Something’s wrong with uTorrent, the de facto Windows BitTorrent client. The client’s implementation of uTP has drawn the ire of certain private BitTorrent sites, saying that it favors uTorrent clients above all others. That’s not good for the “BitTorrent community,” as it were.

The deal is that uTorrent now uses the micro transport protocol to help share the bandwidth load between uTorrent and other applications. You don’t want BitTorrent stealing all of your bandwidth (unless you leave it running overnight or whatever), so in steps uTP. It’s a fine idea, I guess, but it has created a problem: the way it’s currently implemented, uTP favors connections to uTorrent above all other clients. That means, if you’re in a swarm with users using other, non-uTorrent clients—Vuze, Transmission, rTorrent, take your pick—the others guys are doomed. It unnecessarily divides the BitTorrent in two: uTorrent, and everyone else.

Technically, what uTorrent is doing is favoring uTP connections over plain ol’ TCP, which is used by other clients.

It’s such an issue that at least one pretty big, private BitTorrent site has banned the latest version of uTorrent.

Now, if the other clients implemented uTP, which was developed by BitTorrent, Inc., none of this would be an issue, but that’s entirely dependent upon BitTorrent, Inc. Easier said than done, yes.

You’ll recall that Vuze (formerly called Azureus) was banned on several prominent, private BitTorrent sites recently, making uTorrent Windows users’ go-to client. It’s a bigger issue now than it would have been, in other words.

I do wonder if kids (and by kids I mean higher schoolers) even torrent much anymore. It was big in my day (2004ish), but it’s so much easier to Rapidshare this or that here and there.

Credit to Ring of Honor, the professional wrestling promotion, for embracing the Internet era. The promotion has launched a new download store that makes its extensive video library only a $10 download away. A legal download, mind you. It’s all a fan could ever ask for.

The process is pretty easy. You visit the Web site, add the video of your choice—I selected Joe vs. Punk II, from October, 2004 (which received a 5-star rating from The Wrestling Observer newsletter)—then buy via PayPal. A link then appears in the Account area of the Web site. In there is a link to a plain ol’ ISO that you then download at your leisure. The servers don’t seem to be too beefy since the download is running only at around 300 KB/s right now (6:30pm). Still, it’s quite a bit faster than waiting for a plastic disc to arrive in the mail.

It should also be noted that Ring of Honor regularly hosts Internet pay-per-view events, including one on April 3. So, “figures out the Internet” may be a bit harsh.

Companies like Ring of Honor have been fighting piracy for quite some time. There’s a couple fairly high profile BitTorrent sites that specialize in professional wrestling, and their DVDs are often ripped and posted and as soon as they’re released. It’s one thing to download a WWE DVD rip, where the company makes millions of dollars every year, but smaller guys like Ring of Honor truly do get hurt every time you fire up uTorrent. (Not to justify downloading WWE DVDs, of course.) But giving people an easy-to-use, inexpensive, and legal method to access their video library is to be commend, and it probably should have happened sooner.

I’d much rather be given the option of paying $10 for an ISO than having to sift my way through this or that torrent site, worrying about whether or not there’s a seeder in the swarm.

There’s a bit of a controversy in the BitTorrent community, friends. Two rather prominent, so-called private trackers, whose names I will not mention “just because,” have announced that they will be banning Vuze, the former Azureus, one of the elder statesmen of the BitTorrent protocol. Say what you will about the direction Vuze took—I hated it—but there isn’t a more powerful torrent client under the sun. Make no mistake about it: it is an important loss, and one of the bigger developments is the recently quiet world of BitTorrent.

The decision was taken because of the potential for Vuze to be tampered with—it was a hassle to ensure that Vuze stats were on the up and up. Nothing is more vital to the success of private BitTorrent sites than accurate stat tracking. What do you want, chaos?

It’s a valid complaint, to a point: you cannot run a BitTorrent site with the threat of users gaming the system. Private sites usually operate on the upload-to-download ratio system: you’re required to keep your ratio above a certain number in order to keep your account in good standing. So, you’ve uploaded 20GB of data and downloaded 15GB of data, giving you a ratio of 1.33. Now, if you were to somehow tamper with the way your BitTorrent client reports stats, you could rig it so that it looks like you’ve uploaded 50GB and downloaded only 10GB, the site would suffer.

How often that has actually happened, who knows? I do know this: if you’re tampering with your clients’ stats you should be deported.

The sites in question now recommend Windows users use uTorrent; Mac users uses Transmission or uTorrent; and Linux users use rTorrent. It’s a peculiar decision.

Popular because of its simplicity and small footprint, uTorrent is a closed-source application, and one point was linked with the MPAA and RIAA. You’d think that people who were engaging in wanton copyright infringement would be a little more prudent with their activities, but far be it from me to question people’s decision-making skills.

The Windows version of uTorrent is far more mature than the Mac version. One feature you won’t find in the Mac version of uTorrent is RSS, something that’s been around seemingly forever.

Transmission is another client that’s popular because of its small footprint. (If you’re seeding on a dedicated box, or have a system with a decent amount of memory, having a small footprint is essentially irrelevant. I used to run Azureus 24/7, and never noticed my machine slowing down.) Again, it’s on the simple side, so people who want to “set it and forget it” will be right at home.

I don’t know, it sounds like I’m pro-Vuze here. I don’t give a damn; I use Usenet for my escapades. I will say, I did the majority of my torrenting—I barely torrent these days—using Azureus/Vuze, so it’s a little sad to see it being pushed out like this.

Still, if it’s for the good of the sites in question, then so be it.

Took Pictures

Here are some pictures of the MSI Wind U210, featuring the netbook in various angles. Click on a thumbnail to see a large-size version of the picture:

Used Ninite

Ninite, if you recall, lets visitors choose the applications they want and download a customized executable to facilitate their installation. Based on my SO’s preferences, and what I thought she’d need, here’s what I ticked off:

• Chrome
• Skype
• Yahoo Messenger
• iTunes
• VLC
• Picasa
• Microsoft Office (Trial Version)
• Adobe Reader
• AVG Free Anti-Virus 9.0
• Flash Installer for Other Browsers
• Java Runtime Environment Update 18
• uTorrent
• WinRAR

All in all, it took about an hour-and-a-half for everything to download and install. Since Ninite did everything in the background, I was able to get some work done while waiting.

Wrote down My First Impressions

The MSI Wind U210 was very responsive, running Windows 7 smoothly. Keep in mind however that I was using a brand-new gadget, with barely anything on it, so let’s see what happens after a few months of use. The unit itself is very light and compact, but the keyboard is still near full-size, and proved easy to type on with my relatively large fingers.

While the keyboard is snappy enough to facilitate touch-typing, it’s build quality was a bit suspect, with the entire key assembly depressing a bit whenever I’d press U, I, J, K. The rest of unit felt sturdy though, and the finish is shiny plastic, the kind that doesn’t seem like it will wear out or discolor after months of constant contact with the human hand.

By far the best feature of the MSI Wind U210—at least the one I got—is the 9-cell battery, which promises a long life away from the wall socket. After two and a half hours of installing the programs above and working—with WiFi on and the screen at full brightness—Windows 7 promised over 4 hours of operation. The longer battery life comes at a cost of less portability though, with the extra cells bulging out from underneath the unit.

Considered Buying One for Myself

To make a long story short, I’m actually very tempted to buy this netbook for myself. I’m now at a point where I value portability, a good keyboard, and long battery life, and the MSI Wind U210 so far delivered on these. The only issues I have are the lack of Bluetooth, and I’m wondering if I can get a variant that has the 3G SIM slot enabled. Still, a mini Bluetooth dongle shouldn’t cost more than $5 nowadays, and tethering the Wind U210 to my phone for 3G access isn’t that difficult anyway.

Other than that, MSI has managed to cram a good mix of features into a small yet usable form factor. The MSI Wind U210 is light, speedy, and lasts long on a single charge. I’m simply trying to justify not getting this netbook, given the price for what you get.

You can buy the MSI Wind U210 (6-cell version) from NewEgg here: MSI Wind U210-008US Black/Gray 12.1″ WXGA Netbook ($430)

Post from: The Gadget Blog

The uTP protocol is an extension of the bittorrent protocol, and essentially times packets being transferred and calculates if there is any serious delay. The idea is that this would only kick in when the network is being stressed.

We’ll see how this turns out, but who knows what other implementations of this sort we’ll be seeing. The net neutrality battle is likely to be marked by compromises on both sides. Expect to see measures taken in other areas like VoIP. It’s progress… I guess.

What’s wrong with sites like Hulu? Well nothing, per se, except for the fact that they can’t be used anywhere outside of the Unites States. As if other countries don’t want to watch… um, really great shows like “Extreme Makeover” and “The [American] Office”! Perhaps that’s why, then, BitTorrent site EZTV has seen traffic double, mainly from non-American IPs, in the past year? For whatever reason, people want to watch these shows, but since there’s no legal outlet to do so, well, it’s not exactly hard to configure uTorrent or Transmission, now is it?

The problem goes back to a time before the Internet ruined Hollywood’s business model. Back in the day (and still today, actually) people in other countries had to wait months, if not years, for “American TV Show” to show up on their local TV networks. That wasn’t much of a problem before the Internet, because how could you get jealous in London that a new season of The Simpsons started when all you had access to was whatever the hell Sky put on the air? You can’t want to see something if you don’t know it exists.

With apologies to alt.tv.simpsons, where I used to hang out for a minute.

But now you can’t visit Digg or Facebook without seeing your online, American buddies chatting about “30 Rock” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm. These shows won’t show up on your local TV stations for months, but that’s why there’s BitTorrent!

It’s like this: would you rather wait months and months to see “Whatever” when you can download it in seconds from EZTV? That’s what I did when I was in Barcelona and wanted to see “Generation Kill.” I downloaded the episodes a few minutes after they made their way to whatever site I was using at the time.

Is that piracy though? I mean, I guess it is, but what are you gonna do? Wait around like a jerk for Local TV Station to pick up the shows?

What the studios should do, but probably never will, is either A) eliminate staggered release schedules or B) set up international versions of sites like Hulu. I mean, why do they do that staggered release nonsense anyway? To protect the local market from imports or some nonsense? One World, baby, so treat it as such.

And why can’t a Web site be set up where my BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER MOTHER~! can stream “Family Guy” from the comfort of their home in Vienna, Melbourne, or Rio? It’s a stupid, Old World restriction that no longer make sense in this environment.

And yes, I know you can merely use a U.S. proxy, but that’s not the point, now is it?

Only a fool would pay for pornography on the Internet. It’s like, you don’t pay for air (or, more accurately, oxygen), do you? So why pay for porn? But if porn is free all over the place, what’s going to happen to our nation’s adult entertainment industry? It employs more than a few people (that’s good), and helps maintain our image abroad (that’s also good). Two good thing! So what’s the industry going to do in a world where every kid can load up uTorrent or visit YouTube-like site? One word: robots.

David Levy is something of an artificial intelligence expert, and he believes that the adult entertainment industry may well turn to robots to save itself. He told The Guardian:

I’ll be surprised if it’s more than another three years or so before we see more advanced sex dolls with more electronics and electromechanics. There will be a huge amount of publicity when products like this hit the market. As soon as the media starts writing about ‘My fantastic weekend with a sex doll,’ it will be like the iPhone all over again, but the queues will be longer.

Which begs the question (yes, I know that’s grammatically incorrect, but when has that ever stopped us?): would you, you know, have sex with a robot like you just don’t care? (All the married men reading this just said to themselves, “I already do—it’s called my wife!) I say, why the hell not? Don’t we already have similar robots? Let’s take it up a notch, then. It’ll be like Ancient Rome, only with pleasure bots.

El Seedee

The screen itself is good. It’s 320×240, nice and sharp, and color is vibrant. It’s basically like your average mid-range cell phone screen. Viewing angle is pretty dismal, but you’re usually right in front of it and it swivels vertically anyway. So what’s on it?

Well, the screen has a few basic “channels.” YouTube, RSS Feed, song display, “my videos,” a clock, a performance monitor, a picture viewer, and a timer. Of these, the performance monitor is really the only useful one, because I can’t think of a reason you’d want or need to navigate YouTube or your pictures and videos via this tiny screen. The only situation I can think you’d do it is while in a full-screen app or game that doesn’t minimize or alt-tab well. The RSS reader is adequate, but only displays one story at a time. You’d really have to try hard to make use of this thing.

It works with some games and apps, but not many that I found. FRAPS and Neverwinter Nights 2 were the only ones that showed anything, and they were plain little displays with little information.

Squandered potential, plus it’s annoying

Where’s my bandwidth monitor for uTorrent? Where’s my ammo readout in Counter-Strike or my mini-map in Assassin’s Creed? Of course, it’s on the game and app developers to make that happen, but it’s on Logitech to press them on it. If Logitech is going to roll something like this out, they needed to roll out big or customers are going to see that they’re paying for a fantasy device.

Lastly, the LCD screen is not some self-contained little thing. It runs a bunch of processes in the background all the time, and on XP at least also had an item (or two) in the taskbar all the damn time. Come on, that’s unforgivable.

So unfortunately, that’s the G19’s primary selling point, and it’s not very convincing. Maybe in a year there will be more support for it, or a touchscreen, or what have you, but at the moment it’s just not worth it. But what about the rest of the keyboard?

Solid otherwise

The G19 is, aside from the screen, a very competent keyboard. The keys are big, well-spaced, and have a pleasant resistance to them. They seem to project further from the base than other keyboards, but I have been using the very flat Lycosa for months, so that could just be a bad comparator. The backlighting is the best I’ve seen, and covers the entire rainbow; you can set colors to profiles so you know which you’re in. All illumination turns off with the touch of a button so you don’t have to fiddle with anything if you want a blackout while you watch a movie.

Like the G19’s predecessor, the G15, you’ve got macro keys on the left side and a hard profile switcher — work, play, movie editing, or what have you. Plus, like most gaming keyboards, it detects games you start and will automatically launch a macro/key profile. The macro editor worked well and I use it for blogging shortcuts (inserting image code, signatures, etc) and that sort of thing. I’m not a big macro user but if you are I think you’d enjoy this. The macro keys themselves (G1-G12) are easily available and organized into little blocks of four, excellent for finding without looking (the F-keys are also blocked, thank god).

The other features on the keyboard include a (thank you Jesus) Windows key disabler and the usual media controls. The media buttons worked perfectly for me, although it would have been nice to have them be able to launch the player instead of just control it. The big mute button and volume wheel are responsive and feel good.

Killer app kills the keyboard

So what we’ve got here is a failure to launch. The LCD screen has a lot of potential but is only used for mundane tasks which have no real reason to be on there, or at least don’t justify the cost. Other than that, it’s a great keyboard. I enjoy typing on it, the macros are handy and responsive, and everything works perfectly well. It’s just not worth dropping $200 on because it has a screen. Logitech makes great keyboards, and you’d be better off going with another one, at least until this one has adequate support from the community and industry.

Day Two of Optimum Online Ultra here at Deleon HQ, so I thought I’d share some info regarding how it works in the real world. (Yesterday we looked at a speed test, which isn’t necessarily reflective of what you’d find in everyday Internet use.) Onward!

Let’s first look at BitTorrent, which I’d guess is the most popular P2P thingie out there. I use Vuze because I’m on a Mac (well, two Macs: a Fall 2006 era iMac, which now sorta acts as a server, and a pre-unibody MacBook, which is what I use to pump out all these posts on a daily basis) connected to the 802.11n Wi-Fi network provided by the D-Link DIR-825; Transmission, the other big Mac client, is a little too “dumbed down” for my tastes (and it seems to be more buggy than many “private” BitTorrent sites would like to see), and I’m not about to run uTorrent in Wine or anything like that.

I used this site’s speed calculator to determine what settings to put Vuze at. It seemed to work pretty well. Observe:

Or, zoomed in:

That’s a movie from a certain BitTorrent site; you’re out of your mind if you think I’ll identify either the movie or the site in question. I’ll just say it’s a very well-seeded torrent and leave it at that.

As you can see, it’s pretty damn close to Optimum Online Ultra’s max speed of 101 megabits (or, 12.62 megabytes), running at 10+ MB/s.

That same torrent then began to upload at this speed:

So the upload is about half of the max speed of 15 megabits (or, 1.87 megabytes) at 962 KB/s. I may still have to some tweaking in Vuze—speaking of which, do any of you know a good how-to guide on how to setup things like max connections per client?—in order to get that number closer to the max.

Last night my younger brother crossed the 11MB/s barrier using Giganews. (For the record, I use Newsdemon—a perk of the job!) Sorry, no screenshots of that amazing moment. Just take my word for it, okay?

Probably the most disappointing is YouTube. Here I was expecting each video to load like lightning, but it really doesn’t seem to be any faster than it was using my old Internet connection. I guess that’s Google’s fault, though.

If there’s any requests out there to demonstrate how fast Optimum Online Ultra is just drop a line in the comments. If not, thank you for your time, and God bless America.