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EU invests $22 million in open-source P2P technology

It's ironic how different Europe can be from the United States. While the U.S. continues its mindless rampage against the future of digital distribution with DRM, RIAA, MPAA, and other acronyms designed to stuff the 21st century back into the 20th century's ideas of how to package and sell property, Europe is actually investing in that future. To be exact, it's putting $22 million toward peer-to-peer technology, in a BitTorrent-minded project called P2P-Next.

Surely European broadcasters are against the move, right? After all, research suggests that 50 percent of those using BitTorrent are doing so to steal TV shows. As one TorrentFreak blogger noted, however, European broadcasters believe this situation presents an opportunity rather than a threat:

One of the biggest names taking part is the BBC, who will use the new BitTorrent client to stream TV programs. Other partners in the P2P-Next project are the European Broadcasting Union, Lancaster University, Markenfilm, Pioneer Digital Design Centre Limited and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The main goal is to develop an open source, BitTorrent-compatible client that supports live streaming.… Read more

Unsolved problem with TiVo file transfers frustrates users

A fall software update from TiVo damaged a popular feature on the company's DVR, and months later the change remains unfixed for a number of customers.

As part of the TiVoToGo feature, software from Roxio called Toast 8 allows users to transfer recorded shows from TiVo to mobile devices, like laptops and iPods, or put the shows on DVDs. The recording and transferring functions stopped working late last year for some customers using Toast.

Users began to complain starting in early October that they were unable to transfer, or burn, any TiVo'd shows at all.

"Right after … Read more

Winny Trojan author arrested in Japan

On Thursday, Japanese authorities announced the arrest of a college student and two associates who are alleged to have written and distributed a Trojan horse via a popular peer-to-per network.

Because Japan currently lacks computer crime laws, the three (whose names were withheld) were instead arrested on copyright violations. Between October and November of 2007, the author of a Trojan known as Harada used images of a popular anime character to entice users of the Winny P2P network to download the malware.

Computers infected with one strain of Harada displayed a message saying, "You're already dead. Come here. … Read more

Time Warner to test metered Web use

Time Warner Cable is testing a new pricing structure where heavy broadband users will be charged based on how much data they transfer, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

A trial for the new pricing scheme is expected to begin in Beaumont, Texas, later this year. Time Warner is testing the new pricing model to see if it can curb usage of peer-to-peer applications on its network, said Alex Dudley, a spokesman for the company.

Peer-to-peer protocols allow users to access content that is distributed throughout the network on other computers running the same application. It's commonly used to transfer … Read more

Waste-to-electricity firm Ze-gen raises funds

Ze-gen, a company which has a process for converting municipal waste into electricity, has raised $2.5 million to fund construction of its first full-scale plant.

Pinnacle Ventures on Thursday said it will provide the debt financing, which will be used to develop a commercial plant. Ze-gen's pilot plant opened in the middle of last year in New Bedford, Mass.

Ze-gen developed a process to turn municipal solid waste into electricity, which you can sell onto the grid or to an on-site consumer.

Through gasification, it turns waste into syngas--a combination of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen--which is … Read more

The back-to-work blues

One Sunday night, when I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, my dad noticed I was acting a little moody. "What's the matter, sonny boy?" That's what he called me sometimes. I think it's from an Al Jolson song.

"Ah, you know, I've got school tomorrow." I whined. "Weekends are great, but they're too short."

"You know what?" he replied, "I still feel that way about work."… Read more

TorrentSpy loses Calif. copyright lawsuit

Updated at 1:30 p.m. PST with more comments and background.

TorrentSpy may be its own worst enemy.

A federal judge has ruled against the BitTorrent indexing service TorrentSpy.com saying that its hiding and destruction of evidence made a fair trial impossible.

A Los Angeles court agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America's attorneys that the extraordinarily harsh sanction of terminating the case was necessary because TorrentSpy operators' actions impacted the ability for the movie studios to prove its case.

"The court finds that plaintiffs have suffered prejudice, to the extent that a rightful decision … Read more

Odiogo does really cool text-to-speech for blogs

Here's a neat service for blog owners who want to add another layer of distribution for their content. It's called Odiogo, and it will take any written blog entries and turn them into spoken word. It uses an integrated player that sticks itself on top of every blog post, and lets readers listen to any post in lieu of reading.

I came across the service while reading a post on UNEASYsilence about hacking the new eeePCs to run a hacked version OS X Leopard (which apparently runs about as well as it can on the aged processor), and … Read more

P2P downloaders tend to buy more music

Are peer-to-peer music thieves the music industry's best customers? In an ironic twist to the music industry's woes, a new study suggests that P2P downloaders may buy more music than their straight-laced, non-P2P brethren. The results are non-conclusive one way or the other, but the researchers conclude:

However, our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing.… Read more

Tutorial: Screen Sharing in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5): How it works and how it doesn't

Originally posted by Ted Landau (November 2007) Updated by MacFixIt Staff (May 2009)

If you are into troubleshooting (and given that you are here at MacFixIt, it's likely that you are), you'll find a wealth of welcome goodies in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). If I were to make a list of Noteworthy New Troubleshooting-Related Features in Leopard, the first item would be the redesigned and pumped-up Sharing System Preferences pane and its related features. And of all the new sharing?related features, the one perched at the absolute pinnacle would be screen sharing.… Read more