Controversial (?) nugget

Since I feel like being non-wiki and controversial today, below is the link to the short movie I mentioned at the end of our class, as a slight counterpoint to the two other movies we watched. It is not a pro-conservative movie, since it is not a US production at all - it is actually a promo of a new Japaneese anime series, Full Metal Panic: Second Raid. But, whether one likes anime or not, I find it an excellent, graphic explanation of why military intervention in another country may be justified.

Opening this can of worms further, in order to download the movie you need to install (assuming you don't have it) a BitTorrent software, as the series has not been officialy translated into English and the only available and unofficial trailers with English subtitles are distributed that way. BitTorrent technology is actually a good subject for another digital fluency nugget. It represents one of the (in)famous peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution tool, is open sourced, and used to download not only the pirated stuff but for completly legal large files (like Linux distributions (i.e. operating system install files)).

BitTorrent can be used by software developers who want to ease the bandwidth strain on their servers. If a developer offers a large file for download, the bandwidth limit of their server may be exceeded if a large number of people download the file. By offering the file via BitTorrent, they transfer much of the bandwidth burden to downloaders of the file. For example, the demo of the flight sim X-Plane is offered via BitTorrent, as well as the World of Warcraft ingame patches. Another such example is PlaneShift, a free open-source MMORPG, which uses BitTorrent for its primary method of distribution. The fan-film Star Wars: Revelations is distributing two DVD images as well as the film by itself via BitTorrent, and Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning, a feature-length film, was provided for download via the network besides a centralized server. The NetBSD operating system version 1.6.2 and later as well as most major Linux distributions use BitTorrent as an alternative way of distributing ISO images of their releases.

Following the success of the BitTorrent protocol, Bram Cohen, its creator, was hired in 2004 by Valve Software to develop a means of distributing patches and other content for online video games, proving that there are some less controversial reasons for the development of this technology. While many legal files, including Linux distributions, are available on other networks such as eDonkey2000 and Gnutella these are placed there by users and not generally part of the official distribution mechanism. So far, BitTorrent seems to be the most popular P2P protocol adopted officially for legal uses.

So, after this intro, here is the promised link. File (avi) needs to be opened with a BitTorrent application, and size is 45mb. I hope you enjoy it :)

PS. For a list of BitTorrent clients to chose from, see Wiki :)