BitTorrent to Industry and Digital Right

"My second position paper"
Posted by Nancy.
March 05, 2007.

BitTorrent was originally created and designed to solve some problems of peer-to-peer sharing of large files. This content distribution protocol was written in the Python programming language by Bram Cohen and is freely distributed under an open source license. The idea of BitTorrent is to enable other users to serve as redistribution points rather than downloading from the original server on every requesting. To share a file using BitTorrent, a user creates a .torrent file, a small file which contains: the filename, size, and the hash of each block in the file, the address of a tracker server. The torrent file can be distributed to other users, often via email or placed on a website. The BitTorrent client is then started seeding, allowing other users to connect and commence downloading. Therefore, this content will make the original server to serve more varieties of files without requiring the huge amount of bandwidth and resources.

Whenever one user completes the download, the content will turn that user as another distribution point in a group by optional reseed choice becoming an additional source for the file. The concept of BitTorrent is a fairly simple one. You can only download if you also upload. This means the more people are downloading from you, the faster you can download from other people. Downloading with BitTorrent is straightforward. Each person who wants to download the file first downloads the torrent and opens it in the BitTorrent client software. The torrent file tells the client the address of the tracker.

Additional features and Rundown Clients

Currently, BitTorrent was added features called multi-tracker and trackerless Torrent. The first feature has multiple trackers in one torrent. This way, if one tracker failed, the others can continue supporting file transfer whereas trackerless is something of a misnomer. Trackerless based on the decentralized or distributed tracking of DHTs (Distributed Hash Tables) essentially treats every peer in the swarm as a tracker.

There are many clients offering different features and service for BitTorrent. Some of them offer more details and some have more functionalities. The rundown examples of 4 major clients are such as the Official Client, Azureus, BitTornado, and BitComet.

The Official Client is originally produced by BitTorrent.com. Howevere, it lacks of features found in other clients but can handle multiple download with no problem.

Azureus is a java-based client, which is pretty new in BitTorrent clients but provides a BitTorrent protocol implementation and offers multiple torrent downloads.

BitTornado, a very similar look of the Official Client, is one of the most popular clients. It is quite functional and easy to use. You can also change IP settings and ports and perform other operations with one or two clicks of the GUI.

BitComet has more functionalities like fast-resume, chatting, disk cache, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, and IP-filter which allow user to check or non-check the contents before the download begins.

BitTorrent is a relatively new way of sharing large amounts of data. Generally the users today are mainly professional who have technological knowledge in information system. In the future, clients would be getting, easier to use, track, and access by people who do not have a great amount of knowledge on this technology. Using the BitTorrent will help internet surfers to reach the large size of material whenever they want.

Impact to Industry and Digital Right

BitTorrent’s popularity has grown exponentially in the past couple years. The advantage of this P2P protocol as mentioned earlier allow people to freely use for sharing and downloading material including the copyrighted music, movies and TV shows so easy. This has caused complaints from the producers of TV shows and film industry due to the illegal distributions. Since it is hard to control posted on web servers and client tracker, the risk of being sued or even arrested is a big disadvantage on using BitTorrent, and other similar programs. Being spread out the internet for free with BitTorrent is where the copyright conflict comes up and leads to legal issue of Digital Right and Piracy.

According to The New York Times on February 26, 2007; BitTorrent Inc. has done agreements with more than 35 entertainment companies to offer their content to run a download service. The options are both offering the purchase of ownership which can be played up to 2 players or rental with variable range. BitTorrent will also use digital rights management (DRM) technology from Microsoft to prevent protected content from being redistributed on the Internet or played on a different PC from illegal file trading.

From my perspective the introduction of the BitTorrent technology these borders have been more or less removed benefiting the free information flow between different parts of the world. The BitTorrent technology gives a person any other part of the world the possibility to take part of information presented. In addition this technology is a cheap and reliable way for distribution of material.

I believe that problems of the legal aspects and illegal file sharing can be resolved soon like another situation. For example, we wouldn’t stop using computers because of virus but we invented the anti-virus program. My side is that how can we use the advantages of the BitTorrent technology to find new opportunity and make it even better. And how can we improve and get rid of weakness to make this protocol much more effective. Today it is just the beginning of a minor revolution regarding data sharing. In the future, I believe that it will probably find new areas where the BitTorrent technique can be used with a great success.

Open Source Software for Business

"My first follow-up paper"
Posted by Nancy.
March 05, 2007.

Many debates surrounding what is best to a company, open source software or closed source commercial software continue to rage. Open source software means the source code that is available to anyone who wants it, and can be examined, changed, and used to write additional programming. Open source supporters claim that it saves money, has huge community supporting, and is able to develop more add-on features. But the question remains: is it the best way for business? We will discuss in more details.

I am also a fan of open source software and has experienced on many of them for a long time. I saw the incremental numbers of new applications, their development, and each community’s growth. Until now I have found that the open source software is all around, and many of them make a best deal. In my personal opinion, open source software is worth and attractive to try individually. However, I couldn’t totally agree with the idea that open source software is the appropriate choice for business. Even free or cheaper cost might seem to be a given, what else should it be considered to choose the software for the company? Is there any issue should we concern more on open source codes? If so, why? And if not, why do so many have that perception?

Cost Advantage:

Most people think open source is free of charge, but that’s not necessarily the case. Actually, there are both free version and enterprise version that could cost you from a few to a few thousand dollars. For example, RedHat Enterprise Linux premium edition lists at $2499 for Intel x86, up to $18,000 for IBM S/390. Although most of core of Open Source software is free and can really cut down on your initial capital outlay, total cost of this perspective may not be totally right. Let’s take a closer look. Your choices can have higher cost of installation, operation and maintenance, technical support, and training services. The hidden costs as stated would free or less for the commercial software since they were forced to configure their products for easy installation, operation and maintenances In addition, they will mostly include training and supporting from their vendors.

What is the second order effect from open source software in terms of cost? Time consuming to fix the problems and uncontrollability of your performance could be considered. Whenever you are in trouble and could not have it fixed fast enough, it will lead to uncontrollability issue. If that issue is big enough to stop some of your other processes, it may rip some extra cost or your reputation. As the result, perhaps they end up costing more.

Supporting Issues:

Whenever you find an annoying bug in an Open Source application or when something goes wrong, who you can count on and who you could call. You may need assistance with, but you may not get it without paying someone to fix it. Even with general questions, if you take a look at many forums that act as support centers of Open Software applications, you will see that it is not unusual for questions to go unanswered. Even though you try to retrieve to get the answer or figure it out for yourself, there is no single source information out there. You may be wasting your time until finally be able get the right solution for your problem.

In addition, the Open Source community does not have a legal obligation to answer your questions and there is no warranty if some of them ruin or cause damages to your system. On the other hand, if you are using commercial software, the vendor has an obligation to assist you in a timely manner. Most of well-run commercial software companies will immediately turn around customer requests for enhancements, especially where security bugs are involved.

Perhaps another choice for you to avoid the supporting issue if you really want to use some open source software is to consider the service of the commercial Open Source software. There are many vendors that offer the implementing version with supporting in packages. JBoss is one of them that provide excellent technical services and solutions within the average of 3 hours. However, if you pick this choice, the concept of using open source software is not about the cost concern at all, but it is about the quality of the software itself.

Variety of Open Source Software:

Wow!!! There are so many varieties of Open Source Application out there. It seems like we could have the whole organization as a monopoly Open Source station. But how can we tell which one is good and ready for long term usage? As mentioned, some Open Source software projects can have huge communities of programmers involved, allowing for the rapid implementation of new features and security fixes. The communities of users and programmers are also invaluable resources for asking questions relating to troubleshooting and suggesting enhancements. Therefore, to have the right choice is not only you knew what type of software you want to pick from the basket but also need to know how well of implementation of this software is.

Many Open Source software projects out there stall and extinct. Some of them have very slow response for development, especially when a project is started without strong backing from one or more companies. If it is not possible to get funding or enough programmers cooperating at this stage, the project is just vanished, or perhaps slowly fades out. Sometimes it is hardly to tell the current status of a project. One factor that may use to monitor is the movement of its community. Whenever there is the updating status, report, or plan of releasing, this project still maintains in a good spot.

Feature Development & its Capability:

It is obvious that most Open Source software has more restricted, poor interactive capabilities, less features, and difficulty to use. For example, Open Office which has been launched into a market for a while and was promoted to have the advantages of lower system requirement, boot up time and file storing size comparing to Microsoft office suite, are still struggling in the fact that they have less interactive features and poor visual graphic. For Word and Excel in Open Office suites, you hardly tell any differences comparing to Microsoft Office in basic user level. However, PowerPoint in Open Office is far more behind than in Microsoft Office. Another thing to concern is about file format compatibility and familiarity of users. These problems would occur if you plan to share or use the same file among a group of people.

According to this issue, you may see the reason why those interactive packages in Windows like Adobe PhotoShop, Visual Studio, Microsoft Word and others have GUIs of extraordinary breadth and depth. All accomplished with care and attention to hundreds of thousands of details of the user interaction.

Since the Open Source software was basically built to support specific tasks, most of them may require the technical background or some degree of expertise from users. Open source packages tend to be written by programmers/engineers for other programmers/engineers and for many of them it is accepted that ordinary function will involve creation of configuration files, written scripts, or actual edit and recompile on the source code. Therefore, those programs were written by assuming the modifications will be made by experienced users in this particular area.

Up to this point, perhaps somebody wants to jump in and take the feature adding job. Can we just develop code and add feature that we want? Actually you can, but it does not mean that you will get a vote from community. Limitation of the Open Source Software (free one) is that you need the support of community in exchanges. Sometimes what they want is not what you need and what you need is not really what they want to do right now. Therefore some single requests sometimes are not fully accomplished.

Security Issues:

One of the most important concerns on using Open Source software is the security problem. In terms of security subject, it obvious that having the Open Source code available has both advantages and disadvantages. Vulnerabilities may be found and exploited more easily, if they’re found by the wrong people. However, they may also be fixed more quickly, if they’re found by the right people.

Some said since code is opened, there is no challenge at all for hackers. They would aim to the closed source targets that would be more challenge with higher market penetration like Microsoft products. For my opinion, whether or not the source code is open is probably one of the least important factors. It is all about what is attracted them to do so. Safety or not also depends on the number of developer in community and the popularity of the software itself. However, on the average, this choice will add on another uncertainty to your business processes.

Conclusion:

Open Source software will be remained in the software community as an alternative choice for computer users as long as there are rooms for software development in the market. Even though it offers benefits including availability with less cost than most of commercial software and allows users to study, change, and improve the software for their personal interest, many issues such as higher hidden cost, higher degree of proficient users required to install and operate the software, and security/legal issues still linger when it is considered for business application. However, by adopting proprietary/commercial software and stop using Open Source software may not be a final answer.

For academic industry, technical/software development or other related industry, it may be an elegant choice because those industries focus on software developing issues. Whether it will be integrated and implemented into a company IT structure are needed to consider on a case-by-case basis. If Open Source software is well matured and the nature of the company is suitable for some specific applications with availability of the experienced employee support, using Open Source will be effective and liable.

For typical business that time consuming and practicalities are more important, commercial software may be good enough. In some cases, combining both of the proprietary and good quality open source software is also a good choice. Whatever it is, the final decision could be given by main criteria and policy of each company and its benefit.

Smart Company Towards Microsoft Vista

"My first position paper"
Posted by Nancy.
Feb 05, 2007.

At the public launch of Vista, a speech in New York by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates stated that Vista Operating System will this time be recognized as a leap past Windows XP and will be a key to the era we are approaching with tons of recognition features. The Vista improvement is not just far more security but most likely to cite the accumulating ability of the digital content uses. As the result, this effort take Microsoft to step up closer to being a digital hub along with handful partners and vendors-- AMD, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lenovo, etc. among others.

From the consumer point of views, Vista is the new way to do Windows’s jobs. Photos that were trapped on the hard drive could transmit wirelessly to places around your house through the digital frames and Wi-Fi network. Music and movies can be shot wirelessly to multiple devices without the same old problem of copy protection which has been fixed by Windows Media 11, the technology inside Vista. Up to this point, I found that many new Vista features are already in Mac OS X. However, does it really matter to PC users who came up with those features first as long as Windows operating system is more user friendly? In my opinion, the improvement of technology would reward users no matter who create or develop this technology. Unless PC users have joined the Apple camp, thereafter their new machines will be running Vista.

Nowadays there are more than 90 percent of world wide businesses that their computer networks are running on Microsoft Windows products. Trend of Vista will sooner or later be the next operating systems for most office workstations that have used the Windows platform. For companies, Vista adds new benefits and, in the long run, will make computing easier, faster, and a lot more fun. However, rushing to adopt Vista immediately may not seem likely to be a good choice at this time. In smart companies, IS/IT leaders should aware of those following issues before upgrading or changing their whole new systems.

The potential security hole is one of many issues that were just discovered in the online blogger discussion. The speech recognition flaw generated the new term “Shout Hacking”. Even though it might be easily resolved by disable this feature, this problem may discredit the new launched OS more or less. Microsoft did not consider this as a big problem and also recommended users who concern about this issue to turn off the speech recognition feature or shut down Window Media Player if they encounter a file that try to execute the voice command on their systems (refer to Shout Hacking, InfoWorld 02/01/2007).

Another issue is the incomplete support for Windows Vista in terms of both hardware and software from lead vendors. Many of them could not tell when they will complete new operating system drivers or update their old products. Unbelievably, not all manufacturers are ready for video and sound cards that support Vista highlighted features. In addition, Vista is costly in term of money and time investment. If your company really wants to go with this choice, you’d better ask yourself that “Are you ready to spend huge money to buy or upgrade you workstation and systems to optimize Vista?”, or “Have your teams been ready to configure everything including loading data, installing their applications and getting peripherals working?”

Despite Window XP after years of services, I believed that it will not be obsolete and still has an industry-wide support. According to Computer World Newsletter issued on January 25, 2007, it was reported that, by the end of this year, XP will be installed on 77.1% of all PCs worldwide and Vista on just 12.3%. Of course, these numbers will eventually be switched but it may take a certain period of time. That means the industry will make sure their computer networks still work great on XP platform. As the result, the organization would not have an impact within a few years. On the other hand, companies should take this opportunity to planning ahead on switching XP to new upcoming operating systems (if they want) including training and planning to upgrade new system since Windows Vista contains totally new functions and require an optimized station to run.

In summary, Vista is a cool operating system in the digital world that technology lovers individually should once give it a try. In corporate point of views, there are more than just how powerful this operating system is to be considered. The most important thing is whether this technology change will make an impact on how the company is run and how much benefit will be received. Vista not only requires user knowledge, powerful workstation, and compatible peripherals but also more money to upgrade the existing system that is currently performed. In addition, for now, this new launched OS does not stand in the solid position as XP does. Therefore Vista should be an eye catching OS that still need a period of time to prove how efficient it is and adapt toward the organization growth. The fact that Microsoft has still continue working on XP and will release the service package 3 next year is clearly evidenced to a company using XP that there should not be any problems causing from using XP soon. My perspective to a corporate level is that we should stay a little bit longer with what we have while use a plenty of time to plan on training your staff and managing an IT budget for this new system.

Papers

Papers by subject area (make a link to your software):

• Open-source software
• Legal / ethical issues of BitTorrent
• Webcasting
• VoIP
• Internet trust / security issues
• Distance training / conferencing
• Mobile computing devices
• Mesh networking
• RFID, or equivalent, for management
• Computer industry - GREEN policies