Just because two people argue, it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. And just because they don’t argue, it doesn’t mean they do.
We don’t have to change friends if we understand that friends change.
No matter how good a friend is, they’re going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.
The Shareaza Development Team are going completely postal on Discordia, the scumbag shell corporation behind the extortion of the former Shareaza site and false program, and now who are attempting to trademark the Shareaza name.
The Shareaza Development Team needs your help - we are setting up legal defenses to go to battle with Discordia! Every cent counts, even if you can only give a little.
On March 10-14, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division (NCSD) will sponsor it’s second large-scale national cyber exercise, Cyber Storm II. The exercise will center on a cyber-focused scenario that will escalate to the level of a cyber incident requiring a coordinated Federal response. Cyber Storm II is part of Homeland Security’s ongoing risk-based management effort to enhance government and private sector response to a cyber incident, promote public awareness, and reduce cyber risk within all levels of government and the private sector.
The goal of Cyber Storm II is to examine the processes, procedures, tools, and organizational response to a multi-sector coordinated attack through, and on, the global cyber infrastructure. The Secret Service as well as numerous other agencies will participate in this exercise.
I’m releasing the Shareaza Daily Builds script under the General Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.
CNN is reporting that the 100-day Hollywood writers walkout is now officially over. The new contract managed to snag two of the three major points the Writers Guild was looking for. The writers will now have “jurisdiction” for content created especially for new media (Internet, cell phones, etc) and will get paid for the reuse of content on new media when the studios get paid.
“It’s unclear how soon new episodes of scripted programs will start appearing, because production won’t begin until scripts are completed, the AP reported. It will take at least four weeks for producers to get the first post-strike episodes of comedies back on the air; dramas will take six to eight weeks.”
Now my television addiction to the shows House and Grey’s Anatomy can continue. I was getting a bit sick of watching re-runs.
I should also note that a report was released today that stated that 50% of all BitTorrent downloads are TV shows. With the writers strike over, I expect this percentage to only increase.
I have officially been added to the Shareaza project on Sourceforge as a developer. I am honored that I am able to help out in such a way. My title is “Content Management”, and I will be bringing the current Shareaza site up-to-date with the latest XHTML standards and CSS fixes.
With a militant style more associated with the crew of The Pirate Bay, TorrentFreedom promises to put the user back in control, by offering a new BitTorrent-optimized, zero-logging, 100% anonymous VPN service, guaranteed to punch a hole through throttling ISPs. It is a service similar to Relakks, but based out of the Netherlands, rather than Sweden.
Basically, just sign up for an account, run the software (which is the click of a button) - which encrypts and tunnels all your Internet traffic to the Netherlands and back to you and you run your file-sharing client(s), such as Limewire, Bittorrent, or any other peer-to-peer software! This way you can share and download files freely, and you don’t have to worry about the RIAA/MPAA knocking on your door, or worried about getting sued. I’ve already signed up for an account!
If you’re still concerned about your privacy and you’re somewhat computer-savvy, I recommend encrypting your hard drive with TrueCrypt.
Update: The speed has been noticeably slow (eg 160KBps vs 1.1 MBps), compared to when I’m downloading from my direct connection. This is most likely due to the length of travel (eg: Texas –> Netherlands –> Texas) and Internet piping constraints across the seas. The upside is that people at TorrentFreedom are working on getting some servers set up in the US, so I expect a great increase in speed in the near future.
Update 2: I’ve received word that getting US servers is going to be harder than expected. I’ve also been refunded my money. If you live in Europe, I’d say give it a go, but if you’re in the US, you’re out of luck for now.
I’ve started back at school, now attending the University of Houston. I’m only taking 6 hours, as I’m just getting back to going to school again, it’s a new school, and I don’t want to overload myself. This leaves me with a lot of extra time on my hands, so I’ve taken a keen interest in learning PHP, specifically version 5.
There is a real beauty behind PHP in how it works and the actual power behind the language. It’s an extremely powerful language, it’s fast, open source and with a programming background, the learning curve is simple - all great reasons to use it. Also, I believe in the next couple of years, we’ll be seeing a lot of applications that we use everyday going online, to be completely web-based. We’ll also see a increase in web-based storage solutions - where you’ll be able to access your information anywhere with an Internet connection. The drawback on this is that your information no longer becomes exclusively yours, which is a major privacy concern.
However, with everything going web-based, that is where PHP comes in. I was familiar with it previously, and could read and understand it, but coding it would be a challenge. Now, I find that since I’ve been hosting the Shareaza Daily Builds, I’ve gone from having multiple scripts to incorporating everything into one script using functions and sessions. It’s been quite fun actually, while being a learning process, and reminds me of the days of when I used Visual Basic 6. Once I get the Daily Builds script perfected, I’m going to release it under the GPL v3. While I haven’t gotten to a point or project where I’m incorporating databases and MySQL, that’s on my future agenda.
I’ve also been working closely with Greg Hazel, one of the lead developers of uTorrent. While I’m not going to go into specific details, I will say that version 1.8 is progressing nicely and will definitely be a recommend upgrade on final release. Using Visual Studio 2008 on debugging this project and learning the inner-working of Shareaza has been a pleasure.
Having been a developer in the peer-to-peer and Internet scene for several years, from a few years at PeerGuardian, working at a web-design company, to now working with Shareaza and helping with uTorrent, it’s been very interesting to see the progress and direction that peer-to-peer is going in. I strongly believe that in the next few years, we’ll see an increase in hardware appliances and applications using some sort of peer-to-peer protocol to deliver information. Along with this happening, we’ll see an increase in broadband speeds, moving to wideband speeds, throughout the United States.
I was asked an interesting question the other day, about what I thought about the sharing of illegal, inappropriate or questionable material online. My response is that with the recent events of things such as mandatory filtering throughout Australia and talks of AT&T filtering copyrighted material at the network level, I maintain my stance in the freedom of information and flow of traffic on the Internet.
Voltaire once wrote “I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. I fully agree but now that we’re in the information age, I think it may be more appropriate to say “I may not like what you have to share, but I will defend to the death your right to share it”. We cannot stop the flow of information - you can try, and I promise you that you will always fail. We must learn to embrace file sharing and peer-to-peer protocols. Specifically, corporations need to stop going against the grain and instead try a new approach. I applaud Netflix and Xbox 360 for their recent delivery of full content (eg: TV shows, movies, etc.) through the Internet, directly onto your computer or television. This is where the future of media content and delivery is going.
On February 4th, IANA will add AAAA records for the IPv6 addresses of the four root servers. With this transition, it will finally be possible for two internet hosts to communicate without using IPv4 at all. Certain obsolete software may face compatibility problems due to the change, but those issues are addressed in an ICANN report (pdf).
Update: The transition has begun!
The Shareaza Development Team has released version 2.3.1. This is a bug fix release version. Some optimizations were made, Win9x support was reviewed and serious bugs were fixed. It’s the last version of Shareaza with Win9x support.
I’m also pleased to announce that I’ll be officially compiling and hosting the Shareaza Daily Builds. A separate server has been setup for this task.