Posts Tagged ‘bittorrent’

The Flashbulb is.

Tuesday, February 19th, 2008

If you haven’t heard about Benn Jordan, The Flashbulb, or how itunes stole and sold his music, here’s that interesting story (which is yet another reason not to patronize Apple or itunes). Long story short: dude gets his music stolen, so he and his label give it away and win from donations; internet works. As far as I know, he is the first artist to work with a private bittorrent site to distribute his music freely.

I’d like to formally recommend the album to anyone interested in film soundtracks or ambient type things in general. “Soundtrack to a Vacant Life” is described basically as it is titled, and while normally a much more aphexy musician, on this album he has toned and tuned everything to the pace of his life. This is a mostly relaxing trip through what I see as a truly grandiose statement of electronic music. This is a project I would do.

This story is a couple weeks old, but I finally finished getting to the album and I really wanted to mention it. This is part of us moving on. Check it out online.

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Posted in The Internet Effect, awesome, corporate, crazy, culture vulture, hot shit, money, noise, owned, p2p, violins and stuff, www | No Comments »

50 Cent’s Two Cents Re: p2p.

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

50 Cent made a huge statement in an interview (in Norway, no less), saying file-sharing doesn’t hurt artists:

“…the advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt…This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”

“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.

Not sure what the jazz and classical thing is supposed to mean, but he was probably high.

The RIAA and friends say file-sharing is hurtful stealing that kills the blood cells of huge artists and gives them HIV. Why would you believe companies that steal from the very artists they pretend to protect? Everyone knows almost all music contracts are completely one-sided deals that artists hardly benefit from in comparison to the contractor. Fun fact:

50 Cent has engaged in numerous feuds with other rappers including Ja Rule, The Game, and Fat Joe.

THE DUDE IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. He deserves serious respect, even if he was blazed out of his brainhole during the interview; he utters truth. File sharing hurts profits, not artists.

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Posted in FACT, awesome, corporate, drugs, hilarious, money, noise, p2p, quoting, thinking positive, www | No Comments »

Has dynamic torrent tracking ever helped you?

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

Dynamic tracking is the bane of private torrent sites; at the same time, it is a boon to those trying to use crappy public sites, as well as those who are impatient and think more connections means more faster automatically.

DHT (Distributed Hash Table) is an addition to certain BitTorrent clients that allows them to work without a tracker. What this means is that your client will be able to find peers even when the tracker is down, or doesn’t even exist anymore. It allows the swarm to continue as normal without a tracker. You can also host torrents without a tracker.

I can remember a few times that dynamic tracking has helped me finish something that would have been absolutely unfinishable otherwise. An average example would be a decent quality vhs rip of rare as hell, out of print shit, scraped together at 1.9k/sec from one dude wherever over a week.

With so many big trackers disappearing, the idea that DHT is helping hundreds of thousands of people finish torrents they couldn’t have otherwise is not only hilarious, but it also sort of makes you have to reconsider laws that can no longer be enforced.

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Posted in downlode, hilarious, p2p, tech, www | No Comments »

Waffle recipes and oink.cd…

Saturday, October 27th, 2007

The domain oink.cd is now back in the hands of its owner (it had been hijacked earlier this week by the super-riaa and vandalized), and while the tracker is gone, something interesting is in its place.

See for yourself.

What’s going on here? The oink site now links to a google search most likely intended to help you find this page, which links to a huge variety of torrent sites. I’m ok with the terminology “hydra” when applied to torrents.

He even changed the secret shady-as-hell note page, which made the ominous-yet-vaguely written propaganda threat page seem fake. Before it was changed, it was a note from the super-riaa (IFPI + BPI) to the police saying thanks for the help, and had the exact text for the threatening front page in its entirety. How official does that sound? Hopefully I won’t be picked up for plagiarizing this text, which was on the front page after being taken from here:

Pedro,

Many thanks for your assistance with this. Please find attached two logos for IFPI & BPI together with text to be displayed on a new homepage on the ‘Oink’ website. Can the logos be added to the page:

This site has been closed as a result of a criminal investigation by IFPI, BPI, Cleveland Police and the Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police (FIOD ECD) into suspected illegal music distribution.

A criminal investigation continues into the identities and activities of the site’s users

Many thanks

Keith

The site was hijacked, literally. This organization had no authority to access or use the domain. Essentially, they pulled exactly the same trick that hacker kids do to sites they vandalize. Hijacking website is generally considered illegal.

This story just gets more weird and twisted as the days pass, but it seems like more sources are becoming respectable in reference to the whole mess.

Here is the best waffle recipe ever (yes, metric; fuck off):

  • 50g Egg Yolks
  • 15g Sucrose
  • 1g Sea Salt
  • ½ Vanilla Bean
  • 125g Sifted Cake Flour
  • 2.5g Baking Powder
  • 50g Whole Milk
  • 200g Heavy Cream
  • 50g Butter (82% fat)
  • 10g Dark Rum
  • 1 pinch Cream of Tartar
  • 45g Egg Whites

Mix wet crap and dry crap together, let it sit for a half hour, then cook in an iron or whatever. Best waffles ever. Seriously.

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Posted in food, hot shit, list, noise, owned, p2p, potlikking, tech | No Comments »

The problem with alternate pork.

Friday, October 26th, 2007

Talk of new oink replacement sites has thickened to culmination and The Pirate Bay, the Swedish-based public tracker thought to be the biggest in the world, has announced its plans to provide a replacement site with hopes that oink users will fill in all the details and make it right.

There are problems with the Bay’s plan was wrapped up in a single comment from Anonymous:

It wont be OiNK. There will just be hoards of transcoded, non-seeded, mislabled, shit uploaded. This is why OiNK existed, as a reliable source of good quality music, which ‘BOiNK’ won’t be.

It’s true. No matter the level of care taken for the Bay to claim this niche, what is most likely going to end up happening is a “haven” for music that is just like any other public tracker…i.e. crap. What set oink apart was high quality, and a tracker where anyone could upload anything doesn’t have the infrastructure to maintain the same level of quality.

Who knows? The Bay could moderate it for real, and make a genuine attempt at maintaining the standards, but it’s not likely. They are more about the message than the method. It has its place, but it’s not what oink users seem to be seeking; for them, it is about quality and even community.

Scams and misinformation continue, in case you were wondering. There appears to be one source of super-reliable information, and elsewhere is going to be hearsay.

The internet isn’t as fast as people think in some departments, and one of those departments is getting over the 192kbps hump. Many folks do not even know of the v0 “standard,” and have never heard of flac, either. And to think some people take blu-ray seriously.

Bittorrent is a bigger idea than a country or a law. It is decentralization manifest, which is a concept that backfires when the topic of restrictions and private community comes up. In fact, they appear mutually exclusive. What will happen?

Lots of the same ideas coming up here are coming here. Read it.

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Posted in noise, p2p, skepticism, tech, www | No Comments »