Bittorrent

[Richard Franklin]

Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

>A resent question here brings up something that's bugged me too.  
>
>Bittorrent is a great concept.  It's community supported, and for files the 
>size of installation iso's it's a better way to download.
>
>So why hasn't it replaced ftp completely?
>
>Because bittorrent doesn't work.
>
>When it does work, it works great.  It works so well and it's such a great 
>idea that people for whom it works often abandon conventional means of 
>distributing files, leaving their projects completely in limbo if the 
>torrents dry up, or if one of the many other overriding reasons bittorrent 
>doesn't work should take them down.
>
>I don't want to get into a language war here.  I know that there can be no 
>growth without change.  Part of the problem with bittorrent is that it's 
>written in python, and python is an evolving language, so depending on what 
>platform you're on, you may or may not have access ot a version of python 
>that will run bittorrent.  (I don't.)
>
>Although bittorrent pierces firewalls pretty well, it's not clear that it does 
>as well outbound as inbound.  This appears to stall the process in some 
>cases, as you are expected to share your resources if you're going to 
>participate in a torrent .
>
>The other problem, and one that I think has probably been what kept me from 
>persuing bittorrent further, is that there are a lot of bad links to bad 
>torrents out there - streams that won't launch, won't connect, for whatever 
>reason.
>
>So the problem is that if you have a project that has "discovered" bittorrent, 
>but has yet to discover all the potential problems it has, you end up with a 
>project that's inaccessible to a large portion of it's potential audience.  
>The standard OSS community response is to blame the users, and belittle their 
>skills and knowledge because they can't get bittorrent to run.
>
>If anybody's listening, I have another idea.  The traditional protocol for 
>distributing software on the internet still works just fine.  For a 
>bittorrent project, it makes a great backup, and ensures that future torrents 
>can be launched, even if there's a problem that takes down the original 
>links.
>
></rant>
>
Have had difficulties with the bittorrent client running with SUSE, and 
rather than to take the time to figure that one out, have copped out and 
used BitTornado with XP ... for the time being. I don't belittle my own 
skills and knowledge ... that's just to easy to do ... the point is, I 
really am just that lazy (and busy)! ;-)

And yes, some occasional sessions with a torrent are still hopelessly 
futile, but usually a mid-grade connection with Everest (= T1 +, in 
theory, by the benchmark ... yeah, right) is a speedy, fast food lane 
experience, and my laptop likes the Mandrake 10.1 that was  fetched in 
record time. Hmmm ... did I just compare Mandrake to McDonald's? ... uh 
... no, just the total download time.

Good to be getting the postings again to my new address ... even as a 
home / home office user (OOo rocks), I glean useful info from this list 
from time to time, though most of the info exchanged on this forum will 
never apply to my limited use of, and for, computers. Using mental 
bandwidth, such as it is, for other things.

Rick

PS Did your first line contain a Freudian slip that your spellchecker 
... oh, nevermind ... http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/p109g/fslip.html