Archive for » August, 2009 «

The Pirate Society
25
August
ravakk

O'ReillyWhen you look at that name, the sharp mind discerns two things. It is a society, and it probably has pirates. It is amazing what a college education lends to the ‘powers of observation”.

The Pirate Society is a community of people who are committed to the highest standards of integrity in the torrent community. It is a common meeting ground for all people to come together and share insight, knowledge, and data wealth. It is a place of refuge for those who have been beaten by poor public tracker performance. It is home to those who like to chat, participate in games, internet radio, and artistic expression. It is also headquarters, a country club if you will, to some of the biggest names in the torrent industry. It is an opportunity, and for many, the only chance they will ever have, at placing themselves in front of the people who make decisions, where you can prove your worth, your honesty, your integrity; where relationships are formed, and TRUE access is acquired. TRUE access is not always an INVITE, sometimes it’s much much more.

Trackers are divided into PUBLIC and PRIVATE. From there, their attributes range from secure – to not, from awesome – to crap, and are as unique as the number of trackers themselves. Beauty is in the eye, and value is within perception. No one can rate or rank a tracker for you. It is not so cut-and-dry as that. You have to educate yourself. If you believe what you read and assign that “Face Value” to trackers, you become part of the media hype…you are essentially at that point…controlled. Brainwashed, uneducated, and unsatisfied you reach the doorstep of The Pirate Society because someone told you that it was the “Best Place to Get Tracker Access”. Tracker access comes from two places: The right people, and the wrong people. The Right People only give it to those they know and trust, The Wrong People give it to anyone. When you acquire access from the Right People you hold authorized access to an organization that respects you, and your presence was desired. If you acquire access from the Wrong People you hold unauthorized access to an organization that hates you, hopes to find and expose you to the entire community including every known tracker, and will never respect you, your presence is not desired, wanted, or welcome.

If what you REALLY want, is “the goods”, the loot, the treasure….the data…the software. It’s easier than you could possibly imagine. Without being sarcastic or laconic I can safely say that Google is your friend. Google…your .torrents. It is as easy as that. What one element is it, about private trackers, that make you want access? There are five elements about a private tracker that make them desired over public trackers. And any of the five elements are destroyed by handing site INVITES out, to people who you don’t know. Trading invites is how access to a site falls into the WRONG hands. Trading bypasses hundreds and thousands of near countless hours of coding, standards, procedures, policies, interviewing, screening, and the efforts of an entire tight community, to keep their members safe…..to keep their forums and IRC peaceful….and to keep their torrents smooth and operational.

Trading is different than inviting a personal friend. When you trade an invite to a person you do not know personally, you have no idea WHO are WHAT they could be. At that point, to the torrent community, you are not a pirate, you are a plague.

Lets recap:

1) The Pirate Society is NOT a tracker in any capacity.

2) Tracker ratings are hype and a form of advertising, experience everything yourself, be your own judge.

3) Private trackers are usually small social cliques that are best worked by being social, pleasant, and participating.

4) Trading is absolutely hands down and beyond all else, the worst offense you can commit as a pirate, a torrenter, or as a friend.

Category: BitTorrent, Filesharing, The Pirate Society  9 Comments
Permanent Marker
20
August
ravakk

Sharpie

Permanent Marker – Fine Point, conforms to ASTM D-4236. Smells wonderful. The instructions claim it can leave a mark that cannot be removed by anything. Once you write with this marker, it is forever. What would early day Egyptians paid for a marker such as this? A device so cleverly created as to escape the very jaws of endless motion…time itself. The Romans may have destroyed Alexandria but if they were going to erase THIS marker they were going to have to do their homework…..

“…homework, class pay attention just one moment.” said Mr Johnson, my 12th grade English teacher “pages 113 to 145 BY MONDAY do you hear me?”. I thought “Yeah right more reading blah blah now that idiot has delayed me, and the crowd will be fierce between me and my locker”. I never carried many books, it was just too uncool. Just then my right arm was pulled with great force as to spin me around for the inevitable confrontation of a great beast….or my best friend Candice….just as bad. “Yo Alycat I know you are so ho ho ready for the tour of La Jolla Mall tonight!” she squealed with excitement. “Yeah I have to admit I’m kinda looking forward to that, just anything to get away from my parents.” We continued walking towards my locker, “Dad is always at work trying to insure he has a positive lock on his position and mom just about talks my head off because she is scared of this new country and all the new ways…and lonely I guess heh”, I managed a fake laugh. “Well I happen to know a crew of guys that will be there, some fine ass fine shiznitz….you are on birth control, right?” she asked. I imagine my eyes were the size of my combination lock, she just asked that right out in public, even though no one was looking I’m sure I turned a hundred shades of red.

How many items do you have around your home that leave permanent marks or stains? Well the difference between my marker and just any type of mark, is that it can leave intellegent and meaningful permanent marks. It can convey image or linguistic for all time to be remembered and discussed. It seems as if everyone I know has for all of their life measured themselves by acquisitions and losses. From childhood most people learn the skill of collecting and acquisition. Gifts, presents, birthdays and Christmas or any equal type holiday, used as an excuse to transfer wealth or acquisition from one person to another. We learn to collect comic books or barbie dolls, cars or dresses, books or videos, and eventually one day – as technology permits, we collect data. And when we take a loss, it is only mildly annoying because we can always….reacquire. No loss is forever permanent. So what good is my marker…

“…marker 55, repeat mile marker 55.” The trolly reached my street with no problems today, normally there is usually a traffic situation and almost an hour delay when trying to reach home after school. As I rounded the corner to the front door of my home, it looked as if my dad had invited co-workers home for dinner. Dad worked for the military and there were two guys in full uniform garb coming out of the door. Bah I guess they won’t be staying for dinner..damn…was hoping they would keep my parents busy so they would not ask a lot of questions while I changed clothes and slipped out, towards the mall. “Ma’am” they said as they lifted their hats while walking by. As I walked inside, mom had her head down on the kitchen table, her hair covered 40% of the surface. Mom has a lot of hair. Dad…not so much, and I could see him in the living room facing away from me with his hand on his head as if he was pushing his hair back, but froze in time. Then it dawned on me, mom and dad got into a fight and the military was called in to stop it. Oh my god this was not good. And was NOT going to be a good time to ask to go out to the mall, if nothing else, to escape this situation.

Seriously, who cares if the marker is permanent? Or if it is possibly erasable for that matter. Why would you ever want to erase the mark anyway, unless the mark was unintentional. There are actually two components to permanency, the ink and the catalyst. The catalyst is the object the mark resides. You can always just throw away the bad catalyst and replace with new. So in regards to markers, heh, nothing leaves a mark that cannot be erased…or just outright replaced…I guess…

“…I guess I’ll call Henrik” my dad said as he turned around to face mom “and I’ll tell him…..Aly! Babycakes I didn’t hear you come in!” his statement caused mom to jerk up from the table and turn to me. Mom’s face looked like she had been tortured. Dad’s eyes were red and his nose was running. Oh my god, they were going to divorce…it had reached critical mass. Dad moved across the floor like a phantom on legs of drifting smoke, as if his body was motionless yet moved towards me. I was engulfed in a hug so tight I thought he intended to kill me. Mom went into a sobbing frenzy and pushed her face into the table again. “Aly Aly Aly my baby, my….”

Nothing feels as unsettling as the heat from someone else’s tears striking your face. Dad lowered himself so that we were looking at each other, eye-to-eye. “Babycakes, your brother has had an accident”, he said” And we stared at each other. “An accident?”, I thought in my head. The kind of accident that causes a mother and father to cry, the kind of accident that causes military men to have to come to your house in full dress uniform, the kind of accident a marker leaves………….and we stared at each other…for minutes….for hours….and to this day…we stare. We stare at the catalyst…

Fraternity Rush Week, University of Ole Miss, a red 2004 toyota 4×4 pickup truck with three young freshmen on the inside, and a hard southern rain on the outside. The truck looses traction just prior to a bridge on a sharp left turn. It conforms to the law of inertia, it conforms to ASTM D-4236.

Before you allow life to teach you the permanency of the markers in your life, grab those markers, and draw everything you can…

Category: Abstract  5 Comments
ISP Download Caps, a rant!
20
August
akramh

Access
So we have been hearing this year that a major move in the US for enforcing download caps or fair use policies. Now you have to wonder why are ISPs doing that, is it really to give internet users a more quality experience or is there a more hidden agenda? And how do we fight this? This is not just a US problem too, here in the middle east it’s also an issue, and other parts of the world such as Australia.

So what’s the new hidden Agenda? Well just think about it, consider some of the really large ISPs like Warner, what other services do they provide? Cable TV… could it be that after the financial wows that happened last year with people loousing their jobs, they started to cancel Cable TV services and don’t want to buy as much DVD/Music as they did before? So they turn to legal streaming which is cheaper, but it reduces the fat profit margians for these corporations. offcourse add to that the ilegal p2p, so what’s the solution for them? you got it, download caps…

Look what people in egypt are doing here , the goverment wanted to put download caps but the people protested, not just in the streets but in facebook and twitter and finnaly the goverment canceled that idea. sadly in jordan these download caps have existed for over 5 years now and nobody protested, some just rant in blogs, we have only 1 unlimited internet ISP but they are not able to cover the whole capital at the moment, we wait for them to expand their services to other areas but it will take some time, but there is hope. I just hope by the time they get to my area the goverment won’t force them to put download caps in order to regulate the ISP market.

For me I have a 10GB Limit and my father likes to watch Youtube. I just downloaded 2 movies and moslty surfed with the daily antivirus updates I am now near the limit already on the 18th of the month. If I was downloading freely I would be over the limit usually by the 10th. but at least they don’t limit the upload for now, I uploaded over 20GB already this month I have so many torrents that I am putting on hold, when I reach the download cap I start download freely as then it does not matter how much I download.

Category: Filesharing, Tech  5 Comments
Apples vs Oranges
19
August
koby

AppleHow many times have you heard you can’t compare apples with oranges? I always thought it was a silly statement and was passed down by the ages. It was a definitive saying to negate a comparison of any type. Well, I’d like to compare them for you, from the most simplistic comparison to a more scientific approach.

We can accept that apples and oranges are both fruit; they are both readily available in the supermarket. If you were to let them sit for about 4-6 months, there would be a terrible smell from both of them. Oranges are mainly known to be sour, you have probably heard of sour apples as well. Additionally, the Valencia orange is a sweet orange as well the granny smith apple is a sweet apple. They are usually known to be approximately the same size. Also, both apples and oranges are healthy to eat and drink and when they are made into juice, they are better then most drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup. Throughout Florida, apples and oranges both grow plentiful on trees. Unlike some other fruits like the pomegranate, I would never think of eating the seeds of an apple or an orange. I was just recently at the store and was thinking of how good of a dessert an apple pie would be as well as an orange meringue.

There was a scientist by the name of by Scott A. Sandford of the NASA Ames Research Center; he was also fed up with not being able to compare apples and oranges. He took dried samples of both and then mixed them with potassium bromide and ground them into a small ball-bearing mill for two minutes. One hundred milligrams of each of the resulting powders were then pressed into a circular pellet. The resulting samples were then looked at through a spectrometer. The graph that was made is readily available for anyone and I carry a pocket-size version in my pocket for those times that I need to pull it out to prove a point.

OrangeOverall, Apples and oranges have a lot more in common then people give credit for. Sometimes I wonder how people come up with these catchy phrases and why they stick overtime. Healthy, Delicious, and colorful are just a few words that come to mind when I think of both. Next time you hear someone ridicule an argument by using the statement, it’s like comparing apples to oranges, just turn to them and tell them that it’s been done already and continue on with whatever comparison you were making.

Category: Abstract  Leave a Comment
Ricky Bobby’s Revenge
18
August
othersna

TallaIn the movie Talladega Nights, star American NASCAR driver Ricky Bobby (played by Will Ferrell) is taunted by his rival, French racer Jean Girard (played by Sacha Baron Cohen), when Girard enters Ricky’s favorite Country/Western bar and changes the music on the jukebox from Ricky’s Country music to jazz. Well in real life, Ricky gets his revenge.

A few years ago, I was visiting the City of Light, Paris for the first time. I was strolling the famed Champs-d’Elysees, and about halfway between the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Corcorde, is a bastion of American consumerism, a Disney Store, right smack in the midst of the cafes and boutiques. Well I just had to pop my head in, and once I entered, I was assaulted by a big screen TV image of Miley Cyrus, as Hannah Montana (in blonde wig), singing her signature Best of Both Worlds song, in English of course. This sight would surely make a French Traditionalist scream “Sacre Bleu!”Miley

But there is some solace for the French, because Miley may be of French ancestry! Later on my trip, I was touring Versailles. Inside there is an art gallery of famous French generals there and hanging within is a portrait of a “General Cyrus.” Further, Miley’s dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, was quoted as saying he is a “Kentucky Hillbilly,” and in the 1700s, what is now Kentucky was inhabited by the French. So there is a possibility that Miley descended from these settlers and General Cyrus may be a distant relative!

Category: Offbeat  Leave a Comment
Stores trick HDTV consumers with lighting
17
August
solidsnake66

bestA lot of pirates enjoy watching movies. To get the best out of your top quality downloaded content you have a home theater. Whether your home theater is big or small the main concern in most cases is picture quality.

When shopping for an HDTV most people go into stores with the idea that if they can see the picture quality of a TV before buying they’ll get the best TV they can. What most don’t realize is that brick and mortar retailers raise light levels to fool consumers into thinking the televisions have better picture quality.

When watching television in a home environment the televisions that will look better and appear sharper are the ones that have the blackest blacks and reasonably white whites. But, when in a high ambient light showroom, the televisions that look clearest are the ones with the brightest picture.

A typical living rooms light levels when watching TV’s can range anywhere from about 1.2 to 110.1 Lux. Meanwhile stores that specialize in home theater equipment such as Best Buy and Sears have their ambient lighting at 180.3 lux and 236.58 lux respectively. The biggest culprits are the big box stores such as Target (371.38 lux) and Wal-Mart (411.66 lux) and warehouse stores such like BJ’s (412.13 lux) and Costco (742.77 lux). An exception to the high ambient lighting in stores is the Magnolia Home Theater section in some Best Buy’s. Due to the high quality of these TV’s they are displayed in ambient light of approximately 34.7 lux (similar to most home lighting levels) to properly show the high contrast and superior image quality of the sets.

sears

By increasing the brightness over the HDTV’s salespeople can maximize their profits by selling a TV that appears to have equal picture quality to a higher priced TV and then adding on high profit items like $80 HDMI cables and service contracts.

Unfortunately you can’t do much to combat this HDTV selling tactic of store showrooms. What you can do to get a better idea of the black levels of a television is to cup your hands into a tunnel place it up against a TV where a black area is (like the letterbox bars). Then press your eye against the other end of you hands. This will let you see how black those blacks actually are.

Category: Offbeat  2 Comments
The Torrent You Want…With A Slight Twist
16
August
ith3ory

HorseSome lessons for when downloading torrents from my own recent experiences. I know that a lot of people like to be the first person to comment the torrent, but that does not mean that they have downloaded the torrent. Hence their comment “first!” These are a few lessons that I have learned when searching for that file that you cannot find in any of your private trackers and even Demonoid does not have it. So you decide, “hey, why not search Isohunt, Mininova, or the pirate bay?!” So off you go and you finally find the file! Well this is where I went all wrong and what has taught me so much. No I did not get a Trojan or anything bad that can easily be caught by my anti-virus…something worse! I downloaded a measly 702.5 Mb file that caused me so much anger! It was an average day when I decided that a horse racing game would be fun to play. But I did not want to be the horse or the rider…I want to manage it! So I found out that there is a game called Horse Racing Manager 2. I wanted the second one because that is the first one I saw and whenever I searched for Horse Racing Manager…there was none. So I checked all of my private trackers first. None had the game. Not even my game trackers. What good are they for?! So I decided to try Demonoid. When other trackers do not have what I want…Demonoid usually does.

Nope. I was upset. So I sucked up my morals and decided to take the risk with Mininova. Nope. Ugh!! The Pirate Bay did not even have it! I checked last at Isohunt. To my surprise it was there! Horse.Racing.Manager.2..ISO. Exactly what I wanted, right? Wrong! The file had no comments…but it did have a good numbers of seeds and even some leechers. About 18 seeds were stated on the file. I am the type of downloader that does not like to be the guinea pig to download a new file. I like for it to have comments from others just in case I cannot get it working because then the users will work it upon themselves and I can just get it working based on what is said. So I downloaded the file. We all get desperate. Do not deny it. Many of us do this. Our hope makes us ignore our logic. So it downloaded fast. Put a smile on my face. I did not install it right away. I think I waited a day or two. I could not wait to get home and install the file. I extracted the file…I had a smile on my face because I was ready to play. I went through to the install. Soon after, the language option of the game came up for the install and such…I quickly said yes, but recognized that it said French. I blamed my anxiousness and cancelled the install. Promising to myself that when it came up again, that I would make sure to put it to English. I got to the language selection window and clicked down on the scroll arrow. Nothing. The only option available was French. None other. I got quiet, my smile went away, and I shook my head.

I should have listened to my logic rather than my temptations. I learned my lesson. I know that I said that a Trojan would have been the lesser of two evils, but I actually got the lighter sentence. Always be aware of what you are downloading. Especially on a public tracker. Also be cautious on a private tracker because anything can happen. If there is no description on the torrent and no comments, request some information before you download it. If you decide not to, well then you are responsible for the download and may suffer from a virus or what happened to me which was a totally different language of the game! I know, I know…you have a great anti-virus right? Does that mean you would download something that is a known virus and test it? I think not. So do some light homework and try to request some information. Sometimes you will get a reply and sometimes not. I am not saying that all torrents without information and comments contain viruses or are in French…but you also do not want to happen to you what happened to Witherslick…sometimes you will want to download some Dora the Explorer for the kids…but do you really want to find out that Dora was not Dora the explorer? Do some light homework and prevent more thread posts like me crying about preventable situations. =]

Category: BitTorrent, Filesharing  One Comment
From n00b to l33t in 1 year
15
August
othersna

About a year ago, I was surfing one of my favorite forums, when I read posts about downloading one’s favorite TV show via a “torrent.” I paid no attention but the next time “torrent” came up was when I watched a clip of a movie I saw many years ago, but could never find it for sale. There was a link to a “torrent” so I happily downloaded this file and was disappointed that this “torrent file” was not the movie. So this lead to some voracious reading on BitTorrent technology and getting familiar with public trackers and next thing you know The Pirate Bay was my best friend.

Now I naively suggested to the IT guy at my work to unblock TPB on the work computers and of course he thought I was being ridiculous (which I was). But he told me privately that he torrents at home, but he uses “private trackers.” He showed me his favorite, Waffles, which looked so much more organized than the public places. I then told myself I’d try to get into Waffles, it looked to be impossible.

My first break into the private world was when Demonoid had open registrations. I thought I had gotten into a really special place but once inside, it didn’t look that much different from the public places. What it did have, was a private forum loaded with names of private trackers I had never heard of. I found one, Cinemageddon, which had open registrations and once in, had exactly what I was looking for – those rare films I saw on TV years ago that I had wanted but could not find anywhere. My mind was set. Private trackers were the way to go. I just had to master how to manage ratios since I went wild at CG and had to download a lot of popular material I’d never watch just to get upload credit.

My next break was finding out about the What.cd interview. This place looked a lot like my “dream tracker,” Waffles, but was giving invitations for those who passed a test. When reading the study materials, I thought I‘d fail. What the heck was “V0,” or “Spectral Analysis?” And why is WAV -> FLAC -> V0 ok but APE -> 320 CBR -> Ogg Vorbis not ok? After studying hard, I passed and got into What. I felt like I just got admitted into an exclusive country club.

But the best thing to happen to me regarding torrenting was getting into The Pirate Society. I saw the invitation thread at the Demonoid forums, and the place got glowing reviews from a public torrent blog, so I took the interview. After getting in, I felt right at home from day 1. Members welcomed you right off the bat, and the threads were jumping. Plus I saw none of the cliquish or disruptive behavior I’d seen at some message boards. Not to mention the knowledge base contained within is vast. There are tutorials, reviews and help sections. I also needed some ratio help at What and multiple members offered to download material I’d uploaded.

Last, but not least, I’d read that members of TPS would get into their “dream tracker” if they’d contribute and get to know people. I did just that and after one month of membership, I got into Waffles, my dream tracker. The day I got in I sent an e-mail to the IT guy, who had since gone to another company, and he congratulated me, and gave me a 24 hour free leech as a thank-you for the help I gave him in the past! I looked up his profile – he has hundreds of GBs up and downloaded there. Who knew?

Category: BitTorrent, The Pirate Society  7 Comments
The concept of evaluation for Microsoft
14
August
bubbl3

TechNetPlus
I bet all of us are used to the term evaluation applied to software, pretty much all the commercial software has an evaluation version with a feature or time limit.
As usual Microsoft decided to reinvent the wheel with Technet: they make you pay to evaluate their software. I even don’t know when Technet was born, since I’m interested in IT it was there, all the resources were restricted to the paid customers, then they made many resources available to the public and kept exclusive features like software evaluation to the subscribers.
In the US a Technet Plus Direct (direct download only, no physical media shipped, but who needs them in 2009 ) yearly subscription will cost you 349$ for the first year and 249$ if you decide to renew.
Let’s focus on the evaluation part, on the main subscriptions page they let you know that “A TechNet Plus subscription includes premium resources to help you evaluate Microsoft technologies, plan deployments and support your current IT environment” also they specify in a dedicated box that you can “Evaluate full-version commercial software products like Windows 7 without time or feature limits”.
Those statements probably made you curious and now you want to know more, with a little effort you can reach the “Buy” page with a link named “What are TechNet Plus subscriptions…” that states: “A TechNet Plus subscription is the ultimate resource for IT professionals. TechNet Plus provides convenient access to full-version Microsoft evaluation software—without time limits! The annual subscription also includes Professional Support incidents, a technical information library, and many other resources for evaluating, deploying, and maintaining Microsoft software.” and later down in the benefits descriptions: “Microsoft software licensed for evaluation purposes. Evaluate full-version commercial products without time limits or feature limits, including Microsoft operating systems, servers, and Office System software. With full-version software, you can make informed decisions about new technologies and deployments at your own pace.”
But all those statements say the same things over and over, we still don’t know what exactly “evaluation” means for Microsoft, so I searched more and in the Technet support section I found the “Getting Started” page that is just a conventional FAQ. There I found two interesting informations:

What is the general nature of the terms of the TechNet Plus Subscription End User License Agreement?
The subscription terms vary based on your subscription level and license type. Each subscription license type entitles only the designated subscriber to use evaluation software, support incidents and access the TechNet Benefits Portal – no other users are entitled to use these resources. A single-server subscription allows a workgroup to share the technical information library content only with others in their organization. For full details on use rights, see the TechNet Plus License Terms.

Can I use evaluation software received in my TechNet Plus subscription at home?
The license grants installation and use rights to one user only, for evaluation purposes, on any of the user’s devices, this may include devices at home. Keep in mind that you may use the evaluation software only to evaluate it. You may not use it in a live operating environment, a staging environment, or with data that has not been sufficiently backed up. You may not use the evaluation software for software development or in an application development environment.

So finally what we know about Technet subscriptions is:

• It costs 349$ for the first year and 249$ for a 1 year renew.

• You can evaluate with no time limits or feature limits commercial versions of Microsoft software including Microsoft operating systems, servers, and Office System software.

• You, the subscriber, are the only one entitled to use the licensed software.

• You, the subscriber, can install the licensed software on all of your devices, included the ones at home but you can’t install it on a live (read production) environment, staging (live events) environment and you can’t use it for development (there is the more pricey MSDN for that).

Very interesting isn’t it? I would like to add some things that I know from my experience with Tehcnet:

• Even if your subscription expires the licensed software you got from Technet will still work, so there’s totally no time limits.

• The software you get is the same as what you get with a purchased retail version, for example a Windows CD-KEY can be used 10 times for activation and after that you can just phone Microsoft and tell them you had to format your PC and need a phone activation.

• You don’t have to provide any proof you’re an IT Professional when you buy a Technet subscription.

I’m sure you got the feeling that the concept of “evaluation” Microsoft expressed is not that clear, they don’t ask you a proof you’re working in IT, they don’t really say what you can’t do with the software you get, I mean, yes you can’t develop with it and you can’t host a stage presentation but they don’t say you can’t use it for a media center at home or for gaming, also it never expires.
I had any sort of discussion about the “misuse” of Technet subscriptions, some people even said that get one for home use is like pirating, probably the subject will never stop to be a matter of discussion.
What I think is that it depends on how you morally see the situation and how you define “evaluate” in the limits of the Technet license.
Microsoft states you can “evaluate” it at home so I guess you could say you’re evaluating it at home to see how applicable it is in a working environment, even a future one because you’re planning to have a career in IT. The terms only really explicitly state it can’t be used for development or live environments which I don’t think really falls under home use. The fact the wording has been somewhat confusing and vague for some time and hasn’t really being addressed pretty much says to me that Microsoft is happy enough for home users to subscribe and pay for it.
As I said others will see it differently and some will say it’s same as pirating. I personally think it’s one big grey area thanks in part to how Microsoft designed it and something which they seem happy to leave unclear as far as home use is concerned despite being pretty clear on how the software is to be applied for work purposes.

What you think about it?

Category: Tech  5 Comments
Battle of two Bismarcks (going down)
13
August
ravakk

Have you ever started a torrent that was not very old, and all the way up to 100% completion you didn’t really seed anything. You connect to a good amount of seeds and quite a bit of peers, but just don’t really seem to seed. Then at 100%, its like everything practically is un-connectable to you. This is VERY common on three trackers I frequent. It is a condition I term Battle of the Bismarcks.

24MAY1941 – The German ship Bismarck and escort Prinz Eugen detected on hydrophones two British vessels just off the port bow. Within 15 minutes both vessels were in visual sight. These ships were the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Hood. The Hood was a capital flagship, a cruiser by technical declaration with heavy armor. The Bismarck however was the oddball in this theatre, the Germans had created a sophisticated radar controlled 15 inch gun. Let me explain that for you:

Battleship

In 1941 a ship could have 15 inch guns for firing at GREAT distance to bombard shorelines prior to infantry landing. Then the 12 inch guns could be used to bombard ship-to-ship mortar style trying for a deck penetration. Ten inch guns were for close range hull penetrations. And 4 inch flak guns were used to clear decks and anti-aircraft. The issue here is that in 1941 radar had recently been invented for use on the open water to detect surface vessels out of visual range. The problem was that German figured out how to control their 15 inch guns with the information the radar saw as relevant vectors. Bottom line: The Bismarck never missed twice, on the same vector. Two serious advantages, exploited for their full potential, great for one faction, but fear for the other.

A seed box is a wonderful tool for the serious torrenter. It is like the big 15 inch gun, there is nothing quite like hitting with the largest gun in your arsenal. Another such tool is the RSS feed. A powerful option that allows unattended downloading from your selected tracker. And a third tool that some find useful is the BAN option of a client, the ability to block inbound, outbound, or all transmission of a specific OR range of IP addresses. The combination of all three at the same time is a bit perplexing. The combination of all three at the same time working on paired seed boxes, is the Battle of two Bismarcks. Here’s how it works:

The first box is the escort, (Prinz Eugen) and is a .lu box with two .ovh Bismarcks behind it, OR a .ovh with two kimsufi boxes in tow. The escort is RSS fed and starts the motion by jumping on the torrent at the earliest possible moment, a script triggers the Bismarcks to engage at the escort 10% completion mark. The Bismarks have a modified uTorrent client as specified in a tutorial here on this site. The Bismarks only TAKE data from each other and the escort, but they will SEED to anyone. The reason for two of them is their modified ROUTE tables enable them to cover the maximum amount of potential clients via manual gateway selection by being programmed for different paths. Since the escort is on a 1000/1000 connection it has Full Pull saturation on the original SEED, the original seed hardly has any bandwidth for other LEECHERS. The bulk of the LEECHERS find the path of least resistance being the Bismarcks and thus pull heavily from them. The Bismarcks are programmed to pull only from each other, and the escort.

All this time you may have held connections to christ-loads of fellow leechers, but as soon as you reach 100% completion, all of a sudden no one is connectable to you. Even though there are still loads of leechers. Why is this? The tracker doesn’t see you? Has that damn escort sent you a fractional packet? Eh….you’re getting warmer…..warmer….

Category: Abstract, BitTorrent, The Pirate Society  2 Comments
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