I know Shareaza isn't the absolute greatest bittorrent client out there... but it seems to work fine for me, and the fact that it's also a Gnutella2 and eDonkey client makes it just too damn good for getting all those 'latest and greatest' BitTorrent things, as well as those hard to find things you only get via other P2P networks.
Plus... if your tracker goes down it looks for alternat Gnutella2 sources... sweet.:)
Oh... and it's open source... that's good... right?:P
These have been on the website for months now. I watched them around 6 or so months ago. And yes, they are all from episodes that have screened, but these are BITS of them that were not aired. PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE!:D
My god what a absolute killjoy you are! I mean, come on, this is one of the shows I really look forward to watching these days, and there are almost none of that ilk for me... and I think it's a fascinating show which shows things being done which are the sorts of things that many of us wish we could do if we happened to have lots of money and ample free time. (or be paid to do it).
I find out all sorts of interesting factoids from it, and I am not having my intelligence insulted while I watch it either (like the horrendous English version 'Braniac'... What a completely disgusting show that is. "Let's disguise some random violence and tits as science").
Just because it's not some intensely specialised, narrow focus, boring as hell to most, monotone narrated documentary, does not make it uneducational. Do you equate 'popular' with uneducational do you?
You can already use this in Australia as well... I mean, yeash... my company was going to use this as a ticketing system for music venues over a year ago... I don't know whether it was the lot you linked to... but this article claiming these guys came up with it is just crud.
Here Here (or is that Hear Hear?)... I hate posts that scream "Yadda yadda yadda... FACT!"... with nothing to back it up.
I'm not entirely sure that the argument that the way they used to build things resulted in a poorer product though... poorer by the image quality etc. but things like tvs etc were built then with a longer intended lifespan. These days it's assumed by the manufacturer that you will be wanting to upgrade in x years due to technology moving on anyway, so why spend more money making it last longer than x years.
I don't know what the magic x is that various manufacturers use... it'd be interesting to know.
Yeah, let's all live our lives worrying about the most petty of things... enjoy using the camera to take photos of everything you want to... enjoy learning how to compose, enjoy playing with the manual settings... do not let that enjoyment be dampened with 'gee... if I press the button, that might shorten the life of this by 1/20000!')
Couldn't you find anything else to complain about?
No, not really.:)
Who ever said this was a super Mac related list?
Well, see, I figured, that being a Macworld event... and being that Apple zealo... enthusiasts... go on and on how much better the Mac is because it has much better hardware, apps etc. I just figured that the best of Macworld might, you know, consist of things that are truly Mac specific and cool... not just some little usb/video gadgets that don't really have much to do with a 'Mac' as such... in fact those probes, I warrent, will be used in the vast majority on PCs, because they tend to be the machines of tinkerers...
Erm... how was this list a super Mac related list? Only the first and last items (the Sketch thing and the iPod dock) are specifically for Apple products, the other three are general use USB and video items that have to alegence to Mac or PC specifically...
"So people will basically shift because they have to" Except
a) All players will be backwards compatible, so you'll still be able to play all your old discs... no need to move your library of movies to HD just because the new player you bought supports them.
b) As if they're just going to stop providing movies in a format with such a MASSIVE user base... for how long did they (and still do to a small degree) keep producing cassette versions of albums after CD? Long time... looong time.
Gee, it was really worth signing up wasn't it? (I'm not saying that against you, it's against them...) How stingy are they? More of the article available before the break than after... Pretend there's a whole slew of other wonderful information after the break to only get one more paragraph is a bit rich.
I probably wouldn't even touch on being liable at all.. it's all just going to trigger the 'bullshit' alert... but mentioning something along the lines of 'Also, to my understanding, doesn't this stop you being able to be considered a common carrier anymore?'... might make them think, or ask their boss as to what it means or similar....
The heart was indeed in the right place though... they have a legitimate use for BitTorrent which their company is blocking.
It just comes from having worked for them a lot, and in their customer facing areas in a number of those instances... you learn what makes them jump... and loosing a customer makes them jump far higher than someone saying "You might be liable for some law I'm not really familiar with".
You'll probably get some automatic reply, which will mention other contact points you can follow if you're not happy with the reply, use them to say that you will leave and move to another company unless the BitTorrent issues are resolved.
And no... no it didn't come through... Think XML style comments to know what I put there... and really, I wrote hugely witty things inside of the comments, which of course I just can't re-write here...:P
That really isn't the way to word an email on such a topic to a corporation, you need to be more formal... ------------- To Whom it may concern,
I have noticed that you are shaping packets (*are they shaping, or are they blocking the traffic?*) which you identify as being BitTorrent traffic (http://www.bittorrent.com/). I assume your reasoning behind this is that BitTorrent traffic accounts for a very high percentage of overall bandwidth usage on your network and your assumption that all BitTorrent traffic is of an illegal nature.
However your actions are affecting many completely legitimate uses of the internet and are making your service severely crippled for many of us. For instance, the most popular online game in the world at present is World of Warcraft (WoW). This game, as most do, supply occasionaly patches and updates which require downloading of sometimes quite substantial volumes of data. BitTorrent makes this method faster for the end users (myself included), and reduces the load on the company's servers also, allowing more people to download the content in a far shorter time. Apart from this use, which is impacting me the most, there are many other items transfered using BitTorrent which are just as legal and useful to your paid subscribers.
I ask you to reconcider your blocking of this traffic, else I would like to be released from my contract to you with no penalty as you are no longer providing the service which I initially signed up for.
Sincerly,
Yournamehere! --------------
Something along those lines anyway... (spell checked of course)... and I would lay off the legal crap... nothing will turn off a tech support or customer support officer more than some little kid (whether you are or not, that's what they'll see you as, trust me... I have run an internet provider's customer support centre) claiming that they know something about the law when really they don't... it just makes them instantly go "We've got another RIAA nut here...." "Really? Send them the pre-canned response".
Threatening to end your contract with them and demanding to be released without penalty will get you far more action than vague mentionings of cans of worms and lawsuits.
Well, mores the pity for you... we've been demoing our system to interested parties and they are extremely impressed with the look, feel and functionality of the product when, to their eyes, they haven't had to install a damn thing... We looked at XHTML, CSS, DHTML, Javascript etc. etc... but having 'enjoyed' the wonders of trying to get sophisticated javascript things working across all browsers and operating systems a while back, I wasn't keen on doing the same battles all over again... using your despised flash means we can forget about whether it's going to work on browser x on version y of operating system z, because we just know it will... no finicky little differences on how browser x renders item b just a few pixels off because in browser x it considers the browser window to include the scrollbar while browser y doesn't etc. etc.
In your world Flash may be burning in damnation, but in our world it's a beautiful little ray of sunshine that has cut our development time right, right down.
And you make up how much of the web... what?... less than a percent, probably less than a fraction of a percent actually... I'm talking about creating applications for use in companies here... no need for distribution of software, easy updates by the company who makes it etc. etc... it's a wonderful way to go. Even for the general populous, excluding those of your ilk, you're going to hit a very, very high percentage of your target market without them having to install anything.
Not trying to spruik it or anything, but I'm currently working on a project of making a webapp using Laszlo.
It's an open source language/server for creating flash based applications.
We've found it to be very impressive how much you can do with so little code... and it's nice to have a proper OO backend to a flash frontend... the flash frontend means we can:
a) Make our interface very pretty and like a 'normal' application b) Means it works in pretty much any browser... c) on pretty much all platforms... d) without a download of any plugin in most cases (just because of the penetration of flash)
The thing is that it's a flat screen already... so you are effectively 'watching' something that you are taking part in anyway... so you can't be truly immersed... so, what they're attempting to do is to make it more like what we're used to seeing on a flat screen, and that's movies... we have spent our lives seeing 'reality' presented via tv/movies in this way, so if you can make the game seem more like that, then you can make it seem like you're acting in a movie (in a sense anyway)...
There are ways and means to use this technology to make it seem more like you are really 'there' rather than making it film like, and that's the other way to try to take it... as much like looking into the real world as possible... but don't discount the filmic qualities as a way of immersion... it works very well too.
Come down here too! We have more cafes per head of population than anywhere on earth! (I think... I heard it somewhere anyway and now can't find anything to back that up!)... in any case we have a lot of choices for coffee, of every variety... and let me tell you, after working in the States for a while, I appreciate good coffee even more... man, the majority of coffee in America is truly disgusting... when Starbucks starts tasting good, you know you've got a problem!:P
Yeah, and they would never expect their ONE configuration to EVER 'Overheat'! Oh heaven forbid... or have a 'Bad Power Supply', or 'Low power' or 'Fans not working' or any one of a number of things that can happen in a complex machine due to component failure.
Sensationalist crap is EXACTLY what a comment like that was.
Slashdot Mirror
I know Shareaza isn't the absolute greatest bittorrent client out there... but it seems to work fine for me, and the fact that it's also a Gnutella2 and eDonkey client makes it just too damn good for getting all those 'latest and greatest' BitTorrent things, as well as those hard to find things you only get via other P2P networks.
:)
:P
Plus... if your tracker goes down it looks for alternat Gnutella2 sources... sweet.
Oh... and it's open source... that's good... right?
These have been on the website for months now. I watched them around 6 or so months ago. And yes, they are all from episodes that have screened, but these are BITS of them that were not aired. PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE! :D
My god what a absolute killjoy you are! I mean, come on, this is one of the shows I really look forward to watching these days, and there are almost none of that ilk for me... and I think it's a fascinating show which shows things being done which are the sorts of things that many of us wish we could do if we happened to have lots of money and ample free time. (or be paid to do it).
I find out all sorts of interesting factoids from it, and I am not having my intelligence insulted while I watch it either (like the horrendous English version 'Braniac'... What a completely disgusting show that is. "Let's disguise some random violence and tits as science").
Just because it's not some intensely specialised, narrow focus, boring as hell to most, monotone narrated documentary, does not make it uneducational. Do you equate 'popular' with uneducational do you?
You can already use this in Australia as well... I mean, yeash... my company was going to use this as a ticketing system for music venues over a year ago... I don't know whether it was the lot you linked to... but this article claiming these guys came up with it is just crud.
Here Here (or is that Hear Hear?)... I hate posts that scream "Yadda yadda yadda... FACT!"... with nothing to back it up.
I'm not entirely sure that the argument that the way they used to build things resulted in a poorer product though... poorer by the image quality etc. but things like tvs etc were built then with a longer intended lifespan. These days it's assumed by the manufacturer that you will be wanting to upgrade in x years due to technology moving on anyway, so why spend more money making it last longer than x years.
I don't know what the magic x is that various manufacturers use... it'd be interesting to know.
Yeah, let's all live our lives worrying about the most petty of things... enjoy using the camera to take photos of everything you want to... enjoy learning how to compose, enjoy playing with the manual settings... do not let that enjoyment be dampened with 'gee... if I press the button, that might shorten the life of this by 1/20000!')
Couldn't you find anything else to complain about?
:)
No, not really.
Who ever said this was a super Mac related list?
Well, see, I figured, that being a Macworld event... and being that Apple zealo... enthusiasts... go on and on how much better the Mac is because it has much better hardware, apps etc. I just figured that the best of Macworld might, you know, consist of things that are truly Mac specific and cool... not just some little usb/video gadgets that don't really have much to do with a 'Mac' as such... in fact those probes, I warrent, will be used in the vast majority on PCs, because they tend to be the machines of tinkerers...
Just odd is all.
Erm... how was this list a super Mac related list? Only the first and last items (the Sketch thing and the iPod dock) are specifically for Apple products, the other three are general use USB and video items that have to alegence to Mac or PC specifically...
Pretty darn lacking I think.
"So people will basically shift because they have to"
Except
a) All players will be backwards compatible, so you'll still be able to play all your old discs... no need to move your library of movies to HD just because the new player you bought supports them.
b) As if they're just going to stop providing movies in a format with such a MASSIVE user base... for how long did they (and still do to a small degree) keep producing cassette versions of albums after CD? Long time... looong time.
Gee, it was really worth signing up wasn't it? (I'm not saying that against you, it's against them...) How stingy are they? More of the article available before the break than after... Pretend there's a whole slew of other wonderful information after the break to only get one more paragraph is a bit rich.
I probably wouldn't even touch on being liable at all.. it's all just going to trigger the 'bullshit' alert... but mentioning something along the lines of 'Also, to my understanding, doesn't this stop you being able to be considered a common carrier anymore?'... might make them think, or ask their boss as to what it means or similar....
The heart was indeed in the right place though... they have a legitimate use for BitTorrent which their company is blocking.
It just comes from having worked for them a lot, and in their customer facing areas in a number of those instances... you learn what makes them jump... and loosing a customer makes them jump far higher than someone saying "You might be liable for some law I'm not really familiar with".
You'll probably get some automatic reply, which will mention other contact points you can follow if you're not happy with the reply, use them to say that you will leave and move to another company unless the BitTorrent issues are resolved.
And no... no it didn't come through... Think XML style comments to know what I put there... and really, I wrote hugely witty things inside of the comments, which of course I just can't re-write here... :P
Ha! I didn't even notice... I haven't used Pascal in yeeeeears! In fact, now it would be (I hope this comes through correctly)
That really isn't the way to word an email on such a topic to a corporation, you need to be more formal...
-------------
To Whom it may concern,
I have noticed that you are shaping packets (*are they shaping, or are they blocking the traffic?*) which you identify as being BitTorrent traffic (http://www.bittorrent.com/). I assume your reasoning behind this is that BitTorrent traffic accounts for a very high percentage of overall bandwidth usage on your network and your assumption that all BitTorrent traffic is of an illegal nature.
However your actions are affecting many completely legitimate uses of the internet and are making your service severely crippled for many of us. For instance, the most popular online game in the world at present is World of Warcraft (WoW). This game, as most do, supply occasionaly patches and updates which require downloading of sometimes quite substantial volumes of data. BitTorrent makes this method faster for the end users (myself included), and reduces the load on the company's servers also, allowing more people to download the content in a far shorter time. Apart from this use, which is impacting me the most, there are many other items transfered using BitTorrent which are just as legal and useful to your paid subscribers.
I ask you to reconcider your blocking of this traffic, else I would like to be released from my contract to you with no penalty as you are no longer providing the service which I initially signed up for.
Sincerly,
Yournamehere!
--------------
Something along those lines anyway... (spell checked of course)... and I would lay off the legal crap... nothing will turn off a tech support or customer support officer more than some little kid (whether you are or not, that's what they'll see you as, trust me... I have run an internet provider's customer support centre) claiming that they know something about the law when really they don't... it just makes them instantly go "We've got another RIAA nut here...." "Really? Send them the pre-canned response".
Threatening to end your contract with them and demanding to be released without penalty will get you far more action than vague mentionings of cans of worms and lawsuits.
Great link! Thanks... a very interesting interview... thanks... :)
Well, mores the pity for you... we've been demoing our system to interested parties and they are extremely impressed with the look, feel and functionality of the product when, to their eyes, they haven't had to install a damn thing... We looked at XHTML, CSS, DHTML, Javascript etc. etc... but having 'enjoyed' the wonders of trying to get sophisticated javascript things working across all browsers and operating systems a while back, I wasn't keen on doing the same battles all over again... using your despised flash means we can forget about whether it's going to work on browser x on version y of operating system z, because we just know it will... no finicky little differences on how browser x renders item b just a few pixels off because in browser x it considers the browser window to include the scrollbar while browser y doesn't etc. etc.
In your world Flash may be burning in damnation, but in our world it's a beautiful little ray of sunshine that has cut our development time right, right down.
And you make up how much of the web... what?... less than a percent, probably less than a fraction of a percent actually... I'm talking about creating applications for use in companies here... no need for distribution of software, easy updates by the company who makes it etc. etc... it's a wonderful way to go. Even for the general populous, excluding those of your ilk, you're going to hit a very, very high percentage of your target market without them having to install anything.
Not trying to spruik it or anything, but I'm currently working on a project of making a webapp using Laszlo.
It's an open source language/server for creating flash based applications.
We've found it to be very impressive how much you can do with so little code... and it's nice to have a proper OO backend to a flash frontend... the flash frontend means we can:
a) Make our interface very pretty and like a 'normal' application
b) Means it works in pretty much any browser...
c) on pretty much all platforms...
d) without a download of any plugin in most cases (just because of the penetration of flash)
The thing is that it's a flat screen already... so you are effectively 'watching' something that you are taking part in anyway... so you can't be truly immersed... so, what they're attempting to do is to make it more like what we're used to seeing on a flat screen, and that's movies... we have spent our lives seeing 'reality' presented via tv/movies in this way, so if you can make the game seem more like that, then you can make it seem like you're acting in a movie (in a sense anyway)...
There are ways and means to use this technology to make it seem more like you are really 'there' rather than making it film like, and that's the other way to try to take it... as much like looking into the real world as possible... but don't discount the filmic qualities as a way of immersion... it works very well too.
Come down here too! We have more cafes per head of population than anywhere on earth! (I think... I heard it somewhere anyway and now can't find anything to back that up!)... in any case we have a lot of choices for coffee, of every variety... and let me tell you, after working in the States for a while, I appreciate good coffee even more... man, the majority of coffee in America is truly disgusting... when Starbucks starts tasting good, you know you've got a problem! :P
It's your... only use you're if you can put in "you are" in its place and have it still make sense.
:)
That's if you were actually asking.
Yeah, and they would never expect their ONE configuration to EVER 'Overheat'! Oh heaven forbid... or have a 'Bad Power Supply', or 'Low power' or 'Fans not working' or any one of a number of things that can happen in a complex machine due to component failure.
Sensationalist crap is EXACTLY what a comment like that was.
I mean, you can do both video and audio calls via MSN Messenger, and it's free... so how is this different?
Well there was a well thought out and supported argument for your view... 'It's wrong'.... brilliant.
Care to back that up in any way shape or form?