Has anyone made a good beginners guide to torrenting?

[anon]

Is there a way to change usernames? I would gladly do so.

As I believe mjmacky hinted at, you can create a thread in the report section to have your name changed, if you're serious about this.

[temisturk]

Thanks temisturk. And sorry about what I said on the other thread, I wasn't trying to be a dick but instead just explaining my mindset behind how i use bit torrent when ratio doesn't count.

I'm glad you said that because your reply there really left me speechless. But as much as I applaud your honesty I'm one of the people who seeds public torrents--one of the people you take from without giving back to--so I'm not sure I want to continue helping you.

[Funkin']

Is there a way to change usernames? I would gladly do so.

You gonna change it to tombrady?

[mjmacky]

Is there a way to change usernames? I would gladly do so.

You gonna change it to tombrady?

I would have just suggested "nottimtebow"

[tombrady]

I'm glad you said that because your reply there really left me speechless. But as much as I applaud your honesty I'm one of the people who seeds public torrents--one of the people you take from without giving back to--so I'm not sure I want to continue helping you.

Thanks for being one of the generous people. I have a couple questions about how to seed I guess since maybe I'm just confused about the process. It seems to me that often during my torrent downloads i will maintain for instance a 200kB/s download speed and a maybe 4kB/s upload speed. Once I'm done it the download speed drops to 1kB/s and the upload stays about the same. A lot of the time they both stop. I'm not limiting the seed ratio or the upload speed, leaving both at unlimited, but it seems to me that I really don't provide a whole lot of service to the community. I might get to a 0.100 ratio if I download the average 700MB movie while I sleep. When I wake up I normally turn off my computer or put it to sleep and go to class. If I shut down, the torrent obviously stops and if I take my laptop to class I have to quit out of the client because my university monitors their network. Now until I need another torrent download I have little incentive to reopen the client. Im not going to leave my computer on and running day and night for a week to build up a ratio that does nothing for me. I mean, if I am able to download overnight 700MB, but unable to seed the same amount in a week, are people actually benefiting from my seeding? Arn't the same people that I got the content from still there giving it out? Are they going to lessen in number because I now seed? I guess I just feel that wasting power running my laptop (i could run folding@home and get two jobs done at the same time) but I just don't think its worth it. I don't feel like I am a selfish person, I volunteer occasionally, I give small donations to various charities, I sometimes use paypal to give a dollar or two to a developer of free software. I guess to me seeding isn't one of the ways I give back to the community, I'm sorry I'm not more compelled but I guess I just don't see much of a point.

[mjmacky]

Over worded attempt to justify not seeding.

I would accept the reasoning of, "I'm just self-serving leecher" over the explanation you gave any day. You take while others give, just accept that this is your stance on the matter. However, to actually address what you posted, why not just seed when you have your computer on and while you still have the file? It's pretty much that simple. Why the fuck would it matter that your client is closed sometimes or that you leave your computer in sleep mode? It's not going to stay in those states forever. The reason you were able to download in the first place is because there are others leaving their clients running and seeding the files. The reason public torrents can be so slow is because most are like you, only in for the take, thus content not currently popular will take awhile to complete.

As far as the security risk, or the copyright infringement risk, you've already exposed yourself. This is because when they monitor a particular torrent they would be doing it long term instead of just popping in at some random time.

In case you haven't really followed the advice about how to change your username, here's a follow up:
Go here:
https://filesharingtalk.com/forums/72-Report-Section
Create a new thread saying you want to change your nick, then tell them what you'd like your new nick to be. A mod will review it, and most likely change it if available and appropriate. I imagine the primary reason we aren't allowed to change nicks ourselves is to avoid scamming abuse.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/311565/sat...ght-live-tebow

[tombrady]

Over worded attempt to justify not seeding.

I would accept the reasoning of, "I'm just self-serving leecher" over the explanation you gave any day. You take while others give, just accept that this is your stance on the matter. However, to actually address what you posted, why not just seed when you have your computer on and while you still have the file? It's pretty much that simple. Why the fuck would it matter that your client is closed sometimes or that you leave your computer in sleep mode? It's not going to stay in those states forever. The reason you were able to download in the first place is because there are others leaving their clients running and seeding the files. The reason public torrents can be so slow is because most are like you, only in for the take, thus content not currently popular will take awhile to complete.

As far as the security risk, or the copyright infringement risk, you've already exposed yourself. This is because when they monitor a particular torrent they would be doing it long term instead of just popping in at some random time.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/311565/sat...ght-live-tebow

That SNL skit was great.

The problem with seeding intermittently for me is that most of the content that I download tends not to stay in the same format forever. For instance, If I download some software it comes as a package file, and as soon as I install it I normally delete the package, especially if its say, the Adobe Creative Suite which is probably like 6 gigs. Im not starved for space, but I would be if I had to leave content like that on my hdd. As for movies and music, I normally change the format, either to fit them on a DVD or get the songs into iTunes. Again, often the originals get deleted to save space.

You are right, its probably easier to just say I'm a self serving leecher.

[mjmacky]

You are right, its probably easier to just say I'm a self serving leecher.

Why do you have to be so harsh on yourself? Changing format is a totally legit reason, especially when it's put together in a redundant or retarded fashion, e.g. RARs.

[Alien5]

If 6 gigs is a struggle to make space then Why not invest in a new bigger hard drive.

[tombrady]

If 6 gigs is a struggle to make space then Why not invest in a new bigger hard drive.

Find me a 2tb 2.5 inch drive and ill install it.
6 gigs was a single file, and no, its not a huge problem to have one, or two or even like four. But if i had to keep every original file that I torrent I would quickly run out of space.

What I was thinking was maybe I should buy an old desktop PC, like a apple powermac G5, and load it with cheap 3.5 inch HDD's, leave it in a corner with a wired connection straight to my router for optimal speed and use that as a box that I just leave on all of the time and use to torrent everything, then just copy the files to my laptop. This would allow me to seed and probably never run out of space, as well as meaning that I don't have to run the torrent client on my computer.