Torrenting..

Hello again :) (see i'm posting! :P)
First, I'd like to thank whoever prayed or wished me good luck on my mid-quarters, I did great! :D thank you all, what the heck.. why not thank anyone whoever existed :P (or most cause some don't deserve being thanked for anything :P like jews for instance.. yeah you can call me racist :@) anyways.. most probably you've all heard or read the words Torrents or BitTorrents somewhere at a particular time (okay seriously what's wrong with me?!) and probably most of you have already been using this great method of P2P sharing for a few years now (if you're one of them the post ends here :P don't bore yourself), but I've heard of some who haven't :P so here's an intro and some tips from yours faithfully :D..

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) communications protocol for file sharing. The protocol was designed in April 2001 and implemented in Summer 2002 by programmer Bram Cohen, and is now maintained by BitTorrent, Inc.

BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the whole of the corresponding costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources. Instead of the distributor alone servicing each recipient, under BitTorrent the recipients each also supply data to newer recipients, thus significantly reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source as well as providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence upon the original distributor.

~ via Wikipedia

in short, it's a way of sharing files between internet users, but in a much faster way than P2P programs such as KaZaA or eMule.. but ofcourse speed depends on your connection and the number of Resources (file uploading users) who are sharing the file you're downloading (leeching), or as they are familiarly known in BitTorrent clients (programs used to connect to Torrent Protocols) as Seeders.. so Seeding is Uploading and Leeching is Downloading (pretty neat huh?)
So why use BitTorrent?
Well, lets take a sneak peek under the hood of your BitTorrent client, and list a couple of features that make BitTorrent as fast, stable, and robust as it is.

• Fair trading

Once you have a little piece of the file, your BitTorrent client starts to look for other people who might be interested in the pieces you have. The BitTorrent protocol works as a tit-for-tat game, you only upload pieces to people who offer something to you. The more you upload to others, the more you receive.

This fair trading principle prevents free-riders from stealing your precious bandwidth.

Once you’re trading files, the BitTorrent client keeps a close eye on your peer, as soon as the other side stops sending you data it will stop sending as well (choke). In the meanwhile your client keeps searching for other peers, it randomly sends data to peers who are interested (optimistic unchoke), to see if that peer is a potential trading partner.

• Selecting pieces

So what pieces does your client sent first? Well, BitTorrent works with a “rarest piece first” scheme. Your BitTorrent client generally looks for the rarest piece that’s available among the peers in the swarm. This makes sure that the most common pieces are still available at the end, and may prevent people from getting stuck at 99%.

• Seeders & New Peers

Seeders don’t stop sending out pieces of course, but the rules change a bit. As a downloader the client determines the best peer by the upload/download ratio. A seeder however is only interested in peers with a high upload speed, so these fast uploaders can send the pieces to other peers, and speed up the overall speed of the swarm (seeds + peers).

New peers (without pieces) are more likely to receive a piece of the file at random. Besides this, new peers are not bound to the rarest piece first restriction. This makes sure that a new peer receives a “piece” as quick as possible, so he can share it with others.

These are just a few advantages of BitTorrent Clients, but I think of them as the main ones.

Can't wait to start using it? :P alrighty then, first, you'll need a BitTorrent client, I've tried about 3 clients, the functionality's all the same, but I've concluded that uTorrent is the best out there.. uTorrent's "A (Very) Tiny BitTorrent Client" slogan is amazingly true! since it only takes 170 KB's of your hard disk's space, that's the Standalone version, but I chose to go with the full installation program, felt safer with that :P and it's just 646KB's..

Now.. where Can I find files (torrents) I want? well, Google's a bless.. but then again, it's Almost the same when it comes to searching for files, cause you're only searching for torrents that are being shared over the Protocol.. but here's a few links I find great..
Torrentspy Fast search results with a clean layout (best for downloading LOST and Prison Break :P)
ISOHUNT If you're looking for software and games you'll probably find it here, great site..
Mininova I like how they list Recent and Latest shared files in categories on the main page.

So, now that you've searched for your file, found it and want to start leeching :P just go ahead and click on the Download link for that file, and choose Open with (if your're a firefox user) obviously the BitTorrent Client, I'm sure it'll directly transfer it to the Client if you've associated the .torrent file type with, and if you're using IE choose Open as well, some people choose to Save the torrent file, and then go to wherever the download location is, and double-click the .torrent file, I don't see why they'd do that, since it'll be safe in the Client, anyways.. that's that, and this is how you download :)

Hope whoever's new to this, finds my post helpful, thank you for your time :).. now I need to sleep.. Trying to fix my schedule :P..
PS make sure to pass by late tomorrow, I've got an interesting post about this Secret!!
Ti9ba7o 3ala 5air jamee3an :D