Slashdot Log In
Torrentocracy = RSS + Bit Torrent + Your TV
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Jun 21, 2004 06:47 AM
from the clairvoygence dept.
from the clairvoygence dept.
lerhaupt writes "I've started a project called Torrentocracy which is the combination of RSS, Bit Torrent and your Television. It's written as a plugin for MythTV (the homebrew Linux PVR project). This means you can not only easily find out about new torrents from various enclosure enabled blogs, but you can also start the torrent download process with the click of your TV remote control. Are RSS aggregators which support torrent downloads the next greatest thing since web browsers? What is the significance of hooking this directly to your TV? Here's a screenshot."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Sounds Wonderful (Score:4, Funny)
Obligatory pr0n joke (Score:3, Insightful)
Aren't you doing that anyway?
Re:Obligatory pr0n joke (Score:2)
Re:Sounds Wonderful (Score:4, Insightful)
You would have to leave your PVR/whatever on to seed, but as you might of noticed, your computer continues to function with your monitor off.
Parent
Re:Sounds Wonderful (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, if you use the switch on your monitor, you can get some awesome boot times!
Parent
Re:Sounds Wonderful (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Sounds Wonderful (Score:5, Funny)
Sad but true: we have a client who prints out emails so he can fax back the reply...
Parent
Re:Sounds Wonderful (Score:2)
--
7 Gmail accounts availiable. [dealsites.net]
Psst. Buddy. (Score:5, Funny)
Just a thought.
Kthx.
From "The Matrix" (Score:5, Funny)
"No Lieutenant, your webserver is already dead."
Parent
Interface (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't look at the screen shot though. been
Re:Interface (Score:5, Funny)
When I sit down in front of the TV I become a veg. Anything not easy is just plain to hard to do.
Damn, that's true. Why is it that I can write shell scripts and debug Perl, but have never been able to program my VCR? Selective stupidity - or lack of tin-foil hat? ;)
Parent
Webserver go boom (Score:3, Funny)
Bad rep (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bad rep (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Bad rep (Score:5, Interesting)
Bit torrent, however can serve up the 400+ mb file within an hour and the developers can just set up the link to the seed from their site. It carries an air of legitimacy greater than you can achieve by saying "or look for the file on eMule".
Parent
Comparatively little use of BT for Warez (Score:5, Interesting)
BitTorrent has successfully been used to provide everything from ISOs for distros to large commercial game demos.
The use of BT for transmitting illegal warez etc has been minimal mainly because BT requires a larger number of people to be interested in the particular warez than most P2P software for a download to work.
Its worth remembering that the primary use of BT is to get large files out to large numbers of people as soon after a given date as possible (while using the minimum of initial bandwidth).
What the article is actually getting at tho is that the PVR can be used to easily start a BT download on another (perhaps headless) machine to which the TV/PVR is networked.
Its convenient and useful but hardly revolutionary in this case.
Parent
Smirk (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdotters: Cool. (Click)(Click)(Click)
Slashdot: Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!! [[[[Crush]]]]
Server: (Dies)
Guy: Well now that you've killed my server... I guess my project can't continue.
Slashdot: Thanks for letting us know about your project.
Computer + TV card (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Computer + TV card (Score:2)
Dangerous New Bomb (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... (Score:4, Funny)
what's the ocracy? (Score:3, Funny)
Easily Tracked? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thoughts?
GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com] - A completely free stock trading community!
Re:Easily Tracked? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Easily Tracked? (Score:3, Informative)
Let's take these one at a time.
As with any web site, Google knows the IP addresses of anyone using the site. So they can know who searches for pr0n or mp3's, etc. But they can't know whether you actually went to the site they provided an URL to, and performed a download, as that's between your web browser and the file server.
KaZaA knows the IP addresses of the computers you're connected
Re:Easily Tracked? (Score:3, Insightful)
A good advancement, but not a totally new trick (Score:5, Informative)
Now you've done it, Thanks for all the work Isaac. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now you've done it, Thanks for all the work Isa (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Now you've done it, Thanks for all the work Isa (Score:2)
Re:Now you've done it, Thanks for all the work Isa (Score:5, Funny)
"...MythTV will be indistinguishable from "Movie Pirates" in the MPAA's eyes..."
Ahem. They prefer to be called [dieselsweeties.com] buccaneer americans. [dieselsweeties.com]
I mean honestly, the insensitivity of some people.
Parent
Great plan (not) (Score:3, Funny)
They have a word for that, its called appeasement [reference.com].
They tried it with Hitler before World War II. It didn't work.
Caught on google (Score:2, Informative)
Appropriateness of torrents for this, and legals (Score:3, Interesting)
1. I thought torrents randomly sent chunks from all over the file, rather than as a stream. Wouldn't this make no sense unless you wanted to wait forever for the program to be completely downloaded ?
2. Given the large amount of copyrighted programs made available on torrent networks, isn't this an effort to make mainstream what might be otherwise illegal ? Does it make sense to put this amount of effort into support of what might be intended to be an illegal activity for most ?
I would have RTFA but its slashdotted, so I couldn't confirm for myself how torrents are an appropriate medium, and whether the issues of widespread support for copyright violations are addressed.
Re:Appropriateness of torrents for this, and legal (Score:5, Insightful)
In a previous post [slashdot.org] I talked about a similar problem when TiVo suggested a similar feature. I think this would apply here too. This doesn't change the DVR recording model, which is schedule something and watch it later. The only thing that this adds is that it makes the Internet a like a TV channel, from which you can set up something to record, and then watch it later. It's not *exactly* like a TV channel, but it still fits the DVR model.
The person/people who are creating this tech have got to pull off a trick. They've got to figure out how to make sure that the only content available is distributed with the permission of the copyright holder. If they can do that, then they have a much more credible case that this is not intended to be a tool which is intended for copyright violation.
I don't mean to suggest that copyright is a good thing. But it exists in today's world. It never ceases to amaze me when we (the slashdot crowd) get up in arms when someone violates the GPL (i.e. violates copyright) and then we turn around and violate copyright when it comes to music or movies or ... The point is that we can't ride whatever side of the fence is most convenient. Either copyright should be enforceable and we support others rights to enforce their copyrights or copyright should not be enforceable and we allow GPL violations without restriction. Which means that if we want a solid GPL, then we should also ensure that this tech does everything to respect other's copyrights.
$.02.
Parent
Re:Appropriateness of torrents for this, and legal (Score:5, Informative)
If you think about it, if torrents were purely sequential they would be very slow since if say 10 people started torrenting from 1 seed they would all be fighting over the same blocks and couldn't help each other.
Parent
Freecache! (Score:2, Informative)
Only now it's too late, ofcourse..
problem w/idea of a massive PVR/torrent system (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The inconvenience. As another poster indicated, BT downloads RANDOM chunks, so you'd have to wait until the entire file is downloaded until you can watch it.
2. The bandwidth. If this BT concept became as ubiquitous as PVR's will be in the future, the home ISPs would collectively have a heart attack. Now, I don't own my own ISP, but from what I understand just about all of them could never put up with every, or a significant amount, of their subscribers utilizing their upload amounts. They sell you those great 3mbit/1mbit (or whatever) lines, but if you consistently use the 1mbit line for WHATEVER reason, many ISPs (comcast anyone?) will automatically flag and cap you once you cross a data transfer amount (an amount they refuse to disclose to you). Granted, torrents are a great idea for spreading popular files, but it is a system that requires (or at least thrives on) people kicking back whatever they can into the system.
Anyone else see that as a serious problem?
Large-Scale Distribution System for Indie TV (Score:3, Interesting)
Broadcatching with BitTorrent (Score:5, Interesting)
http://scottraymond.net/archive/4745 [scottraymond.net]
After addressing the initial whys and wherefores, I speculate on how the pairing might be potent enought to spark an indie media revolution. Here's the text:
-- RSS meets BitTorrent meets TiVo.
The other day, Steve Gillmor wrote about BitTorrent and RSS and how they could be combined to create a "disruptive revolution." He's half right. RSS and BT are indeed two great tastes that taste great together, but Gillmor's vision is upside down: we shouldn't use BitTorrent to carry RSS, we should use RSS to carry BitTorrent. Let me explain.
-- But first, some background.
RSS (RDF Site Summary) is a simple format for syndicating content on the web. These days, the most common application of RSS is subscribing to weblogs: you tell your computer to check an RSS file for changes every so often, and then it notifies you when there's something new to read. If you're like me and you read one metric shitload of news every day, this is a life-saver.
BitTorrent, the brainchild of Bram Cohen, is the current cool-kids' P2P program. It works sort of like Kazaa, but at a lower level. It doesn't handle searching for new files, it doesn't have a media player, it just concentrates on downloading big files efficiently.
Okay. Two solutions in search of a problem. Here's a problem:
-- I have a weakness.
I am addicted to the show Alias. I watched the first couple episodes of season two as it aired, and I was hooked. In my honest moments, I'll admit that the show's appeal is mostly due to the callipygian Jennifer Garner. It's a weakness; we deal.
But it gets worse. I go out on Sunday nights, when Alias airs, and I don't want to give that up. That's why God created the VCR, I know, but to compound the problem, I don't have TV. I don't want to have TV, because I love the feeling of superiority that I get by not having it.
This system is at tension, it has no rest, its forces are unbalanced, it wants to be resolved.
-- A partial answer.
The internet, it turns out, is great at resolving different kinds of tensions, and this is one of them. After a few weeks of missed episodes, I realized that with a little patience, a P2P program like Kazaa was able to fetch back-episodes with aplomb. Each file is around 450 megs, fairly high-quality video, with commercials cut out. I start a few episodes downloading, and by the next evening, they're ready to watch, whenever I have the time.
After a few weeks of enjoying this, a new tension emerged: I had caught up with all of the old episodes, and I had to wait a week for each new one. The problem is that the Kazaa protocol isn't especially well-tuned for getting brand new files: first someone has to record the show as it airs, cut out the commercials, and compress it to a reasonable size, then seed it on the network. Then, it has to slowly propagate to its peers, each transfer taking hours. It might take three days before it's available on enough peers that I'm able to even find it, let alone download it.
-- BitTorrent to the rescue.
The solution is BitTorrent. BitTorrent operates on similar principles to Kazaa, but it's tuned differently: it excels at downloading files that are new or currently in high demand. It breaks large files into many small chunks, and coordinates their assemblage, so that users can tap into a swarm and distribute the load evenly. At the same time that you're downloading a chunk, another user is downloading an earlier chunk from you -- no one server is overwhelmed, and the more popular a file, the higher its availability is. It's perfect for large files that are most interesting when they're fresh -- in other words, it's perfect for TV shows.
In many cases, I have been able to use BitTorrent to completely download a new TV show mere hours after the show airs.
Re:i love the idea of torrents but ... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:i love the idea of torrents but ... (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't make any sense. Torrents are completely reliable -- they already have block and file level hashing and automatic re-downloading of blocks in case of transmission errors, etc. The only time you won't get a complete torrent is if there are no complete copies of the file being served. Adding error correcting codes (e.g. PAR files) would make the total file larger, and only recover from incomplete torrents that are _almost_ complete (i.e. would have been complete if the PAR file hadn't made it 15% larger). Just make sure that anything you're downloading has a couple of seeds before starting the download.
Parent
Re:i love the idea of torrents but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i love the idea of torrents but ... (Score:5, Informative)
What this has to do with PAR2s are obvious: the entire effective functionality of PAR2s is already integrated into BT, automatically. It's not something that users can turn on or off, it's an integral part of the protocol.
The cause of your problem is likely that your torrent ran out of seeds before you finished downloading. Look at the "distributed copies" number your client gives you. That represents how many effective copies there are of a torrent. (Say client A has the first 50% of a torrent, and client B has the second 50%. Those are the only two peers. That's 1.0 distributed copies, since even though neither peer has a full copy, the two of them together do.) If the number is below zero, you will never be able to download the entire torrent unless a seed pops in.
As BT clients advance, this is becoming rarer. There's a "super-seeding" option of some clients which helps get out sparsely-seeded torrents as fast as possible by refusing to send the same chunk more than once.
If this is a problem for you - trying to get poorly-seeded torrents - you might want to try out Azureus. It preferentially grabs complete files inside a torrent first, and you can tell it which files to try for.
Parent
Re:i love the idea of torrents but ... (Score:2)
I think this is precisely what the problem may be... I generally am downloading what people call 'world music' and it's not as widely seeded as your usual porn, bootlegged britney and what not and troublesome to find.
Hence I've seldom managed to retrieve an entire file.
I only persevere because you lot keep raving about it
I'll look into Azureus
Cheers
Re:i love the idea of torrents but ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Conincidentally, being able to prefer one file over another is one of the reasons that we have poorly-seeded torrents to begin with.
The mainline BT client does not support this becuase it interferes with it's rarest-first algorithms. It will download the pieces that are in danger of falling off the network before it will download a more common piece.
I agree that preferring files may be a useful feature from the user's point of view, but it's still a selfish thing to do, and makes the 99%-and-no-seed problems worse and more frequent with it's use.
Parent
Re:i love the idea of torrents but ... (Score:2)
Re:http torrent (Score:3, Informative)
Completely anonymous too. Albeit slow as a snail on valium.
An increase of users is supposed to equal an increase in speed. Unconfirmed.
I, for one... (Score:2, Funny)