off manually.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  14. Freenet would be more important... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine that you've taken a bunch of photos on your cameraphone, of a sensitive situation that the government might not want to get out. If you could insert those files directly into freenet without the provider being able to see or log them, the chances of getting the truth out without retribution or much coverup would be much greater.

  15. You think ISPs think bittorrent is evil, try WISPs by nweaver · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ISPs think BitTorrent is incredibly evil, because from the ISPs viewpoint it is VERY inefficient... Bittorrent is not about efficient file distribution (thats called Akamai), rather Bittorrent is a way for someone to provide a large file cheaply, because it puts the bandwidth costs directly on the customers of the large file.

    Unless the protocol has a significant number of simultaneous users for a given file within the ISP's local network, everything is actually transfered twice: once in, and once out. This isn't an efficiency savings, it is an efficiency hit, and a big one given the volume transferred.

    They can't cache it either, because so many uses are copyright violations and the protocol is not designed to be friendly to transparent caches. You could make up a cache, but you'd basically have to do a LOT of work with an IDS and a custom cache for a cache which will require many MANY terabytes of disk and that will get you sued if you deploy it.

    Likewise, for a mobile use, it will suck twice the power, as you send and receive EVERYTHING twice on your local link.

    And wireless bandwidth is much more valuable than the commodity internet link (there is a lot less of it), so even if items ARE staying in the ISP, the double transfer problem is a huge issue unless you have a bunch of people getting the same file right next to each other.

    Bittorrent in the mobile world saves the content provider from having to provide cheap, wired bandwidth by making the recipients and/or their WISPs provide expensive wireless bandwidth instead!

    --
    Test your net with Netalyzr
  16. Re:You think ISPs think bittorrent is evil, try WI by burris · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They can't cache it either, because so many uses are copyright violations and the protocol is not designed to be friendly to transparent caches. You could make up a cache, but you'd basically have to do a LOT of work with an IDS and a custom cache for a cache which will require many MANY terabytes of disk and that will get you sued if you deploy it.

    In the USA at least, ISPs running automatic caches on behalf of their users are protected from secondary infringement liability by the DMCA.

    BitTorrent implemented caching extensions and there was at least one company producing caches for BT and other p2p protocols but it didn't seem to go anywhere.
  17. Way ahead of its time. by EddyPearson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok, Its fairly clever, I'll grant you (Though, its not THAT tricky to code a BitTorrent client in Java), but with mobile data tariffs being what they are, whose actually going to use it?

    --
    You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
    1. Re:Way ahead of its time. by pbxtreme8720 · · Score: 1

      The UK is getting alot better with their data tariffs. with unlimited data for around 10 extra and good 3g coverage and most towns having 3.5g this could be very good.

  18. mais non!!! by quantic_oscillation7 · · Score: 0

    i'm warning you...i caught you for the 3rd time using that evil protocol, sarkozi take is phone...

  19. Re:What's the point? - you've made it by chawly · · Score: 0

    You're right. It is a bad trade off and a silly thing to be doing

    --
    How many beans make five, anyhow ? ... Charles Walmsley
  20. implementing it is not the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    It's just a TCP/UDP networking app, nice hack but no big deal to port it to J2ME or Windows Mobile or whatever...

    The real problem is not technical, it's legal, eg stuff like this (excerpt from Verizon Wireless T&C):

    Data Plans and Features (such as NationalAccess, BroadbandAccess, GlobalAccess, Push to Talk, and certain VZEmail services) may ONLY be used with wireless devices for the following purposes: (i) Internet browsing; (ii) email; and (iii) intranet access (including access to corporate intranets, email, and individual productivity applications like customer relationship management, sales force, and field service automation). The Data Plans and Features MAY NOT be used for any other purpose. Examples of prohibited uses include, without limitation, the following: (i) continuous uploading, downloading or streaming of audio or video programming or games; (ii) server devices or host computer applications, including, but not limited to, Web camera posts or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine-to-machine connections or peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing; or (iii) as a substitute or backup for private lines or dedicated data connections. This means, by way of example only, that checking email, surfing the Internet, downloading legally acquired songs, and/or visiting corporate intranets is permitted, but downloading movies using P2P file sharing services and/or redirecting television signals for viewing on laptops is prohibited.
  21. welcome by nerdyalien · · Score: 0

    welcome to the massive mobile pr0n era!

    Oh noo.. I can't take calls now... hey.. stop downloading.. answer my call you idiot...