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 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 and do your search.
  
• For example, a search for "d&d" 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"
  
• 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.
  
• Now you'll come to a page in some crazy moon-language. However it has a download link 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

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/