. . .for copyright infringement. I just think that's too funny!

My whole office was just laughing about this one.... The irony is too much.

Yeah, especially since anyone worth their salt uses Kazaa Lite over Kazaa any day.

Yeah, especially since anyone worth their salt uses Kazaa Lite over Kazaa any day.

If I must P2P, it's eMule all the way.

Yeah, eMule is good, though I find that BitTorrent does a better job speed and reliability-wise as long as there is enough current demand for the file. With eMule and BitTorrent on hand, I rarely if ever feel the need to fire up Kazaalite anymire.

Yeah, especially since anyone worth their salt uses Kazaa Lite over Kazaa any day.

The article says that the record execs were using Kazaa lite. Or did I misunderstand the point of that post?

I haven't messed with BitTorrent. A couple of times there have been new game demos downloadable on the web, and some of the mirror sites needed the BitTorrent client. I didn't know anything about it, worried it might be adware/spyware, so I found a different mirror. What's BitTorrent like?

The article says that the record execs were using Kazaa lite. Or did I misunderstand the point of that post?

Kazaa Lite is a user friendly, copywrite-breaking hack of Sharman's kazaa. Sharman is understandably concerned that the RIAA is using it in violation of their copywrite.

-jk

[edited because I hit the wrong continue button...]

BitTorrent is great for software and such.

I've never used it for music, is anyone using it thus?

The article says that the record execs were using Kazaa lite. Or did I misunderstand the point of that post?

Kazaa lite is a sort of "illegal" hacked version of Kazaa. So the article is saying that the record execs were using pirated software and circumventing the Kazaa usage guidelines in order to do their sting operation.

The point of my post is that not only were the RIAA weenies using it, it's likely the kids they were doing the stings on were also using it. As well as a huge percentage of the users on their network.

I just used it the first time last night to try to get some Red vs. Blue (and failed), but it's an extraordinarily simple client. It's just a compiled python script (no need to have python installed) that does its thing. It only works as a helper app for a browser, though, as far as I can figure, at least under Windows.

Kazaa Lite is a user friendly, copywrite-breaking hack of Sharman's kazaa. Sharman is understandably concerned that the RIAA is using it in violation of their copywrite.

Right. Have been using it on occasion for some time myself. I was just trying to figure Tony's point...I'm assuming he thought it was funny that the record execs are the only ones getting sued over using Kazaa Lite when everyone else is using it too...

EDIT: Nevermind...I type slow...

Okay, I just read through the Red Vs Blue FAQ which indirectly answered my question about BitTorrent. Way cool.

And damn, that FAQ is funny.

shareaza. uses three different p2p networks, including managing bittorrent. can also grab from muliple networks at the same time. i was able to grab all 18 episodes of rvb in one sitting, high res and packaged nicely for me. (note, not packaged exclusively for me, just saying it was nicely packaged, which worked well for me)

To expand on what Bitt has said about BitTorrent, it is just a simple application under Windows that associates with .torrent files. The .torrent file you download has information about a tracker server, and some checksum information about the file. Once your computer has this, it connects to the tracker, and from there discovers who else has that particular torrent active. It only shares that file, and stops sharing once you close the dialog it has.

In most cases, it is much faster then normal web site downloads for new game demos and such. I downloaded the Homeworld 2 demo at about 200k via the torrent file, where as the fastest I could get from many of the web servers was 10k.

interesting...

BitTorrent is great for large downloads. As others have said, it's simple python, and very basic and not adware at all. What's nice about it is it's "swarming" p2p nature with download speeds tied to upload speeds. As soon as you begin downloading a file, any chunk of the file you've got is available to send to other people. The more you send, the faster you can download. Each part is checksummed, and the whole thing is checksummed once you get it, so the files are downloaded correctly. It's a great system, and a very lightweight install.

Matthew

although there have been times where i have sat for days waiting for it to finish because the hash check fails. this may be a fault of my wireless network as it seems to enjoy dropping packets at the most inopportune times.

The others have responded with the merits of BitTorrent, so I'll just say "ditto" and say that the best BitTorrent client I've used is Personal Torrent Collector. Haven't tried that Sharezaa yet, but that doesn't look bad either.

Music can be found on BitTorrent, but like all other BitTorrent downloads, it requires that someone out there has created a "torrent" file to start things off. You can find recent torrents at http://www.suprnova.org/ which tends to bounce up and down a lot, but seems to be pretty stable the last month or so.

My interest in BitTorrent is not for Kazaa-style P2P file sharing. I just wanted to know if it was useful to download those large game demos I keep seeing linked at Blue's every few days. I just tried it for the "War of the Ring" demo, and it is working as advertised.

For a brief moment, I thought it was working horrendously fast, and then I realized that the progress bar was merely indicating the time it took to allocate the disk space for the incoming file. After the initial file allocation, the download proceeded at a more understandable (yet still nice) rate.

It all depends on when you get on the Torrent. If you happen to connect within 10 minutes of the link getting posted then the download would be slow.

You just have to see how many seeds the torrent currently has, the more seeds the greater chance of getting the file at max speed.

Also this is the best client http://bt.degreez.net/

For a brief moment, I thought it was working horrendously fast, and then I realized that the progress bar was merely indicating the time it took to allocate the disk space for the incoming file.

I thought I was the only one...

I thought I was the only one...

Count me in. The reason I found BitTorrent was because I found that I was able to download entire seasons of The Simpsons. When I first saw the progress bar halfway through all of Season 4 within less than a minute, I was pretty freaked out, until I saw the activity light on my cable modem was hardly blinking. I guess it's just a rite of passage.

I prefer giFT myself. It runs as a daemon and has a buncha different interfaces available - including a nifty ncurses one. Plus, it ties into fasttrack, OpenFT (which never has any users), and Gnutella. It rocks. Although I haven't had the daemon running as of late. Paranoia, I guess.

- trs

I'll second that. I've been using it for a while and I really like it. Although, I still use BT for larger files (TV shows, etc).

A couple days ago I looked into BitTorrent again and was disappointed to see that it was still not very easy to set up the client. Does anyone have tips for how to use it under Win2K? All I know is the page I was referred to said Windows installations were not simple and the one client I downloaded ran, stated it had been installed, yet I could find no evidence of it on my system.

Scratch that. If this Shareaza can do it, I'll try that. It looks like a great program, although I'm having trouble setting up my network to accomodate it. I'd appreciate help. I've started a new thread so as not to get this one too off track. Thanks!

The standard bittorent installer I used asked no questions at all. Once you ran the installer, you just tried clicking on a bittorent link, and it worked. I was kind of annoyed at not getting to chose a directory, but that's the way it worked...

A couple days ago I looked into BitTorrent again and was disappointed to see that it was still not very easy to set up the client. Does anyone have tips for how to use it under Win2K?

Odd. I just ran the setup. It worked. After running the setup, clicking on the .torrent link for the game demo just worked. Couldn't get any easier and simpler. And that was under Win2k.

Hmm, maybe it did work and I didn't know it. Still, I'm none too happy that it leaves me no apparent way of uninstalling it if I want to. The client you installed may have done this for you, but mine leaves nothing in Program Files, the Start Meny, or Add/Remove Programs.

Must have been your choice of client. Mine had a very clear folder in Program Files, and a very clear entry in Add/Remove programs. I got the one linked at the main site by the original author of BitTorrent.

I did notice that it didn't prompt me for an installation folder. But it went where I expected it to go.

To anyone who's been using Shareaza for a while, I have some questions.

1) have you found any way to limit upload bandwidth? no matter what I set the number at in the settings dialog, I get the same amount. I was originally going to set it at about 10KB/s, due to my next question, but the speed kept at upwards of 30KB/s (and yes, I mean KB, not Kb).

2) does it slow down your connection too? When I have the program open, I cannot do anything else on the internet, lest I endure a sub 56K modem-like experience. It's terrible. This is despite the fact that I have yet to have my total download badwidth load get higher than 15KB/s.

3) so far I have been very happy with the program, but I am not happy with the stability of its connections. I don't see how a filesharing network can persist when the best you can do as far as connections go is to have tiny bursts of 3 seconds at >1KB/s for one user. As an uploader, I'd much rather have three or four people connected to me at 4 or 3KB/s for several minutes than have upwards of 40 people connecting to me at .3KB/s. It makes it impossible for large, 300MB+ files to get downloaded.

With that said, I have a request. Would someone who has a lot of X Files episodes on their PC mind giving me my one favorite episode of all time? It's titeled "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" from Season 3. The one with Peter Boyle.

Thanks for any help (or episode) I can get

ps-my second and third favorite eps are "Redrum" and "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas," respectively. I don't need those, though. They're on my Tivo. I've had X Files on my season pass for a year and my favorite episode never gets aired, despite several emails to SciFi, TNT, and whoever else airs it. Has anyone else noticed how syndication means that they'll take a show with several hundred episodes and replay the same 50 over and over? Grr.

I suppose getting the DVDs is right out?

(Yes, I have the DVDs, and in another 6 weeks I'll be getting season 8 to go along with the first 7)

I would do that, but I'm not in the position at the moment to start buying box sets. Plus I really just want one episode from the whole series

does it slow down your connection too?

This is due to modern broadband connections having much slower upstream connections then downstream. If you flood the upstream, the acknowledgment packets have a hard time getting out quickly, thus the downstream slows to a crawl.

This is why I would love to get off a cable modem connection. Sitting on a T1 with noone else about a month ago was amazing. It responded much quicker then my cable modem.

Hmm. Well, this would be another reason to figure out how to tell the program to limit the upload stream. It seems as if this is not possible, even with an option to do so. This may be due to the bittorrent downloads I have going, though. Perhaps the limit does not apply to them?

I'd hate to become a leech and cut off all sharing completely, but if the program doesn't offer a way to control this type of thing, I might have to do just that.

Would someone who has a lot of X Files episodes on their PC mind giving me ... "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". [M]y favorite episode never gets aired, despite several emails to SciFi, TNT, and whoever else airs it.

Perhaps you should call the Amazing Yappi.

dignan17, i noticed the same things. mediocre consistency and no upload cap. over the past few days ive uploaded more than ive downloaded!
ive tried killing the uploads that do exist but it doesnt seem to do anything to the upload speed.

my only gripe about bittorrent is that it will get to 99.99% of a 1.4 gig file and sit there for days failing hash checks. gets annoying.

Perhaps you should call the Amazing Yappi.

lol

Was he related to the Stupendous Yappi?

Dammit. I knew that sounded wrong.