|
Bitzi
Bitzi was a website, operating from 2001 to 2013, where volunteers shared reports about any kind of digital file, with identifying metadata, commentary, and other ratings. Information contributed and rated by volunteers was compiled into the ''Bitpedia'' data set and reference work, described by Bitzi as a "digital media encyclopedia". The Bitpedia was published through the Bitzi website and web services under an open content license ( Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 2.0). Bitzi's standards and services have been adopted by a number of popular peer-to-peer file sharing systems. Bitzi was sponsored by a metadata publishing company of the same name based in San Francisco. History Founded by Gordon Mohr with Mike Linksvayer the Bitzi service launched in 2001. The Bitzi website shut down on 31 December 2013. Technology At Bitzi, files are identified by applying a strong hash function to their contents, which gives a distinct "fingerprint" for each file. Bitzi calls ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Linksvayer
Mike Linksvayer is an intellectual freedom and commons proponent, known as a technology entrepreneur, developer and activist from co-founding Bitzi and leadership of Creative Commons. He is GitHub's Policy Director. Biography Linksvayer holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has worked as a Chief Technical Officer, Vice President, manager, software developer and consultant. He joined Creative Commons as CTO in April 2003, and held that position until April 2007 when he became vice president. He also co-founded p2p file sharing company Bitzi, well known for its invention of magnet links. Former executive director of Creative Commons, Glenn Otis Brown, noted that Mike Linksvayer brought much-needed stability to the organization, comparing his role to that of a drummer in a band. Linksvayer encouraged NASA to use public APIs to share its data, which is already in public domain as government works. He also suggested that scientists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gnutella
Gnutella is a peer-to-peer network protocol. Founded in 2000, it was the first decentralized peer-to-peer network of its kind, leading to other, later networks adopting the model. In June 2005, Gnutella's population was 1.81 million computers increasing to over three million nodes by January 2006.On the Long-term Evolution of the Two-Tier Gnutella Overlay Rasti, Stutzbach, Rejaie, 2006. See Figure 2a. In late 2007, it was the most popular file-sharing network on the Internet with an estimated market share of more than 40%. History The first client (also called Gnutella) from which the network got its name was developed by Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper of Nullsoft in early 2000, soon after the company's acquisition by AOL. On March 14, the program was ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magnet URI Scheme
Magnet is a Uniform Resource Identifier, URI scheme that defines the format of magnet links, a de facto standard for identifying files (Uniform Resource Name, URN) by their content, via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hash value rather than by their location. Although magnet links can be used in a number of contexts, they are particularly useful in peer-to-peer file sharing networks because they allow resources to be referred to without the need for a continuously available host, and can be generated by anyone who already has the file, without the need for a central authority to issue them. This makes them popular for use as "guaranteed" search terms within the file sharing community where anyone can distribute a magnet link to ensure that the resource retrieved by that link is the one intended, regardless of how it is retrieved. History The standard for Magnet Uniform Resource Identifier, URIs was developed by Bitzi in 2002, partly as a "vendor- and project-neutral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grokster
Grokster Ltd. was a privately owned software company based in Nevis, West Indies that created the Grokster peer-to-peer file-sharing client in 2001 that used the FastTrack protocol. Grokster Ltd. was rendered extinct in late 2005 by the United States Supreme Court's decision in '' MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.'' The court ruled against Grokster's peer-to-peer file sharing program for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, effectively forcing the company to cease operations. The product was similar in look and feel to Kazaa, marketed by Sharman Networks, and Morpheus, which was distributed by StreamCast. Grokster, along with Morpheus and Kazaa, are considered second-generation peer-to-peer file sharing programs. Unlike their predecessor Napster, these file sharing programs allowed users to trade files directly between one another, without these transactions passing through a centralized server. Because Napster maintained this fraction of control over t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merkle Tree
In cryptography and computer science, a hash tree or Merkle tree is a tree in which every "leaf" (node) is labelled with the cryptographic hash of a data block, and every node that is not a leaf (called a ''branch'', ''inner node'', or ''inode'') is labelled with the cryptographic hash of the labels of its child nodes. A hash tree allows efficient and secure verification of the contents of a large data structure. A hash tree is a generalization of a hash list and a hash chain. Demonstrating that a leaf node is a part of a given binary hash tree requires computing a number of hashes proportional to the logarithm of the number of leaf nodes in the tree. Conversely, in a hash list, the number is proportional to the number of leaf nodes itself. A Merkle tree is therefore an efficient example of a cryptographic commitment scheme, in which the root of the tree is seen as a commitment and leaf nodes may be revealed and proven to be part of the original commitment. The concept of a hash ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Video Encoding
In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information. Typically, a device that performs data compression is referred to as an encoder, and one that performs the reversal of the process (decompression) as a decoder. The process of reducing the size of a data file is often referred to as data compression. In the context of data transmission, it is called source coding; encoding done at the source of the data before it is stored or transmitted. Source coding should not be confused with channel coding, for error detection and correction or line coding, the means for mapping data onto a signal. Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Audio Codec
An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file or streaming media audio coding format. The objective of the algorithm is to represent the high-fidelity audio signal with minimum number of bits while retaining quality. This can effectively reduce the storage space and the bandwidth required for transmission of the stored audio file. Most software codecs are implemented as libraries which interface to one or more multimedia players. Most modern audio compression algorithms are based on modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) coding and linear predictive coding (LPC). In hardware, audio codec refers to a single device that encodes analog audio as digital signals and decodes digital back into analog. In other words, it contains bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
File Size
File size is a measure of how much data a computer file contains or, alternately, how much storage it consumes. Typically, file size is expressed in units of measurement based on the byte. By convention, file size units use either a metric prefix (as in megabyte and gigabyte) or a binary prefix (as in mebibyte and gibibyte). When a file is written to a file system, which is the case in most modern devices, it may consume slightly more disk space than the file requires. This is because the file system rounds the size up to include any unused space left over in the last disk sector used by the file. (A ''sector'' is the smallest amount of space addressable by the file system. The size of a disk sector ranges from several hundred to several thousand bytes.) The unused space is called slack space or internal fragmentation. Although smaller sector sizes allow for denser use of disk space, they decrease the operational efficiency of the file system. Maximum size The maximum fil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Overnet
eDonkey2000 (nicknamed "ed2k") was a peer-to-peer file sharing application developed by US company MetaMachine (Jed McCaleb and Sam Yagan), using the Multisource File Transfer Protocol. This client supports both the eDonkey2000 network and the Overnet network. On September 28, 2005, eDonkey was discontinued following a cease and desist letter from the RIAA. eDonkey2000 network Users on the eDonkey2000 network predominantly share large files of tens or hundreds of megabytes, such as CD images, videos, games, and software programs. To ease file searching, some websites list the checksums of sought-after files in the form of an ed2k link. Some of those websites also have lists of active servers for users to update. MetaMachines has also created another file-sharing network called Overnet, which interoperates with the eDonkey network, but without the use of servers. Most eDonkey clients also now use the Overnet network. In 2004, MetaMachines announced it would stop development ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
EMule
eMule is a free peer-to-peer file sharing application for Microsoft Windows. Started in May 2002 as an alternative to eDonkey2000, eMule now connects to both the eDonkey network and the Kad network. The distinguishing features of eMule are the direct exchange of sources between client nodes, fast recovery of corrupted downloads, and the use of a credit system to reward frequent uploaders. Furthermore, eMule transmits data in zlib-compressed form to save bandwidth. eMule is coded in C++ using the Microsoft Foundation Classes. Since July 2002 eMule has been free software, released under the GNU General Public License; its popularity has led to eMule's codebase being used as the basis of cross-platform clients aMule, JMule, xMule, along with the release of many eMule ''mods'' (modifications of the original eMule) on the Internet. As of August 2017, it is the fourth most downloaded project on SourceForge, with over 685 million downloads. Development was later restarted by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
