Bittorrent DNA - Redirection of funds...

I just discovered BitTorrent DNA today... Turns out that it had been covertly installed on my machine. For once in my life, I'm thankful for Windows Firewall's constant pestering. So what is DNA? To quote BitTorrent: "DNA is a content delivery service that uses a private and secure managed peer network to give you faster and more reliable access to your favorite websites and videos." (Source). To (cynically) rephrase that: DNA's a way for content hosts to avoid costs by forwarding them to the end-user.

Until recently, I had a (theoretically) unmetered connection. As such, I wouldn't really have minded something like DNA, had I been told about its existence. Hell, I'm more than happy when I'm legally torrenting to give back when I'm taking. My personal problem lies with silently installing services in the background to do this. It seems to harm the user (directly costing them in bandwidth fees) and the reputation of the content providers and the BitTorrent corporation themselves.

My proposed solution to content providers? Find a distribution method you can afford.

No more Flock

So... I got bored of Flock. After installing the Windows 7 RC, I didn't bother to install Flock. As I mentioned in my last entry, I think it was just a bit too cluttered... Next up, boredom inspired by the universe.

Using Flock

I felt like trying Flock... So I did. First impressions? A bit cluttered. I think that's pretty well offset by the integration with various social networking tools and other "Web 2.0" sites. I've dropped in most of my accounts, Youtube, Facebook, Flickr etc. and it seems to play pretty nicely with them all. Well, except YouTube, which it keeps saying I'm logged out of. It also has good support of Firefox extensions, being Firefox-based, so I get to keep X-marks, Adblock Plus and Greasemonkey with no problems. Overall? Pretty good. I'll have to use it for longer before I commit permanently though...