GBuffer.net

For the impatient… head over directly to the direct download links

For those of you who don't know, HBO recently put the first 15 episodes of their new show 'In Treatment' online. That was good news so the first thing I did was head over there and checkout their 2 min preview. Looked quite interesting, except for the part where the full episodes can't be watched from my country (India), or for that matter any country other than USA [Haven't confirmed this yet].

Now this has got to be one of the lamest attempts to block people from outside USA watching your shows. This is the probably one of the biggest reasons thepiratebay is doing so well. Besides this goes directly against one of my most fundamental beliefs that once information is online anyone in the world should be able to access it. Sure I could catch the episodes on youtube, but then youtube has never been my favorite for offering such low quality videos without giving you a choice. HBOs online stream was much bigger and was on the border line of acceptable. So this is what I wanted and this is what I was going to get.

The first step is to find the .flv files they were linking to. I thought that if I get a direct link to the .flv file I may not have to even watch it online.

Unfortunately I realized that the .flv file was actually a redirect script, to redirect the person based on his IP address. This is another lame attempt to block people. So I just went and found a proxy in USA and managed to get the direct links to the actual .flv file. Turns out that once you have the direct links to the files, you don't even need to be behind a proxy. Might as well make HBO pay for the bandwidth.

In fact even if you are in USA, this will probably be a more convenient method of watching the show, as you can just queue up all the episodes in your favorite download manager and then watch it in your favorite media player.

And before I forget, probably the reason you came here, the…

Direct download links

Laura:
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I always find it hard as to why there are not so many genius hackers out there making a gazillion dollars a day hacking high profile government servers. And then I read this Q&A session with Bruce Schneier . Well basically he says…

"If I make a computer security mistake in a book, for a consulting client, at BT it’s a mistake. It might be expensive, but I learn from it and move on. As a criminal, a mistake likely means jail time time I can’t spend earning my criminal living. For this reason, it’s hard to improve as a criminal. And this is why there are more criminal masterminds in the movies than in real life."

I highly recommend that you read the Q&A session . It's about the past, present and future of computer security, selecting the right passwords and digital security for the ignorant common man like you and me.

PS: For those of you who don't know Bruce Schneier is one of the most respected computer security experts. I take his advice pretty seriously.