Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Microsoft readies BitTorrent alternative
Avalanche technology could make it easier to distribute big files over the Internet

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND – Researchers at Microsoft’s (Profile, Products, Articles) Cambridge, England, labs are developing a file-sharing technology that they say could make it easier to distribute big files such as films, television programs and software applications to end-users over the Internet.
 
Code-named Avalanche, the technology is similar to existing peer-to-peer (P-to-P) file swapping systems such as BitTorrent’s, in the sense that large files can be divided into many smaller pieces to ease their distribution. End users request the file parts from other users’ hard drives and reassemble them to create the original file.

Such systems can scale well to serve millions of users, and reduce the bandwidth and computing costs of sending content directly to users from central servers. Some have also irritated publishers who complain the services are used to share copyright works illegally.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/16/HNmsbittorrent_1.html

"The founder and chief architect of the popular Linux distribution Gentoo Daniel Robbins, has taken up a job at Microsoft. He describes his new job as "helping Microsoft to understand Open Source and community-based projects". While in the midst of hastily packing to move to Redmond, Robbins nonetheless managed to find the time to finalize the transfer of Gentoo’s intellectual property (essentially copyrights on ebuilds and other software as well as soon-to-be trademarked Gentoo logos) to the not-for-profit Gentoo Foundation, Inc."

For those that care, yes, he does work here and I’ve looked him up, and no, I can’t say anything about his role being that that’s his own business and not mine.

http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10838

I was talking to some customers the other day and was surprised to discover that they didn’t know what Blogcasting (aka podcasting) was.

If you’d like a quick overview of Blogcasting, check out our web site on the topic here:
http://www.microsoft.com/events/teched2005/podcast.mspx

For the undoctrinated, podcasting is kinda like a ghetto version of "TiVo for audio on the web".  Blogcasts are audio files filled with different content from different places.  These audio files are downloaded on a scheduled basis via special "blogcast" software on people’s computers and often times replicated to people’s portable music players.

Podcast content ranges from:

• Music with DJ’s
• Talk radio formats
• Technology discussions
• Soap operas
• …and other miscellaneous rantings & ravings from assorted lunatics on the web.

Some blogcasts are actually sponsored by vendors or 3rd party companies that get advertising consideration for their monetary contributions to the "show".   Others have absolutely no support whatsoever other than the person doing the ‘blogcasting’, so needless to say, there’s an awful lot of garbage out there to listen to.  It makes it difficult to sort the ‘wheat from the chaff’ without kissing a lot of frogs.

Personally, I download 10 or so blogcasts daily that I’ve found to be ‘interesting’ to my Toshiba Tablet PC M200 and subsequently sync the content to my Pocket PC Phone or my Rio Carbon. 

(The Rio Carbon by the way is a GREAT Music Player if you don’t have one.  It’s SUPER thin and light so it makes a great workout-at-the-gym device.  It also supports Windows Media format which typically compresses 50% smaller than MP3 format allowing you to store twice as much content as an iPod Mini, has 20hrs of play back battery time, stores 5GB of audio content, shows up as a hard drive on Windows computers, and costs only $120 from http://www.broadmarkets.com/store/mp3players/riocarbonr.htm)

Here’s a few of the Microsoft blogcasts that I download daily:

• The Microsoft Log – http://microsoft.quicksurf.com/wp-rss2.php?cat=7
• Major Nelson’s XBox Live – http://feeds.feedburner.com/MajorNelsonblogcast-wma
• The Tablet PC Show – http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/tabletpc/feed
• The Microsoft Developer Show – http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/msdev/feed
• The Media Center Show – http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/mediacenter/feed
• IT Conversations "Microsoft" section – http://www.itconversations.com/rss/category-rss.php?k=microsoft&e=1
• Microsoft TechEd Podcast – http://www.microsoft.com/winme/TechEd/TechEdPodcast.xml

Here’s some non-MS specific podcasts that I listen to:

• Geek News Central – http://www.geeknewscentral.com/podcast.xml
• Ziff Davis’ Between the Lines – http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/wp-rss2.php?cat=12

Here’s some Windows XP blogcast/podcast client software that I use:

• Doppler – http://www.dopplerradio.net/?page_id=64
• iPodder – http://www.ipodder.org

For Windows Mobile Pocket PC or Smartphone:

• Skookum – http://msmobiles.com/news.php/3759.html
• smartFeed – http://www.smartfeed.org/

All you Active Directory mavens out there… check this out.  It’ll only probably be humorous to someone that actually knows what AD Schema is.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/adschema/adschema/a_drink.asp

Someone internally refered to this as being the result of RFC1274.

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1274.html

Gartner has written up a glowing article about SQL Server 2005.

…150% faster than SQL Server 2000…
…Gartner believes SQL Server 2005 will, overall, have been worth the wait.
…Gartner believes many implementation issues have already been worked out.
…Recommendations:  Begin testing the new product while in its final pre-release version…

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=129042