YouTube removing 15 minute upload length, for some

YouTube videos are about to get longer. The company says it is lifting the 15-minute limit on uploaded videos, beginning with a subset of users. These individuals have never violated copyright rules and have followed YouTube's community guidelines. Some content owners that partner with YouTube have already been able to upload longer videos but this step will remove the limit for everyone.

The change will allow YouTube to host videos such as lectures by college professors, talks at conferences, and films by independent filmmakers without breaking them up into multiple parts. It could also mean uploading longer copyrighted material, but YouTube says it is changing its limit now because its system for handling copyright violations is better than ever.

"As long as it's your original content, its fair game regardless of length," a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement. "This launch has been made possible in part by the continued advances in our state-of-the-art Content ID system, as well as our other powerful tools for copyright owners. Over 1000 global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube, including every major U.S. movie studio and music label. We remain as dedicated as ever to building and improving the most sophisticated technology in the world to help copyright owners protect their rights."

YouTube currently has 35 hours uploaded every minute. Expect that number to grow even faster as the 15 minute limit is slowly removed.

New BitTorrent client offers truly decentralized P2P

While BitTorrent is the most popular P2P protocol, it still relies on several centralized points for users to find the files they are looking. There have been several attempts at making BitTorrent more decentralized, and the latest Tribler 5.3 client is the first to offer the BitTorrent experience without requiring central trackers or search engines, according to TorrentFreak.

Tribler offers some very interesting technologies; the latest version enables users to search and download files from inside the client. Plenty of other clients offer search features, including the ever-popular µTorrent, but Tribler's results come from other peers rather than from a dedicated search engine. Users can search and download content without a server ever getting involved; everything is done among peers, without the need of a BitTorrent tracker or search indexer.

This is a little ironic because it means that the actual torrent file aspect of BitTorrent is no longer necessary. Normally, users have to find the torrent file corresponding to the content they want to download. The torrent file contains the BitTorrent tracker URL which, as its name implies, keeps track of everyone downloading and uploading the content in question. More recently, the need for a tracker has been replaced by technologies like peer exchange (PXE) and distributed hash tables (DHT). A replacement for BitTorrent search engines and indexers had yet to appear, until Tribler 5.3.

Since Tribler is still a rather new BitTorrent client, there are significantly fewer torrents to search from compared to popular BitTorrent search engines, but as it gains more traction, that number should grow exponentially. Furthermore, if competitors like µTorrent jump on board, we may have yet another P2P

Microsoft: 46% Windows 7 installations are 64-bit

For the first time in history, 64-bit operating systems are gaining serious traction with the arrival of Windows 7. In a blog post today, Microsoft revealed that 46% of Windows 7 users are running a 64-bit version, which compares to only 11% of those on Vista and less than 1% on XP. Steam recently released stats showing an even higher adoption rate among its customers, with around two times more people running Windows 7 x64 than x86.

OEMs have finally embraced the architecture, with some converting their entire consumer lineups to 64-bit-only machines. NPD says that 77% of retail PCs sold in the US during April 2010 ran the updated architecture – but it's not just end users buying into 64-bit computing.

Gartner estimates that 75% of all businesses will ditch 32-bit systems by 2014, and Intel recently migrated to a 64-bit environment to take advantage of features such as support for more than 4GB of RAM and additional security benefits.