Wide World of Women

17. April 2008 - Captcha stories, happy hours

As every free user should have noticed, we are experimenting once again with the CAPTCHA system. The reason is that RapidShare is popular enough for people to create tools to download from RapidShare as a free user as if they were a premium user. This has a negative impact for our paying premium users, since they expect a fast download. On the other hand we are also experimenting with happy hours again. When our servers have enough spare bandwidth, we will make it easier for free users to download from RapidShare, knowing that this also makes it possible again to automatically download files with those tools. Right now the RapidShare Happy Hours will disable the download tickets and the captchas completely.

What the RS self-serving promotional spiel conveniently neglects to mention is one minor (not) detail: those insidious download LIMITS are still in effect, as always. The Happy Hours are hours, alright (how long RS makes you wait between files), yet anything but happy. Not to mention those ridiculous, tiny cats and dogs, designed to thwart those very software tools, but apparently ending up sadistically frustrating many humans in the process.

Fortunately, no special "tools" are necessary to bypass the download limits. All you need to do is change your IP address after downloading each RS file, which for many people can be as simple as restarting your broadband modem.

Object detection is cutting edge research...why not exploit the inability to train and detect objects? Detecting text in images has been done..."unbreakable" captchas have been broken.

Show a bunch of random objects, then prompt "What's the largest object?" or something like that...though that assumes the user can spell and that the server handles a variety of languages.

I dunno. All I know is those Captcha symbols are past annoying at this point. The wait time is bad enough and yeah Happy Hours aren't so happy. Why call it happy hour when the download limit is still in effect?

That's a good tip. I'll give it a try. Thanks.

Thats very true but eith BT in the UK [unsure of non UK or other ISP`s],doing this numerous times a day will result in BT dropping your IP profile/Bras Profile as they deem the loss of sync to be an error,If you continually do this time and time again you will get put on a lower profile,which ultimately means slower throughput,BT uses a 3 day stabilisation period where he sync is monitored and if the sync remains stable then the IP profile will rise.
Your IP profile is always lower than you actual line sync,

I have a sync of 7368kbs with a profile of 6500kbs and a throughput of 6285kbs or 6,3 mbit

I am always stable at this but i used to rape RS using the reset trick[before i had a premium account],i eventually ended up being still synced @ 7368kbs but my ip profile dropped to 125k with a throughput of 60k LMFAO [ i couldnt even stream a youtube video without it buffering! on a 6.5 mbit connection

I had to wait 3 days to get back to my full speed,If you use the reset router trick always reset it the last time after 1am and before 6am as this is when the exchange is quiet and you will sync a the highest possiblt rate for your line.

Just thought id add that as it is relevant.

For all the videos and content people download from rapidshare why not just spend a few bucks and get a premium account .
I bought one once 3 years ago and it's been free ever since.
All you have to do is collect 10,000 points per month to keep the free account going , i have been on premium for free going on 3 years.
The fact of the matter is that all these services suck unless you have the premium version.
So people need to just buy a premium version and be happy with direct link downloads and no download limits or time outs .
Or stop complaining about it .
Rapidshare is a company just like all the others , there to make money .
Yes there are one with free service but there is a reason why they are free.
remember that .

Rapidshare is making money of illegal file sharing and i'm not going to contribute to their criminal activities by paying them

also with my speed i can only download 200 mb an hour so it's a waste of money

You are paying them by uploading to their site.

A 1 year RS account costs about $90 USD. If you spend 5 hours a week/260hours a year to keep that account going your working at a 34 cent/hour rate.

I had a RS account long before uploaded anything. All the amount of stuff that's posted there it's worth the money IMO.

In the end RS is a free service. It's not perfect..nothing is. They don't delete files for 90 days, they have fast downloads, and there's A LOT of stuff hosted there. You just have to deal with the inconveniences if you don't want to pay for an account. Pretty much the way of the world.

When they had happy hours i was able to get full speed with Stardownlader but now turtle speed

Why are they allowed to make money by allowing people to share software ,movies and music

I've said it before. Paying to download files is like buying bottled water. The technology exists to share files and bandwidth, albeit news of peer-to-peer misuse scare people away. Sure, it may not give optimal download speeds (as this is a function of peers), but its not all that bad either...I was able to get Starcraft 2 videos (600+ MB) in an hour with Blizzard's torrent downloader. Blizzard uses peer-to-peer technology to their benefit...doesn't cost them a dime.

RapidShare has the fattest pipes - thats why i use it - I've downloaded 5128 MB in the last 5 days alone. and its been free for me for 2 years now - other sites associated with rapidshare like rapidshare king are great too - oh, and EVERYBODY uses it. So your kinda forced into using it

I have been reading ;with interest; all the comments about Ratpidshare.I have expressed my negative feelings for this company and would like to focus on the positive.

Since moving to Mediafire;the NUMBER of downloads have almost doubled. "I DONT GET NO POINTS" but since its free "I DONT NEED EM". My upload and download speed is much faster than Ratpidshare.

Although my premium acccount runs through oct 18 2008 and have accumulated a few months of "free"; I no longer upload to this company. I use the free download. I makes me much more selective in what I download and also give the holder of the account points.( I understand that if you download using a premium account; no points are given)

With PANDO;aol;hulu; etc; and DEMONOID now back on line I can download a plethura of movies and tv; fast: easy and with no cost

In a few weeks they should be deleting about 12gb from my ratpidshare account and the account will eventually die. RIP

Loneranger

i was against the rapid boys!
bought a account en i am hooked!!!!
they are the best!

mediafire is fast loneranger
not faster than rapidshire dream on buddy!

i tried them all en was dissapionted in download en
upload speed. there are some good filesharing programs.
they are not a$$ good a$$ rapidshire.
dont believe me!
take a look in this forum!
En all other forums worldwide.


rapidshire rules is reliablle en fast!

En if its not than the mayority of al downloaders en uploaders on the net are plaine stuppid!!!!!!

I rest my case.