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So, wossis BitTorrent nonsense then?

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Disco is My Class War

11:36 / 02.09.06

I also just had a quick look at TorrentSpy and there are a good few season 3 eps of Deadwood with healthy swarms sitting there.

Sure, but hardly any of the trackers actually work. They do seem healthy, but they're not. Same with Mininova, the Pirate Bay, Meganova, Torrent Reactor, IsoHunt.

12:04 / 02.09.06

Sure, but hardly any of the trackers actually work. They do seem healthy, but they're not. Same with Mininova, the Pirate Bay, Meganova, Torrent Reactor, IsoHunt.

I just grabbed the first four torrents from a TorrentSpy search for Deadwood (eps 9, 10, 11 ans 12 of season 3) and they all began downloading fine. I mean I'm not saying they're all working or anything but my random sampling there does imply there's not an across-the-board problem here.

12:08 / 02.09.06

As others have said I evnetually got sick of Azureus and it's slow resource-hogging nonsense as well. Luckily uTorrent has almost exactly the same feature set, an interface so similar that there's no learning curve when you switch and it's got a tiny footprint on your machine (the actual app itself is only a 170KB download).

18:41 / 02.09.06

I'm using uTorrent too, and I like it a lot. However, often I can only connect to a small percentage of the available peers. And the size of the swarm seems to have little bearing on my dl speed. Is that normal?
I haven't done the ports forward thing; should I?

21:00 / 02.09.06

I'm using uTorrent too, and I like it a lot. However, often I can only connect to a small percentage of the available peers. And the size of the swarm seems to have little bearing on my dl speed. Is that normal?
I haven't done the ports forward thing; should I?

If you connect to the internet through a router in your house then yes, you must forward a port or your download speed will never be optimal. If you just use one of the more common USB modem then forget about it, the whole port forwarding thing doesn't apply.

The other thing a lot of people don't do is implement the '80% rule'. On contrast to the more traditional P2P apps like Kazza, LimeWire, etc, BitTorrent uploads a lot of data as well as downloading. If you let your torrent client (uTorrent in this case) consume your entire upstream bandwidth then your connection gets swamped just by constantly uploading bits of data to other people, this means you don't get much of a chance to make requests for file piece from peers.

The solution to this is to restrict slightly the amount of your upstream bandwith uTorrent is allowed to use for uploading stuff to others, to give your connection some breathing room to make requests for yourself, and the recommended amount of upstream bandwidth to allow is 80%. So, if you've got a normal ADSL connection then your upstream bandwidth will be 256Kbps (regardless of whether your download speed is 1MB, 2Mb or whatever). The torrent clients tend to talk in megabytes rather than mebabits so that puts your upstream at 32KBps and 80% of that is around 25KBps. To add that restriction to uTorrent, go into the Preferences then into the Connection section. In the "Global maximum upload rate" box at the bottom enter your 25 and you should be golden. Of course the download speed you get on a specific torrent is still at the mercy of other factors but this upstream bandwidth limiting is still a good idea in general.

And bear in mind that my assumption about your upstream speed there is just that, as assumption, and yours could be different so it's probably worth checking with your ISP for the correct figure if you're unsure.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

08:47 / 03.09.06

demonoid registrations are open (possibly only for a few minutes/days) again.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:46 / 09.09.06

Yeek! Okay, so I went through the uTorrent tutorial on how to open a port on my firewall, etc. etc., and tried it out, and everything worked.

Downloaded, uploaded, turned the computer off, went for a walk.

Now, ZoneAlarm is giving me Security Alerts every few minutes, saying it's blocked access to my computer (TCP Port 99999) from (random IP number) (TCP Port Something Else) (TCP Flags: S).

Have I done something wrong? Should I just close that port on my router and open a new one? Or is this perfectly normal torrenting action?

Feeling a bit paranoid and weirded out.

21:19 / 01.03.07

Can anyone explain why every time I think I've downloaded 100% of x video file and go to play it I discover that it is in fact only 99.5% complete? Cue firing up bitlord again, downloading to 100% again, trying to run the file again only to find that it's 99.6% complete, cue...?

ArrrggghhhfffuuuuckOOOOOOFFFFFFF!

05:12 / 02.03.07

I don't know a solution, except that I use BitTorrent, and find the torrents through Torrentspy with never any problems...

06:15 / 02.03.07

I'd switch clients dude, BitLord has a bad reputation with many private trackers blocking it's use because of the way it implements the BitTorrent protocols, and it's allegedly full of bugs because it's based on an old version of another bad client called BitComet. And, from what I'm reading, it's ad-supported and there's no reason you need to put up with that when there's shitloads of properly free clients out there. I'd recommend uTorrent; all the features you could ever need packed into a tiny executable that never hogs resources.

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

06:22 / 02.03.07

There's been a few more rubbish data seeders around lately, especially on older torrents, so it could be that you're downloading junk data and your client isn't bothering to check it until you tell it to start that torrent again. you might be able to do a a forced hash check through your client which should reveal the junk data bits and make it start downloading real data, but you should also try and block access to the group of i.p.s that are seeding you bad data.

As they're probably going to report you to someone for stealing, because of the junk you downloaded from them.

(ok, that's a worst case scenario, but it makes sense to block areas of the internet which are the domain of large corporations, for instance, for that reason)

I'd say go to uTorrent as well, it's a much better client and auto-blocks i.p.s that send bad data (but not ranges of i.p.s, which is kind of irritating - it's easy to put them in, though).

07:17 / 02.03.07

Thanks, guys, I'll be switching to utorrent this evening.

I've been running security software to block bad data. That should help, yeah?

11:08 / 03.03.07

I've been running security software to block bad data. That should help, yeah?

Depends what you mean by security software, personally I run PeerGuradian which blocks the IPs of known RIAA affiliates to not only try and get you 'better' data but also protect from legal issues. How effective it is is almost impossible to say obviously but I run it because I figure it can't hurt.

15:06 / 03.03.07

I mean PeerGuardian.

Kirin? Who the heck?

16:11 / 03.03.07

If you commonly get stuck at 99.9% (or something close to that), and your client shows there to be one or more copies in the swarm (usually called 'availability' or something along those lines), there are a couple of things you can do.

Check the individual files' statuses. If the file you want shows 100%, then you can be on your way. Also, look out for temporary files, such as Windows' Thumbs.db and Mac OS X's .DS_Store. It's perfectly safe to tell your client not to bother downloading them (since they likely differ between computers, your client will never find a copy which matches what it's expecting). You can usually achieve this by un-ticking them in your client's files list.

Be patient! BitTorrent speeds tend to be slow at the beginning and end, with the peak in the middle of the download. Once you get to high percentage completion, you'll be looking for some fairly specific pieces of the files, and the last ones are going to be, by definition, the hardest to find. Just wait, and good things may come.

16:37 / 03.03.07

Thanks for the advice, Kirin, but switching to utorrent solved my problem immediately.

17:30 / 10.10.07

Has anyone got an invitation to Oink they can give me? I let my membership lapse and I'm lost without it.

13:08 / 17.03.08

So where is good for lesser-known stuff these days?

Since Oink and Demonoid got shut down, I've been looking a while for a site that has a good amount of music that just doesn't appear on the big trackers. There are a few sites that talk of being similar to Oink, but they're all private and I have no idea where to get an invite. I miss being able to find good quality copies of nice music...

Someone care to point me the right way?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:57 / 17.03.08

I've recently changed ISP but am finding that with my Torrents, while I download them entire thing fine I'm not really uploading much, even though uTorrent seems to think theres thousands of people gagging for the data. Quite a few of the Torrents seem to stop at the 0.2% uploaded mark. I've not changed any of the settings since I changed ISPs but looking through the settings there's nothing that, to my untrained eye that looks like it's ISP dependent. Obviously I can't ask the ISP but, while I'd be more bummed if I couldn't download stuff I like to feel that I'm doing my small bit for the community of illegal file-swapping scum that we are :-D so wondered if anyone had ideas.

14:04 / 17.03.08

So where is good for lesser-known stuff these days?

While it's certainly a bit more labor intensive than torrents, I find that soulseek (solarseek for the mac users) is my go-to app for harder to find stuff.

15:17 / 17.03.08

I've recently changed ISP but am finding that with my Torrents, while I download them entire thing fine I'm not really uploading much

A lot of ISPs offer pretty fast download rates, but slow uploads. You can test your down/upload speed with a bandwidth speed test (there's loads if you google for 'em). Just remember to close all your downloads/torrents/etc and wait a few minutes before running one. Alternatively, just call your ISP or check their website for info on the upload rate.

If these tests show your upload rate to be higher than you are acheiving on bittorrent, your ISP may be filtering your traffic, though I'd expect this to be happening with your downloads too... If this is the case, a lot of bittorrent clients have options for encrypted traffic. I've not used uTorrent, but from what I've heard, it's pretty fully featured so it should have optins somewhere.

It also depends on how many other uploaders there are in a swarm. If there are a few hundred people in a swarm, you may end up uploading to a load of people, but only tiny bits of info as they are getting a lot from a lot of other places.

While it's certainly a bit more labor intensive than torrents, I find that soulseek is my go-to app for harder to find stuff.

I use soulseek too, but the 'labour intensive' part really gets to me. Having to wait for days to get to the end of a queue to download someone's files, only to have them log of, or my client log itself off (solarseek is a buggy PoS) and have to try all over again...

Add this to the totally random nature of searches, the mixed quality of tracks, the infuriatingly messed up naming schemes of many users, the annoyance of NOT BEING ABLE TO GET THOSE LAST THREE FUCKING TRACKS OF THE ALBUM, and.. and...

Yeah, Soulseek pisses me off...

Also, not too keen on the way they offer incentive for donations - it's not a donation if it gives you something good, it's a payment. While I'm happy to fileshare, I'm not too keen on people making money from it.

15:54 / 17.03.08

I use Soulseek

16:04 / 17.03.08

Sorry, Boboss. Didn't mean to offend.

00:29 / 18.03.08

while we're on the topic of pirating stuff-

does anyone know anything about UseNeXT? Is the hype about being able to download anything in the universe at crazy fast speeds simply hype?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

13:59 / 18.03.08

Thanks Petunia, I'll check the speedtester doohickey some time...

trouble at bill

15:38 / 30.03.08

Seeing as this is a sort of 'stupid questions' style thread, I will risk coming out as one who is utterly backward and ignorant about all this! First, it looks as though it's almost more trouble than it's worth, literally. I mean, is anyone spending longer faffing about doing this than they would spend earning the money to just buy the stuff the old fashioned way? While I am at it, is there still any real issue with pc safety here (or was there ever)? Can one be sure to avoid spyware and malware and all sorts of nastiness when downloading this stuff? I've heard horror stories, but I'm not really qualified to judge them. What I think I mean is, leaving aside the ethical dimension which is probably a different thread, should I be catching up with the cool kids and getting into this, or are there still any practical reasons to steer clear?

16:26 / 30.03.08

Depends what you're downloading. If you're downloading music and films in fairly standard formats (mp3s, avis etc.) you should be safe. If you're downloading programs, either stick to a trusted source or find ones which have plenty of comments confirming they're authentic, and then still check them with your virus scanner.

16:29 / 30.03.08

Oh, and as to faffiness, it's really, really easy. Download a torrent client, and then in the case of, say, middling-to-major films or albums, it's generally possible to just Google "album name torrent" and find it quickly.

trouble at bill

18:06 / 16.04.08

Cheers, hmmm, so it's obviously time I caught up with the cool kids then. Apart from that I don't approve of the whole stealing aspect of it, of course. ;-)

18:15 / 16.04.08

Stealing? You are copying files, not taking them away from anybody.

13:52 / 17.04.08

First, it looks as though it's almost more trouble than it's worth, literally. I mean, is anyone spending longer faffing about doing this than they would spend earning the money to just buy the stuff the old fashioned way?

Other have already commented on this but my $0.02 is that your assumptions there are flawed in a few ways.

Firstly, there really isn't much in the way of trouble in setting this stuff up. Within about five minutes you can have downloaded uTorrent, followed the step-by-step guide on portforward.org to sort your router out and that's you ready to go; it really isn't amazingly difficult at all, and certainly any time you might spend on it is 'worth it' for what you can get back. It seems that you're reading a thread specifically designed for people to bring their filesharing troubles to and assuming that the experiences here are general, but your sample set is flawed because people are specifically coming here only if they've got problems. Sort of like going to a forum specifically for people to ask questions about their broken TVs, then taking away from that the idea that it's nor worth owning a TV as they mostly break. There would need to be a "Hands up who's generally pretty happy with BitTorrent?" thread to provide a balanced view, but obviously such a thread would serve no real purpose so doesn't exist.

Secondly your assuming that the stuff people are downloading can actually be bought. The vast majority of stuff I'm grabbing these days is either (a) British TV comedy that isn't yet available on DVD or (b) American TV that both years ahead of the same series' on UK TV and which will inevitably be shown on some subscription TV channel like Sky One even if it does ever turn up here and, personally, I'm just not willing to pay for such things even it I couldn't get them on BitTorrent sites. The fact that I'm able to lay my hands on any music, films and software that take my fancy is an added bonus obviously.

16:41 / 17.04.08

demonoid's back up, for those that haven't been paying attention. it's really a shadow of its former awesomeness, but i'm hoping that in a month or two things will be business as usual. (if anyone wants in that isn't already, pm me for an invite).

20:53 / 12.05.08

Sorry this is sort of a specific question rather than general enquiry but....
I'm looking for a torrent of Edward II. I'd buy it but it seems to be only available on import and time is an issue. Basically writing an essay on the bloody thing for a general paper coming up quite soon as its British made and films like "Caravaggio" & "Wittgenstein" are readily available on DVD I didn't think twice about doing loads of research before checking the local shops *Head-desk* etc.
Torrentreactor gives these options : DownloadNova / Usenet / Professional Download. I'm eliminating Download Nova as it apparently requires me to sign up to a porn site in its registration process, Professional Download as the link seems to be invalid, leaving me with Usenet.
Usenet appears to allow a free two week trial. I only want one bloody torrent. I'm happy enough to sign up provided its actually there and whatnot. If the service is good I'll even stay.
Any opinions, advice or possible alternatives? I've looked every usual so it might be a last resort apart from a Italian dubbed posting on Youtube which is missing 2 of 11 parts.
Bah. Complain.

20:43 / 19.05.08

So where is good for lesser-known stuff these days?

There are a lot of smaller and more specialised sites that usually (and unfortunately) don't have open registrations. Although this is not usually that hard to get (assuming you're willing to use some of your time on the site's irc channel or troll message boards for invites.)
One of my favourites is cinemageddon.org, which mostly contains b-movies (and movies further down the alphabet also). Invites are not required for signing up, and their motto is quite amusing: "quantity not quality".
There are lots of other more high maintenance sites I use, such as karagarga, and cinemaobscura. On all three sites you mainly find movies you wouldn't find elsewhere. E.g., on cinemageddon there are "projects", that collects movies made by a certain studio/filmmaker or genre. There's a Godfrey Ho project, Eurospy project and a Godzilla movie project. On karagarga I recently found the german masterpiece Rote Sonne after trawling the web looking for it for a couple of weeks.

22:59 / 19.05.08

I'd love to snag a copy of the Argentinian movie "The Man Facing Southeast" (at least, that's the English title, the original title is "Hombre Mirando al Sudeste" which is looking to the southeast). K-Pax was a lame ripoff of it. I really remember the soundtrack, which was mostly good creepy atmospheric, this one poignant collection of scenes with a very emotional piece backing it, and one or two incongruous sexy sax bits peppered in. Like the end of Blade Runner.
I don't know, though...it's a movie I last saw nearly twenty years ago, maybe I wouldn't like it now, but I sure loved it then.
But, sorry, more on topic- I still use standard P2Ps (mostly emule) for more obscure items, I seem to have more luck there. But I've never joined one of those exclusive sites. Is it worth it?
As far as bittorrent clients, I use Azureus still, Utorrent totally froze my machine. I could not figure it out for the life of me. Azureus works nicely for me, anyway.

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