Things That I Know

General Links

ESPN.com
The industry standard for sports news and coverage. Outstanding columnists, breaking news, scoreboards and Page Two. Also great baseball, NFL, and boxing pages. Boxing page is amongst the best subsections of any sports site on the net, run by Dan Rafael.

CBS Sportsline
Very good overall site, including fantastic fantasy sports section. Also has a top of the line horse racing page, which to some of us matters.

Yahoo! Sports
Quickly gaining on ESPN.com as the top Internet sports site. Also has excellent breaking news and scoreboards, as well as one of the best boxing writers on the web in Kevin Iole.

USA Today Sports
Web version of the popular newspaper has far more online than they do in the paper. Home of Jeff Sagarin, and his ever important Sagarin Ratings. Great feature articles.

Sports Illustrated
Another web version of a print periodical, but with more than you can get from just the magazine.

New York Times Sports
Great place for in-depth pieces, as well as New York sports information. Some of the best writers, and being the sports section, is politically neutral for all to enjoy.

Baseball Links

Baseball Musings
Daily baseball information and continuously updated blog-style site. Great place to check often for up to date baseball information.

Baseball America
Great source of information on amateur baseball. If you like the baseball draft, or just following the college and high school levels, this is a must read publication.

Baseball Prospectus
Sabermetric home for stats and information.

Baseball Almanac
One of my favorite baseball websites. Not a great stats source, but great for finding all kinds of records, season, game and individual. This is more of a historical perspective of baseball.

Baseball Reference
Your online baseball encyclopedia. Doesn’t have much for sabermetric type stats, but it’s got all of your basics, and is easily searchable.

Retrosheet
Retrosheet is your Internet home for the numbers behind the numbers through baseball’s history. This is where you’ll find box scores of every game since 1957, and much, much more. This is also where you can download the files that contain all of this information to create your own databases and such. For true diehards.

Football Links

Rivals.com
Top resource for college scouting of high school football. Full of information on college and high school football.

KFFL.com
One of the best resources on the web for breaking sport news having to do with transactions. A must-read for any fantasy sports enthusiasts.

Boxing Links

BoxRec
The ultimate database of professional boxing. Fight-by-fight records for every fighter. Kind of like the Baseball Encyclopedia for boxing.

Boxing Scene
Great overall boxing sight, including interviews, previews, transcripts and breaking news.

Fight News
Best source on the Internet for breaking boxing news and up-to-date rankings and schedules.

Doghouse Boxing
Decent articles, but a very lively message board. A great site to interact with other boxing fans.

BBC Sport Boxing
Boxing doesn’t just take place in the United States. Great site to keep up with the European fighters.

Yahoo! Boxing
Previously mentioned Kevin Iole has turned Yahoo’s boxing page into a must read. Also has a better-than-average MMA page.

ESPN.com Boxing
Previously mentioned Dan Rafael is the top of the boxing media pyramid, as far as current events and breaking news go. If you’re a boxing die-hard, his Friday chat’s are a must read, as is his blog and notebook.

Sherdog.com
A great, interactive forum for all things MMA. Good MMA info is hard to come by, so this is a good site to know about.

Basketball Links

Real GM
If you ever thought, “hey, the Suns should trade Steve Nash for Kobe Bryant”, this is the site that will tell you if it’s even possible. One of the most inventive and in-depth sports sites ever created. They also have RealGM for baseball and football, but hoops is their bread and butter.

College Hoops Journal
If you can’t get enough college hoops, this is your site.

College Hoops Net
If you still can’t get enough college hoops, this is also your site.

Blogs

lukekohler.com
Personal friend of the site, this is a great blog for boxing, football and baseball. Includes more in-depth and researched articles than many typical blogs.

Sports Guy
Not a blog per se, but a great Internet sports columnist. Bill Simmons has become the industry standard for this era’s humorist sports columnist. A little too much Boston and basketball for me, but always a good read.

Deadspin
From the Gawker family of blogs, this is the sports child. Reading it daily will usually keep you up to date on the hot topics and off topics.

SPORTSbyBROOKS
Similar to Deadspin, but with more hot chicks. Updated quite often, and also a good source of what’s hot in sports at the moment. And great photos.

Awful Announcing
As they say, “putting announcers on notice since 2006,” this site keeps tabs on the announcers in the sports world. Being a former media type, I always enjoy a good sports media blog.

Kissing Suzy Kolber
Other than having a great name, this blog calls itself “humor site dedicated solely to the NFL”. They apparently won some blog awards in the past and offer consistent, high quality posts.

Sports Media Watch
Another blog that looks at the sports media world.

Fire Joe Morgan
Baseball blog with a great title. This site is run my some cats that are big-time sabermetric proponents, Boston fans, and TV writers. One of them is also apparently Dwight Shrute’s brother, Mose, on The Office.

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There are obviously many more great sports websites out there. If you feel I’ve left off a site that needs to be on this list, add it in the comments, or just tell me to add it.

Tags: Best of the Internet, Internet

How Does BitTorrent Work?

In the ever-evolving digital world, BitTorrent has secured a spot as one of the most effective ways to share files, particularly large files, with other users. BitTorrent is simply a protocol for sharing files, using multiple users who share “bits” of each file to cut down on the dependency of one host sharing with the downloader.

BitTorrent operates via an external client on a users computer. The process starts with downloading a .torrent file, which has the metadata, or information and instructions, your BitTorrent client needs to gather the pieces. Upon opening or running the .torrent file from your chosen client, the software will connect to a tracker that will sort out where to download the pieces of the file. The client will gather bits of the file from as many users are available, until the entire file is gathered. At this point, you have a full file that has been downloaded from many peers simultaneously.

Is BitTorrent Legal?

As with any file sharing protocols, the issue of legality is always front and center. With BitTorrent, the answer is both yes and no. The software and protocol itself is legal, but it is up to the user to determine if the files they are sharing are legal to share. Since the trackers and metadata files offer copyrighted material, they are not breaking any laws. But using those files to obtain copyrighted materials is where the legal issues lie.

BitTorrent, Inc. has a deal with several Hollywood studios to distribute it’s movies to paying downloaders legally. There are record companies that also utilize BitTorrent to distribute their material legally. But when it comes to peer-to-peer downloads, it is at the user’s discretion.

There are many websites that offer torrents for illegal downloads of movies and music albums. Downloading them from other users, and avoiding the record companies or movie studios is likely illegal. As with any digital downloads, if the material you are downloading is copyrighted, and you are not paying for it, you are likely breaking the law.

There are places however that allow users to trade material legally, such as live concert BitTorrent sites. These sites allow users to trade concerts via BitTorrent, with permission from the traded artists to do so. Some open source software projects also encourage using BitTorrent to help ease the load on their own servers.

Should I Use BitTorrent?

Well, that question is one you have to answer on your own. There are legal ways to use BitTorrent, so if you are a regular downloader of files legally, then it is a protocol worth being familiar with. Personally, I enjoy trading concerts with people, which is not illegal, and without BitTorrent, it would be nearly impossible. But when it comes to movies, television shows, and music albums, you are running the same risk as the old days of Napster. The major studios are not happy with the business they are losing to file-sharing software, and are going after people. The RIAA is suing teenagers for downloading songs, HBO is sending cease-and-desist letters to ISPs who are allowing BitTorrent use on their bandwidth, and movie studios are fighting the illegal distribution of their movies as well.

My suggestion is to be familiar with BitTorrent, because there are many, many legal files to be shared with this protocol. It is worth having it and being familiar with it. But legally speaking, my advice is to never download copyrighted material from anyone unless you are paying for it legally. Stick to iTunes and the like for copyrighted work. But get on board with BitTorrent for open source, or legally traded material. It is definitely worth knowing how it works and having it available.

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For more on BitTorrents:

Wikipedia
Protocol Specifications
BitTorrent Clients
DMOZ Open Directory Project BitTorrent Directory

Tags: BitTorrent, Computers, Copyright, Downloads, Internet, Software