Mars Landing, NASA-TV live stream

With the upcoming landing of the Opportunity Mars Rover this Saturday,
January 24th, all eyes will be on NASA. Tuning in to NASA-TV is the
perfect way to get live images and updates from the surface of Mars as
soon as NASA receives them. For those of you who have never
experienced or do not have access to to NASA-TV, we at Network
Foundations Technology would like for you to partake in a milestone of
streaming media. We will broadcast NASA-TV all day on Saturday free
of charge. You will have access to a live video feed from NASA as
the landing occurs. Not only will you be witnessing a milestone in
space exploration and streaming multimedia, but you will be helping to
test a groundbreaking peer-to-peer video streaming technology. Here
http://nasa-tv.yi.org is a link to our site where you'll find our
streaming video client, as well as all the information you need to
watch the broadcast. You can begin watching the NASA-TV video feed
right now, but the actual landing festivities start at 8 p.m., 7
central. Feel free to email me with any questions.

Ronald Norman

Network Foundations Technology

you will be helping to test a groundbreaking peer-to-peer video
streaming technology. Here http://nasa-tv.yi.org is a link to our
site where you'll find our streaming video client, as well as all the
information you need to watch the broadcast.

Hmm, peer-to-peer. This might get around the problems that usually
occur trying to watch NASA TV over the net (namely, the server always
gets overloaded, especially around times like a launch, landing, etc).

I will admit, I didn't find a whole lot of information about this
effort. A web search for "peer to peer streaming video" found a bunch
of hits, but no one clear system which seemed to be dominant.

http://www.nft-tv.com just has an invitation to log in.
There's an IRC channel at
http://www.valinor.sorcery.net/channels/nft.html although I didn't try
joining it. The http://nasa-tv.yi.org page has a download of
NASA-TV.zip which is just the executable. There's some info at
http://nasa-tv.yi.org/faq.html . Do note that nft is for windows only.

I'd be a bit wary by default: (1) because using this involves running
code you download, and in general one should be wary about trojan
horses, virused executables, bugs which may compromise security, and
the like, and (2) to get full advantage of the peer to peer nature,
you need to punch a hole in your firewall, which has its own set of
security risks. Not that there is anything particularly suspicious
that I noticed: the same risks apply to any peer-to-peer application.
But it is a good reason to consider the reputation, security
consciousness, etc, of the provider.