Posted 11/18/09 at 12:00:00 PM by David Murphy

Half the internet says The Pirate Bay is dead; The other half says the first half has no idea what it's talking about. Popular BitTorrent index The Pirate Bay is never without controversy, it seems. But is the site's latest move to kill its BitTorrent tracker for good really that much of a white flag? I don't think so, because decentralized BitTorrent tracking has already been here for quite some time now. If anything, The Pirate Bay is just trying to cover its poop deck from additional legal threats.

Here's the deal. For the last many years, anyone could head on over to The Pirate Bay site, do a quick search for a piece of content, download the associated .torrent file, and connect up to The Pirate Bay's tracker. The tracker would, in turn, find you a number of peers to connect to and your BitTorrent client of choice would commence the download of bits and pieces of your file from these multiple sources. Easy.

When a tracker fails to work--or gets forcibly removed from the Internet--you can keep on transferring bits and pieces of a file to those you're already connected to. If you want to start a new download, however, you'll be unable to find any peers seeding the file for you. The same holds true in reverse: Without a tracker, others on the Internet won't be able to connect to you either.

To solve these problems, BitTorrent has embraced two technologies that, together, transform the art of downloading files into a truly peer-to-peer solution: DHT and Mirror Links.

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Posted 07/07/09 at 07:26:11 PM by Paul Lilly

Good news for developers. Microsoft announced plans to apply its Community Promise to its C# language and Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), leaving developers without worry over patent claims over use of Microsoft's intellectual property.

"No one needs to sign anything or even reference anything,"  the Community Promise states. "Anyone is free to implement the specifications as they wish and do not need to make any mention of or reference to Microsoft. Anyone can use or implement these specifications with their technology, code, solution, etc. You must agree to the terms in order to benefit from the promise; however, you do not need to sign a license agreement, or otherwise communicate your agreement to Microsoft."

The Community Promise applies to developers, distributors, and users of covered implementations without regard to the development model used to create the implementations.

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Posted 05/08/09 at 04:31:26 PM by Andy Salisbury

In the past, Microsoft has been against the use of open-source software, but it appears that trend is going to change with the introduction of their new search platform, Kumo.

Reportedly, the team in charge of Kumo (previously Powerset) “tries to use open-source software, if it is available.” And, on top of that, they’ve made it a point to avoid proprietary software. It would seem that Microsoft’s anti-open-source ways have been left in the dust (for the time being). While Microsoft is notably nervous about licensing their software using an open-source license, they are enthusiastic about consuming open-source software and integrating it into their proprietary products.

So, for the time being Microsoft has lowered their defenses when it comes to the possibility of open-source software. Though, given their track record, it isn’t likely that this trend will continue.

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Posted 08/23/07 at 09:15:43 PM by Erin Simon

A UK man is arrested for connecting to an unsecured wifi network - but the law in the US is considerably less clear.

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