Suprnova is back!

Suprnova was one of the earlier torrent aggregators out there but it got shut down by the copyright cops. Fortunately, they’ve been brought back by the friendly folks at The Pirate Bay. Best of all, Suprnova actually has a search function now – I can’t tell how hard it was to look for stuff on the old site, especially near its end (when there was a hell of a lot of listed torrents). It’s still supposed to be in beta for the next few weeks but it looks to be working okay. Welcome back, Suprnova!

In related news, Torrentspy has disallowed searches for users with U.S.-based ISPs. Justin Bunnell of Torrentspy has said it was to protect the privacy of its users; I think the MPAA lawsuit has made this an extremely prudent move. See Slyck for the details.

A child’s-eye view of the impending collapse of the U.S. economy

If you’re like me you’re probably not too familiar with the details of the U.S. sub-prime lending fiasco. All the news coverage has made you aware of the broad strokes, of course, namely that American banks (in a fit of exceptional short-sightedness and stupidity) approved loans to people who couldn’t actually pay them. But did you actually know about how the banks sold off those loans, which were then split up and sold off and split up and sold off some more, such that many more times the original value of the loan was resting on the ability of the loan’s recipient to pony up and pay it off? And now I will abandon the second person since it’s fairly obvious I only bothered to scan the headlines and thought the underlying details were too complicated. Well, the Asia Sentinel has got my back with an explanation addressed to a hypothetically interested child. Titled “It’s All Gumdrops,” it uses the sale of a gumdrop to a sticky-fingered kid to illustrate how exactly the whole thing works. The short answer is that it’s another iteration of the age-old pyramid scheme; the long answer is – well, read the dang article.

Sûreté du Québec forced to own up

A bit late, but I’ll put it up anyway: the Quebec police have admitted that the anarchist guys captured on tape were cops (see the Toronto Star for details). However, while they admit those three were indeed undercover agents, the SQ states that they were only found out because the men refused to participate in violence and that the reason one officer was carrying a rock was because a protester handed it to him. Needless to say, one only has to watch the video to know this is complete and utter bullshit. The crowd and the organizer was trying to get the police agents to leave and were trying to keep them away from the line of riot police. Hell, even Ottawa’s Chief of Police stated (before the SQ’s admission) that the conduct of the men on that video is highly suspicious. I really hope an independent inquiry is carried out because if this thing only goes to an internal review it will get quietly buried.

In honour of this event I’m introducing a new tag, “Fuck tha police;” I hope its use will be fairly self-evident. If you still think the SQ isn’t full of shit then I suggest you watch the video again.

(Incidentally, I couldn’t figure out how to type those accents in the SQ’s name and had to copy and paste it from elsewhere. This is also the reason why I keep calling them the SQ.)

This just in: Quebec police haven’t seen Serpico

So there’s talk about Quebec police planting agent provocateurs among protesters at the Montebello summit. As the above photo shows (which I swiped from the comments thread of the Torontoist article, I hope it’s okay with whoever posted it), these agents apparently never bothered to change out of their police-issue boots. This is exceedingly stupid, and reminded me of that line in the cop movie Serpico, where Al Pacino decried undercover agents who’d go to a lot of trouble getting the right clothes, haircut, and so on, but still wear the same shoes they’re handed at the station. The boots are kind of a moot point anyway – the fake protesters were quickly identified since none of the real protesters knew them but they were still trying to stir up a bunch of middle-aged people into a confrontation with the riot squad. If you ask me, this is a pretty ham-fisted approach.  They should have had agents join student protest groups like the NYPD used to do (and for all I know, still do).  Still, if you’re going to the trouble of instigating a riot among people who don’t know you then at least make sure it can’t be traced to your employer. You’d think a reasonably intelligent undercover agent would know not to wear the same gear as his “enemies” but I guess these were especially stupid police. They’re so dumb I imagine they’re already on the fast-track to lieutenant; within a year they’ll probably be heading the RCMP’s intelligence division.

Booster Gold isn’t Jewish

Who’s Booster Gold? He’s a second-string superhero who used to be part of the Justice League of America. Often written as comic relief, his gag is that he’s from the future and traveled back in time so he can be a big-shot. Booster is always coming up with get-rich or get-famous schemes that inevitably backfire. His powers include flight, some kind of beam-thingy that he shoots from his hands, and a sassy robot sidekick. (Yes, sassy robot sidekicks count as powers.) And that is pretty much the extent of my Booster Gold knowledge; I never followed the character so I hope my bare-bones summary can be forgiven. Anyway, in my blissful ignorance I had always assumed that the guy was Jewish. Why? Well, Gold – along with Goldschmidt, Goldman, Goldbach, and other Goldies – is a fairly common Jewish surname. (Which isn’t to say that non-Jews don’t have these names as well, but – in the U.S. at least – if you were to meet someone named Goldstein, chances are that person is Jewish.) If you think about it, Booster also seems like the kind of spacey, rocket-based name that people might give to their kids in the sci-fi world of the future. So, Booster Gold = futuristic Chosen Person.

My wacky misconception led to me being wildly disappointed when I found out that, not only is the guy not Jewish, Booster Gold isn’t even his real name! Nay, his birth name is actually Michael Jon Carter, which is pretty much as goy a name as possible. This brings up some fascinating thoughts about the world of the future, where a man out to promote himself would feel compelled to adopt a Jewish identity (perhaps the Learned Elders had finally succeeded?) – but no, Wikipedia tells me that Booster was just Michael Jon Carter’s college football nickname.

I think whoever created Booster really dropped the ball by making him a Gentile. Think about it: a flying Jew from the future – the stories practically write themselves! Just swipe the plots from Seinfeld and throw in some jetpacks. Maybe Booster’s parents are visiting from the future and he becomes so annoyed with them that he starts sleeping at the JLA headquarters. Or maybe Booster avoids a dinner invitation from his great-aunt Astra by citing an already-scheduled fight with Captain Boomerang, but is then spotted in a restaurant by his cousin Payload. Or how about Booster’s friend the Blue Beetle thinks Munich was terrible but doesn’t say so in public because he’s afraid of being called an anti-Semite. The only way this idea could be improved is if his sidekick was Lenny Kravitz.

So join with me in weeping at the road not taken. No matter who you are – woman or man, Gentile or Jew – we have all felt the terrible loss wrought by finding out that Booster Gold isn’t Jewish. As you read the following lyrics with tears rolling down your face, please imagine you’re watching Beaches and think of what could have been.

Memories,
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?
Memories, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember…
The way we were…
The way we were…

How to download shit off the Internet, part 2

This is a continuation of my earlier post, How to download shit off the Internet, where I went over some filesharing basics and focused mainly on BitTorrent as a peer-to-peer system. Today I will deal with a couple other filesharing networks, DirectConnect and the eDonkey/eMule system, and touch briefly on IRC and newsgroups.

DirectConnect

DirectConnect is one of the older peer-to-peer systems out there. Though it gained many users when Napster was shut down, DirectConnect was on its way to irrelevance until the release of an open-source client called DC++ (open-source means they release the code out there for anyone to modify). DirectConnect servers are called “hubs”, and many hubs won’t let you connect to them without having already having a certain amount of information to share. Different hubs have different minimums, so make sure to put the necessary files in your DC++ client’s folder. There are also private, invite-only hubs but only the hard-core need go there. To be honest, I only use DirectConnect to download comics, and I only really use one hub, The ComicShack (Comicshack.no-ip.info), sponsored by the ZCult folks (whom I mentioned in the previous update). As you might have guessed from the name, The ComicShack specializes in comic books, and is largely the reason why I rarely use ZCult torrents anymore. I suspect many ZCultists have also migrated to DC++ and this is why the site is fairly quiet nowadays. Torrents are still great for downloading entire series, but if you’re only looking for one or two comics, DC++ is the way to go. Some other comics hubs are Comicopolis (comicopolis.no-ip.info:313) and The Watchtower (thewatchtower.no-ip.info:1411), both of which have a 2 GB minimum.

Some people are probably wondering where exactly they’re supposed to get 2 gigabytes of data to share. Unless you’re a dedicated scanner or ripper, you won’t have that much already on your computer. Not to worry, that’s what BitTorrent is for. Download a few things and put them in the folder you’ve designated for your DC++ client. As for which client to use, I’d recommend ApexDC++; I’ve yet to have a problem with it. Install it, specify which folder(s) you’d like to share (and don’t just share your entire hard drive, unless you want people to be able to download your tax information, letters to Penthouse, and whatever else you have in there), then connect to a public hub. There’s a large list of public hubs available if you go into View, then Public Hubs, which you can then filter to show only the hubs that specialize in whatever it is you’re looking for.

eMule/eDonkey

Ironically, the shutdown of Napster resulted in the creation of many new filesharing systems, ones that wouldn’t be as vulnerable as Shawn Fanning’s creation. Napster also attracted a lot of people to filesharing, so its many users were looking to new systems to move to after the shutdown. One of these systems was eDonkey2000. Like DirectConnect, it didn’t really take off until an open-source client was created, which in this case was called eMule. The eMule client fixes some things wrong with the original eDonkey, plus it also connects to the Kad file-sharing network. The biggest reproach of the eDonkey system is its speed (or lack thereof). This is a pretty fair criticism because downloads with this system can take many days, especially if it’s a big file. However, it is more than offset by the network’s comprehensiveness. Simply put, if you can’t find the file you’re looking for here, you’re probably not going to find it anywhere else, at least not on the Internet.

One of the more annoying things about eMule is that you have to manually update its list of servers. Although it comes with a server list when installed, over time some of those are shut down for one reason or another and many other servers come online for the first time. You can set the client to automatically update its server list when you connect to a server but it’s still a good idea to manually update it every now and then. You can manually download a list here, as well as other places on the Internet.

IRC and newsgroups

These are systems I stay out of completely, not because of any inherent dangers but because there are easier ways of getting the files I want. I should mention that I have little experience with using IRC and newsgroups for filesharing. Nonetheless, I will go over what I know for the benefit of the curious. IRC and newsgroups were around before the World Wide Web and can be considered as the original filesharing systems, though they weren’t intended as such. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a chat program that can double as a client for downloading stuff. You join a channel that deals with the stuff you want to download, search through the available servers, connect to them, then download. As for newsgroups, they’re much like the webforums of today, though in an earlier, text-only form. Uploaders split up their files into smaller chunks which are then converted into letters, numbers, and other characters – these converted files are called binaries and are then posted to the appropriate newsgroup (e.g. alt.binaries.dvds). Downloaders then take these binaries and convert them back into the original. Both IRC and newsgroups can be trying to use but many rippers still upload through these channels; the files then filter through to other filesharing systems. If you ask me it’s not really worth the hassle, but if anyone reading this wants to learn more they can use the Slyck guides on IRC and newsgroups as a primer.

I hope you readers enjoyed this short romp through the world of filesharing. Keep in mind that what I’ve written is not meant to be comprehensive. There are other networks and client out there, though I think I’ve touched on the major ones. Also keep in mind that the filesharing world is always changing – networks get sued shut, new ones are created, and there are a lot of different clients getting updated and abandoned every month. Think of what I’ve written as more of a snapshot, the state of filesharing networks as of mid-August 2007. While it’s impossible to tell the future, I think that, based on current conditions, the world of filesharing is safe and there are many new innovations on the horizon. Happy downloading, and don’t forget to use your virus scan.

How to download shit off the Internet, part 1

I’m writing this to help those who have heard of the endless downloading opportunities out there but have not yet figured out how to do it or are too afraid to get started on their own. I should start off by saying that the first priority for downloaders is a decent virus protection program. In this day and age you really can’t use an unprotected online computer anymore, especially if you’re using it to download stuff. Buy it if you have to, but get one. My only recommendation is to stay away from Symantec since it hogs a lot of memory and can noticeably slow down your computer. Avast! is the one I use; it has a fairly small memory footprint and it’s free.

With that out the way, let’s get on with the programs. First off is BitTorrent. You may have heard of it already as it’s the most popular method out there. BitTorrent is actually a protocol, a way of transferring information over the Internet. There are many programs out there that use the BitTorrent protocol and it can be difficult deciding which one is best. Me, I just went to Slyck and looked at the BitTorrent section. Slyck has a lot of file-sharing info available and I use it to find out what’s new in the world of downloading. This is where I discovered µTorrent (pronounced “mu torrent” – that u with a line in front is the Greek letter mu). I used to use BitComet, and, while there’s nothing wrong with it, µTorrent uses up less memory, which makes it easier to use your computer for other stuff while downloading.

Before I continue, let me go on a bit about how BitTorrent works. Each file on the network is split up into many different sections. When you use the BitTorrent protocol, your computer connects to a central server called a tracker. It keeps track of the people who are downloading a particular file and however many sections each person has. Those who have the complete file are called “seeders” or “feeders”, while those who have an incomplete one are called “peers” or “leechers”. Seeders upload to peers, but peers can also upload to each other since they can have different sections of that particular file. After completing the download, a leecher becomes a seeder. It’s generally considered polite to seed to at least a 1:1 ratio though it’s not always possible (especially if the file is not too popular). Over time, the number of seeds slowly drops until eventually there are none and the torrent is dead (though it can be re-seeded by someone with a complete file). The life of a torrent varies according to how popular the file is. Generally speaking the more popular the torrent, the longer the torrent lasts.

After you’ve installed your client, you may have noticed that you can’t actually use it to look for stuff. What you have to do is look for websites that list torrent files for download. They usually have their own trackers and many cater to a particular type or style of media, such as Chinese movies or old TV shows. There are also more omnivorous sites out there – the most popular right now is Mininova. Unfortunately, it presently appears to be having technical difficulties so check back tomorrow. The Pirate Bay is one of the oldest sites of its kind and their tracker is widely used. Torrentspy is a decent enough site; my favourite part about it is the well-used comment section. A lot of times it descends into typical Internet garbage but at least they tell you if the file is screwed up or not. Careful or nervous types should note that Torrentspy is currently being sued by the MPAA; make of that what you will.

Among specialty sites, membership is usually a necessity. They like to keep track of their members’ upload ratios and make sure they stick to a decent rate. I only really visit two of this kind, though there are of course many more out there. ZCult deals with comic books and has a well-established forum. After you join you may have to post for a bit before you can see the trackers; it’s been a while since I signed up. ZCult isn’t as active as it used to be – I suspect many users have migrated to DC++, another file-sharing program (which I’ll get into some other time). There’s still comic book torrents being uploaded so I check it every now and then.

The other specialty site I use is MVGroup, which disseminates documentaries. There are many documentaries on here, dealing with a wide variety of subjects. There’s WW2 docs, docs from the BBC and National Geographic, docs about the Middle East, science, religion, etc. They don’t just list docs on their tracker, though, as the forum also includes a section for those uploaded to other trackers. If you’re looking for a documentary, this is the place to go.

One final caveat: when downloading files, be careful of those with an .exe extension (e.g. program.exe, or stuff.exe). Some people write viruses into these then upload them to trackers as harrypottermovie.exe (or something of that kind) to dupe people into running them. I’m not going to tell you not to download them since I occasionally do it myself, but don’t forget to use your virus scan and use common sense – there’s no reason a Harry Potter movie needs to be an executable and you can probably find another torrent on the same site anyway.

And on that note, I will have to end this. I was thinking about going on about other file-sharing programs but it’ll have to wait for another day. Happy downloading.

Part 2

Superhero comics are lame

There’s an interesting discussion by Noel Murray and Keith Phipps at the AV Club called “Are Superhero Comics Played Out?” I am in the “Hell yeah” camp. I don’t think many would disagree that much of the current writing on superhero comics is terrible. Marvel and DC are backsliding to the bad old ’90s with the awful, company-wide crossovers, only this time their audience is way smaller. The most interesting works are the ones that stay largely out of these crossovers, where writers are able to maintain a consistent tone and storytelling capacity while remaining free of editorial dictates about what needs to happen in the story.

I should add, however, that I also have problems with the underlying concept of superheroes. Let’s be honest that the idea is pretty ridiculous – a grown man dressing like a giant bat and fighting crime (for example). Don’t get me wrong, The Dark Knight Returns was a fascinating work but it breaks down once you remember that yes, it’s about a guy in a bat costume who goes around punching criminals. There’s no way you can play that character straight, not for any length of time and not for an audience of adults. Lest we forget, superheroes were originally created to appeal to children, but since kids have effectively stopped reading superhero books, we’re left with the Big 2 trying to appeal to adults using characters created for a way younger audience. The “adult” superhero books try to deal with more complex situations but it doesn’t really fit. They seem especially trite when you compare them (for example) to Persepolis or The Acme Novelty Library, books that were created to explore those more complex themes and do not come burdened with a past as light children’s entertainment.

I agree with Noel Murray’s statement that:

Batman, Superman, Spider-Man etc. have all had good runs, and those runs either have been or will be collected, and made available for new readers whenever they want them. If Detective Comics and Action were cancelled outright tomorrow, that might be the best thing that ever happened to the titles and to the characters in them. Focus on the reprints. They’re cheaper to produce, since the creative work has already been paid for; and the quality of the material is generally better.

But that doesn’t mean that DC and Marvel need to retire their chief moneymakers. (For one thing, they kind of have to keep publishing stories about them or they’ll lose the copyright.) Instead, they should set the good writers loose on a series of graphic novels. Ditch continuity altogether, and let them brainstorm the kinds of Superman and Avengers stories they’ve always longed to tell. Some can be traditional, like Kurt Busiek’s Avengers Forever, and some can be left-field homages, like Busiek’s Superman: Secret Identity. Some can be for mature audiences, and some for kids. A shift in focus will also give the top artists in the industry the chance to do their best work without the pressure of a monthly deadline. Both of the big two already do this to an extent, but maintaining monthly titles as well has overextended the creative teams and the characters.

Just retire the damn characters, they already have decades of adventures that can be endlessly reprinted. Come out with higher quality stuff when you have them and not be forced to churn out crap every month, and don’t feel the need to slavishly follow every single bit of continuity-linked minutiae. To quote Noel Murray quoting John Byrne, “When you reach an age where you start nitpicking and making fun of the clichés of superherodom, than it’s time to put your comic books away and leave them for those who still appreciate them.”

Note to self

When I started this thingamablog I thought I’d write more often on serious matters. A month later and it’s mostly scattered stuff about pop culture ephemera with no outstanding insights. I’m kind of annoyed at myself for doing this but I guess I am writing what I know. In the future I’ll try to write about more interesting stuff and actually include an original thought or two. Anyway, to make up for the shallow focus on pointless pop culture riffs, here’s more of the same: a clip of Stevie Wonder playing “Superstition” on Sesame Street. Check out the fake ending and the red-shirted kid having a funkilepsy.

TV on the Internet

There’s a website called TV Links that’s all about TV shows on the Internet (plus movies and documentaries). It has this streaming video thing of a lot of different shows. The selection is pretty wide but, as of now, is still pretty shallow. You can find Tales from the Crypt and The Colbert Report but not too many episodes of each. However, new stuff is being added daily so it’s only a matter of time before it gets comprehensive. I don’t really know how this thing is legal; they say they only provide links to where the stuff is stored but who knows how the courts will interpret that. Anyway, check it out before it gets sued into oblivion.