It’s much easier to share uncommon files with a Gnutella/Napster/Kazaa/eDonkey/SoulSeek-style “What folders do you want the world to see?” approach.

utorrent till i die!! =P

this works best on large, large swarms on public trackers (stfu to all you losers who rail against public trackers – being a real torrent user means knowing what is available, when, and where – including on public trackers, assholes.)

use azureus to kick-and-ban very low or non-sharing peers. azureus will only connect with a certain number of peers, and then usually stops looking for more, even if your ‘number of connections-per-torrent allowed’ is very high.

so, sort connectable peers by ‘total uploaded’ (or is it total downloaded? both, ironically, are counter-intuitive) and kick and ban the peers who haven’t uploaded you anything. there will always be about 10 or 15 upload-capping shit heads that you need to get rid of. then hit “update tracker” a few times, get some more peers and repeat. three or four times, and you should be connected to some of the best-sharing peers in the swarm.

Actually, it was Ernesto who was contacting developers to get feedback – I got an e-mail (though never got round to replying to it). No idea who else got it though.

Society moves forward by the number of activities it can perform without thinking (expending excess energy). The hacker manifesto states that redundancy is the enemy of progress/efficiency. Yea, you guys are the pioneers, capable of things that the mainstream can’t even understand, and we appreciate that…but not everyone needs to be a pioneer/expert. You play the role so that others don’t have to (and remember we play roles for you too).

In order for torrent tech to achieve it’s full potential and have a widespread impact (and I think we all agree it could be even more massive than it currently is) these programs have to be “user friendly”. What would it be like if we were all punching in letters on a command line instead of using an intuitive OS? Wouldn’t it be slow and frustrating? Somebody had to build that, to make it so that you didn’t HAVE to think about tasks that could be simplified. Right now we’re all involved in building something that we give to the next generation of computer users, whose abilities will probably embarrass ANY of ours by comparison.

So that’s my position. If I came off as an ass let me make clear that you guys are fantastic and on behalf of all noobs I thank you for being the early adopters and the experts. I’ve really got to get to sleep but thanks for the tips everybody, and I’m going to look into seedboxes. :)

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this advertisement brought to you by your corporate overlords at Vuze, the soon to be owners of TF

As to Tip #3: 3. Manage your upload speed…Ideally you want to set your upload speed to be 80% of the maximum possible line speed.

If your ISP is a cable ISP, then too many people share the uplink for this advice to be practical.

For Cable ISPs, it would be more effective for all if the uplink speed was about a third, particularly during peak surfing times.

As you all know, I’m involved in major legal action regarding Comcast and their secret attack on BitTorrent. Although they were wrong to do what they did, it is a fact that Cable ISPs have failed to manage their bandwidth and that our upload line speeds are no longer low enough to keep us from interfering with one another.

For example, most of Comcast has been “upgraded” from 384 Kbps to 1 Mbps. This “upgrade” is a modem upgrade only. The network itself has not been improved.

This might be a more open version of the Vuzereus friendship thing.

Physical friends are likely to be closer geographically so in a way Vuzereus has branded a geography-boost feature as a social feature when really it’s about speed due to proximity.

What am I getting at? Seeds that are closer physically will be faster for those in close proximity.

Do torrent clients follow this logic by prioritising peers from closer geographic proximity?