Hell, even I thought bootlegging (pirating) was just buying a cd and sharing its rip. But this article from Wired blew my mind. Here are a few excerpts:
"In reality, the number of files on the Net ripped from store-bought CDs, DVDs, and videogames is statistically negligible. People don't share what they buy; they share what is already being shared - the countless descendants of a single "Adam and Eve" file"
"Whoever transfers the most files to the most sites in the least amount of time wins. There are elaborate rules, with prizes in the offing and reputations at stake. Topsites like Anathema are at the apex. Once a file is posted to a topsite, it starts a rapid descent through wider and wider levels of an invisible network, multiplying exponentially along the way. At each step, more and more pirates pitch in to keep the avalanche tumbling downward. Finally, thousands, perhaps millions, of copies - all the progeny of that original file - spill into the public peer-to-peer networks: Kazaa, LimeWire, Morpheus. Without this duplication and distribution structure providing content, the P2P networks would run dry."
"The sites use a "bounce" to hide their IP address, and members can log in only from trusted IP addresses already on file. Most transmissions between sites use heavy-duty encryption. Finally, they continually change the usernames and passwords required to log in. Estimates say this media darknet distributes more than half a million movies every day"
Dig deeper and read more about Frank, the hacker who distributed HalfLife2 beta an year before its release.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Sunday, December 12, 2004
Real speeds and download caps.
In my previous post comment,
Sushubh said...
unfortunately sify broadband. the only other option i have in my area is dialup or gprs (max 40kbps). as for limits i believe airtel is giving 128kbps unlimited for 900-1000 bucks... isn't it true?
Of the evils choose the least, eh? Yes, touchtel's (airtel) does offer unlimited 128kbps for Rs.900, but the problem with airtel's is that its 128kbps comes only to around 13.5kBytes/sec rather than the expected 16KBytes/sec (128 divided by 8). On inquiring, they responded that the ATM backbone's header combined with the IP and TCP's headers take up almost 10% of the total bandwidth. And infact, they said I was lucky enough to get 13.5KBytes/sec.
[For knowing my bandwidth, I used download accelerator's read-out, DslReports.com (excellent) and a lot of other sources (streaming servers, ftp, etc)]
What's the loss? Well, some streaming sites detect my connection as 128kbps and send data AT 128kbps. The result? No streaming songs/movies appear continously for more than some 5 seconds. And the next best bandwidth available to me is at 56kbps, which is totally horrific to see or hear.
Though some sites with wmv optimised videos (msdn blog videos) stream at 103kbps "intelligently", which is fine with my connection, I still see stuttering sometimes. So, the decision is made. I am opting for Reliance Broadband, if available in my area, or BSNL's DataOne.
Download caps suck. I really hate DataOne. And all services that are like DataOne too. I mean, what's the use in providing broadband and setting a download cap of 250MBytes? Clearly, people are not paying for broadband just to check their mails faster, or are they?
"Fabulous offer! 1GBytes/second* Internet access for Rs.1000/month!"
Anyone interested?
Reliance Broadband too has a download cap, but at a reasonable 10GBytes. I am still unable to get any information from their customer service on whether I will be behind a NAT based network or a DHCP based one. The type of network is not that critical with current P2P networks able to operate transparently in both the environments, but my friend sriram krishnan has problems accessing the Shareaza network from his Net4India network.
I was concerned that with the high data rate that I am about to get, my download habits may change and the 10GByes/month download cap will seem unrealistic too soon. But a distant memory of a economic model (or something) which said something in the lines of "After a few months of the introduction of a hike, the initial interest will subside and become a uniform line below the hike", comforted me. (Don't stone me for such a badly formed statement, but the statement was in the one page that I saw in a library book.)
Oh, and I appologize for confusing Reliance Netway with Reliance Broadband service. Both are different. My bad.
Sushubh said...
unfortunately sify broadband. the only other option i have in my area is dialup or gprs (max 40kbps). as for limits i believe airtel is giving 128kbps unlimited for 900-1000 bucks... isn't it true?
Of the evils choose the least, eh? Yes, touchtel's (airtel) does offer unlimited 128kbps for Rs.900, but the problem with airtel's is that its 128kbps comes only to around 13.5kBytes/sec rather than the expected 16KBytes/sec (128 divided by 8). On inquiring, they responded that the ATM backbone's header combined with the IP and TCP's headers take up almost 10% of the total bandwidth. And infact, they said I was lucky enough to get 13.5KBytes/sec.
[For knowing my bandwidth, I used download accelerator's read-out, DslReports.com (excellent) and a lot of other sources (streaming servers, ftp, etc)]
What's the loss? Well, some streaming sites detect my connection as 128kbps and send data AT 128kbps. The result? No streaming songs/movies appear continously for more than some 5 seconds. And the next best bandwidth available to me is at 56kbps, which is totally horrific to see or hear.
Though some sites with wmv optimised videos (msdn blog videos) stream at 103kbps "intelligently", which is fine with my connection, I still see stuttering sometimes. So, the decision is made. I am opting for Reliance Broadband, if available in my area, or BSNL's DataOne.
Download caps suck. I really hate DataOne. And all services that are like DataOne too. I mean, what's the use in providing broadband and setting a download cap of 250MBytes? Clearly, people are not paying for broadband just to check their mails faster, or are they?
"Fabulous offer! 1GBytes/second* Internet access for Rs.1000/month!"
Anyone interested?
*maximum 250MBytes/month. Rs.500 for every extra Megabyte
Reliance Broadband too has a download cap, but at a reasonable 10GBytes. I am still unable to get any information from their customer service on whether I will be behind a NAT based network or a DHCP based one. The type of network is not that critical with current P2P networks able to operate transparently in both the environments, but my friend sriram krishnan has problems accessing the Shareaza network from his Net4India network.
I was concerned that with the high data rate that I am about to get, my download habits may change and the 10GByes/month download cap will seem unrealistic too soon. But a distant memory of a economic model (or something) which said something in the lines of "After a few months of the introduction of a hike, the initial interest will subside and become a uniform line below the hike", comforted me. (Don't stone me for such a badly formed statement, but the statement was in the one page that I saw in a library book.)
Oh, and I appologize for confusing Reliance Netway with Reliance Broadband service. Both are different. My bad.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
BB hunting
This is December. The time of the year when the semester exams get over and serious gaming days begin. It's also the time of the year when offers from Internet providers are coming! So to the BroadBand providers, "Let the competitions begin!"
Since I am changing residence, I figured this would be the best time to change my internet connection as well (yea, not the best logic in the world).
I am currrently hooked up with TouchTel which is now AirTel after being acquired by AirCel. I am with the Rs.995 per month for 128Kbits/sec for 25hours plan. Though the price is too much and the hours offered is too low, I think this is the most consistent and reliable BB provider in India.
Since my family is moving residence to the next street, we get to keep the same phone number. So I don't have to change the Telecom provider (which is Touch Tel, ofcourse), but I can withdraw from their DSL offer and choose some other BB provider.
I used to be the run-of-the-mill dial-up (l)user before I switched to my 128kbps line. I've been receiving bills in the range of Rs.3500 to Rs.5000 per month. Ofcourse this includes the phone charge, but we use the phones for receving calls more than making them ourselves. That makes our phone charges around Rs.100 to Rs.300 per month.
[Heh, I recall the last month when a TouchTel customer support lady ringed me up to tell me, "make more phone calls". No kidding! :)]. At that time when I bought this plan, this was the best out there (with a phone atleast) in my area. It introduce me to the incredible world of Gigabytes: warez sites, gnutella, kazaa and recently BitTorrent. After having tasted the speed, I naturally want more...
So, I am hunting for new "BroadBand" service. If you had noticed the quotes, then you know that there is a catch: In India, there is no real broadband. Only during the middle of this year the TRAI fellas 'upgraded' thier definition of BB to 256kbps (from 64kbps?). I don't know the official definitions but they seem to be around 11 or 12 mbps. Sure, a lot of fellas seem to offer that kinda service nowadays, but they are experimental and after more customers are drawn into their network, there WILL be a permenant bandwidth/download cap.
So far I have considered SIFY, Reliance's Netway and BSNL's Data One and DIAS, in that order. I am yet to decide on whom to give my (father's) bank. These are big players with B.I.G big plans for BB in India, mind you.
First off, Reliance:
Reliance is a big company ruled by an awesome man who said "India is a land of billion oppurtunities", when asked about his plans for NetWay in India. Netway is gonna be simple: Provide a 100MBytes/second per household in India by the end of 2005. This is carried by Reliance's optic fiber backbone running through the country's streets (motorists will remember this one). This may look puny to those who have read the 1GigaByte/second plan in Japan, but it will work for me. But then again, I don't want to wait till then.
Currently, Netway charges Rs.1200 for 256kbps with a download cap of 10GByte (Rs.1.40/MByte afterwards). Nice. Will have to think about it though because there's one more plan for 512 kbps with the same download cap, but for Rs.3000 ;) BSNL's Data One: Reliance was good, but to further reduce costs, I went onto look at the newly advertised Data One service, named after their Cell One cell phone account. BSNL says that they would affer 256kbps to 8Mbits/sec on ordinary copper cable (DSL) from Rs.500 onwards. That is pretty cheap. But a lot has been left unanswered, like download/bandwidth caps, distance from exchanges, etc. But this service won't be available untill after December of this year. Also, since this is DSL, I will have to pay for a new phone line as well. But if the final costs come to something cheaper than it is now, I will happily keep a second phone (prolly in my closet). BSNL's DIAS:
I don't have much info on this one than that it stands for Direct Internet AccesS. But it seems that depending upon your distance to the nearest digital exchange, you will get speeds ranging from 128kbps to 2Mbps on an existing telephone line. Rate range from Rs.485 to Rs.3000 for corresponding download caps from 200MByte to unlimited. (I am going to find out if I am lucky enough and there's a BSNL exchange near my house.)
This is all I can gather from their home page. What it doesn't say is, whether the price is the same for both 128kbps and 2Mbps connection. What, should a company be lucky enough to get a hi speed connection?
SIFY:
This is a really bad egg. Do a google on it and you'll be surprised at how a single ISP can influence so many hate clubs for itself. I guess SIFY broke the record for that one. One of the most active clubs for this I have seen is Sushubh's. And recently my friend Balakrishnan was a victim of their adverisement fallacy. Since I don't feel like starting a YASHC (Yet Another Sify Hate Club), I think I will stay away from it.
I am sure there's more so called Broadband providers around redefining Broadband as 115kbps (Reliance infocomm and Tata Indicom), but no thanks. It seems, "If enough people use the term wrongly, it would be correct". Well, to those people, think again if you want to get (and make) India faster.
One provider that I forgot to mention was Net4India, a Brit company that has launched broadband internet for homes and businesses. My friend sriram krishnan, has this connection since he was lucky enough to live in the test area (the lucky pig) and he seems to get speeds ranging from 2Mbits/sec to 15Mbits/sec. But recently, due to increase in customer base, that has come down to less than 1MBits/sec. There is a franchise of Net4India in my area, but since I live outside of his cable limits, I can't have it. And he is still in experimental phase of launching. Such is fate :(
[Quick facts:
As of May'05, countries like canada, usa, japan, etc had more than 75% BB users. In India, there were about 0.02%]
In the end, my requirements (low cost, non-NAT, Broadband (the indian kind: atleast 256kbps), no or very high download cap) are met by TouchTel, Reliance Netway and BSNL DataOne (also DIAS). I am sure my current provider and all the others will come up with massively attractive bandwidths and other offers. So I guess I will let the companies fight themselves in the market and jump in when things simmer down.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Bashed :(
I've been doing a lot of bashing around these days. Hardly a week passes before I read atleast a hundred quotes. Though I don't like the profanities, I like the humour in those quotes. The metaphorical devil in my idle mind spews out a lot of sarcasms and jokes from time to time, and what's a bit unnerving is that they seem to have mutated lately to follow the chat format. And, of late, with a soupcon of profanity (don't tell mama!)
I will write a few of the impromptu ones that prompted me to write this article.
The other day, I was watching "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" in my Onida HomeTheater and came back and switched on my computer. Then I was imagining what would people say if I was talking about this on irc (Actually, I don't chat on IRC. But I like bash.org quotes.)
A): What do you think of the T-virus?
B): T-virus? Does it go well with tea? :p
[Then I just said "no sh*t" while actually typing "sh*t" as the password at the login prompt!(Meanwhile, my computer's password is "sify") Nah, I don't mind giving away my password.
What's that you say? You sayin' "Stupid password"?Well, the password is the way it is just so that my mom or dad won't accidentally type a few random characters and accidentally hit enter and accidentally enter my login. That is, assuming they accidentally clicked on my account icon rather thatn on their's at the login prompt. Considering my dad's and mom's knowledge of computers, I would say the probablity of these things happening would be
somewhere around,
Math.pow (iReallyBigConstants.INFINITY, -1)
And this ofcourse decays with a rate equal to, the half-life of my parent's ignorance of password cracking skills. Or so I hope. I mean, do I have anything to hide from my parents? ;p]
I was sittin' around idly and the devil cranked out a "joke" from his workshop, again in a bash.org format:
A): So what excites you about going to America for your M.S?
B): Hmmm....well, I am going to get aids there.
A): ...
B): Er..the financial kind.
It's time I stopped reading irc quotes, I guess :(
I will write a few of the impromptu ones that prompted me to write this article.
The other day, I was watching "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" in my Onida HomeTheater and came back and switched on my computer. Then I was imagining what would people say if I was talking about this on irc (Actually, I don't chat on IRC. But I like bash.org quotes.)
A): What do you think of the T-virus?
B): T-virus? Does it go well with tea? :p
[Then I just said "no sh*t" while actually typing "sh*t" as the password at the login prompt!(Meanwhile, my computer's password is "sify") Nah, I don't mind giving away my password.
What's that you say? You sayin' "Stupid password"?Well, the password is the way it is just so that my mom or dad won't accidentally type a few random characters and accidentally hit enter and accidentally enter my login. That is, assuming they accidentally clicked on my account icon rather thatn on their's at the login prompt. Considering my dad's and mom's knowledge of computers, I would say the probablity of these things happening would be
somewhere around,
Math.pow (iReallyBigConstants.INFINITY, -1)
And this ofcourse decays with a rate equal to
I was sittin' around idly and the devil cranked out a "joke" from his workshop, again in a bash.org format:
A): So what excites you about going to America for your M.S?
B): Hmmm....well, I am going to get aids there.
A): ...
B): Er..the financial kind.
It's time I stopped reading irc quotes, I guess :(
Home Raider!
I am a sort of movie watcher that asks for original DVDs or VCDs whenever I rent movies. And I am also the kind that mostly watches those movies that are critically acclaimed in the Internet Movie Database and saves those movies onto my harddisk for viewing it till I am satisfied (read: bored) with it and have proudly screened them to my family. I guess I am the kind of user that's truly one of a kind :p
Now DVDs cost space (around 3.5 to 4.3 GB per movie, I recon). So I usually uninstalled those games that I play less frequently to make some space. After watching the movie to my heart's fullest, I normally either archive it by encoding it using those brilliant tools based on the DivX;) format or delete it depending upon the movie's ability to appease me.
Compressing a movie is a long, arduous process that I seldom mind to undertake unless the movie justifies itself for the time spent. Though tools of late could provide you support while you are groping in the dark trying to compress the movie, they can only help you as far as suggesting you the compressiblity of the movie; the actual size and resolution of the final movie is left for you to figure out. Tools like Dr.DivX can automate the entire process and certainly is suitable for almost all movies, but for a queer few movies, the resulting thing won't exactly please the senses.
So, after all these juggling with deleting and encoding which inevitably reduced quality, I've decided to buy a new hard disk for my computer. I am currently contemplating the possiblity of purchasing another Hard disk as my current 80GB Samsung Spin Point is full to the teeth with data. Since adding another disk to the ide channel might decrease performance, I have decided also to do a raid-0 on the two hard disks.
(Why Raid-0? Because it splits data into "Stripes" of some size, say 128KB, and then stores alternate stripes into alternate disks, hence almost doubling data read and write speeds. Infact, since there is no redundancy involved here, 'RAID-0' must be called just 'AID').
I was excited with this idea and so went to a computer shop to which I frequent. I swear that the guy got really panicky when I mentioned the word "Raid". (Which I presume is because of his stash of pirated game disks. Sometimes I get a feeling that these computer shops get real prfit only from selling these games than from selling anything with a hint of hardware in it.) So I trudged on to another "Computer shop" where I was told that raid cards cost around Rs.600 to Rs.1000 and that a hard disk similar to the one in my keep will cost me Rs.32oo. I thanked him and walked home. Operation "Home Raider" is finally assesed to be feasible and now all that I have to do is to wait till my exams get over, which it will do so on December 9th 2004.
But I wanted to know if that is the best I can do to my system. Then the thought of SATA hard disks hit me. But a quick visit to a few forums informed me that a Raid-0 is faster than a SATA, since a SATA hard disk is only mariginally faster than a equivalent IDE HDDs and so a Raid-0 of IDE HDDs must be performing much better than a SATA HDD.
But a visit to one particular site acted like a BSoD and brought my this endeavour to a crashing halt.
According to this site, for home users, the most that a RAID configuration can do is to waste the time you spent considering it. I claims that an ordinary home user can expect a performance increase of around 1 to 4% when comapared to a single hard disk. As an added bonus, you will also be reducing your hard disk's life by two, since even if a single hard disk fails, you lose your data entire!
But another site here, seems to tell me a completely different story. This site seems to take care of performance while gaming, movie encoding and that kinda stuff, so this test might be closer to what my requirement would be. And the disks actually show atleast 40% increase in performance there!
So, I have decided to bite the bullet and go for the raid configuration. Extra performance is not the bone of why I am buying another hard disk for and so any extra performance is only an added bonus than a prime factor in the final decision. I haven't yet finished the stage where I find out the max. speed vs max. perf. For example, I haven't looked into a SATA raid configuration yet ;) I am awaiting the end of semester exam days to continue pursuing my this raiding of hard disks.
Now DVDs cost space (around 3.5 to 4.3 GB per movie, I recon). So I usually uninstalled those games that I play less frequently to make some space. After watching the movie to my heart's fullest, I normally either archive it by encoding it using those brilliant tools based on the DivX;) format or delete it depending upon the movie's ability to appease me.
Compressing a movie is a long, arduous process that I seldom mind to undertake unless the movie justifies itself for the time spent. Though tools of late could provide you support while you are groping in the dark trying to compress the movie, they can only help you as far as suggesting you the compressiblity of the movie; the actual size and resolution of the final movie is left for you to figure out. Tools like Dr.DivX can automate the entire process and certainly is suitable for almost all movies, but for a queer few movies, the resulting thing won't exactly please the senses.
So, after all these juggling with deleting and encoding which inevitably reduced quality, I've decided to buy a new hard disk for my computer. I am currently contemplating the possiblity of purchasing another Hard disk as my current 80GB Samsung Spin Point is full to the teeth with data. Since adding another disk to the ide channel might decrease performance, I have decided also to do a raid-0 on the two hard disks.
(Why Raid-0? Because it splits data into "Stripes" of some size, say 128KB, and then stores alternate stripes into alternate disks, hence almost doubling data read and write speeds. Infact, since there is no redundancy involved here, 'RAID-0' must be called just 'AID').
I was excited with this idea and so went to a computer shop to which I frequent. I swear that the guy got really panicky when I mentioned the word "Raid". (Which I presume is because of his stash of pirated game disks. Sometimes I get a feeling that these computer shops get real prfit only from selling these games than from selling anything with a hint of hardware in it.) So I trudged on to another "Computer shop" where I was told that raid cards cost around Rs.600 to Rs.1000 and that a hard disk similar to the one in my keep will cost me Rs.32oo. I thanked him and walked home. Operation "Home Raider" is finally assesed to be feasible and now all that I have to do is to wait till my exams get over, which it will do so on December 9th 2004.
But I wanted to know if that is the best I can do to my system. Then the thought of SATA hard disks hit me. But a quick visit to a few forums informed me that a Raid-0 is faster than a SATA, since a SATA hard disk is only mariginally faster than a equivalent IDE HDDs and so a Raid-0 of IDE HDDs must be performing much better than a SATA HDD.
But a visit to one particular site acted like a BSoD and brought my this endeavour to a crashing halt.
According to this site, for home users, the most that a RAID configuration can do is to waste the time you spent considering it. I claims that an ordinary home user can expect a performance increase of around 1 to 4% when comapared to a single hard disk. As an added bonus, you will also be reducing your hard disk's life by two, since even if a single hard disk fails, you lose your data entire!
But another site here, seems to tell me a completely different story. This site seems to take care of performance while gaming, movie encoding and that kinda stuff, so this test might be closer to what my requirement would be. And the disks actually show atleast 40% increase in performance there!
So, I have decided to bite the bullet and go for the raid configuration. Extra performance is not the bone of why I am buying another hard disk for and so any extra performance is only an added bonus than a prime factor in the final decision. I haven't yet finished the stage where I find out the max. speed vs max. perf. For example, I haven't looked into a SATA raid configuration yet ;) I am awaiting the end of semester exam days to continue pursuing my this raiding of hard disks.
What kind of blogger are you?
|
You Are a Pundit Blogger! |
Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few. |
Found the above site from this blog. The blog looked cool, but was a bit (too) profane.
While the above may not be an exact description of my blog , it might be *ahem*very*ahem* close.
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