Links, Links, Links - February 21st, 2009

Here are some interesting links I picked up around the web. Have fun, and have a great weekend, too!

• 10 Ways To Speed Up Torrent Downloads - it's never enough, isn't it?
  
  
• 80+ Updated Tools and Resources for del.icio.us
  
  
• If you haven't seen it yet - Obama Sushi!
  
  
• Google Ocean: Has Atlantis been found off Africa?
  
  
• And... Digg Finally Admits the Auto-Bury Exists - Like we didn't know.
  
  

Does your ISP Slow Down Torrent Downloads?

There's much talk lately about ISPs that block or slow down torrent traffic. Users who have enjoyed the great download rates of torrents, find themselves looking at very slow connections, with no apparent reason.

ISPs that throttle torrent traffic were recently exposed by Azureus. The data was gathered from many users, using the Azureus plugin, and it confirms that Comcast continues to use TCP-resets to manage BitTorrent traffic on their network, but they are not alone. You can read the full results of the research here (PDF format).

Now the research is expanding. If you are using a different torrent client than Azureus, and you want to check if your ISP is messing up your downloads, you can do it with this service. The test servers are working hard, and you might get a "busy" response - so simply try again later.

The test creates a BitTorrent-like transfer between your machine and our server, and determines whether or not your ISP is limiting such traffic.

The test focuses on the BitTorrent protocol. This type of traffic can be identified by the port it is sent on (e.g., TCP port 6881) or by BitTorrent content headers which occur in the packets.

It's going to be very interesting to see the results. I am still waiting for the servers to clear, so I can run the test myself. Updates will follow.

The Pirate Bay Interrogations - Transcripts

The Swedish authorities are all over The Pirate Bay, but these guys don't seem to flinch.

First, they promised the site will keep on working, no matter what. And now it seems the Swedish prosecutor can't accuse them with anything more than "assisting copyright infringement", which is a relatively small accusation.

TorrentFreak posted the transcripts from the interrogation of the Pirate Bay people. Here they are.

Aside from a lot of "no comments" there are funny things, like this bit:

Interrogator: How can one translate the word tracker? (Note: same in Swedish)

A: It is not possible to translate.

Or this:

I: This has been a police investigation for a long time. The prosecutor’s case is one of copyright infringement, assisting in copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. What is your position on this?

T: That he is wrong. That if we are guilty, then Google is guilty too.

I: You mean you can compare Google to The Pirate Bay?

T: Almost.

I: What the difference between them?

T: Well... One difference is that you can upload torrents on The Pirate Bay, but it’s really the same thing because if you have a site with copyrighted material, you can add the link to be indexed on Google. It’s the same level as both sites are handling user-generated material. We don’t have any views on what the content is, we just provide a search engine.

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Hopefully, this will all clear out soon, and the good guys of the Bay will continue doing their stuff.

Google Pirate: Plunder the Web

There are plenty of Google-based search engines out there, but some of them are more fun than others.

This one just popped up on my radar: Google Pirate. The name is appealing, and so is the function: search for pirated downloads, using the power of Google. You can search for torrents, ringtones, software, ROMs and more. The results are pretty good, but it seems the engine doesn't support languages that are not English.

You can also add a plugin for your browser, if you are into that sort of thing.

Speaking of cool engines, this might be a good time to remind you that you can search for mp3 files using Google's power - with this neat site.

Plunder and enjoy!

Torrents for Geeks

Just saw this site for the first time - geektorrent.com.

The site features torrents that are for the nerdy crowd - programming related, sci-fi stuff and even math and physics torrents.

The activity in this site seems pretty low-key at the moment, but that could change in a hurry. So, if you are a Geek and enjoy torrents, this might be the place for you.

From the site:

"geektorrent is tracker/indexer for bittorrent files in any way related to "geeks". This is a rather broad term so if you consider your content "geeky" in any way, it is most likely OK. Feel free to upload programming screencasts, science documentaries, physics papers or why not some gaming speed runs"

20 BitTorrent Tips and Tricks

I really like TorrentFreak.com. It's a very professional site, and there is a lot of interesting info and discussion going on there.

Yesterday the released a very cool post - 20 BitTorrent Tips and Tricks.

I get a lot of questions about torrents and how to use them. Mostly it's from people who got stuck in the age of eMule and don't know how to get out of it. After a little bit of technical explanation, I tend to remark that torrents have some clear advantages, but also some problems.

I think the biggest advantage is the speed of download. When the amount of seeders is reasonable, you can download at amazing rates. As a user that "grew up" on download rates of 0.9 KBs (yes, I am that old), seeing a download speed of more than a 100 KBs constitutes a bloody miracle for me.

Still, the torrents have one big disadvantage - things get old, and fast. A DVD rip of a movie which is a year old or more, is much more difficult to get than a low-quality screener of the current top-hit. If you are looking for a movie from the 80s - you are better off with eMule or Newsgroups.

The biggest problem, of course, is that there are not enough seeders!

Spread the wealth and rejoice. Who knows when it's all going to end.