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World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

torrentfreak.com

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Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#21

Post by petra »

jimrandomh wrote: post #7
petra wrote: post #2

Actually torrents are pretty bad for storing "rare" files. Maybe someone should offer a fix.

I think this is mostly a consequence of how the clients work. When I download something with BitTorrent, it goes into a Downloads folder. Then I want to move and rename the files to fit into an organized collection, but then the client won't be able to find it anymore. If my client were able to track files across moves and renames, I'd be much more willing to seed things permanently. (It would also need to have good…

To make it work i think the client should have some hard drive space allocated for the purpose of "preservation" , which he can automatically use according to some reasonable policy(maybe only files i downloaded can be put in the folder) and it should allocate some share of my bandwidth for that purpose. Than the client automatically manages everything with coordination from the network.

That's the only way this can scale for regular users, i think. And of course it may use social mechanisms like feedback "you're the reason why this rare work of art if available for everyone".

As for scalability of TCP connections , you're probably right, not my area of expertise , but once this will be declared as an important BT problem with great practical value, i'm sure some researchers would be happy to contribute and might solve this.

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#22

Post by chair-law »

grecy wrote: post #8

I'd be interested to learn about the software that created the ASCII version of the movie. Is there a simple way to do this, or would they have made something custom?

The algorithm dosent need to be too complex. You basically look at each still frame as grayscale, generate a hashtable of brightness values mapping to monospaced characters, and convert each grayscale pixel to a character.

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#24

Post by icebraining »

iDemonix wrote: post #15
projct wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ffmpeg can output ascii videos

Whilst this statement is true, the torrent predates the earliest versions of ffmpeg, so it wouldn't have been what was used (which was what the OP was asking).

Whilst this statement is true, the torrent predates the earliest versions of ffmpeg

How so? The torrent is 12 years old, while ffmpeg was first released 15 years ago.

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#25

Post by _asummers »

jedberg wrote: post #19

Slightly off topic, but I find the fascination with ASCII-arting things interesting. I grew up in the days of 2400 baud modems and even ran a BBS briefly. At the time, ASCII art was the only thing you could do to differentiate yourself. Nowadays I suppose it's a combination of nostalgia and ease of transferring since pretty much every system ever has a way of reading ASCII. But I wonder how long the trend will last -…

Not EXACTLY the same thing, but there's a really neat Jason Scott talk from Defcon 18 that goes into some of the history of crack screens from early software. [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5AceLYWE1Q

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#26

Post by icebraining »

LukeShu wrote: post #14
jimrandomh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is mostly a consequence of how the clients work. When I download something with BitTorrent, it goes into a Downloads folder. Then I want to move and rename the files to fit into an organized collection, but then the client won't be able to find it anymore. If my client were able to track files across moves and renames, I'd be much more willing to seed things permanently. (It would also need to have good…

I've "solved" this by having torrents go to a "Torrents" folder, then symlinking those files into my organized collection.

I hardlink them instead. Then I can prune them from the torrents folder without affecting the organized file.

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#27

Post by jimmytucson »

jedberg wrote: post #19

Slightly off topic, but I find the fascination with ASCII-arting things interesting. I grew up in the days of 2400 baud modems and even ran a BBS briefly. At the time, ASCII art was the only thing you could do to differentiate yourself. Nowadays I suppose it's a combination of nostalgia and ease of transferring since pretty much every system ever has a way of reading ASCII. But I wonder how long the trend will last -…

I think some of this stuff will retain its coolness with future generations even though they didn't experience it first hand. Kind of like the way I distributed copies of the Hacker Manifesto when I was in high school even though I was an infant when Mentor wrote it.

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#28

Post by bitL »

jedberg wrote: post #19

Slightly off topic, but I find the fascination with ASCII-arting things interesting. I grew up in the days of 2400 baud modems and even ran a BBS briefly. At the time, ASCII art was the only thing you could do to differentiate yourself. Nowadays I suppose it's a combination of nostalgia and ease of transferring since pretty much every system ever has a way of reading ASCII. But I wonder how long the trend will last -…

It's a form of art. Imagine Matrix done by arranging small pictures of flowers, by constructing scenes using parabolic approximating curves or fractals. Just an interesting form of art giving you another perspective. And for many text-oriented people ASCII art is like opening up a new visual perspective they were lacking.

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#29

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

iDemonix wrote: post #13
Zikes wrote: post #5

This reminds me of that ASCII Star Wars telnet thing. How long has that been around for?

I believe you're referring to http://www.blinkenlights.nl/services.html (or 'telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl', as it's more popularly known). On the authors bio page it says he started creating it in 1997.

Oh this is masterful trolling. If you connect over IPv4:

       The IPv6 version has extra scenes and extra color support.        
       So if you want to experience ascii starwars to it's fullest       
       you really should get IPv6.                                       
                                                                         
       www.sixxs.net or another IPv6 tunnel broker may                   
       help getting IPv6 to your computer.                               
                                                                         
       Good Luck,                                                        
                                                                         
       Snore ( Has no life for Hardware )
But if you actually connect over IPv6:

       Well, the IPv6 version is exactly the same as the IPv4 one.       
                                                                         
       The difference is in the visitors...                              
                                                                         
                                                                         
       Je bent een Stoere Bikkel, aka You Rock.

Re: World’s Oldest Torrent Is Still Being Shared After 4,419 Days

#30

Post by jefftk »

chair-law wrote: post #22
grecy wrote: post #8

I'd be interested to learn about the software that created the ASCII version of the movie. Is there a simple way to do this, or would they have made something custom?

The algorithm dosent need to be too complex. You basically look at each still frame as grayscale, generate a hashtable of brightness values mapping to monospaced characters, and convert each grayscale pixel to a character.

You can do better than that by taking advantage of character shapes, though. Minimal example:

    ()
and:

    )(
have the same brightness values, but we see them pretty differently.

Ideally you would use edge detection, maybe some object detection, and then be willing to compromise a little on brightness in order to make important edges nice. I don't know if there's software out there that does this, though.

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