Winextra » RIAA

Yes RIAA we would download a car if we could

Steven — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:48:07 +0000

There’s all kinds of arguments that people use to justify their stance against online piracy with the most often used being the comparison of digital products to physical ones like cars.

In most cases their arguments are factitious and ridiculous and for the next time some better than thou hack from the RIAA throws you the car argument you can shoot him this in response (thanks to the crew at Gamma Squad for this BTW).

Yes RIAA we would download a car if we could is a post from: winextra
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Software Review: BitTorrent Clients – A Primer

billy2 — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 21:43:28 +0000

For those of you who haven’t heard of the BitTorrent protocol, I’ll take you through a brief introduction. BitTorrent and P2P networks in general spend a lot of time in the news, being demonized, usually, by both the media and venerable organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA. It is claimed, generally, that the P2P networks are responsible for the lion’s share of the illegal trafficking of music, software and movies.

Like any tool, P2P nets like BitTorrent can be misused. This does not mean that the tool is to blame, but the person who wields the tool. There are many legitimate uses for BitTorrent, as it is a fabulous method for sharing large files of any kind, particularly to a vast number of people. With other methods of file distribution, the file is placed in one location, and everyone who wants it connects to grab a copy. This puts a huge strain on the resources of the computer hosting the file, as a separate connection must be initiated for each requester. Bandwidth is usually the bottleneck, resulting in refused connections, and very slow transfer speeds, if not collapse of the network hosting the file if it is extremely popular and proper safeguards haven’t been implemented.

According to Wiki:

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a “torrent.” This small file contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file first obtain a torrent file for it, and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.

The torrent file can generally be found on BT websites or newsgroups among other places. The key is that once a few people who have acquired the torrent from a website download pieces of the file, the strain begins to be relieved off the originator. Newcomers to the party actually get the file from the people who downloaded it, bypassing the original computer entirely. This way, the person sharing the file need only upload it a couple times in many cases, and subsequent transfers are handled by an ever-expanding network of participants. The benefits are increased speeds, faster dissemination of the file, and the originator doesn’t even have to stay online for the file to continue to be distributed.

A BitTorrent client is any program that implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. A peer is any computer running an instance of a client.

BitTorrent is just one type of the P2P (peer-to-peer) file transfer method. In FTP, HTTP, and virtually any other file transfer method, the file is hosted in one spot, as explained above, and everyone grabs from there. This is the primary reason that the copyright enforcement groups hate P2P so much. If there is a website serving copies of Kanye West’s latest insult to music, chances are good that it can be shut down. However, with P2P, there is no central location, just a bunch of people sharing files. However, some sites distributing the torrents HAVE been shut down when it was proven that the offered info was for copyrighted data.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that Winextra or myself condone trading copyrighted media, I just wanted everyone to understand BitTorrent, how it works, and why it is popular (and hated in some circles). There are millions of files being traded every day that are perfectly legal, in fact there are even commercial uses for BitTorrent coming to light.

Now that you’ve got a basic handle on how BT works, watch for the reviews of BitTorrent clients. I’ll be reviewing 3 or 4 of them, and allow you to choose the best for yourself.

Software Review: BitTorrent Clients – A Primer is a post from: winextra
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Bill’s iTunes Review: By popular Demand!

billy2 — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 04:42:48 +0000

I said I would do it, and I’m a man of my word. I’ve downloaded, installed, used and abused iTunes from Apple. I trashed this app pretty hard last week, but in retrospect, I may have been a bit hard on it. The last time I used it was about version 4 or so, and the only thing I really used it for was loading up the iPod with tunes. So, I resolved myself to take fresh look at what can’t be ALL bad, considering the swarms of people who are using it, and, as I said, try to be objective as well.

Acquisition and Installation

The download for the current version, v7.5, is a whopping 41 megs, but considering that this is, similar to Windows Media Player, more than just a simple player, not yet in the realm of ridiculous. iTunes is a player, CD ripper/burner, iPod interface, web browser and file organizer. Versions for Mac as well as XP and Vista are available. Apple requires your email address to download, be sure to uncheck the boxes if you don’t want to add to the adverts in your inbox. Apple delivered the package to me at close to 1mB per second, quite fast, even for a commercial site. I’m aware that some people are not fans of QuickTime, but iTunes requires it. It’s included in the installer, nothing special need be done if you don’t have it yet. You can choose from 17 languages and are offered the usual: shortcut creation, file association and automatic update checks.

The “assistant” asks you what file types it should search for, but be careful here: iTunes offers to organize your music for you, but if you choose ‘yes’ your files and folders will be moved and renamed according to iTunes’ preference. I have my music meticulously organized alphabetically, if I’d chosen wrong, I’d be in tears and in no condition to write. iTunes lets you know that track info is sent to Apple for use in finding album art for you, but assures you that no record of the contents of your hard drive is saved. We hope. So, if you’re among the 100 million plus people who download music that isn’t “quite” legal, keep it in mind. You are also given an opportunity to go to the iTunes Store and open an account where you can buy and download thousands of albums or about 2 million individual tracks, album art and more. One related tidbit I thought interesting: The RIAA would have you believe that ripping “importing” CD’s, even for personal use on your computer or portable device, is not “fair use” and, therefore, illegal. However, Apple encourages you to do so. Hmm.

Interface and Features

First off, the playlist functions impressed me. That is, after my library was built. That was time consuming, to say the least. Ten minutes to add my ripped CD’s folders, which consists of about a gigabyte of mostly *.MP3s. Then, another hour or more (I wandered off) to “process” them. After that, I was making playlists like a mad thing. Of special note is the “party shuffle” playlist. This playlist randomizes all songs, displaying the next dozen or so songs queued up, as well as the previous few. As you use iTunes more, you can assign ‘ratings’ to each track, and iTunes will be sure that the the songs you like are queued up more often than ones you indicate you’re not fond of. Provided the ID tags on your tracks are correct, iTunes can make playlists that just include ’90′s tunes, your top rated tunes, or just the ones that it notices you listen to the most. The UI wasn’t extremely intuitive, but it does a lot, so some getting used to is in order. I would, however, like to know why in the hell the switch to “mini player” is under the ‘advanced’ menu item rather than ‘view’ like every other bit of software ever made with a similar feature. Took me a bit to find it. It could use an ‘always on top’ toggle as well. Annoying to have to bring up the taskbar every time I want to skip a crappy song, but you can check an option that minimized iTunes to the systray, giving you some right-click capabilities. Also, the lack of a ‘Stop’ button annoyed me. There appears to be no way to stop a track and restart it other than grabbing the slider and pulling it back to the beginning. You can switch views to automatically display only your music, only videos, TV shows, podcasts, or Internet radio stations. You can also easily modify ID3 tags, and modify volume level and EQ settings, which is very handy if your songs were ripped with different apps, and have different volume levels, and/or sound quality. A search function within the playlist views would be nice.

If you insert an audio CD iTunes will ‘import’ (rip) it for you and add it to your library. This was effortless and pretty quick, too. Burning CD’s was, shall we say, functional, but you’re better off using a program specifically designed for this, like Ashampoo. ITunes, will of course, synch your libraries with your iPod or iPhone, and you can even make ringtones for your iPhone from your tunes. Also of interest is the parental controls, which can be password protected to prevent unauthorized kidlets from downloading and/or viewing content that is age-inappropriate.

System ‘Friendliness’

Looking back at the review on the other players, iTunes stands out in one way in particular: This thing is a HOG. During the hour it was ‘processing’ my music it was gobbling up nearly 30% of my processor capacity, and this is a 3.4 gHz P4. In addition it ate up over 100,000K of memory. After the ‘processing’, processor use dropped to a more reasonable 2-3%, but memory usage was still 60,000K plus. The only thing I’m running that uses more is Firefox, which…just….keeps….growing….. In iTunes’ defense, after being left open for over 24 hours, and playing most of that time, it didn’t grow more than a couple K. Back on the offensive, this is, in my opinion, far more memory usage than I’d like to see in a media player. That 60,000 does not count the 2 sub-apps that load automagically, which account for another six or seven thousand K.

Wrap-Up

Pros: Free, fabulous playlist management, direct access to music store, some great features for individual track management.

Cons: UI needs work, resource-sucker.

All in all, this wasn’t reminiscent of the horrid experience I had with my last try at iTunes. The quick CD import and unmatched playlist features almost make me willing to leave this on the machine for a while. A big thanks to those of you who rang in on this.

Bill’s iTunes Review: By popular Demand! is a post from: winextra
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Software Review: Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 – Part Two

billy2 — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 15:01:58 +0000

Video and Disc Images

Working with video in Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 went well. The disc copy function was quick and easy, copying data cd’s and dvd’s as well as video discs. BS7 will not, however, make a copy of a commercial disc. You’re on your own there. The RIAA is watching.

Making a video DVD was effortless. I used a wide variety of video formats, from .wmv to .avi. I burned 2 avi files totaling about 1400megs as a video DVD. The entire encoding and burning process took about 2 hours on my machine, which, I’m sorry to say, isn’t exactly bleeding edge of technology. The disc played on my home theater system, the kid’s $30 dvd player, and the Sony Playstation.

As you add files to a video DVD project, BS7 automatically prepares to burn at the highest quality possible. As you add more files, it reduces the quality to make the project fit on the media. Most other apps I’ve used, you had to do this manually, at least clicking a couple warning boxes.

I created VCD and SVCD discs from mpg’s and wmv’s, then made some disc images. Ashampoo will create and burn in usual image formats including .iso and bin/que./

One impressive bit is that even though I used about 8 CD-R’s, and 6 or 7 DVD-R’s, I did not end up with a single coaster. I usually ended up with at least one every time I tried to use Nero.

One thing I wanted to touch on was the performance variation from machine to machine. I was perusing the user reviews on BS7 at CNET and noticed the wide variety of comments. As usual, you dump the extremes at both ends of the spectrum as whack-jobs…erm…’statistical anomalies’ but are still left with users who report that BS7 was blazin fast and exactly as advertised, as well as users bemoaning 9-hour video conversions and stacks of coasters.

I have personal experience to add to that, BS7 would hand me an ambiguous error box each time I tried to add an .avi to a video DVD. Contrary to some reports in the CNET reviews, I had a reply from Ashampoo’s support team in less than a day. I use VLC from Videolan.org for my media player, which requires no codecs, so I never even thought of codecs as a possible issue. The support staff had me install a pack of codecs, and all is well. So, remember, if you have trouble with this software, look at the usual suspects. Poorly coded app in memory or trojan that got by your malware solution and is randomly gobbling memory or CPU cycles and borking a burn? Bad memory? Computer trying to do too much at once? I can’t count how many times I’ve been told by someone “I have NOTHING open!” only to look down at the 2 dozen or so icons in the system tray. Don’t forget, of course, missing codecs.

Overall, I was impressed with the software. Not so much with the download/registration process though. I have now received nearly 15 emails from Ashampoo in the week or so since I first handed over my address. I know I mentioned that before, but I got another one a little bit ago, and it stirred me up a bit. Steven isn’t the only one around here who gets cranky. Ask my wife.

Like Crossloop, the interface is nice and clean, everything I want is easily at hand. However, Ashampoo has, for those of us who like to feel a little more involved in the experience, expert functions. I do not call myself an expert on anything, for responsibility usually follows such an admission. At any rate, if you prefer a little more control, you can change filesystem settings, enable Joliet and UDF, even make bootable discs.

In the Internet tab in the taskbar, you find an option entitled ‘Buy Recordables Online’. This takes you to an Ashampoo website where you can order and purchase all types of recordable media. The prices aren’t too bad, either. Very interesting. Didn’t expect that one.

I hope I’ve managed to cover enough to give the readers a good idea of the benefits of Ashampoo Burning Suite 7.

Pros: Clean design, full-featured yet simple to use, reasonable price. Good support.

Cons: Email advertising after download is over-the-top. The one error message I got was completely useless for fixing the problem.

Software Review: Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 – Part Two is a post from: winextra
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