Tom.torrent

Google tells me there's a video torrent available of Tom talk at the NDU back in August. If you know what a torrent is and have the software to get it, by all means, check it out ;-)

(If not, I'm not prepared to do the tutorial right now, though I probably can later. Or maybe someone can comment some tips. Or you could Google it ;-)

Comments

[Doron]

I have this file on my PC, got it via a torrent. A good torrent client can be found at http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

[Thomas Pamelia]

You probably do not have to take the time to create a tutorial. There are dozens of very quality run-downs of what torrents are and how to access them.Of course - everyone has their own opinion of what the best torrent client is - but they all pretty much do the same thing. I'd be willing to bet most readers here can figure it out just by googling 'bit torrent'.

[Nathan Machula]

If you don't already know, BitTorrent is a network protocol that allows file-sharing. It's become so popular it now consumes over 1/2 the bandwidth of the entire internet. A defining feature of BitTorrent is that you can download files from multiple sources, as long as multiple people are "seeding" the Torrent. That way there's no single point of failure, and it distributes the network load. A Torrent is a file that tells your BitTorrent client how to download the pieces of the file(s). There are literally dozens of BitTorrent clients available. I personally use the Azureus client, which has many power-user features besides being very user friendly. It's available for Windows, MacOSX, Linux, and more.

[patreus753]

Basic Torrent Tutorial:

Basically, a 'torrent' is a means of sharing a file over a peer-to-peer newtork. It is different from earlier file-sharing newtorks in that the file itself is divided into many small parts, which can be uploaded and downloaded simultaneously. While you are downloading a file (a "torrent") you are also uploading it to other users. This allows for much faster and much more reliable file transfers than in the past. Sites where you find torrents are only tracking them and providing the information for users to connect with one another. The sites themselves do not actually provide content. This is what, so far, has allowed tracking sites to escape the fate of previous file-sharing ventures like Naptser, Morpheus, etc.

To use a torrent, you'll need to download a program like Azureus or uTorrent (Azureus is the best, really). All you have to do is click on the torrent download link on the tracking site and your torrent program should start. Assign the file a destination and then wait for it to finish. Additionally, some large torrents (usually greater than a gig) are split and compressed into sub-sections that require a special program to uncompress ("extract") and re-join them once they have been fully downloaded, so you might want to download WinRar or some other similar program to do that.

When looking for a torrent, you'll notice that the tracking site has usually posted the number of "seeds and leechers" (or "downloaders and uploaders"). This is the number of other users who are uploading/downloading the file. The greater the number, the faster you'll be able to download the file. For the torrent of Tom's August talk, there are only two seeders listed. This means that, even though the file is only 169 MB, it will probably take a long time to download (at least a couple hours, if not longer). This might change if a bunch of people started to seed the torrent, but for now it'll probably be slow going.

[Chuck]

Here is a link to another of Dr. Barnett's briefings from back in 2005:http://www.jhuapl.edu/POW/rethinking06/video.cfm#barnett

The page offers several other worthwhile presentations as well.

[Peter Kay]

Here's a search on Torentspy for TPMB:

http://www.torrentspy.com/search?query=thomas+p.m.+barnett

Looks like there are 4 torrents out there and I'm downloading them right now!

[antonymous]

Personally, I'm a little disappointed that torrents have gotten such a bad rep as of late. When I ask non-geeks what a torrent is, they often come back and say "oh, that's how you pirate movies, software, etc.". I think it's a powerful distribution method that should be employed more widely. I mean, if you read slashdot, for example, you know that sometimes they link to a website which doesn't have the bandwidth to handle the resulting traffic. There's no reason that after you load a page, you shouldn't be able to become a peer and share those ones and zeroes with other people who are trying to access the same thing.

Not to sound like a paranoid nutjob, but it all comes back to being the "single point of failure" - are ISPs holding us back from unleashing the true collaborative power of the internet?

Well, I can see 5 seeds and 13 leeches, so I hope to have the full thing within an hour. And it doesn't require a centralized server, just a tracker? I really love this technology. Thanks for seeding, everyone!