Thank You for this BitTorrent System to Replace the P2P sharing (NOT!)

[akidaki]

P2P - original, easy and beloved download frame, friendly to use for beginners and experts alike, one click to search, one to download and one to play/use the file requested, straightforward, quick (depending on the connection speed, of course) and above all - simple and intuitive as much as any nowadays computer technology could be!

Bit torrent on the other hand is the alternative so overly complicated, slow, bug-ridden, faulty and generally cumbersome system aimed at computer geeks (in its worst sense) with a lifetime to spend in front of their screens. It takes 50- page manual to just start operating properly and even then there is NO guarantee it will work. Most of the time - it does not. It will devour hours or days of your precious time to download - nothing. It takes a friend (high up) in the IT department to help you set it up and tune and his entire helpdesk to guide you through the process to download a song or a music video. Still, you may end up just with a 404 page not found error...

For all of us laymen it is Bit Torture to use and a damn shame we are doomed to use This Thing in place of Kazaa, Napster and all other divinely simple tools we used to get our free content on the internet because of greedy media corporations' crackdown! So it does not jive when those numerous geek proponents cynically respond to any Bit Torrent criticism along these lines "Well, it is getting you stuff for free, if you cannot learn it to depths required then go and BUY your media!" as I am sure Bram Cohen doesn't download Bit Torrent and uses the money he made off of This Thing to go buy CDs and DVDs and Video Games at his local stores...

Thank you once again for this wonderful technology! Not!

[Ultima]

I fail to see what your point is. BitTorrent was designed to offload the upload bandwidth from the initial seeder. It was never, ever designed to be "a replacement for Kazaa, Napster". What other people choose to do with it the protocol none of our concern, so you're barking up the wrong tree. If you'd like to complain, go complain to those people actually serving the .torrent files and ask them why they chose BitTorrent, because no one here had any say. Ranting in the wrong place, to the wrong people, doesn't earn you any brownie points (and doesn't make anyone take you seriously either, for that matter).

And if you had a hard time setting BitTorrent-specific things up, then you're doing it wrong. Port forwarding may be the most complicated part overall, but that needs to be done for any P2P protocol, and isn't BitTorrent-specific.

[akidaki]

Point is very simple - HOW it was designed to do what ever it was intended and we consequently ended up having to use is - frustrating.

That's all. I'd still like to download stuff from the internet from time to time but found that the cost/benefit in terms of time invested tipped in favor of actually buying the media. 99 cents a song on iTunes is a lot cheaper than setting up the Torrent for hours with unforseeable results. Doing a search and downloading on any other P2P was well worth it. So much for the purpose and utility of the whole Thing.

[Ultima]

So much for the purpose and utility of the whole Thing.

Yeah, I'm guessing you didn't read my post carefully, because if you did, you'd understand that your very wrong misconception about the purpose and utility of BitTorrent is very different from its actual purpose and utility. The actual purpose and utility is proving to be the very reason it is widely used, and in that way, it has been a very successful protocol -- not something you can argue with using your wrong-minded assumptions.

[DreadWingKnight]

Your whole argument is based on the flawed assumption that Bittorrent was designed to replace the likes of kazaa.

It wasn't. It was designed to be an intelligent mirror management system where everyone who is downloading is a partial mirror.

You know WoW's patch downloader? It's a torrent client. Some users have even written programs to extract the .torrent from the downloader and use them in real torrent clients. THAT'S where things perform the best.

[akidaki]

Sorry if my post came accross as rant, but maybe it is as I have to vent all that frustration somewhere. I just did not know who else to tell it to but here on the BT forum - as the pool of users seem to be very sharply divided - those who do not understand what's "overly complicated" about BT as they find setting port forwarding equally simple to opening an application and clicking a couple of buttons (the geeks, among who BT truly may be "widely used") and the rest of us mortals who do find it overly complicated (no quotes) and just stay away from it. I was the one in between with enough motivation and savvy to try and learn but to no avail. Not enough savvy, i guess, hence my post.

I did read your post and I am not arguing the craft used in the making of BT system itself, it may even be that great "Intelligent mirror management system" but you did not read MINE - I just said that from the perspective of a Joe Blo who liked to browse the net for content BT is now the prevailing alternative to peer sharing and in terms of user friendliness - it failed miserably.

As far as guidelines and help - thanks for the offer but I simply do not have that kind of time and energy to spend on a tool for downloading from the internet.

Lastly, I hope you guys did not mind this one voice of dissent.

[Lord Alderaan]

Instead of complaining do something about it: Inform the masses.

People don't learn by keeping them ignorant. Sure you can write software as simple as possible. And µTorrent does aim for that imho (the speed guide is even better in 2.0 from what I heard).

But they'll still need a bit of education to learn what BitTorrent does and how to get it to work. "You can bring a n00b to the water, but you can't make a n00b drink."

You can start by referring people here:

http://www.portforward.com/english/applications/port_forwarding/Utorrent/Utorrentindex.htm

[Ultima]

you did not read MINE

Sure I did. That's why I noticed that by the end of the last post of yours that I responded to, you reverted to incorrectly assuming something about BitTorrent's purpose. Unless you were discussing P2P's purpose in general... in which case... well, P2P's purpose wasn't and isn't to bypass the need to pay $0.99 for a song anyway.

from the perspective of a Joe Blo who liked to browse the net for content

And browsing the net for .torrent files is not browsing the net for content... how?

As far as guidelines and help - thanks for the offer but I simply do not have that kind of time and energy to spend on a tool for downloading from the internet.

I'm guessing you were responding to DWK's forum signature.

All of that aside, there's nothing wrong with voicing one's discontent. There's something wrong with saying you have a problem with something, and then not proceeding to be more specific about what you're having problems with. So instead of just telling us that it's difficult, why don't you actually tell us exactly what part is difficult, and exactly how other protocols make it easier? Because I don't see any real difference between BitTorrent and any other P2P protocol with regards to usage.

- Port forwarding? Same as any other P2P protocol.

- Client setup? As simple, if not more simple, with the Speed Guide built into µTorrent (at least you don't have to guess stupid settings).

- Finding files to download? It's just a different medium -- instead of being built into the client, it's using the World Wide Web easily accessible anywhere. In fact, that makes it all-the-more convenient:

-- It means you can find a .torrent file anywhere, and add it remotely to your BitTorrent client (so that you don't have to be in front of the computer running your BitTorrent client to find and add new files). Heck, it can even use RSS feeds for automatically downloading newly released, periodic content, and makes it easier to download new files you're expecting.

-- It makes it that much simpler for users to provide feedback about .torrent files so you know what you're getting yourself into (infected files et al -- something pervasive in just about any other P2P protocol).

- Speed? No way. P2P means peer-to-peer, meaning you're always at the mercy of the maximum upload rate of the peer at the other end of the connection. The same goes for any P2P protocol, so I don't understand how you could claim other P2P protocols are "fast". And no, don't tell me any other P2P protocol is "guaranteed" to work, because that'd be an utter lie.

- Adding torrents? Not sure how hard that can be. After you add, you wait for it to finish -- is it really that different to you?

- Using downloaded files? Not a function of any P2P protocol, so I'm not quite certain I see what your point is about "one to play/use the file requested". So your previous P2P client (not protocol) integrates a crappy media player -- that's irrelevant (heck, plenty of other BitTorrent clients have built-in media players).

So what is it that I've overlooked that makes you think that it's so difficult to use BitTorrent?

[Switeck]

If you're having trouble finding .torrent files for uTorrent...you're probably not trying very hard, or you're searching for something very obscure that's probably only shared on specialized private trackers.

If you're having trouble with .torrent files working, the website and/or trackers that are handling those torrents may be bad.

MANY people run uTorrent with whatever default "no settings" it starts with. Admittedly, this may cause them considerable internet lag (due to no upload speed limit).

uTorrent can auto-configure Windows firewall.

With UPnP and NAT-PMP, uTorrent can even auto-forward your router...IF your router's UPnP support actually works correctly.