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I keep trying to get out but it keeps pulling me back in: Usenet the ugly duckling of the tcp/ip world is still worth using. Yes its based on one of the oldest and most arcane protocols still in use (the only worse system I can think of was Gopher). Usenet is based on the exact model that every internet media distribution method developed in the last 10 years has been built to work around. Usenet connects you to a single server (or at least a server farm) to do all your downloading. The downside is that whomever sees your packets going to that server knows exactly what you’re downloading (more on this later). And, yes, Usenet has a steep learning curve but… the pay-offs are  huge.

The first payoff is privacy: modern Usenet allows for SSL connections… yes its a bit slower but with an SSL connection no one (not even your ISP) can tell what you are transfering… Well… except your Usenet provider. This means that choosing your Usenet provider is a critical decision. I use Astraweb. Why? Its cheap ($10 US a month), they keep around 400 days of usenet posts (which is a lot) and its fast (see below)… but most importantly they don’t keep any log. Combine this with SSL and you have a very fast and private service.

The second payoff is speed: I get about 1.5 MBps (thats Bps not bps) continuously downloading. Some of the most highly seeded torrents download at around 600 KBps (and this isn’t continuous). 1.5 MBps means that you can download a 15 GB file in less that 3 hours (every time, no matter who else is downloading it).

The third is that your ISP doesn’t care: 15 GB files sound great but isn’t your ISP going to be freaking out when you’re downloading 100s of GBs of movies? Nope. Why? Your ISP doesn’t care about downloads they care about uploads. Torrents are terrible for ISPs because they do a lot of uploading. Usenet does no uploading at all. This means that all that crazy traffic shaping and filtering that your ISP does, does not affect Usenet either. I’ve literally downloaded 250 GB of movies in a month and never heard a peep from my ISP.

The last is selection: almost everything that eventually gets posted to torrents first came from usenet (don’t tell the RIAA/MPAA). This means that movies, games, software, tv shows, images, music etc are all available. I use Usenet mostly for high-def movies, TV shows and games. The selection is vast but it all depends on how much your Usenet provider will store (and for how long)… this is why using your ISP’s usenet servers typically isn’t good enough. A third party Usenet provider is much much better (Astraweb keeps more than a year’s worth of posts). Thus far there has been absolutely no censorship of Usenet. None. Even in the US.

Sounds good right? So what’s the catch? Well besides the monthly fee for a Usenet provider, you’ll need Usenet reader software and you’ll need to figure out how to use it. This is a good and short introduction to how exactly usenet works.  Remember its a technology based in the 70s, so basically everything is treated as a textual post. Lots of tricks and workarounds have been employed to allow Usenet post to include data files.

I highly recommend using Newsbin as your Usenet reader software. Its pretty much a standard, has great customer support and does lots of complex stuff automatically for you. Check out the documentation to learn how to use it.  Newsbin is so good I actually paid for a copy of it!

Once you’ve got Newsbin setup with your Usenet provider, you’ll need to add groups. There are -many- groups each dedicated to different types of media. My suggestion is to use Newsbin’s sort feature to sort by number of posts, typically the more posts in a group the better the group will be: alt.binaries.hdtv.x264 is my favourite group since it contains HD quality versions of pretty much all recent movies and TV shows. It gets about 700,000 posts an hour (note that each movie can be made up of thousands of posts).

You’ll need to download all the post headers (basically the subject line of the post) before you can start downloading. This takes a while the first time but is quite quick on subsequent loads. Once you’ve got headers you can either search them or just scan through them looking for stuff of interest. Make sure you totally read the subject, for example some movies are in different languages or weird formats or have wacky subtitles.  Once you’ve found somethink you like, download it and Newsbin will do the rest.

Now that you’re actively downloading this is probably the first time that you’ve maxed out the speed of your internet connection. Bask in the unbriddled speed of Usenet. Once the download is finished Newsbin automatically unarchives the files and they should be ready for you to use/view. Your 12 GB blu-ray rip of the Dark Knight is all ready to watch.

Yes this is a bit complex to get setup initially. Yes Newsbin has a bit of a poor interface. But the payoff is well worth the learning curve. A vast selection of high quality, fast and anonymous downloads are waiting for you right now.

Aech sent me a link to the Google Wave demo which is an hour an a half long video. At the beginning I was thinking “what could possibly be cool enough for me to sit through an hour an a half long video of geeks at a conference”. By the end I was shouting out “Oh my god that it soooo cool!”. Google Wave appears to be a revolution for the internet. If you are interested in the future of the net, I highly recommend watching the video (or at least skimming it). One obvious highlight was the real-time, character-by-character translation being transmitted in real-time to anyone with your Wave. Apparently a Beta of Wave will be available soon to selected users.

• A recent problem with many virus scanners is that they produce a lot of false positives. Clearly its better to be more safe than less but often times the virus scanning companies are getting paid off to make keygens and other cracks show up as virii even when they are not. Enter Virus Total a program you upload your questionable file to and it checks the file against almost all major virus scanners, then you are in a better position to make an informed decision about the file.
• Old news now but Songbird (the open-source and free iTunes replacement) has gone 1.0 and looks to be a viable alternative (if you don’t need to sync with an iPhone or iPod).
• If you download shows or movies off the internet using torrents (and why wouldn’t you?) then you should be using RSS with your torrents. Why? Because it allows you to automatically download shows and movies as soon as they are released. Check out the these tips on getting it setup.
• Also old news now but Nintendo destroyed Sony and microsoft in 2008 gaming sales
• In other cool Google news, check out Goog-411 now you can use google from any cell phone.
• Finally a very interesting sounding software made by university of washington researchers called OneSwarm which allows P2P connections (like BitTorrent) but does so in an anonymous way. Still under heavy development but looks like it has huge potential.

This week I have been inspired by, of all things, Windows 7. For years now I’ve used IA as a platform to rally against microsoft. Long time readers know that I’ve never, ever, capitalized microsoft simply because there approach to business, computers and their users was in my opinion evil. Even now that MS has been somewhat humbled by Apple, their anti-competitive pratices have left an indelable scar on the software world.

Having said that, I’ve used a microsoft operating system as my primary OS since DOS 3.1.1. Why? Because it has been the dominanent OS of the time (and I’m a software junkie). Some of microsoft’s releases have been amazing (DOS, Windows 95 and XP) and some have been collosal failures (Windows ME and Vista). I installed Vista twice in recent months and twice lasted less than 24 hours before deleting it. Why would I upgrade to something that is slower, had more crap built-in software -and- was more annoying to use when Windows XP was stable, fast and ran all available Windows software?

Recenetly, I noticed that Windows 7 gold (meaning this is the version that you’ll be buying a few weeks when it actually comes out) has been leaked onto the net and that a reasonably reputable (but of course there is no garuntee of that) crack was available. After reading some reviews of the beta I decided to re-partition my main drive and check it out. Since that time I’ve completely abandoned Windows XP and re-formatted my main drive on my main computer for Windows 7.

In a nutshell, after three weeks of use, I think Windows 7 will be seen as one of the great microsoft OSs. So far it seems  fast, stable and reasonbly minimal.  It certainly isn’t significantly slower than XP. While some of the annoying features of Vista (such as User Access Control) are still around in 7, it is much much easier to turn these “features” off.

Microsoft has done a good job of improving the OS by adding features while not changing the metaphors already understood by Windows users.  Right now the only reason not to upgrade (in my mind) is that driver support while generally good (since Vista drivers work for almost everything) are still spotty for some brands. However even XP drivers can be made to work through Windows 7’s built in virtualization.

• The history of the privacy and rights of users for the newly released Google Chrome browser is chronicled in this story. Bottom line is that Google has fixed most of the glaringly evil language in the original user agreement… but I’m still too scared to use this browser. Plus, why would I? Firefox kicks ass!
• For anyone who uses What.cd (its very quickly approaching the awesomeness of Oink!) might like to user the OinkPlus plugin which allows you to do all sorts of cool stuff within albums you are viewing on the site.
• If you play poker online and don’t check out your opponents historical information while you’re playing… you’re missing out on critical information. Check out the free-for-a-few-searches SharkScope site.
• The 13 greatest error messages of all time has some funny and some classic error messages.
• Finally, Liquid TV brings Tivo to your PC. I absolutely love Tivo and having its interface on my PC (and then being able to use the saved media however I want) is the panacea of TV watching. The only downside I can see is that you’ll need a cable box to use it to record HD.

I’ve grown to hate anti-virus programs: They are a vastly over-rated protection against modern threats, even when installed correctly they can (in some cases, seriously) slow your computer and there are no reasonable freeware and open-source alternatives.

I know I recently posted about Avast! Saying that you should change from AVG to Avast! but after using it for a while, I decided that Avast! also sucked ass.

The first question you should ask yourself is: do I really need an anti-virus program? If you: download anything in a .zip or .rar file from torrents, download sketchy files from the web or share, use a local (ie. not gmail or yahoo mail) e-mail client or share files with those that do… then sadly you do need an Anti-virus program.

After much searching and reading, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that Avira free anti-virus is the best option out there. It found several virii neither AVG nor Avast found on my system, its fairly fast, its free and its interface is simple and effective.  The downside? It  comes with “awesome” pop-up ads that pop-up once a day. Since I can’t put up with any kind of pop-up ad, I quickly found this work-around which, while kind of annoying to do, is effective at removing the pop-up windows completely from Antivir. Another setting I highly recommend is under Configuration > Expert Mode > Guard > Scan Mode, set this to Scan While Writing (reading isn’t necessary unless you are using other people’s discs a lot).

Unfortunately there is no panacea in anti-virus.  Its quite possible that Antivir will change and start to suck as much as AVG… but until that time… this is where its at for me.

• If you don’t have or don’t have the skills to use Photoshop, you might want to check out the Fotoflexer online image editor that recently won a usability award for ease-of-use. Plus is “free”.
• If you’ve ever had problems cracking or maintaining a cracked version of Windows XP or Vista, this great little article explains everything you need to do without compromising your machine. (Although its probably still a good idea to run Antivir afterwards if to remove any possible lingering virii).
• Google has announced their own browser called Chrome. Ars has a very positive hands-on with the new browser however the Chrome end-user agreement definitely leaves something to be desired!
• Finally, if you’re interested in free software, reading about the behind the scenes at the free software foundation article on slashdot was quite informative.

• Ancient news now but Billy Gates aka Captain Winky has finally left microsoft to continue his dominance in charity work. The man probably most responsible for the largest amount of frustration and wasted time in history (through poorly written and tested code and buggy OSes) is leaving his (leaky) ship to Steve Balmer… god help us all.
• If you’re thinking about buying a house (not my style but I know lots of people want t0), I’d suggest checking out the awesomely designed NY Times Rent vs. Buy Calculator.
• Thanks to Juicetastic, I’ve been using LaunchBar for my Mac for ages. It allows you to press a key, type a few letters and launch any application or file on your computer. Some people like QuickSilver better but I find it slow and over-featured. For those of us on Windows, Launchy is as good as it gets. I haven’t used it a ton but it looks pretty good.
• Delicious Library has (finally!) upgraded to version 2. So far its pretty damn awesome with a new layout and a waaay better export facility. DL2 is definitely the best DVD and Book cataloging system out there. Unfortunately its Mac only. For those using Windows, check out Libra (its beta but still works fine).
• Aech introduced me to a hardcore little program called Wireshark. What does it do? It listens to a network adapter on your computer and shows you all the packets being streamed across the network. You can use it to find some very interesting stuff (if you’re motivated to hunt through the outputted hex code) including all your plaintext passwords and other important stuff that isn’t encrypted. Its also free and open-source!
• BloodyDingo sent me this link to re-skinning Windows, it allows you to safely and quickly make windows look significantly different than it does now.
• Finally, BloodyDingo also let me know about Gom Player. Its a video player for Windows (a replacement for Windows Media Player) and damn is it slick. It installs all the codecs you’ll need to play pretty much everything on the net automatically, it has a really slick and skinable interface and best of all it lightweight and totally free! I really really like ZoomPlayer Pro but Gom is a damn good free alternative.

I’ve pimped AVG’s free virus software for several years. Its been a simple, effective and free solution to a problem thats -way- overhyped in our networked world (spyware is a -much- bigger problem these days). For several weeks now AVG has been requesting a Windows restart on every update. Super annoying. If you are seeing this problem and still want to use AVG, the check out this tip for fixing the constant restarting.

However, the bigger problem is that AVG has recently switched over to version 8 of its software and version 8 is no longer free which pretty much blows. So its time to find a new virus scanner. I searched long and hard and its a wasteland out there. I’ve tried several alternatives and none of them are as good as AVG except one. Avast seems to be the next-best-thing. Its even less intrusive than AVG (which is great because AVG has been bugging me lately), its free and it seems to work well. My suggestion is to minimize all the install options (ie you probably don’t need the web or network scanner if you have a good firewall) and once installed reduce the settings to “Create” files only (you shouldn’t really need to virus check files when they are copied). Once you’ve got it all setup, it seems fast, effective and minimal… perfect!

Update: Reader Kamel pointed out that AVG 8 is available in a free version, you just have to really look for it on their site. I’m still recommending moving away from it. Check out the comments to this post for the reasons and also some easy customizations to make Avast more palatable.

• Adobe Acrobat Reader has evolved from a really cool idea into one of the worst pieces of software I run on my computer. Admittedly version 8 is -slightly- better than the terrible terrible terrible version 7… but really how many more features do I need in a document viewer? With this in mind, I ran across Foxit Reader a freeware PDF viewer that seems to work very well without all the useless bells and whistlers of Adobe’s product.
• Speaking of free software alternatives to Adobe’s bloated producted, I’ve been frustrated with Photoshop’s bloat lately too and decided to give Gimp (the free open-source alternative) another shot. Its actually quite a good piece of software once you figure out some of the interface differences between it and PS. If you want to make the switch or can’t afford PS’s $800 price tag… check it out.
• Speaking of freeware, here is a nice little list of some of the best freeware tools around. Go free software!
• Having just moved into a new office that requires a very good internet connection, we’ve been using a program called Pingplotter for the past few weeks. I can’t say enough about how awesome this tool is. Basically you one or more sites or IP addresses and it runs traceroutes to that address as often as you want. It plots the results on an easy to understand graph. The key here is that you can easily figure out if a network problem is within your LAN or with your ISP (or farther down the net chain). Simple, powerful and very useful, this tool has become a staple of my networking day. This is not free software and I wouldn’t even bother with anything but the Pro version (have a search on your favourite torrent site for a crack).
• Captain Winky and boys and girls at microsoft have released Worldwide Telescope their competitor to Google’s Earth. Its actually pretty cool and Ars does a nice little review.
• Speaking of Captain Winky, MS had a first demo for Windows 7 (the catchy nickname for the next version of Windows). There’s lots of multi-touch lovin’ but very little in the way of anything new or cool.
• If you’ve always wanted to fool around with Linux (and who hasn’t? She’s so hot), then Ulteo Linux for Windows might be a good place to start. It allows you to install Linux and run it in a window within Windows. You could do a similar thing with VMWare for windows too but this is more self contained and free.
• Finally, there are a myriad of picture hosting sites out there but many of them either don’t allow direct links (ala Flicker or Myspace) or force you to upload photos one-at-a-time. Check out Shell Uploader it works with a few popular hosting sites and allows you to right-click on files in windows explorer and upload them quickly and easily from there.

• Looking for a small program that will give you detailed information about your CPU and motherboard? Look no further than Cpuz, great if you can’t remember what processor you are running.
• I haven’t used it extensively but so far Libra looks like a great PC program to maintain your DVD, CD, games and book collection. The UI looks just like the amazingly awesome Delicious Library (for Mac only) plus it has way more features than DL. Highly recommended if you have a big DVD collection!
• For some time now, drive based encryption was kind of a PC panacea of security. Why? Because (provided the computer was turned off first), it made it almost impossible for a hacker to get into the data stored on the computer. Recent research has shown that it fails miserably if power is not turned off to the computer first however.  Clearly no one solution is perfect for security!
• Adobe is releasing Photoshop Express as a downloadable and free photo management tool! Sounds pretty interesting if it works well and quickly!
• I’ve used PeerSpider a bit recently, its a free tool that allows you to search pretty much all the public torrent sites on the net in one click It works well and has a nice simple interface… the problem is that it uses IE to render the pages, so any pop-ups are going to pop-up normally (and a few of the sites have these). Personally I haven’t seen better results through this tool than I usually do through btjunkie.org but your results may vary.
• Somewhat surprisingly LimeWire has topped the most used P2P list based on a recent study. I find these results a bit hard to take seriously… there is no way that BitTorrent isn’t higher but because of the diverse number of BT clients… LimeWire wins out.

Radio posted mublinder in a comment thread but i thought it deserved a post of its own. Mublinder allows you to update your Windows without a valid license. I’ve been using it for a couple of months now and it seems quite good. As I found out a few months ago, anything that you grant access to modify the deepest levels of your system contains potential risks… especially when its clearly pirate software… so know the risk before using this.

• While poking around the net, I found InterfaceLift it contains a great collection of icons and themes for the mac but also a fantastic collection of desktop backgrounds for all systems
• The Pirate’s Bay has a bunch of useful BitTorrent guides.
  • Everything you want to know about The Scene.
  • A better guide to improving BitTorrent speeds
  • Lots more guides and tutorials

• Aech sent me a link to the Hamachi VPN system. Its a free VPN that seems to work through most firewalls.
• The first thing I do on most people’s PCs that I use is check to see when the last time Spyware Search & Destroy was run. Most times it was the last time I ran it on their PC. So I thought I’d post this little guide on scheduling Spyware Search & Destroy to run automatically.
• The Gartner Group says that 80% of commercial software will include open-source components by 2012.
• In a very interesting case of a defendant in a criminal case using digital technology against his accusers, the defendant in a DWI case wants to see the source-code of the breathalizer that is being used convict him. Interesting stuff.

• If you don’t own your copy of Windows XP and you’re having more problems with Windows Genuine Advantage (which, as we’ve pointed out before, is neither Genuine nor an Advantage), you can find a patch to fix this annoyance here. Update: Patch removed as it contained a virus.
• If you are a slave to Firefox’s password manager like I am, its easy to forget what your password is for sites you use. A new tool called the Asterisk Revealer allows you to get back any Firefox password… and shows just how great Windows security really is.
• So far for me OSX Leopard is a bit faster but provides very little real day-to-day value to me (it also seems slightly less stable than Tiger). Here’s a Great Big Leopard Review for all of you who haven’t upgraded yet or haven’t read any of the hype.
• There is no doubt in my mind that BTJunkie is the best BitTorrent search site out there. Thats why I was happy to find a Firefox plug-in that allows you to add it to your list of search engines (shown in the top right and defaulted to Google usually).
• Something that I’ve been saying for months has been proven (again), Windows XP (even with the upcoming SP3 security patch) significantly outperforms Windows Vista (even with the upcoming SP1 security and performance patch). Why??? Why oh why would anyone upgrade to this piece of trash!?
• Finally, a nice little list of 10 Firefox extensions to keep your surfing private and secure.

Today marks my first anniversary owning an Apple (well if you exclude my Apple IIc from the 80s!). I compiled a big list of software a year ago and I’ve been refining it and adding to it ever since. I’d like to thank Andrew, Gerard, Chris, Juicetastic and Paul among others for providing helpful input to this list:

• Archive Manager - The Unarchiver
• Audio Converter - Max
• Audio Library - iTunes (Built-in)
• Backup - ChronoSync (may not be needed in Leopard, but this is one of the best Mac programs around)
• BitTorrent - Transmission
• Browser - Firefox
• CD/DVD Burner - Toast Titanium
• CD Ripper - Max
• DVD Creator - iDVD (iLife)
• DVD Player - DVD Player (Built-in)
• DVD Ripper - Mac The Ripper
• DVD Shrinker - DVD2One
• File Manager - Path Finder
• File Renamer - Renamer4Mac
• Firewall - Little Snitch (best Firewall on any platform IMO)
• FTP - CyberDuck
• HTML Editor - Dreamweaver CS3
• Image Viewer - Xee (almost as good as ACDSee for Windows)
• IM - Adium (best IM client on any platform!)
• Launcher - LaunchBar (I find Quicksilver a bit slow and bloated)
• Media Library - Delicious Library
• Office - Microsoft Office 2004
• Photo Editing - Photoshop CS3
• Preferences Extensions - Onyx / Diablotin (similar to Tweak UI for windows)
• Spam Management - SpamSieve (best spam software I’ve ever seen)
• Spyware Scanner - MacScan (probably not actually needed)
• Text Editor - TextMate
• Video Player - MPlayer / VLC / Quicktime (Built-in)
• Windows Virtualization - Parallels (a godsend for us Windows guys)
• Windows Media Codec - Flip4Mac (allows you to play .wmv files on the mac)

I’m always looking for more and better software so if you know of anything else awesome, feel free to comment and let everyone know!

I posted the Chuck Norris Dashboard widget before but I’ve got to pimp it again… best piece of software… ever!

• I can’t believe I didn’t hear about this before, the new version of the amazingly awesome (and free!) Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is out (and unfortunately not free). Its called Quake Wars and its pretty much all I’ve been playing for the past week… and let me tell you… its awesome!
• One of the very few programs I’ve found on the Mac that has not been replicated on Windows is Adium. Its an IM program that just simply kicks ass. Well I was in the Mac store the other day (getting a new battery for my less than one year old mac) and the tech guy told me about Pidgin for Windows. Apparently made by the same people as Adium. Its terrific and worlds better than Trillium and Jabber.
• A music making buddy of mine told me recently about Reaper. Its a full fledged music production studio (much like ProTools or CuBase) but its completely free and open-source. It supports VST plug-ins (which ensures that pretty much any software for CuBase will work with it) and is apparently very stable, very usable and has very good sound quality. I’m amazed that anyone would put in so much time to a project like this but I think its terrific that people are this dedicated to a free project!
• Researchers are saying that if you don’t use a peer blocker (like Peer  Guardian) you are being actively tracked when doing anything over P2p networks. Get on it! Its easy and obviously worth it.
• Sounds like others besides myself and the tech media are finding Vista less than compelling. The purchasing numbers on Vista have been “disappointing” and XP will continue to be sold until 2008.
• If you want to copy a recently released movie but DVD Decrypter or whatever else you use isn’t working, check out DVDFab Decrypter 3.2.0.0 which can now copy pretty much any movie out there (just like RipIt4Me could).
• If you use uTorrent a lot, you’ll dig on this add-on which allows you to control your torrents remotely. I’ve used it and it works great through a web interface which is almost identical to the uTorrent interface.
• Finally, you’ve got to love Windows security (or lack thereof), its disturbingly easy to recover windows passwords with Snadboy’s Revelation.

• Getting an older version of an existing application is often useful if you find a crack for an old version, if the old version is just plain better or if you want to take a walk down software memory lane. If you are looking for older versions of your favourite apps check out OldApps and the classic Old Version websites.
• Is right-clicking in windows really slow for you? Are you annoyed with all those stupid menus and sub-menus in your windows right click menu. Be annoyed no further with ShellExView which lets you control what programs end up in your right click menu. A great little app!
• Posting a link but don’t want the site you’re posting a link to to know where the people that click on that link are coming from? Try out this free Anonymous Referrals service.
• If you’re running Vista (why god why?!?) and you haven’t paid for your copy… or perhaps even if you have… you may end up with Billy G’s newest piracy protection scheme the Black Screen of Darkness.
• Bloodydingo pointed me back to Google Books. The interface is vastly improved as is the library of books. Too bad its so darn hard to read big things on the computer screen. Check out Iris Murdoch’s The Black Prince.
• Google has added Google Sky to their Google Earth program which gives you a full and detailed veiw of all the stars you can’t see in the city because its way too bright (or can’t see at all because you’re in the wrong hemisphere). Super cool. Wackily Google Earth also now comes with an included flight simulator (just like Excel 97!).
• Getting through throughput for your BitTorrents but everything else is fast? Your ISP may be slowing BT traffic specifically, check out this guide to optimize BitTorrent to avoid traffic shaping.
• Speaking of my new favourite waste of bandwidth, Shenanigoan sent me this great set of 20 BitTorrent Tips and Tricks.
• If you’re fed up with crappy album art from iTunes or Amazon, check out this free, ad-free and big Album Art for all your music library needs.
• People just don’t backup enough. Check out this great little program that allows you to copy and paste your entire hard drive in one easy step.
• A nice concise and useful like of 40 great freeware software products.
• I’ve written about DeliciousLibrary before. Its a fantastic (though doesn’t have nearly the functionality that you’d expect) way to organize your movies and books. Unfortunately only for the Mac. However, check out this full-featured, free and windows only rip-off.
• The Mac has had LaunchBar and QuickSilver for ages. These programs allow you to press a hot key and start typing the name of the program you want to launch, magically it find the program (or document or music or anything else) and launches it in a couple of key strokes. Way faster than by mouse. Finally there is a good version of these programs for Windows. Meet Launchy.
• I haven’t tried IrFanView but apparently its a quick feature filled image viewer. Could it possibly be better than ACDSee v2.41? I find it hard to believe but its definitely worth checking out.
• Finally if you have a Mac. I’d highly recommend downloading and installing the Chuck Norris Facts widget for your dashboard. Its fucking awesome. Everytime I go to my dashboard it makes me laugh.

Well… BitTorrent and more bandwidth will destroy the world… but more on that in a second. If you aren’t downloading stuff on BitTorrent, you’re missing out on the very best of underground (and overground) culture… and the beauty is how easy it is to get pretty much anything that can be converted into a digital format. This means the best movies, books, tv shows, images, software… its all hear and the majority of it is reasonably easy to get. btjunkie.org has been my regular torrent search engine for a while, occasionally I’ll check thepiratebay.org but rarely. uTorrent is my BitTorrent client of choice for Windows (Transmission for the Mac). Its simple but also has lots of features and is very ’standards’ compliant. Install it and just click on Torrent links from Firefox and they just open in uTorrent and start downloading. Plus you can turn on “Alternate upload rate when not downloading” which automatically throttles down your upload rate (how much bandwidth you allow others to suck from you) when you are done downloading a file. The interesting thing about BitTorrent is that the faster you upload, the faster you download… so why not open up your connection when you are downloading and throttle it back when you are done?

But you probably know all that.

Recently long time IA reader and contributer BloodyDingo let me know about the best thing to happen to BitTorrent since site rips: Oink.cd. Its one of a new breed of private sites that are basically torrent communities (another one specifically for software is demonoid.com), meaning that you need an invitation to get in… and you need to participate to keep your access. Getting the invitation itself may be the more difficult part. On Oink at least, invitations are -very- limited. In order to get one you either: send them a small amount of money or you keep your ratio of uploads to downloads significantly higher for uploads than for downloads (for a long period of time). Keeping your uploads higher than your downloads is harder than you’d think because Oink has everything! I mean everything, at least when it comes to music (oh, I forgot to mention: Oink is a music site!). When I say everything, I mean it: I’m talking about the shit that DJs go digging in crates in remote European cities just to find. Its -that- good.

I love music. I have 16000 tracks in my collection, so you can imagine I’m deep on a few of my favourite artists. I searched those artists out on Oink and in -every- case there was more on Oink than I ever knew existed. Plus people are so eager to upload stuff that there is a vibrant Requests list where you can ask for specific albums to be posted. The need to upload also encourages people to open their bandwidth up to uploads meaning that downloads are typically extremely quick! Oink has all sorts of great tutorials and a very strong FAQ (which I can’t link to because its all private!) to help you get downloading and uploading.

There is so much is sooo much stuff on these sites that it all comes down to bandwidth (told ya I’d get back to it!). I have a 60gb/month internet plan (meaning that I get a total of 60gb of combined upload and download bandwidth). Its only August 21 and I’m already at 73gb!

Digital stuff consumes a lot of bandwidth. A game for the Wii, for instance, is always 5gb in size even when compressed. Full movies can be anywhere from 5 to 10gb in size… and who can survive on only 6 movies a month (6×10gb is my maximum bandwidth)?! When you add to the equation that you also are also going to be doing some uploading… and in the case of Oink… significant uploading, the situations gets pretty grim. We are all going to need more bandwidth in the near future. I pay $37.95 / month for my 60gb and I’m lucky enough to get it through Novus Communications in downtown Vancouver which allows me to get a fibre-to-home connnection (at a relatively paltry 10Mbps). In order to get more bandwidth, my next least expensive option is $79.50 for 140gb a month… which is a lot… and something I’m considering!

The moral of this story? Spend a little time with torrents if you aren’t already, start saving for your bigger (but well worth it) internet bill and start begging your friends for invitations to Oink! The digital world has made our culture more accessible than ever before.