The Right Way

Napster's Logo

Who can forget the widespread popularity of Napster in 2000? The dramatic increase in Internet usage during the 1990s created the perfect environment for peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing to emerge, and most of what was shared at the time was MP3 files. Naturally the Recording Industry (RIAA) brought a lawsuit, and the immediate effect was that Napster was shut down in July 2001. But this was only a temporary setback as there were now countless millions of people around the world who knew the benefits of P2P sharing.

So it wasn’t long before Morpheus and Kazaa took Napter’s place, and P2P sharing continued its growth. The RIAA wasn’t even close to learning its lesson, and they took StreamCast and Grokster, the companies behind Morpheus and Kazaa respectively, to court for copyright infringement. The RIAA was not immediately successful in suing these second-generation P2P firms, and in the mean time it resorted to suing thousands of individuals who had used these programs. After a protracted legal battle, A U.S. Federal court ruled against the P2P companies in September 2006.

And as P2P networks such as Kazaa began to decline due to legal pressure, the use of BitTorrent for file sharing surged. While Kazaa was a software program used with its own file sharing network, BitTorrent was simply a protocol for communications between computers. The central concept behind BitTorrent is that every user who’s downloading (leeching) is also uploading (seeding) to others. This reduces or removes the burden on a web server to provide a particular file, and it also allows users to host their own files for others to download.

Many applications (or clients) have been written for the BitTorrent protocol, and neither the clients nor the protocol can be associated with copyright-infringing uses – they are simply technologies in their own right. However, every popular P2P system has something which links its users together. In the case of torrents, websites (known as trackers) allow users to upload and download .torrent files which contain information about a particular file and the address of the server that keeps track of the clients currently leeching or seeding that file.

And as websites, trackers are not directly tied to any one individual or location and are easily renamed or relocated. One of the first trackers to gain popular recognition was SuprNova.org. From 2002 to 2004, the Slovenian website was widely regarded as the largest torrent tracker, but in December of 2004, the website’s owner was forced to take it offline due to legal threats.

However, just two months earlier in October 2004, ThePirateBay.org was launched in Sweden, and it would become the most widely recognized BitTorrent tracker in the world. The Pirate Bay still holds that title, and it’s still in operation today despite intense legal opposition. In the Fall of 2009, a Swedish court ordered The Pirate Bay’s Internet provider (ISP) to block its traffic and the site’s owners to cease operations, but the site was quickly relocated to an ex-NATO territory within the Netherlands. And even after that, The Pirate Bay is taking some steps to avoid more lawsuits and advising BitTorrent trackers and users to move to a new “trackerless” system. While the future of The Pirate Bay is uncertain, it’s clear that peer-to-peer file sharing isn’t going anywhere.

So what are people sharing that creates so much controversy? Almost all of the copyrighted works that are “pirated” through torrents and P2P networks are digital media such as movies and music. The reason so many turn to file sharing is that media companies such as Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment are clinging to outdated pricing models. People today consume an incredible amount of digital media content, and many either can’t afford to pay for it or need their media in an unrestricted digital format.

For example, Green Day’s latest album costs $13.99 on Amazon, and even if you paid that much, there’s no easy way to get the music from the CD onto a computer or MP3 player. You could also buy MP3s online for under $1 each, but that is still too expensive for most. This creates a barrier that supply and demand won’t tolerate, and as a result, file sharing is meeting that demand. It’s illegality has forced P2P technologies to evolve towards decentralized liability, and as popular as P2P sharing is today, it’s fair to say it’s been wildly successful.

Whether avid gaming enthusiasts or just typical users, everyone wants the best bang for their buck. And when it comes to buying processors, there are hidden opportunities in some product lines. When high-end processors are manufactured, there is always a certain percentage of those which do not meet the highest standards.

The AMD Phenom II X3

In particular, there may be problems with one or more cores, the amount of heat generated, their highest clock speed, or defects in the cache memory. If cache memory is at fault, then the faulty memory can be disabled allowing the processor to still be sold as a low-end model (e.g., Celeron & Sempron).

However, when cores are disabled at the factory because they’ve failed a test, there may not be any real-world problem with the core. This would be the case if the manufacturer needed to be more stringent in its testing methodology in order to force more processors into the budget model lines. And in most cases, these disabled cores can be unlocked and will perform without any significant issues, but currently, only AMD processors support unlocking disabled cores. In this article, we’ll give you an overview of how to do this and take advantage of value-priced processors.

First Step. Decide on a processor model which comes with one or more disabled cores. Currently, AMD ships some Phenom, Athlon, and Sempron models with single, dual, and triple cores that can be unlocked to use the additional cores. Everything depends on the processor model, so make sure you’re buying a processor with disabled cores. You should also be aware that you may not be able to unlock only one disabled core if there are others also disabled. It’s usually all or nothing, although Asus recently released new BIOS revisions which allow cores to be unlocked independently.

Second Step. Decide on a motherboard which supports AMD processors and unlocking. Though each motherboard will have its own set of options, most have an option somewhere in the BIOS (System Setup) labeled Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC). You can usually change this setting from “Disabled” to “Auto,” “Per Core,” or “All Cores.” However, use the “Per Core” option with care as some configurations can cause your system to be unstable. And with some motherboards, you may have to update the firmware (flashing the BIOS) for ACC to work properly.

Third Step. With your disabled cores now unlocked, run a stress test to ensure your system is stable. A stress test forces your processor to work at full capacity by having it process an algorithm many thousands of times.

A Quad-Core Layout

If there are any problems with your disabled cores, you will usually see errors after only a few minutes – though it is still a good idea to run the test for at least 20 minutes to ensure stability. Prime95 is an excellent utility for running stress tests, and we highly recommend it.

The Odds. The chances are very good that you’ll be successful, and the success rate is rumored to be around 70%. Accurate numbers are hard to come by because of course AMD will not provide statistics. But if you’re unsuccessful, the worst case scenario is that you bought a processor which only operates as advertised.

Also, for those of you who succeed, remember that your processor will be generating more heat from the additional cores and a stock heatsink and fan (HSF) may no longer be adequate. It’s usually a good idea to invest in a decent HSF, and ThermalTake and Zalman often have the best products in this area.

Real World. For example, we built a system with a Phenom II X2 545 processor, a Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H motherboard, and a Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 1333Mhz stick of RAM. The Phenom processor with free shipping costs $89 on Newegg, but after unlocking the two disabled cores, it’s now the equivalent of the Phenom II X4 945 (a quad-core) which costs $166.

With over 24% of the global market share, there is no doubt that Mozilla Firefox is the leading alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. No small part of its success and the most important design goal behind Firefox was its minimal feature-set and strong support for extensibility. The intent was to eliminate the “bloat” found in other browsers at the time and allow the Mozilla community to add new features. In this article, we’ll talk about our favorite add-ons.

LastPass. This is an absolute must for anyone with more than a few website user accounts. LastPass can encrypt and store your account information on their servers, and you only have to enter one password (hence the name) to log on with LastPass and gain access to your collection of user accounts. It can then automatically enter your usernames and passwords when you visit a page with a login form.

We think you’ll probably want to change some of the default settings. LastPass should remember your email address, but not your password. This means you’ll need to log into LastPass every time you open Firefox, but it’s the best tradeoff between security and convenience. You’ll likely also want to turn off some of the LastPass notifications (“Save Site” is the most essential). We also recommend against using the “AutoLogon” feature as you won’t always want to log on when a login form is displayed.

Xmarks. This extension both backs up your bookmarks and synchronizes them with your user accounts on other computers. It’s great for syncing your home and work computers and for restoring your bookmarks when moving to a new user profile. Xmarks also offers to store your passwords, but it’s a relatively new feature which isn’t as good as LastPass.

Lazarus. Something that has always plagued web browsers is the loss of text entries due to a session timeout or other problem. Until Firefox incorporates some kind of recovery option, Lazarus is an extension every Firefox user should have. You no longer have to worry whether the website you’re using is saving draft copies of your work.

Web of Trust. Referred to as WOT, this extension allows its community to avoid visiting untrustworthy websites. It’s almost surprising that this service has become popular as a browser add-on and not as an offering from Google or Yahoo, but nevertheless WOT is very useful. Now you can readily tell which links are spam when you search for anti-virus products.

It’s worth pointing out that WOT is meant to help you avoid malware-ridden, fraudulent, and inappropriate sites. It isn’t meant for rating the organization behind the website, but you can sometimes get that information from the “scorecard” on mywot.com from users’ comments.

Summing Up. These four extensions are the best out there now, but there are certainly some very interesting developments coming in Firefox 4. Cloud computing is looming large in the future, and Mozilla’s Weave and Prism projects will likely cause a huge shift in our expectations of modern web browsers.