Hulu, Pandora, Netflix, just to name a few, will simply refuse to work for you — no matter how much you’re willing to pay. In fact, it is extremely frustrating to know that such companies are forced by copyright vultures to refuse access to international customers, and ultimately lose income. It’s a matter of origin: these services see what country your IP address belongs to, and decide whether to let you in or not.

If you can appear to be online from the US, they will often happily accept international credit cards: after all, if it were for them, there would be no silly geographical restriction in the first place. How do you pretend you’re coming from the US? You use a VPN.

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Virtual Private Networks

A VPN, short for Virtual Private Network, is exactly what the name implies: it’s a system that allows an external user to access an internal network. In many cases, VPN are used by (big) companies to allow their employees to log into the corporate network from outside the office. From the point of view of the network itself, the user appears to be locally connected. It’s an entirely transparent process.

What does this have to do with accessing restricted content? Well, one of the pleasant side effects of connecting to a VPN means that the external user will access the outside network from within the VPN itself. Remember, it’s as if you were actually inside that network. Therefore, if the VPN’s outside IP address is in the US, you will be appearing to come from the US.

Let me provide a handy, high-resolution graphic representation of this concept, in order to clarify the matter. Let’s assume you are in Italy. Normally, this is what would happen:

YOU (foreign IP) Hulu/Netflix/Pandora (not happy)

YOU (foreign IP) VPN server (US IP) Hulu/Netflix/Pandora (alright!)

As you can see, the service’s servers see that the connection comes from the US, and all’s right.

Neat! How do I get one? How much is it?

There are several commercial VPN providers out there. Let me focus on one that I’m particularly fond of, both for its ease of use and its capabilities. It’s called IPVanish (ain’t that cute?) and it currently sports over 2500 IP addresses from 38 different locations in 15 countries, with more being added all the time. One of the greatest things about IPVanish is that you are not forced, unlike some of its competitors, to choose a server upon registration and stick with it. When you create an account, you are granted access to its whole network, and changing the output endpoint is as simple as disconnecting from the VPN, changing a setting, and reconnecting. It’s that simple. Also, again unlike many competitors, there is absolutely no limit on bandwidth and traffic. No limit whatsoever, really. It almost sounds too good to be true, but IPVanish is clearly targeted at circumventing stupid regional restrictions, and if you had a traffic limit you wouldn’t be able to use it to access traffic intensive services such as Hulu or Netflix.

The price for an IPVanish account is a flat $10 per month, with a 7-day money back guarantee. At that price, it’s a steal.

I’m in the US, why would I need a VPN?

VPNs, by definition, are encrypted. Even if you are located in the United States and do not strictly need a VPN to access said services, you may still want to attain higher privacy. By tunneling your internet traffic through a VPN, you effectively hide your original location by acting like you’re online from the Netherlands, or from the UK, or from Japan. Once connected to a VPN, all your traffic passes through it; in a way, it’s like wearing a mask or teleporting.

While this may sound like an extra risk (what if they give you away? that’s a reasonable question), IPVanish does not log any of your traffic. The only thing they know is if you’re using the VPN or not, which is really inevitable since they’re offering the service. In other words, it’s like your power company: it doesn’t know if you’re using a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner, it only knows that you are using some power.

Also, by going through a VPN, you might be able to circumvent some firewall restriction in the workplace. (I’m not liable if you attempt it, it works, and you’re subsequently caught and fired. Don’t be stupid.)

Many servers? Why would I need that?

Being able to choose which server to use is more important than it may seem. If you are stuck with one server, and that server is overloaded, your performance will be greatly affected. By being able to choose the endpoint upon each and every connection, you have the possibility of always finding the least clogged of them and enjoy the service the way it should be.

IPVanish actually shows a list of servers and their current, up-to-date capacity usage. During my tests, only one of them had a peak of 3% usage, with the others being at either 0% or 1%. That basically means full speed.

Speaking of speed, does this make my connection slower?

One thing is very important to remember here: you are tunneling all your traffic through a place that may be geographically very distant from you. If you are in Germany and use a VPN endpoint in Japan to connect to a host in South Africa, it will inevitably take somewhat longer not only to send your requests to the host, but also to get its replies back.

How much will the latency be affected? It depends. Let’s say that playing real time games is not something you will want to do.

With video streaming, however, speed is more important than latency (that’s what buffering is for!) and in my tests I was able to stream through full length movies on Hulu with no hiccups whatsoever. Remember, this something that without a VPN with a US endpoint I would not be able to do at all, since I’m in Italy.

Ok, but how do I use it?

This varies depending on your operating system. On Windows, you can download a stand-alone program that handles it for you, similar to the NewsHosting Usenet client. On Linux, you can download configuration files for OpenVPN (a standard, open source software for accessing VPNs).

On Mac, which is what I use, you have many different choices: you can download the same configuration files for OpenVPN, or you can download network connection profiles that will create a new network interface in System Preferences, and all you have to do is choose the server you want to use from the drop-down menu and type in your password. That’s it. The choice between L2TP and PPTP is pretty much irrelevant, though you may want to go with PPTP because it’s slightly simpler (there is no “challenge key” to type in.)

Once done, whereas before you used to see things like these…

…you will now see things like these:

What if I have more than one computer or device?

You can use IPVanish with as many devices as you want, though only one of them can be connected at any time. Of course, if you are savvy enough, you could set up a machine as a gateway and will route all the internal traffic through IPVanish, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.)

And if you are wondering, it’s a breeze to set your iPhone or iPad to use IPVanish. Just go to Settings, General, Network, VPN and set up a PPTP connection typing in your username, your password and the server of your choice. It’s that simple.

After that, you will find a handy VPN switch in the very first view of Settings, so you don’t ever have to dig that deep again. And yes, it works over 3G too.

In conclusion…

I have used VPN providers in the past, and I even set up my own VPN endpoint on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) using PPTP. With no restrictions on usage and traffic, an incredible amount of endpoints to choose from and with an incredible ease of use, I can say that no other service comes close to IPVanish. I encourage you to give it a try, whether you’re outside the US and want to enjoy US-only services, or in the US but frequently travel abroad or just want some extra privacy. It’s a service well worth it.

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(Are you looking for Usenet access to download binaries? Check out my review of NewsHosting!)

While Usenet usage is unfortunately declining for text, heavily supplanted by web-based forums and, in more recent times, social networks, it’s being more and more used to carry binary contents. There are many groups (whose name normally include “binary” or “binaries”) dedicated to the exchange of video files, audio files and, essentially, all sorts of material. In this arena, since very few ISPs still run a newsserver at all, and those few that do will just not carry binary groups, several commercial Usenet providers fill the gap. I am currently a customer of UsenetServer, but I may just switch to NewsHosting.

I want to make it clear that it is not my intention to advocate or promote piracy in any way. This post is solely dedicated to highlighting the differences between Usenet binaries and the more widely known BitTorrent system, and showing how NewsHosting got it just perfectly right. Let’s start from the beginning, but if you want, you can jump to the review by clicking here.

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Usenet vs. BitTorrent

Unlike BitTorrent, which essentially works as an independent peer-to-peer network (the “swarm”) for each torrent, Usenet is a well define client-server architecture. The client connects to the server and uploads or downloads data. It is the server’s business to make sure that all data is synchronized with its fellow server peers. Neither system is necessarily better than the other. While it is true that BitTorrent allows for transfers even in complex situations, whereas a Usenet servers provide a single point of failure, it is also true that the download speed within a swarm depends on the upload speed of the peers themselves. Given that most binary Usenet servers are commercial, however, bandwidth is never an issue and downloading from them is always a very fast business. Indeed, I saturate my downstream bandwidth every single time: I literally download as fast as my DSL allows.

Moreover, many BitTorrent’s trackers have strict ratio enforcement requirements, which can make downloading almost impossible if a user’s line is highly unbalanced. For instance: my effective connection speed is 1.3 MB/s, but I can only upload as fast as around 60 KB/s. This means that if I download a 650 MB file (a typical CD ISO image), it will take me little over 8 minutes. To reach a round 1.0 ratio, ie. to upload as much as I have downloaded, it will take me 3 hours. In the long run, it becomes unsustainable. Usenet servers pose no such problem: users download the contents they want, and only upload (new) contents if they want to. No requirements, and oftentimes no limits whatsoever.

But how does it compare, in practice?

Let’s assume I wanted to download a Linux distribution. I would have to head to a tracker’s site (or anywhere else to get hold of a small .torrent file), feed it to my BitTorrent client, and have it download and upload back, possibly tweaking the settings so that everything is efficient: uploading at the maximum speed possible will make the download slower because there is not enough room to push the ACK packets over the line.

With Usenet, I would head to a Usenet search engine (there are several) and download a small .nzb file, feed it to my Usenet newsreader, provided it handles binary files, and download it. The support for binary files is important: given that Usenet is still essentially a decentralized text-only gigantic bullettin board system, several techniques were devised to allow it to carry binary content. Files are usually split into smaller part using RAR or another compression software, and each part is usually further split into smaller chunks, each of which is uploaded as a single post or article. In addition, parity files are added so that it is possible, within certain limits, to recover any chunk that may be missing due to the decentralized structure of the network itself. Sounds complex? In practice, it’s not. There are specialized Usenet binary downloader programs that are solely dedicated to that; in fact, some of them don’t even handle text groups at all. It’s still a bit of a burden for the uninitiated, and that’s where NewsHosting comes into the picture.

The easy way: NewsHosting‘s client

This is a (currently beta) news reader that incorporates a very nice search system to find contents directly. No more browsing Usenet search engines, comparing dates, looking for retention promises. The database is built by NewsHosting itself, so if it shows, it can be downloaded. It is also possible to use external search engines, but in my tests I found no reason to. The client is also extraordinarily simple to use, and this what really sets it apart. Let’s have a look.

Downloading the application is very easy: after logging in to NewsHosting, a link will led to this page, where it is possible to choose the appropriate operating system. I used the Mac version, but I’m sure that the experience is the same on Windows and Linux too.

Upon launching the app, the only thing that’s needed is typing in one’s username and password. Nothing else. There is no configuration to go through, though of course there are many settings that one may want to tweak: download folder location, connection speed, number of concurrent downloads and more. It is all completely optional, and this is what makes this application really great.

After logging in, the user is presented with what I assume is a collection of the latest posts from the default group bookmarks, seen on the left pane. The application takes care of collecting the chunks and the parts (see above) and condensing them into individual files. Note in the screenshot that there are 26,730 pages to scroll through.

Searching is built-in. Aside from the quick search field in the top right corner, there is a dedicated search pane that allows to set up additional clauses, such as the content language, the file size and more. The application is smart enough to pull up an image for the file in question, whether it’s a cover, a screenshot or a logo.

Before downloading, it is possible to obtain detailed information about the selected file. If an NFO file is present, it is shown directly. In the case of video files, a very interesting feature is the ability to watch a short preview. This is something I haven’t found in any other Usenet downloader I have used, and it’s very interesting. I have no proof of this and I haven’t looked into it in detail, but I suppose that it achieves this by downloading the first part of the set, forcing its extraction without the rest, and then relying on VLC being able to play an incomplete file. For this reason, it may not work in case the video format needs an initial complete seek, but it’s a very handy function nevertheless.

Downloads are just a click away. Once the transfer is started, it is possible to keep browsing around (whether via the search or directly in a newsgroup), or switch to the Transfers pane which shows detailed information about the transfers, down to the part and chunk level.

NewsHosting carries many newsgroups (including national hierarchies) and inexperienced users will probably find the notion of “group bookmarks” less confusing than the traditional idea of a “subscription” used by most, if not all, other newsreaders.

Of course, while the application is specifically built for downloads, I found that it works quite well as a traditional newsreader too. Posting access is disabled by default, but it can be requested via the Control Panel (also directly within the program itself!)

So, how much does it all cost? Less than you think. There are three plains available:

• NewsHosting Lite, $10.00/month, with a 50 GB monthly allowance with rollover, 30 connections
• NewsHosting Unlimited, starting at $12.95/month, unlimited transfer, 30 connections
• NewsHosting XL Powerpack, starting at $15.83/month, unlimited transfer, 60 connections, free account at EasyNews to search and download directly with a browser

Of course, it is possible to use any Usenet newsreader and/or downloader to access NewsHosting‘s servers, though the application I described above frankly makes it hard to justify going through all the loops and hoops of configuration, separate searching and so on.

NewsHosting‘s Usenet client may very well be the “killer app” for anyone interested in the world of Usenet binaries. It’s well worth a shot, and with a two-weeks free trial, why not?

If you sign up for the service, feel free to leave a comment and share your experience!

(Are you interested in protecting your anonymity on the ‘net? Check out my review of IPVanish!)

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(Song by Marco Catarsi)

James LaBrie wrote on his website’s forum:

Hi Everyone,

Thought I would give you time to digest the news of Mike’s departure. MIke stated that he was burnt out with the DT world and needed a break. We have to respect where he is at and where this will lead him at this particular point in time. With that being said, we are more than pumped to continue the legacy of DT and jump full on into the next chapter. Rest assured it will be great. You can count on it.

On another positive note. Matt and I are psyched with the reaction and reviews ‘Static Impulse is receiving around the world. We can’t wait until everyone can get their hands on the complete disc. and hear it the way it was intended.

I will be around more often to see how you’re all doing and to fill you with any and all news. Take care and not long now until the 27th or 28th depending on where you live.

Kick it up a notch,

James.

John Petrucci wrote on his website’s forum:

Obviously you’ve all heard the news of Mike’s departure from Dream Theater by now.
I felt it important to open up a line of communication in an effort to kill any rumors and to promote clarity.
I love Mike and really hope he’s happy and successful in whatever he does.
I realize that Mike was always the one to actively stay in touch with our fans, and I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to try to be at least a bit more present on both mine and DT’s websites and to let you all know that I am here.
To me, Dream Theater’s story is one of defying the odds, standing for true integrity in music and creating our own success through perseverance and hard work, so although Mike’s leaving is heartbreaking, I still look forward to an amazing musical journey that continues on with some of the most talented and respected musicians and composers on the planet!
-JP

Jordan Rudess opted instead to post a video on YouTube, saying:

Everyone is asking me to comment on my thoughts about Mike Portnoy leaving Dream Theater and this huge change that has happened in all of our lives. I have always been able to express my feelings and do my best “talking” through music, so I decided to voice my statement in this improvisation. Hope you “understand”

Here is the video:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgqm8g95wwI

I posted this comment to it (it’s already on page 3 as I’m writing this, but it will fall deeper and deeper as time goes by):

Something must have happened. Jordan was remembering the good times, but the “ticking” at the ending followed by the angry final chord gives me the impression that there was a lot of tension building up and that the departure was not as peaceful as the press releases claim it to be.

Incidentally, I sense a bit of “it’s their fault, they didn’t respect me after all I do for the band” vibe in MP’s post.

DT is not MP. DT included MP, but doesn’t strictly need him. The Spirit carries on.

I couldn’t find any note by John Myung — he doesn’t even seem to have an official website —but I’m pretty sure that nobody is surprised about that.

To all of our loyal fans and friends: It is with profound sadness — regret — we announce that Mike Portnoy, our lifelong drummer and friend, has decided to leave Dream Theater. Mike’s stature in the band has meant the world to all of us professionally, musically, and personally over the years. There is no dispute: Mike has been a major force within this band.

While it is true that Mike is choosing to pursue other ventures and challenges, we can assure you that Dream Theater will continue to move forward with the same intensity — and in the same musical tradition — that you have all helped make so successful, and which is truly gratifying to us.

Fans and friends: File this episode under “Black Clouds and Silver Linings.” As planned, we begin recording our newest album in January 2011, and we’ll follow that with a full-on world tour. “The Spirit Carries On.”

All of us in Dream Theater wholeheartedly wish Mike the best on his musical journey. We have had a long and meaningful career together. It is our true hope that he finds all he is looking for, and that he achieves the happiness he deserves. He will be missed.

Also, Mike himself posted this tweet:

This is a sad, sad day….I’m afraid I have some bad news…. MP/DT Sept 1985 – Sept 2010

And then this note on his Facebook page, which is thankfully accessible to non-Facebook users (otherwise I wouldn’t be able to read it):

I BEG of the fans to please NOT hold A7X responsible for MY decision…they are just as shocked as you guys..I had been contemplating this and desiring a “break” (not split) as long ago as last year…everything else is fully explained in the press release…thank you all for your support and understanding…this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done… : (

This is bad news, but I already knew this would happen soon. See, all Dream Theater’s members have been involved in side projects all along. It’s just the way they are: they are great musicians, and they can’t stand still. James, just to give an example, released several solo albums (“Mullmuzzler” 1 and 2), and participated in True Symphonic Rockestra and in Ayreon‘s “The Human Equation.”

However, Mike lately had not only released an album with Avenged Sevenfold (A7X) and toured with them (John Petrucci did the same with the G3 project, after all), but just by following his tweets you could easily tell that A7X had become “his” band. On September 5th, he tweeted: “Its 3:30am and I am getting tattooed by Grant Cobb on a moving A7X tour bus after losing a bet to Dan The Body…this aint DT!!”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not judging. It’s just that Dream Theater is, if I am allowed to say so, “purer” than any other progrock band out there. Alright, alright, that’s the hardcore fan in me talking, right. But surely everybody would agree that Dream Theater is more like Marillion on steroids than cousins of Metallica, right? All the other members of Dream Theater have “grown up and calmed down,” in a way, whereas Mike seems to be, well, the wildest of the bunch, even though he recovered from his alcohol and drug addiction.

His path with Alcoholics Anonymous has indeed been put into music by Dream Theater over the course of five albums, since 2002, in what is called the “Twelve-Step Suite”:

• The Glass Prison, from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (I – Reflection; II – Restoration; III – Revelation)
• This Dying Soul, from Train of Tought (IV – Reflections of Reality; V – Release)
• The Root of All Evil, from Octavarium (VI – Ready;  VII – Remove)
• Repentance, from Systematic Chaos (VIII – Regret; IX – Restitution)
• The Shattered Fortress, from Black Clouds & Silver Linings (X – Restraint; XI – Receive; XII – Responsible)

All these songs’ lyrics carry a dedication to “Bill W. and all of his friends.” Why all the parts’ names begin with the letter R is currently unknown; however, knowing Mike’s passion for nuggets, it’s not a coincidence.

Still, some people in 2002 feared that Dream Theater’s career would end with the completion of the Twelve-Step Suite. These fears were mostly quenched when they signed with RoadRunner Records in 2005, and many think that Octavarium tells the story of their relationship with recording labels.

Still, the question now stands: what will happen to Dream Theater? Mike Portnoy had been producing the band’s albums for a long while. He may still keep doing that, of course. But who is going to replace him? How will the music change? I am one of those who thinks that Images and Words was their best album, followed by Scenes from a Memory. The freshness of the former was probably influenced in part by Kevin J. Moore, and the latter bears a distinct “Rudessness” to it.

I wish Mike the best for his career, but as a long time fan, yeah, I’m speechless. I hope that this will mark a return to origins for Dream Theater: after all, we (they) have gone through three keyboardists and two (actually three) singers. The point is that while we are “used” to changing keyboardists (no offense to Jordan, I’m glad he’s on board even though, well, Kevin was Kevin — sorry about that), changing drummers is like replacing a load-bearing wall in a building. Everything might crumble. Let’s hope not.

Rock on.

Edit: Mike also posted a detailed note on his website’s forum.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqSmzGj_sQc

The song is, like most lullabies, very simple. I came up with the chords earlier today, while jamming with my ukulele. Here they are, for all my musically-inclined nerdy readers. Corrections are welcome.

[G] Soft kitty, [C] warm kitty,
[G] little ball of [D] fur;
[G] happy kitty, [C] sleepy kitty,
[G] purr, [D] purr, [G] purr.

Interesting trivia: they are almost the same chords as The Lion Sleeps Tonight, except for a minor difference in the last verse that shouldn’t prevent the most creative among you to fit one into the other.

Should you prefer so, you could play it as C F C G / C F C G C or by whichever transposition makes you happy.

First, a little history: Dream Theater’s first name was Majesty, however another band with the same name threatened to sue them and they eventually switched to Dream Theater, following the suggestion of Portnoy’s father. They even went as Glasser for a short while, but thankfully the name was ditched after ten days or so. However, the Dream Theater symbol is still named Majesty.

On their first album as Dream Theater, When Dream and Day Unite, they released an instrumental song that laid the foundation for what their music would eventually become. The piece was called The Ytse Jam (but most often referred to simply as Ytse Jam) and runs 5 minutes and 43 seconds. It is packed with odd time signatures and catchy riffs. It’s also the first example of their passion for nuggets and secret codes, as “Ytse Jam” is “Majesty” reversed.

I’d like to mention some random trivia about the band, but I suppose that I’d better make a separate post about that. In the meantime, for the nerdiest among you, a detailed analysis of their 2005 album Octavarium can be found at spatang.com. It mentions all the hidden messages contained therein, and it’s a very enjoyable read.

So, without futher ado, here is The Ytse Jam performed live in 2004 to celebrate the 15th anniversary of When Dream and Day Unite‘s original release.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvJ7PLtTK-4

And an older version with a drum solo by Portnoy. If I’m not mistaken, this is from the Live in Tokyo tape, filmed in 1993. You can see the original line-up, with Kevin J. Moore at the keyboards. (Alright, it’s not the original line-up since LaBrie had already replaced Dominici, but this is instrumental and neither would be there anyway.)

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEo2GUM4SFI

Pretty neat, innit?

Often, but this is not strictly required, there will be many time and key changes throughout the song, and the song itself can be longer, sometimes even much longer, than someone used to pop music might find acceptable. All of this inevitably relegates progressive music to a niche for connosseurs, mostly because it’s seldom music that one “understands” upon first listening to it.

I mentioned genres because most people associate that to progressive rock or progressive metal, with bands such as Yes, Rush, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd; and more recently with Marillion, Dream Theater, Ayreon and others. Yet, any style can show progressive traits, at least according to my definition.

Jazz music is progressive by design, and my favorite example of a gorgeous non-rock progressive piece is Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” which I present to you in a gorgeous, albeit much shortened, version by The 5 Browns:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bZ0gBBZnCI

A style that has recently become common is what I call progressive acoustic music. It involves playing an acoustic guitar in unconventional ways, mixing different techniques such as tapping, strumming, plucking and hitting the body in a very peculiar way, producing songs that are progressive not just in structure, but also in feeling.

The most known song of this kind is probably Andy McKee’s “Drifting”:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddn4MGaS3N4

The independent label CandyRat acts as a hub for many artists who make this kind of music, allowing them to network and come up with little gems like this, by Antoine Dufour and Tommy Gauthier (make sure your speakers have a good bass response):

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4BYMvVvMg0

I also recently came across an Iranian guitarist, Maneli Jamal, whose foray into progressive acoustic is not as bold and aggressive as Andy McKee’s, but is rather sweet and, dare I say it, hypnotic. Here is his live performance on BBC Persian:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN9pmLCqlWE

Watch it twice: get a general feel for it the first time, then pay attention at how skillfully he uses natural harmonics and how sharp, yet “easy,” the transitions are. What I especially like is that even through the different parts, the whole piece has an underlying rhythm that encircles the music. He effectively joins the best of both worlds.

There is a downside to this type of music. It is so peculiar that just listening to it doesn’t make it justice. The playing style is so much an integral part of it that it has to be watched, especially when played live.

Thankfully, DVDs can be produced very easily and without the need for an expensive service nowadays, so artists can make some money out of their work, and that’s good for all of us. It would be a pity indeed if people like Andy, Antoine and Mameli gave up their skills to get a nine-to-five to pay bills.

As a bonus, here are two of videos of a great duo. What makes their performances is not only their undeniable ability, but also the fact that you can see that they’re genuinely having fun. How can you beat that?

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=famYtHftpwE

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GJs6Cj7X2I