Sorry, what colour?

Went clothes shopping and found this pricetag that I thought was moderately priceless.

Oh well.. I thought it was funny anyway..

Add comment March 30th, 2004

BitTorrent Flaw?

I haven’t done any serious research into this, but I’ve found something that looks like a flaw in the BitTorrent file-sharing system. Whether this is something into the code itself, or just some oddity caused by users not sharing, I found this configuration of users connected to a certain seed this afternoon.

The file is a few hundred MB in size so even with ADSL I’ve been able to watch as these other users download the data, always with the same pattern. The one user with 100% of the file has been there all day sharing the file. What this seems to show is that despite having access to the entire file, everyone is choosing to download the same segments of the file. While this wouldn’t matter to begin with, the faster the entire file is available in more than one location..
eg.
Instance 1: The Original User
Instance 2: a merger of users 2,3,4,5
the more easily it is distributed. The more easily distrubuted then the less load there is on any one machine and the more efficient the whole process is.
The main benefit of the BitTorrent system is that you can grab different pieces of the one file from different users.. by having every client choosing to download the same piece, you effectively negate this.

There is one possibility that comes to mind, that only one person has access to the User1’s file, and everyone is piggy-backing off of User2.. but without seeing their chart like this, I cant tell.
If this is the case and it’s a human influence causing this, then again there is a problem. The bitTorrent system relies on users sharing the files something that has seemed to be working well. If that goes and the greedier ‘leechers’ start to dominate then you’ve got nothing more than another generic napster/morpheus/grokster/kazaa/winmxsystem.

Add comment March 21st, 2004

Snow Crash

Been reading Snow Crash today.

I borrowed it from my friend Charlie last night and although I did open it last night at 3:00am, I only really started reading it this afternoon. The story itself is interesting, I’m only halfway through it so far so the plot is still unfolding, but the thing that has really drawn me into it is the actual style of writing.

I cant pin down exactly what is so different about Neal Stephenson’s style, but I cannot think of any other novel written this way.. it’s mildly infuriating because I’m sure there’s something different in the style, but it’s not obvious.

I assume that someone else that reads this has read this novel, or perhaps Cryptonomicon, which was written by the same author and can help me work out what I’m talking about?

1 comment March 21st, 2004

There is no excuse..

Terrible sorry about disappearing like this, there really is no excuse. I’ve let the team down. You were worried sick. You just dont do that to people you love.

Yeah Yeah!
I actually haven’t been up to anything greatly interesting. I sent my motherboard in to the store for a warranty repair after finally finding a missing stick of RAM. A friend of mine from highschool got married. A cousin of mine got married. I had a few drinks. Nothing really exciting…

So… What’s new with you?

Add comment March 9th, 2004