I think the original article used 'similar files' only as a rough example. How I imagine it would work would be similar blocks could be downloaded from many sources. So in the example of a movie with German language, as long as the video blocks were the same, they would be interchangeable between the 2 files.
This actually would not be hard to do, if there was a standard for block sizes, each one should have a different md5 hash, so what a client would do is say "do you have md5 hash xxxxxx block, please send it to me". This way it would not matter where in the file the other block was, but the original (torrent file in this case) file would have the info on where the md5 hash would go.
As someone who works in the advertising research field, I'll let you in on a little secret.... Advertising DOES work. What people don't seem to realize is that different advertising mediums (web/TV/Print) are geared towards different markets. It's easy to say that the world would be all fine and dandy without ads, but the truth is that advertising actually help bring down the price on many of the products that you are probably using at the moment. Advertisers actually understand this (for the most part), and expect you to ignore the ads that do not pertain to you.
You have to look beyond the narrow view that all advertising is being bombarded with what the latest/greatest product is. While you may feel that advertising doesn't affect you, I can almost guarantee that it does. Think about your phone company (cell or landline), what made you go with that service plan. For most of the/. readers, I would assume that had to deal with reading reviews about the service, friends that have the service who seemed to like it, things of that nature. I'm not saying that everyone blindly follows an advertising and says "I have to get one, I'm going to go buy one now", more that people see a product/service advertised and find out more information on it.
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I think the original article used 'similar files' only as a rough example. How I imagine it would work would be similar blocks could be downloaded from many sources. So in the example of a movie with German language, as long as the video blocks were the same, they would be interchangeable between the 2 files. This actually would not be hard to do, if there was a standard for block sizes, each one should have a different md5 hash, so what a client would do is say "do you have md5 hash xxxxxx block, please send it to me". This way it would not matter where in the file the other block was, but the original (torrent file in this case) file would have the info on where the md5 hash would go.
As someone who works in the advertising research field, I'll let you in on a little secret.... Advertising DOES work. What people don't seem to realize is that different advertising mediums (web/TV/Print) are geared towards different markets. It's easy to say that the world would be all fine and dandy without ads, but the truth is that advertising actually help bring down the price on many of the products that you are probably using at the moment. Advertisers actually understand this (for the most part), and expect you to ignore the ads that do not pertain to you. You have to look beyond the narrow view that all advertising is being bombarded with what the latest/greatest product is. While you may feel that advertising doesn't affect you, I can almost guarantee that it does. Think about your phone company (cell or landline), what made you go with that service plan. For most of the /. readers, I would assume that had to deal with reading reviews about the service, friends that have the service who seemed to like it, things of that nature. I'm not saying that everyone blindly follows an advertising and says "I have to get one, I'm going to go buy one now", more that people see a product/service advertised and find out more information on it.