almost christmas

Well, the holidays have started.

Jen, Jeeb and I are going to give t-dogg and jeff rides out to Abbotsford tomorrow.

Completely unrelated to Christmas, some of you more technical readers may be interested in this post: Why BitTorrent is Important.

An incredible shift is taking place on the internet right now due to two key recent inventions. I'm going to try to explain this in simple terms, so my Moms will still understand it... :)

The first is called RSS. It is just a simple way to subscribe to some "content". For example, I could publish an RSS "feed" of this blog. Then you would use some program - a RSS reader - that would tell you whenever there was a new post. RSS allows one to read a much larger amount of information much more effeciently.

The second technology is called BitTorrent. This program allows large files to be shared very efficiently using a technique called "swarming". BitTorrent essentially splits a file up into small chunks that can be easily traded with other people. So I could share a home movie of the Jeebster using BitTorrent, and as people downloaded the chunks, they would share them with everyone else downloading the movie as well.

Where BitTorrent really shines is for files that are very popular. This is a big shift because previously on the internet when a file became very popular it became very hard to get. A few years ago, if I put a home movie on my website and 8 people tried to download it from me, it would take ~8 times longer for everyone. With BitTorrent, more people actually make the download faster.

There is one particular type of large file that are very popular when they first come out - television shows. So I see a huge shift about to take place because of these two technologies. More and more people are going to be using these tools to download media and watch it at their convenience. The big content producers (NBC, ABC, FOX, HBO) are basically fighting against this. They don't want you to be able to keep high quality copies of your favourite shows. I really don't think they have any chance of winning this. Technology changes markets time and time again, and this new shift isn't any different.


Jen asked me if I had any resolutions for the new year. Perhaps writing on this site more is a good idea.