Live Spins

[Rick Stevens]

On Mon, 2007-11-12 at 11:08 -0800, R A Jon Hamelin wrote:
> Frank Cox wrote:
> > On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:34:57 -0800
> > R A Jon Hamelin <jon_hamelin at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > 
> >> I have had bad experiences with torrents and 
> >> will not use them again.
> > 
> > What's wrong with the torrents?  I downloaded F8 that way the other day at a
> > very healthy pace.
> > 
>   Hi Frank:
> 
> A little over a year ago I downloaded a file - 4.3 GB - from what I 
> thought was a safe site. After installing the program, my computer 
> rebooted by itself and all hell broke loose. I no longer had a 
> functioning BIOS. In addition it wiped my hard drives. Checking with the 
> site in question, I discovered that the file should have been 3.8 GB.
> 
> In my opinion bit torrents are a security issue. Having lost 3 days 
> worth of irreplaceable photos from a commercial shoot and the contract, 
> it was an expensive lesson for me.

Which is why, when possible, you should check any downloads against
their sha1sum.  It's even a good idea to get the sha1sum data from
several sites and compare them as well.  Make sure all the sha1sum data
match, THEN check your download against it.

Anything you download from the net is a security risk.  You have to
take measures to ensure you're safe.
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- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- CDN Systems, Internap, Inc.                http://www.internap.com -
-                                                                    -
-  BASIC is the Computer Science version of `Scientific Creationism' -
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