News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by frio on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @06:28PM (#3979251)
Yes -- and no. You have to remember that outside of a few countries, unlimited internet isn't ubiquitous. Admittedly, NZ is basically a worst-case scenario (we're connected to the rest of the world by a single pipe, access to which is - was - priced expensively), and we've recently seen an explosion of data caps ($130 for 550GiB from one provider, now), but that's only a very recent development. Some ISPs charge up to $2 a GiB - still.

So, using BT and seeding becomes a less valid option. Still, I'll happily admit that things are changing, and if NZ is a yardstick of the bad, then BT as a distribution mechanism (backed by, say, Akamai or other CDNs) for legal content could definitely take off.

Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by uggedal on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @06:41PM (#3979308)
Woulden't bittorrent be beneficial in NZ for popular torrents since not everybody needs to download the entire content through the Southern Cross Cable but instead could download some from local NZ peers?
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by frio on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @09:35PM (#3979911)
In a perfect world: yes. In reality: your uploads count towards your data cap, and national traffic is no longer free (it used to be). When your data cap is expensive/small, seeding can cost you a significant amount of money.
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by fromhet on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @07:11PM (#3979449)
Then there would have to be some feature that filtered non-NZ-peers. Would be great, but I don't think any bittorrent implementation supports this (yet).
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by Drbble on Wednesday May 16, 2012 @01:28AM (#3980630)
A firewall rule on your router should work?
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by insn on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @08:19PM (#3979675)
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by wmf on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @09:03PM (#3979817)
That's local as in Local Area Network as in it discovers other peers inside your house. To discover other peers in the same ISP you'll need to wait a few more years for ALTO.
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by kalmi10 on Tuesday May 15, 2012 @09:03PM (#3979822)
Local Peer Discovery is for LANs
Re:Wil Wheaton: Yo Hollywood, Let Me Download Ubuntu by zurn on Wednesday May 16, 2012 @04:38AM (#3981066)
> outside of a few countries, unlimited internet isn't ubiquitous

Reference?