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Why is he reading 1 byte at a time in FileDownloader

Commons IO:
http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/io/description.html

InputStream in = new URL ("http://jakarta.apache.org").openStream();
try {
System.out.println( IOUtils.toString( in ) );
} finally {
IOUtils.closeQuietly(in);
}

From ilazarte's article, for a little added clarity:
<quote>In certain application domains, such IO operations are common, and this class can save a great deal of time. And you can rely on well-tested code.

For utility code such as this, flexibility and speed are of primary importance. However you should also understand the limitations of this approach. Using the above technique to read a 1GB file would result in an attempt to create a 1GB String object!<quote>