What the fuck?! How the fuck does this thing work? There's no search function?? You just do random fucking web searches with the word "torrent" in them, looking for anything that comes up, and downloading from extremely shady looking sites filled with ads? And all of them ask you to register for some kind of tracking shit i don't even understand?
MY BRAIN FUCKING HURTS.
How the FUCK is this supposed to be easier and safer than eMule?!
RPGPundit
You need a good torrent meta search site. I recommend ISOhunt, it's the only one I use, because it searches most all the big ones and even nets results from some of the other big torrent searchers. Mininova is also a good second opinion if you can't find what you need on ISOhunt.
One word of advice though, you'll want to sort your search results on any such site by the number of "seeds" (on ISOhunt, click the S above the column second from the right). Seeds are essentially the number of people hosting a full copy of the files, the more there are, the more success you'll have downloading it, and the faster it'll download.
The other key thing is to make sure you have the right ports open on your router, if you're using one. http://portforward.com has great guides the break down exactly what you need to do to get your torrent program (I recommend uTorrent) working with your model router.
The few times I have been able to get torrent software/links to work it was going to take 10 hours just to download a 2 hour movie so I have not bothered with it anymore.
RPGPundit, bittorrent technology is very different from just downloading stuff. It's a little more complicated to get set up, so don't expect easier. Once you do get it set up, it is extremely effective.
There are two elements involved, a torrent file and some software to handle the downloading for you.
The torrent file is a super small text file that refers to the actual movie/music/program/pdf that you want to download and consume. You need to find that file elsewhere on the internet.
When you have the torrent file of the item you want, you open it up into your torrent software, (like uTorrent as J Arcane mentioned).
Then the software uses that little file as a reference point to go out on the internet and grab pieces of your file from everyone else who has them and is running a torrent program.
Little by little, your actual file grows. It's very slow, but if it gets interrupted, you don't lose any of the progress, even if your computer crashes. It just goes back to building up your file.
The legality of the content you choose to get is another question, but it's all out there.
It's a slight learning process, but not too difficult. Take your time, be patient, read around on the web. You'll learn something and participate in what is a pretty amazing piece of technology, built and distributed for free by people a lot smarter than you and I.
Ok, very UNuseful J Arcane. Where the FUCK is Isohunt? How the hell do I use it?
All I know is that there are NO instructions that come with bittorrent, and no fucking clue how to make things download.
And again, in what possible fucking way is this method of "going around the internet websites to virus-and-adware-filled sites where dubious files are supposedly hosted to try your luck" going to be safer than emule or limewire?
RPGPundit
OK fine, fuck you too.
If you're so goddamn lazy you can't even use a simple Google search, there's no helping you any way.
Fucking prick.
That's bullshit. I've wasted my entire fucking day trying to search google. I haven't found a single straightforward step-by-step users guide to torrent. I haven't found a single website that looked the least bit reliable for searching for torrents. When I was looking for certain torrents, all I ended up finding were webpages full of ads and popups and other bullshit where the file I was looking for was supposedly hosted but every single one of them had some kind of "tracker error" when I tried to download them, or required registration, or had a password.
So please, do not bullshit me with "this is easy" crap.
RPGPundit
Isohunt and mininova are readily googlable. Other large sites are linked from Wikipedia, e.g. in the article about mininova.
The thing about torrent, though, it's mainly for sharing, not searching. It works extremely well if you have a focused site that points you to torrent files. E.g. if you're into anime, animesuki is like a clearinghouse that points to all the fansub groups' work on any given title.
In practice, I find that bittorrent is much faster than ed2k and related protocols/systems, though that may just be because it's more widely used, for the types of material that it is used for. If you're looking for random obscure stuff that someone might have felt like sharing on the spur of the moment (or downloaded who knows how long ago and just left in their download folder), e2dk (etc.) is better.
RPGPundit: Google it, use it... very simple, even twelwe years olds can use torrent to get latest anime fansubs, so it's not all that difficult...
The thing to know, RPGPundit, is that you are heading into the criminal zone when you go looking for torrent files to download. Like heading to the seedy part of town to buy some weed, you also have to deal with all kinds of other annoying and potentially hazardous distractions.
Here is an aggregator that works pretty well:
http://www.torrentz.com
Just bear in mind that part of the challenge is finding the actual torrent. For major movies and shit like that, it's easy, but more obscure stuff can be really hard to find. You need to be in the know.
Whatever J Arcane said, you should not have any expectations that this is supposed to be turnkey easy. Nobody ever made such claims. You have to do a bit work and learning.
Your google fu must really suck if you couldn't find good info about using torrents. I typed in "how to use bittorrent software" into google and got all kinds of helpful links, such as:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bittorrent.htm
http://www.expertvillage.com/video-series/1417_bit-torrent.htm
http://lifehacker.com/software/ultranewb/a-beginners-guide-to-bittorrent-285489.php
That last one is supposedly for newbies, so it might serve you best.
I did find the "beginner's guide" and it was the only one that even came close to making any fucking sense. But it didn't really answer the questions in a way that allowed for a step-by-step process. And the other FAQs are just utterly worthless, so full of jargon and nonanswers that its just frightening.
But like I said, even the beginner's guide is pretty fucking worthless. Like, it tells you "the most common error newbies make is not to seed".
OH FUCKING GREAT. What the fuck is that?!
How does that help?? You might as well have said "the one thing you absolutely have to remember is vbadfgaty".
What the fuck is seeding? Why do newbies make a mistake with it? HOW DO YOU FUCKING CORRECT THE MISTAKE??
None of these things are answered.
The problem here is that torrent is clearly run by geeks, for geeks, with nary a person involved who knows how to actually communicate at the normal human level.
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;225211What the fuck is seeding? Why do newbies make a mistake with it? HOW DO YOU FUCKING CORRECT THE MISTAKE??
Here's what they mean in English: "Don't just download the file you want then disconnect right away, leave your machine hooked up for a while to upload it back so other people can download from your machine." It's one of those etiquette things.
I think walker had the right analogy with the drug deal - it's like most subculture things, they aren't real receptive to newbies and outsiders.
Personally, I just use eMule as I find it easier to use (though I stick with an older version).
I think it's more than that, jgants. The mistake some people make is not allowing any uploading at all. The algorithms that determine who gets how much of the total available download bandwidth favor people who also upload.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_%28protocol%29 (which also might help other basic questions)
See the paragraph containing the words "optimistic unchoking".
I'm not sure if the scheme is carried out on a file-by-file basis or if someone will give you "credit" for uploading file A, that you can use toward downloading file B.
In any case, if you don't allow any uploading at all, you'll just see a trickle of download, basically just the stuff that's "optimistically unchoked" to you.
Ok, I still don't understand anything.
Let's say I have downloaded and installed uTorrent. Is it set, by default, to allow uploads? Or do I, the newbie, have to go and change something to make it work??
I mean, it seems pretty idiotic to me (though perhaps understandable at certain level) that they would initially set it so that you cannot upload; but if so, how the fuck do I change that? I mean, if they don't explain how to anywhere (not even the motherfucking "beginner's guide") then how do I do it so that my uTorrent isn't running at a sub-optimal level?
RPGPundit
Quote from: Elliot Wilen;225222I think it's more than that, jgants. The mistake some people make is not allowing any uploading at all. The algorithms that determine who gets how much of the total available download bandwidth favor people who also upload.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_%28protocol%29 (which also might help other basic questions)
See the paragraph containing the words "optimistic unchoking".
I'm not sure if the scheme is carried out on a file-by-file basis or if someone will give you "credit" for uploading file A, that you can use toward downloading file B.
In any case, if you don't allow any uploading at all, you'll just see a trickle of download, basically just the stuff that's "optimistically unchoked" to you.
You're right, I forgot that part.
Quote from: walkerp;225198The thing to know, RPGPundit, is that you are heading into the criminal zone when you go looking for torrent files to download. Like heading to the seedy part of town to buy some weed, you also have to deal with all kinds of other annoying and potentially hazardous distractions.
Bingo.
Pundit: You have my sympathies. BitTorrent gives me a headache. I'm lucky that one of my best friends is a linux system's administrator by trade and has set up my linux box to be pretty idiot proof and do most of it automatically.
Isn't there a Preferences or Options menu choice? That will probably say whether it is set to default or not. With the torrent programs I have used, they always are set to upload automatically. Why don't you just start downloading and see what happens? It won't hurt if you aren't uploading right away, as you are starting at zero anyways.
It may depend on the client software, but I'd expect most of them to allow uploading by default. Nevertheless there will be people who for various reasons decide to turn off or throttle back uploading (e.g., they think their non-shared data is at risk, or they don't understand that upload and download bandwidth are separate).
A bigger concern is whether you are operating behind a firewall or in a NATed network. But if you're familiar with ed2K, you probably already know about opening up ports and configuring port forwarding. UPnP (Universal Plug 'n Play) may also help with this but you may not have it on the necessary devices, or you may have turned it off for security reasons.
I'd just do what walkerp says here: get a client that's widely recommended (m torrent is probably your best bet; I think I have bittorrent installed on my home PC but I can see a reason or two why people would avoid it; for Mac I think Transmit is very nice). Then locate a file that's popular (so you can be sure there are seeders) and not too big, and do a test download.
I use uTorrent.
Look, it's really easy. Seriously. My mom uses it :) Go to that cute little search box in the upper right. tyoe in something (for music use the album rather than a single song, though). use the dropdown box to choose a site. Find what you want and download the torrent file, then double click to add to uTorrent. Let it download (Opera will try to download the more than the text, but it can't so don't allow it).
Then after you're done, leave it up so you can let others get it. I usually do this overnight. It should have the defaults set up to allow seeding.
Ok, I'm trying to figure this out, and I seem to be downloading some stuff ok.
Question: is there at least some function in Torrent that is similar to the one in Emule where you can click on a user and "view shared files"; so that you could see what other stuff a given "peer" is currently down-or-uploading?
RPGPundit
Quote from: RPGPundit;225188That's bullshit. I've wasted my entire fucking day trying to search google. I haven't found a single straightforward step-by-step users guide to torrent. I haven't found a single website that looked the least bit reliable for searching for torrents.
Torrents are like pr0n in that they are loaded with dodginess and there's money involved (in the advertising on the sites) which amplifies the dodginess. But you are after all pirating and getting free shit, so don't complain too much.
- Go to Vuze (http://www.vuze.com/Download.html) and download the file.
- Install it.
- Start it up. Go to Tools --> Options ---> Files and set your default directory. This is where your downloads will go to. Now exit Vuze.
- Go to torrentz (http://www.torrentz.com/) and do your search.
- For example, a search for "d&d (http://www.torrentz.com/search?q=d%26d)" returns 91 results.
- The "peers" is how many people are hosting the file on their own computer. When you download files, you're actually downloading it from all those people.
- Click on the file you want to check out, for example, "basically every D&D book released (http://www.torrentz.com/7f71fb8bef0180a5ce6c0d7d7f3c9d81c6f9f23b)"
- Now you'll see a list of other sites such as thepiratebay, mininova and so on. Click on one of them. In this case, the sole link is to thepiratebay (http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3423276/Basically_every_D_amp_D_book_released_%283.5%29_Dungeons_and_Dragons).
- Now you'll come to a page in some crazy moon-language. However it has a download link (http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/3423276/Basically_every_D_D_book_released_%283.5%29_Dungeons_and_Dragons.3423276.TPB.torrent) which is the actual "torrent" file. A "torrent" file is one which is basically the Dewey decimal number of the file you want, so even if your computer crashes or you trip over your internet connection cable, it'll still remember about the file and where you're up to in downloading it.
- Click on the download link, and get the torrent. Now Vuze will start up, and it will tell you how fast your file is downloading - it usually takes a minute or so to get going.
- Right-click on the file involved and go to "Advanced" - here you can set your maximum download speeds (useful if you have download limits with your internet connection) and upload speeds (ditto). If you are a nice person you will set no maximum for your upload speed, since you want to give back to the pirating community. If you are a leech and a selfish prick, then you will set a nice low maximum.
- Log onto therpgsite, rpg.net, imbd.com or similar media site and bitch and moan about the quality of the stuff you just got for free.
Now stop it all and uninstall Vuze because the only reason to use p2p stuff like this is for swiping other people's copyrighted stuff without paying for it, which in many countries is illegal, is viewed by most authours as immoral, and is basically being a lazy, selfish, stingy prick.
Or
not:- however you care to see it :p
Quote from: RPGPundit;225334Question: is there at least some function in Torrent that is similar to the one in Emule where you can click on a user and "view shared files"; so that you could see what other stuff a given "peer" is currently down-or-uploading?
No, that information is only available to the tracker.
Also, I don't thing the BT FAQ has been mentioned, yet:
http://www.dessent.net/btfaq/