All this commentary about uTorrent and none about Boomtown?
The series started out as greatly innovative, highly engaging and watchable. Then the panic set in and one by one the innovative bits dropped away until it was just another ho-hum procedural.
Shame. I guess it required an attention span of more than a minute or so, which doomed it for US TV.
Right, that’s why the RIAA never sues people for downloading music that could’ve easily been recorded from “free” FM radio.
And TV execs never declare that “skipping commercials is stealing”. And PVR manufacturers never remove commercial-skipping technology from their devices.
And businesses never get sued for playing the radio too loud:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/07/2335244
Wake up.
“Oy, I don’t like seeing all that useless info in my face. Just tell me how fast it’s going, how much progress has been made, and when it will be finished. I use Transmission.”
JS, uTorrent doesn’t give you all this useless info in your face, its small and sits happily where-ever you put it showing you just what you want - a list of blue bars with ETA etc. If you press F5 you get the ‘more info’ screens. (admittedly you might need to set it up so the summary is shown by default).
just another example of how good the UI of uTorrent is, you just get the summary until you choose to see more by pressing the ‘expand’ button.
You also forgot the other good bits - when minimised it sits in the tray, with the right-click options you really want such as pause/resume all torrents.
Blurring IPs, hiding data. Oh please. Do you really think the RIAA can’t get a copy of [insert favorite torrent client here] and get exactly the same information posted on this blog?
So you think the RIAA monitors every single torrent? Ohhh please!
The greatest thing (imho) about uTorrent is that the program is entirely portable.
I wouldn’t consider it portable if Linux users have to run it through wine!
Azureus written in java is completely portable.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7029229.stm
I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about this sooner - strikes me as the sort of thing that would cause a fundraiser - I’d throw some money her direction (Being that she’s being used as the poster child for file-sharing).
Might send a good message if that fine just vanished… (heck, it works for corporate execs, why not for us?)
Evan,
You should check out rtorrent (and possibly other linux-based torrent clients). If you were to set up a central server (rtorrent doesn’t take much processor power - typically around .5% or so on my 2 GHz processor, with about 200 (completely legal) torrents running) it’ll handle itself pretty well. You can run it via screen or dtach, if necessary, or just in one of the terminal windows on that computer. And it’s really easy for multiple users to add / remove torrents - just put the torrent file in a specific (network) directory and it’ll start downloading.
You can find it here:
http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/
Unfortunately it’s a linux only client - but I’m sure you could get it running via Cygwin or something along those lines.
It’s like this: if the knucklehead producers cancel a show and do not release it on DVD, and somebody wants to watch it – there is no recourse!! No sales are lost because there are none in the first place.
If Jeff sells it then that’s different.
Wake up sheeple.
Azureus written in java is completely portable.
Which would explain why it eats such ridiculous amounts of resources.
While I like that bt can offer people the chance to see shows that have been cancelled or long forgotten… Like many others, I do find it extremely odd and frankly, disturbing that you chose to keep the IPs and identifying data visible for the other nodes.
While you can make the decision to publicly share what you are doing, I do not think it is wise to post other peoples activity and/ or identifying data.
While the mpaa (or riaa) might not bother with this file, some people might like to use that info to access said machines for both scurrilous or other reasons entirely. It is a bit of information that says IP x is using software/tech y. Knowing that enables the riaa, mpaa or hackers to have a look.
Basically, it seems to be in bad to terrible form to leave the identifying data of others in the image.
s/Boomtown/Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME/
is it still OK to torrent and use things?
Windows 2000 has a similar status as this TV show. It can no longer be purchased. It is no longer supported.
I guess I’ll go find a torrent and I’ll run my home PC with it.
Just because it is easy or available doesn’t make it any more right.
I think Jeff makes his money selling software for a living, or building software which someone else sells for a living. What if it were your creation that people were stealing for free, Jeff?
The state of copyright in the US is disgusting. It is stifling our culture and creativity. We need to revert back to 7 year or maybe 14 year copyrights.
Imagine if you could just wait 7 years and then watch this TV show LEGALLY because it were released into the public domain! That is the situation we had with all copyright materials less than 100 years ago.
I agree with several people above, Azureus had many of these features first. uTorrent just came along and implemented them in a restrictive Windows-only interface.
Also Corvec raises an excellent point. I’ve been using rTorrent for months now, and I love how lightweight it is. I can easily push 100Mbps upstream without the CPU breaking a sweat.
The series started out as greatly innovative, highly engaging and watchable. Then the panic set in and one by one the innovative bits dropped away until it was just another ho-hum procedural.
Perhaps true, but I think my favorite episode is in season 2. I’m trying to figure out which one that is, which prompted the download.
Charles Petzold hates you now ( http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2007/10/151219.html )
That’s interesting. Obviously, I don’t agree. I totally support things like the Amazon MP3 store with my pocketbook, but there was no way for me to obtain season 2 of Boomtown through any legitimate means that I’m aware of. Personally, I think obscurity and scarcity are the greater sins here-- Boomtown was a great show.
Windows 2000 has a similar status as this TV show. It can no longer be purchased. It is no longer supported.
Not entirely true-- I can easily buy legal copies of Windows 2000 on eBay for almost nothing. Where is the equivalent for Boomtown season 2?
you should check out Azureus’ “Swarm” view, aka The Big Eye. That’s my favorite visualization of the state of the torrent.
Screenshots:
http://images.google.com/images?q=azureus+swarm+view
I’ve never used Azeureus, so I can’t say with authority who had these views first.
Interesting post, Jeff.
I can’t wait until your book is available for download, because, you know, I want it now.
I hate to repeat what everyone has already said, but you should blur the peer IPs. Just as a courtesy to the people willing to risk legal action in order to share with you something you desperately wanted for no reward (a good ratio at demonoid is almost meaningless due to its public/private nature.)
Also, the chances of anti-p2p organizations reading this blog entry are 1 out of 1. And contrary to all rationalizations, they are NOT only looking for people sharing massive amounts of anything, they are looking for exemplar targets like defiant public violators, or a selection of people that fit the profile of the typical downloader to hopefully have a terrorist effect amongst other file sharers and raise an erroneous perception of the probability of their being caught and sued, which is currently less than the probability of being struck by lightning on a cloudless day.
I am absolutely sure that at least two or three people are having or will be having a discussion today of the possible PR merits of suing Jeff.
My prediction: Jeff was after the episode “The Hole-In-The-Wall Gang”. Because it featured a “Members Only” jacket joke. At least, that’s why I would want to download it. 
I use eMule (eDonkey/Kad client) and it has many of the same metrics available.
But in regard to the downloading copyrighted material thing.
I downloaded every episode of the first season of Heroes, I came in mid-season so I downloaded to catch up to the story arc. Then I started watching it at a friends house. Then I bought it on DVD.
This would not have happened if I hadn’t downloaded it. (Plus, I think Heroes is funded in part by Nissan (Versa in the first season, Rogue in this season)).
I do this a lot. Hell, TV is probably the only thing I do download. I delete the crappy shows (Code Monkeys) and I eventually wind up buying the good shows (Venture Brothers, Futurama, The Office, and probably House next).
So where does that leave content creators? They do get my money or advertisers’ money. Advertisers should know that the way we consume content is changing and change their tactics accordingly. Actually, they should have done so already with shows like the Sopranos and Entourage which have no typical commercials.
I think with Heroes NBC is approaching the problem in a positive way. By the deal with Nissan that gets their cars specifically mentioned by name in the show. That’s probably a bonus for both parties. NBC gets advertising revenue and Nissan gets a slightly subversive ad that you cannot ignore.
uTorrent seems to make a big deal out of being 100% C++. How big is this advantage over develop the same thing in .NET? Afaik there is no major .net torrent client out there to compare with.
As for the RIAA/MPAA paranoia, come on people… all you need is tinfoil cap.
//Signed interweb citizen nr 81.224.30.112
(Currently downloading the latest album of swedish rockgroup Mustasch witout a qualm)
uTorrent seems to make a big deal out of being 100% C++. How big is this advantage over develop the same thing in .NET?
There’s really only one reason that they make a big deal out of it being done in 100% C++; lower resource (memory) usage.
At the time uTorrent was first starting to get released, the only other client that had as much functionality was Azureus. Being made from Java, it was significantly more resource heavy than uT. I don’t really care what language is used to code the program, but I do care about it’s resource usage when running. Saying that it’s made from 100% C++ (compared to Az, which is the “natural” comparison) gives me an easy way to justify why the resource usage would be lower (without having to do my own testing).