Grind My Gears: 05.06

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Protecting yourself against the BitTorrent bandits!

Copied interesting article from another post here.

[Update: A few hours after publishing on Digg.com, the blocklist referenced in this article stopped working. The reason for this fluke is a change Bluetack made in response to the huge Digg interest. The article now links to alternate files from Bluetack that are in the correct format. It's the same list as before, but this time it's sure to be in the right format.]

If you've been using BitTorrent to download any of the more popular files, such as the latest episode of some major TV show, you may have found yourself receiving lots of "Wasted" data. This is data that has been discarded after being deemed corrupt or invalid by your BitTorrent client. Every so often, you will have received more wasted data than the size of the files you are downloading!

This is happening because Anti-P2P organizations are actively polluting P2P networks with fake peers, which send out fake or corrupt data in order to waste bandwidth and slow down file transfers. At its worst, when downloading major copyrighted torrents, as much as a fourth of the peers you are connected to can be attributed to various Anti-P2P agencies. There is also a much more serious side to this. Once you've established a connection to one of these fake "peers", your IP has been logged and will most likely be sent to the RIAA/MPAA!

But there is a way to fight back! If you are using the latest µTorrent (1.5), you can employ a little known feature called IP filtering. The author of µTorrent has gone out of his way to hide it, but it's there nonetheless. But before we can activate this filter, we need to retrieve a list of currently known Anti-P2P organization IPs.

This is most easily done by downloading the latest blacklist from Bluetack (the same people who wrote SafePeer for the Azureus BT client) at http://www.bluetack.co.uk/config/nipfilter.dat.gz. This list is updated daily, and contains all known Anti-P2P organizations, trackers and peers, aswell as all known Goverment/Military IP addresses as collected by the Bluetack team. Once downloaded, extract and rename the file to "ipfilter.dat" in preparation for the final step.

To make the list available to µTorrent, you need to put it in %AppData%\uTorrent. So type this into the Address Bar, or click Start -> Run and type it there. After placing the ipfilter.dat in this folder, start µTorrent and go into preferences (Ctrl+P), then click on "Advanced". In the right hand pane, make sure that "ipfilter.enable" is set to true, and then close the dialog. That's it for the configuration.

You can verify that the list has been loaded by looking under the "Logging" tab of µTorrent, where you should see the line "Loaded ipfilter.dat (X entries)".

Congratulations! You are now protected against most of the garbage-distributing peers; and the likelyhood of the RIAA or MPAA knocking at your door has been substantially reduced! I'd go as far as to say that you shouldn't be using µTorrent at all without this feature turned on! And even if the law enforcement side of it doesn't bother you, you should still be interested in reducing the amount of garbage data that gets sent your way, which in turn leads to quicker downloads, and isn't that something everybody should strive for? ;)

Note: It's advised that you update the list at least once a month, to keep you updated on the movement of the Anti-P2P organizations. One tool that will aid you getting these updates is the "Blocklist Manager" from the same people who made the list; go to http://www.bluetack.co.uk/ and download it. On a related note, this note from the µTorrent FAQ should come in handy: "To reload ipfilter.dat without restarting µTorrent, simply open the preferences (ctrl+p), and press enter to close it again."

Happy Torrenting!
- jesusisapervert

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Religious Tumor

Here's another great onion article from 2000.

Malignant Tumor Sees Every Day As Gift From God

MUNCIE, IN–On July 12, the cancerous growth imbedded in the brain tissue of Warren Lenders got the news no tumor ever wants to hear: chemotherapy. Facing the prospect of cancer-killing radiation, the six-month-old malignant brain tumor could have cursed the heavens for dealing it such a cruel fate. Instead, it chose to be grateful for the time it has left, viewing each new day as a gift from God.

"God put me on this Earth for a purpose: to attach myself to the parietal lobe of loving husband and father of three Warren Lenders," said the tumor, speaking from the left hemisphere of Lenders' cerebrum. "But if He says it's time to go, then it's time to go. It is not for me to question why."

"As it says in the Good Book," the high-grade cerebellar astrocytoma continued, "'If you have received God's Gift of Grace, rejoice. Enjoy it every day.'"

After tragically losing most of its mass in a June 28 operation, the tumor is now in the midst of 12 grueling weeks of chemotherapy, a procedure doctors say it has a less than 20 percent chance of surviving.

"This has been the greatest trial of my entire life," the tumor said. "Operations, radium bombardment, cesium. You name it, I've been through it. But just as He did with Job, the Lord is presenting me with these hardships as a way of testing my faith."

According to doctors at Indiana University Medical Center, where the tumor is being treated, malignancies of its kind generally have a 60 percent survival rate. But because the tumor was detected early, its chances are far worse.

"Statistically, the odds are against it, no question," chief oncologist Dr. Irwin Patel said. "But this is one tough little tumor, and I wouldn't count it out. It's showing unusual tenacity for a supratentorial growth of its size. We thought the surgery would be the end, but when we got in there to debulk it, we found it had spread all over the place."

Throughout the ordeal, the tumor has found comfort in its strong Christian faith.

"Going into that surgery, I thought, 'Well, this could be the end of the line for me,'" the tumor said. "But, by some miracle, a few of my tendrils had adhered to the occipital lobe without the doctors realizing it, and I made it through the operation. I know in my heart it was God's hand guiding that surgeon's scalpel to the wrong place that day."

After the surgery, the tumor's weight had dropped to 9.8 grams.

"Some tumors might have thrown in the towel right then and there," it said. "But I'm not the type. I need only remember the trials that Jesus went through while in His earthly form to realize that my trials have been nothing."

The tumor sees the fact that it is still alive as "part of God's great plan."

"May I quote The Bible again? 'For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,'" the tumor said. "I guess I'm so calm because I know that when it's my time to go, a better life awaits me in Heaven, where I will be rewarded for my faith with a glorious bounty of ganglion and glial cells, the likes of which a mortal being like myself cannot even conceive."

With its time possibly drawing to a close, the tumor reflected on its life.

"Honestly, I've been lucky," it said. "I could have been born an easily detectable epidermoid cyst and been destroyed swiftly. But instead, I was hidden by the bone matter of Lenders' skull and went undetected by X-rays for months."

The tumor also draws comfort and strength from its offspring.

"In my life, I've been fortunate enough to metastasize three dozen beautiful little cancerous cell masses, which I've sent off into the cerebrospinal fluid," it said. "Right now, they're just imperceptible growths on the spinal cord and medulla. But, God willing, when I've gone to my maker, they will be there to carry on my work. Praise the Lord."