OT: Torrents??

Submitted by wisecrakker on

I am hearing more and more about torrents in the p2p world.

Can "y'all" please illuminate this further and give some direction in safely utilizing these for use on one's computer (if possible).

I consider myself computer literate but this has me somewhat confused.

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joeyb

August 18th, 2010 at 2:59 PM ^

Like umjgheitma said, use utorrent (microtorrent). The way it works is you go to a torrent site and download a .torrent file. That file contains information about trackers which help you get your first connections to other users with the files. You don't download the files from the sites; you download the location of the files and your torrent program knows what to do with the rest.

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bigmc6000

August 18th, 2010 at 3:03 PM ^

Depending on your service provider you may get in trouble.  A friend of mine who's on Verizon FIOS got a nasty letter from them because he was using them - of course after that he just used little snitch and didn't upload which, I know, destroys the concept of the seeders/leachers but it was what he had to do.

 

Also, personally, I used to use isohunt almost exclusively but after they got busted and had to change their format around I ended up going with thepiratebay.org

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Michigan Shirt

August 18th, 2010 at 3:03 PM ^

Never used utorrent, but Bittorent works pretty good for me. Some other sites to use are demonoid.com, thepiratebay.org, and torrent-finder.com (which is like google with many major torrent sites as tabs).

Joined: 02/05/2010

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Michigan Shirt

August 21st, 2010 at 9:41 PM ^

So demonoid.com limits the number of invites, but I will still try to post some more if anyone else asks. I don't think I really need to say this to anyone, but please don't upload torrents with viruses as my account will get deactivated and I do not want that. Again I have a few more so first come first serve.

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switch26

August 18th, 2010 at 3:10 PM ^

Bit torrent and uTorrent are the same thing.. you won't get any faster speed.  It all depends on how many people are seeding on the file you are downloading.

 

Like mentioned torrent-finder.com works well, but there are sites out there where you need a pass, and those download incredibly fast.  You would just need someone who already has access to them to get into them.

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umjgheitma

August 18th, 2010 at 3:13 PM ^

I have been using utorrent for years because it was the only program when I started to let you download multiple torrents at a time (BitTorrent only let you get one torrent at a time). As for sites, btjunkie.org has users that give great feedback. Like if downloading movies/music they give audio/visual ratings (i.e. A9/V8) and tell you if something needs a password or is completely wrong. Another plus is if its a cracked piece of software they will give alternate cracking means just in case the ones supplied don't work properly. 

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strafe

August 18th, 2010 at 3:16 PM ^

Honestly torrents from any of the main sites are pretty safe because anything with malicious software in it gets taken down really quickly (or verified for safety before it gets put up anyway)

Get utorren and install it. Then when you download a .torrent, the client that you use (which would be something like utorrent) should pretty much automatically open the .torrent file and connect to other people using the same .torrent to download the file.

The most customization you should have to do is deciding where you want your files saved, which is pretty straightforward through the options...

Check this out if you want a  bit more about what torrents actually are, includes a link to download utorrent:

http://lifehacker.com/285489/a-beginners-guide-to-bittorrent

Also some other takeaways: Torrents are definitely mostly used for pirated material, but that isn't the only application. More and more people are using torrents to release large files/software patches/etc. Also I don't know if its been said, but the reason that so many people recommend utorrent is that, at least from a few years ago, it was easily the most lightweight and undemanding client when it came to system resources :]

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mgoSk

August 18th, 2010 at 3:54 PM ^

I use Vuze, it's a great all in one piece of software with built in search that pulls from the major torrent sites. Plus it formats to your iPod or even PS3, etc. So you could download the future Michigan beatdown of Connecticut and then stream it to your TV through a PS3.

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Shaqsquatch

August 18th, 2010 at 6:53 PM ^

Vuze is nice, but really memory heavy. There was a rumor a few years back that utorrent had been subpoenaed by the RIAA so I switched to Vuze for a while, and the extra features (not to mention using magnet links) was nice, but utorrent just runs much lighter, which I prefer over the extra features.

And for the OP, I'd reccomend using torrentz.com for your searches, it combines all the major torrent search sites, then you can choose which to download from (piratebay and mininova are my favorite two once results come up), and just doublecheck that the uploader is a trusted uploader before you downloading (usually has some kind of icon by their name) to make sure you don't get any malware.

Also, if you're looking for tv shows, simply go to eztv.it. It's the best, fastest, and most seeded TV show torrents around and he updates with shows usually within an hour of airing, depending on the show. 

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MFreak

August 18th, 2010 at 4:01 PM ^

I prefer demonoid. Really nice selection and I don't think there's one malicious file on the whole site.

And as someone said above, use peerblock. Not sure if it's just the placebo effect and it doesn't work as good as it says, but I do know that I've never gotten a letter from anyone telling me to stop downloading.

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bamill010

August 21st, 2010 at 9:52 PM ^

It surprises me how many people still think that demonoid is the bee's knees. The advantage to uploading and being a good seeder is that you can get invited to lots of private trackers. They're usually specialized per your interests. For example I use what.cd and waffles.fm for music, bitgamer for games, and hdtorrents, hdahoy, hdme, and tehconnection for movies/television shows. The download times on these sites are awesome, the selection is far better than any public trackers (which demonoid practically is), and you're far less likely to have any RIAA people watching your traffic. If you want the best experience you'd be helping yourself if you read up on port-forwarding and how to be a good seeder. When you get to one good private tracker and keep a good ratio you'll find that members will be happy to give you invites to lots of other private trackers.

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Rico616

August 24th, 2010 at 1:58 AM ^

I use bittorrent and kickasstorrents to find the torrents. I just started using torrents a month or so again so I'm still a rookie but I pretty much stick to it for music and my fav tv shows (Dexter at the moment). I usually download the file with the most seeders and comments and kickasstorrents verifies it to make sure its safe from malware. I try to avoid downloading software though.

Either way torrents make it so quick and easy to download whole music albums and virtually everyone I search for is available.

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