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Aftrunner

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Bird Bird Bird Grand Master

Bird Bird Bird

Posted
Posted

Chandamama days !

 

As a kid, I was racked by guilt each time I read a comic book. They were banned in the house. Reading comics was not permitted, bringing them home was unpardonable, buying them was unthinkable. My mother’s sensibilities having been formed by voracious reading of Sarita, a magazine that stood for new age thinking (bah!) in the late eighties.

 

Though she was totally against my reading Raj Comics, my mother quite encouraged Champak, Nandan, Balhans and the like. Mostly because they had goody-goody stories about children my age (dealing with cute little problems like an upcoming exam or a class bully) and were published by reputed publications but also because they weren’t high on action, like the books I preferred more.

 

I personally had had enough of bullies and often wished I could break ribs like Doga did, or fry them with nuclear blasts like Parmanu could do (he never did though). Champak etc. were all eminently readable but they imposed a world too realistic upon an age group in desperate need of the fantastic. Even at their imaginative best, they never came close to the thrill that came from watching Super Commando Dhruv thwart a giant hulking monster with nothing more than a simple idea.

 

In time, at my cousins’ place, I discovered Chandamama. At first glance it appeared no different from what was allowed to me. In fact, it looked even worse with stories all set in villages or ancient kingdoms with kings and queens dressed in what appeared costumes from Ramanand Sagar’s serials.

 

The characters were travellers, farmers, jewel merchants, evil landlords, widows, princes, ministers, and… (gasp!) obedient children. My heart sank. What was all the more alienating was that my cousins subscribed to the Oriya edition called Jahnamamu. I didn’t read Oriya then (blame Kendriya Vidyalaya). Overall, it seemed to me that all of my mother’s favourite publications seemed to be underestimating my intelligence, or worse — trying to lead it. I didn’t like that.

 

I can enjoy a copy of Chandamama now more than I could when I was eight years old. But eight-year-olds are unforgiving. I read what was allowed to me with happiness, but with acute aloofness. Those were not the worlds I pictured myself in. My cousins seemed to take to Champak immediately. Partly because it was the type of fun that Chandamama rarely ever got, but also because its characters were set in contemporary reality as opposed to Chandamama‘s ‘far away and long ago’.

 

There was however, that one time when I had nothing to read but the Oriya issues of Chandamama (which, as I have already said, I couldn’t read). I got my aunt to read me a story I chose at random because it had an interesting picture. I got hooked!

 

It must have been my aunt’s patient way, going over parts that I missed again and explaining the meanings of words I didn’t understand. She must have regretted it later. I am a habit former, and usually never rested till after a whole issue was finished. Everyone tried to get me to learn to read Oriya in the vacations but I decided mine was the easier way.

 

My favourite stories in Chandamama were the serial adventures that ran in the middle of each issue. Ones involving inter-clan battles fought with magic and heroes and monsters. Those were the first epics I knew (Mahabharat was unfashionable because everyone liked it).

 

I felt Chandamama existed in a different universe from the one shared byChampak and Nandan. It never had talking animals (unless they were magical creatures). Everything about it was alien to everything about the other magazines. It seemed Chandamama even refused to acknowledge a world where animals could talk. There WAS the burden of the ‘moral lesson’ to be sure, but it was easy to ignore. Chandamama held its thrall over me till later years when Champak started carrying kiddie science fiction. Then some time while I was not looking, the magazine stopped publishing.

 

Now it looks like everything else in the market. But I am glad it is still here. And I hope it stays around. Just like it has for the last 60 years.

 

\m/

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Bird Bird Bird Grand Master

Bird Bird Bird

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Torrent records !

 

In the near half decade that TorrentFreak has been covering the latest BitTorrent news and developments, every now and then we also have time to discuss BitTorrent trivia. Today we’ll bring you a list of 5 single torrent files that each broke an impressive record, from the largest through to the oldest, and the one that transferred most data.

 

The Largest Torrent

When we refer to the largest torrent we mean the single .torrent file that downloads the most data, not the size of the .torrent file itself. There are several huge torrent files active at the moment, but the record goes to a torrent with a 746.70 GB collection of all 2010 World Cup soccer matches (~ 6GB per half). This torrent was released 4 months ago and is still active with a handful of downloaders.

 

Another sizeable torrent that was released just a few days ago is the archive of the late Geocities.com that was shut down by Yahoo last year. The 641.32 GB torrent has received a fair bit of attention from tech journalists and is well seeded at the moment.

 

Downloading these torrents nowadays is a lot easier and cheaper than a few years ago. In 2001 when BitTorrent first went public the cheapest hard drive cost $238.00, and that was for just 40 GB. At the time, downloading a file of this size would have required a $4522 investment. Even in 2005 you would still had to invest $500 to get this much storage cheaply (5×160 GB).

 

The first commercial 1TB hard drive, one that could store the entire 746.70 GB, wasn’t released until 2007. Times sure have changed a lot.

 

The Oldest Torrent

The torrent file that has been around for the longest time according to our knowledge is The Matrix ASCII. We already crowned this one the oldest torrent back in 2005, and as of today it is still active with a few downloaders and only one seeder.

 

The torrent file in question was created in December 2003 when sites like isoHunt, The Pirate Bay and Torrentz.com were only a few months old and when Facebook and YouTube didn’t yet exist. Thus far, this torrent has survived a mind boggling 2500 days.

 

The Matrix ASCII

 

 

The Largest Swarm

We know that BitTorrent is used by millions of people, but which torrent was shared by the most people at once? According to our records this honor goes to the first episode of Heroes season 3, which appeared on BitTorrent September 23, 2008.

 

On the first day the torrent ‘Heroes.S03E01.HDTV.XviD-0TV’ had a swarm (seeders + leechers) of 144,663 peers, a record that hasn’t been broken since. Today, most than two years later the episode has been downloaded more than 7 million times and at the time of writing it is still active.

 

The Most Files

The next record is the one for the most files in a single torrent. This is a tricky one, because we know that there are torrents which link to millions of files, but none of these are indexed by regular torrent sites. With this many files, the size of the torrent alone can go over 10 MB and most torrent indexes have a restriction on the filesize of a torrent file.

 

The torrent with the most files that we’ve seen on public indexers is a copy of Magic Workstation that was uploaded 8 months ago. The download is only 4.01 GB in total but has 35,256 files in total.

 

The Most Data Transferred

The final record we will discuss is the torrent that has resulted in the transfer of the most data. This record goes to a release of Blizzard’s StarCraft 2 which came out three months ago. The most popular torrent file for this 7.19 GB game has been downloaded 2.3 million times, totalling a massive 15.77 Petabytes.

 

Interestingly, the legit copies of the game sold by Blizzard may have transferred even more data. All download copies of StarCraft 2 have been distributed through Blizzard’s very own BitTorrent downloader. Unfortunately Blizzard’s tracker doesn’t provide any stats so we don’t know if the official beats the illegitimate counterpart traffic wise.

Edited by F@tm@n
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Nemo Rookie

Nemo

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Posted (edited)

The man who puts everything you have done in your life to shame.

Ok, so what is your life's biggest achievement ? topper in class ? 98% ? mba ? 7 figure salary ? 8 pack abs ? bench pressing twice your weight ? being a chick magnet ? xbwaks achievements ?

 

What ever it is, rest assured Byron White has topped them, owned them and has done the literal equivalent of kicking your a*s, petting your dog and making out with your wife at the same time (and making you watch all that).

 

Some of his accomplishments-

 

All-American halfback.

The NFL’s leading rusher in 1938 and 1940.

Rhodes scholar.

Decorated war veteran.

United States Deputy Attorney General.

Supreme Court Justice.

 

Now that is a great man.

Respect.

 

 

 

416px-US_Supreme_Court_Justice_Byron_White_-_1976_official_portrait.jpg

Edited by Nemo
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