Being alive when I am and being interested many things  I am very much a practitioner of the Network Effect, of what Michael Hart called "Replicator Technology"….that value is derived from the use and spread of a thing.
One  example of this is is my interest in Old Time Radio. When I was a kid I was lucky to hear a show or two. Later on I stumbled across groups trading shows on tape. When the intertubes went Borg over the gestalt folks moved the tapes to bits. I had a hand in helping folks build collections so that they could then help spread them to others. The shows flowed, ones and twos becomes hundreds and thousands. Then the Internet Archive opened it's doors to the Old Time Radio bits, finally there was one place to find the most amazing collection. Now the Internet Archive is taking things a step further.Â
Bit Torrenting turns  moving bits from point to point into an easy way to help  spread those bits to many points, its very nature turns each user into a distributor .. .another hand that makes the work of sharing  easier for all.Â
"The Internet Archive is now offering over 1,000,000 torrents including our live music concerts, the Prelinger movie collection, the librivox audio book collection, feature films, old time radio, lots and lots of books, and all new uploads from our patrons into Community collections (with more to follow)."
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If I were wearing a hat I would tip it to the folks at the Internet Archive. They are constantly coming it with new and better ways to get the bits that make up their amazing collections to the folks who want them and to further help grow the collections. 
To download the Torrent of the files in the item, click the Torrent link at the bottom of the download box; your Torrent client (such as transmission and uTorrent) can use the Torrent file you get to …
RaspberyPiratebox
So yeah, this was something I had in mind for one of the RPis…and playing around in the shell tonight I realized I had been caught up in having worked in the cramped spaces of routers and chumbys….in a RPi there is so much damn room and tools (and aptget) to really get into trouble. Â For instance….
-Streaming netcast/shoutcast server….put the link on the craptive portal page…queue it up with whatever propaganda/music/spoken word/experimental sounds. Same for moving images, a nice little vlc instance serving up a playlist of good stuff… think about PirateMovieNight at your local hangout…ya know everyone has a device that can connect…yep. Bonus, if you have accesss to a hdmi able big screen or projector….well bobs your uncle.Â
-If you added a second wifi device you could have your pirate box latch on to an existing wifi network and proxy traffic from the piratebox wifi device to it. Alternatively you culd play with meshing, have pirate boxes sensing each other and sharing the wealth.Â
-Pirate Radio Station… Add a souped up FM transmitter to the audio out and advertise the frequency on the captive portal page. You can either have a precanned playlist or let the users pick/upload &pick. Would be great for gatherings, actions and protests. Make a few of them, mesh/synch playlists or simply repeater them.Â
Oh the possibilities…..anyone else working on these sorts of things?
#raspberrypi  #piratebox  
It is amazing how fast kids latch on to something. The RPi has already earned its keep in the house. The boys want to be known as he RPi Posse, which given they consider themselves Bronies is a nice step up. Ben played with Scratch on the RPi and we quickly got it installed on his main desktop….and off he went to an evening of Scratch tinkering. Isaac is planning up a media server he can attach to any tv such that he can always watch MLP and the Yogs. From small things come much fun perhaps. For myself, it is such a nice environment to play in given the last couple of months I have been playing on the Chumby. The RPi seems extravagant in comparison. This is perhaps the best purchase I have made in a long while. 
I do not know how or why, but a 12 week wait noticed from Newark  resulted in a RaspberryPi showing up at my door this afternoon. Frabulous day.. +raspberrypi
