Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with legitimate

Quality Dedicated Hosting that allows Bittorrent Tracker? Have Budget.

mrflip — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:01:41 -0800

I will soon be distributing a bunch of large scientific and research datasets, all entirely legal for redistribution, many as large as a few gigabytes. Bittorrent is the best solution for this. Many respectable webhosting sites don't allow Bittorrent trackers; too many of those that do seem fly-by-night. I have a budget for this and want something respectable and reliable. Recommendations? My current host (Bluehost) has 6000GB/transfer a month, but I hear that these large caps can often be illusory; I want to be prepared for one to ten TB of traffic per month. I also need to be able to receive similarly large datasets, which I think will be much easier over bittorrent than asking folks to POST >1GB over ADSL and have it crap out after 3 hrs transfer (not to mention hitting CPU limits).

Amazon S3, at $0.18/GB, would be ~ $1000/mo for 6000 GB. I've reviewed most of the previous hosting q'ns, including Dealing with spikes in website popularity, but none of those suggestions make this work financially.

This clearly calls for bittorrent, but I've had real trouble finding dedicated hosting that will allow me to install a tracker. Bitrot has happened to the last question along these lines, and too many of the directories for tracker sites seem populated by rug merchants and fly-by-night operations.

I'm willing to spend money -- preferably in the $100-$200/mo range -- and want something respectable and reliable. If you tell me it will cost more than that then so be it. I'm figuring that the bittorrent solution (combined with throttling, ratios and a cooperative userbase) will keep me in the 1 TB/month range.

Can you recommend dedicated hosting that will allow me to run a tracker?

Photography Laureates - info please

ObscureReferenceMan — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:09:04 -0800

Is anyone familiar with the web site Photography Laureates? My Dad (a retired aerospace engineer) works as a professional photographer taking pictures of local high school and little league sports. Although relatively new to the field, he is quite good - both technically and artistically. But he has not been "in the game" for a long time to know the ins & outs, and potential scams.

He found a web site that runs photo contests. It is photolaureates.org. He submitted a photo, and they let him know he was a finalist for the $6500 prize. However, to confirm his entry he must pay a fee ($59).

Doing a google search on Photography Laureates resulted in a LOT of links to photography forums where people are asking the same question: is it a scam. And the concensus is, it is.

On the other side of the coin, I managed to find a link to a PR statement from Photography Laureates saying that they they are legitimate company, don't believe what people are saying, blah blah blah.

My feeling is Photography Laureates is like "Who's Who". You pay a fee to be listed in the book, then you buy the book, and can show your friends that you're in "Who's Who".

One other data point... One of the forum links I found asking "Is it a scam" was a recent one. This guy was told that he had to respond by November 3 to enter the 2007 contest. My Dad just recently got his email, but it is also for the 2007 contest. And his deadline is 12/4. (One yearly contest/month??)

So... My question is not is this a scam (I am 99% convinced that it is). But rather, does anybody know anything about this company at all? How long have they been around? How often do they run contests? Stuff like that. Thanks!

Too good to be truly existing.

divabat — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:30:46 -0800

How do you tell if an organization is legitimate? I've been granted an interesting opportunity by a non-profit, but I cannot tell for sure if they are legitimate or not.

Some things that seem off:

* They mention partnerships with other organizations and people on their website, but I couldn't find anything on those organizations' and people's websites to back them up

* They seemed rather vague about the opportunity

* The head of the non-profit does exist, and he is who he says he is (a lecturer at a Singaporean university). However, I couldn't find many references for the other people involved.

* They didn't show up on a Network For Good search, or an IRS search, though they did show up on another nonprofit search. (Charity Navigator, I think. Or I'm confusing them with NFG.) Thing is, I'm not sure those searches are completely reliable, because another non-profit I'm closely involved with doesn't have much info on those lists either, so I'm not sure.

* I can't find any third-party references to said opportunity; only Craigslist postings, PRWeb press releases, a MySpace profile, and a mention in a blog or two.

How else can I verify their legitimacy? They claim to be PayPal and eBay-verified. Is there a way to check this?

(for those who want to investigate: I'm referring to this, hosted and organized by this.)

Legitimate p2p examples?

spock — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:32:56 -0800

I need compelling examples of legitimate/legal uses of bittorrent or other p2p applications/protocols. I'm an I.T. guy on a committee that advises a university Chancellor on tech matters. I'm disturbed by the university's bowing to pressure by the RIAA and the responses being taken. We already have a Packeteer in place that (while not banning it) "prioritizes" p2p traffic into such a narrow amount of bandwidth as to make it all but unusable. Now the university is looking into Audible Magic's CopySense appliance/application. Besides the fact that such things are easily defeated by encrypting the shared files (and are therefore a huge waste of university dollars) they also give the university the ability to completely shut off the functionality p2p programs (allegedly). It seems to me that this is wrong-headed — like making VCRs nonfunctional simply because they CAN (and are) used to make copies of copyrighted material.

It seems to me that the best way to make a case against this is to cite situations or cases for which bittorrent or other p2p applications or protocols are used legitimately. I'd appreciate some examples to cite.

Is this site TopSiteReviews legit or just a shill?

Gyan — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 17:08:22 -0800