Microsoft postpones Windows 7 public beta

By Borimol
in Back Page News

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Proficient

Dwarden

Posted
Posted

the point is that if the torrent and source seeding server is 'OFFICIAL' hoster e.g. by MS then there is close to zero chance (unless someone figured out how crack SHA-1)

not to mention such file which You start to download from such 'trusted' official source is always correct content and undamaged even if the downloading program uses then other mirrors/sources due to file chunk and total file hash verify...

today You can find lot of serious firms using BT as secondary or even primary way to distribue theirs software / files while HTTP/FTP becoming just addition to the mix ...

noone here awaits MS just use only BT ... but ignoring it means ignoring that part of population who uses is regular for legal purpose ...

Grand Master

Smigit

Posted
Posted
There's a problem with the fact that people don't understand the meaning of the phrase "official torrent". Once a piece of software is distributed via torrent, people will naturally assume that a torrent download link at TPB is much the same as one from Microsoft. In fact some non-conformist tryhards might go so far as to only download the torrent from a "non-M$" source, just to show how cool they are. There's no control once something is released into the wilderness that is torrents. There's no way to explain to an average user that one torrent is not the same as another.

You realise World of Warcraft patches are distributed through P2P technologies too right? Theres numerous ways to safetly make use of things such as torrents or other distribution systems that leverages other peoples resources in a safe manner.

Experienced

7Dash8

Posted
Posted
You realise World of Warcraft patches are distributed through P2P technologies too right? Theres numerous ways to safetly make use of things such as torrents or other distribution systems that leverages other peoples resources in a safe manner.

World of warcraft patches aren't the same as an operating system.

There is no guarantee that if MS officially supports torrents as a distribution method, that opportunistic people won't hijack the entire process to distribute malware to users who don't understand that one torrent link is not the same as another. The very fact that there are people who have been downloading and installing unofficial pre-release versions of Windows 7 shows that security is not the major concern for end users when they click a torrent link. HTTP links on Microsoft's site on the other hand are 100% secure.

There's also a side issue that by pointing everyone to torrents to get major downloads, MS would in effect be introducing a whole new range of people to a distribution channel used primarily for illegal material. By telling people how to use a torrent in explicit detail, MS would also be giving them the tools they need to start pirating. Not everyone out there knows about or uses torrents, but if it becomes an official distribution channel for major software, piracy will only get worse.

Grand Master

Smigit

Posted
Posted

I was going to edit my last post but since you beat me heres a new one,

There's a problem with the fact that people don't understand the meaning of the phrase "official torrent". Once a piece of software is distributed via torrent, people will naturally assume that a torrent download link at TPB is much the same as one from Microsoft. In fact some non-conformist tryhards might go so far as to only download the torrent from a "non-M$" source, just to show how cool they are. There's no control once something is released into the wilderness that is torrents. There's no way to explain to an average user that one torrent is not the same as another.

You said just here that people will deliberately avoid using Microsoft.com to download the torrent files and thus they are at risk. Might I ask how that is any different to the same users going to another source to get an exe file that's being mirrored instead? Either way as soon the user gets the file from elsewhere they are at some risk, regardless of whether its a torrent or not.

The advantage of torrents however is that there is less incentive to go elsewhere as you avoid the situation where the entire server basically goes belly up and users are forced to use mirrors or wait. It would have been a lot easier for MS to provide the necessary torrenting files and thus allow users to download the files in a safe manner while going to the MS site.

Also you don't have to introduce the user to torrenting at all. MS could implement their own application for distributing the files that while it internally is a bit torrent client externally it abstracts the interface that most bittorrent clients have. Namely they could have their own version of something like Blizzards World of Warcraft patching client. Many users probably wouldn't even realise it's P2P based nor does it compel or allow users to share or partake in piracy.

MS currently, or in the past, has even had a download manager that was used by connect.microsoft.com to allow download resuming or large files. They could possibly even use that and just add a P2P backbone to it although unfortunately I believe it's an IE only client.

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