I’ve been making great use of a file downloading utility called BitTorrent. Basically instead of lots people just downloading from a server, bogging down its connection, everyone downloading also uploads. So the more people are downloading, the more people are uploading. This means that you can get very consistant high bitrates even for large files.
Like, say, popular movies and tv shows.
Takeshi Kitano day, I guess
I’ve gotten episodes of Sealab 2021, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, 24, The Shield, Pen and Teller’s Bullshit, and basically lots of shows that I keep missing. Is this illegal? Well I pay for cable, so every show that I download is something I could see if I wasn’t too lazy to watch it.
Then again, the commercials have been removed, so maybe I’m cheating there. To me, commercials aren’t much more than a polite fiction — since the money charged is based on the Nielson’s, a flawed system. The Nielson’s determine whether a show lives or dies. A rating of 2, and a show is cancelled. If it gets a 3, it stays. But the Nielson’s margin of error at 2 is one. So it could actually be a three, or it could be a one. Everyone knows its nonrepresentative, and bullshit. So commercials are based on a bullshit system. So I don’t care if I’m “cheating” by paying 45$ a month for cable, and then downloading shows I miss sans commercials.