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Long-Awaited BitTorrent 4.0 Released

wintermute1974 writes "After sitting at a stable release of 3.4.2 since last spring, Bram Cohen's official BitTorrent client has been upgraded to version 4. In addition to its existing, rock-steady functionality, BitTorrent now sports a new queue-based UI. The revision details are on the BitTorrent site. Packets are now marked as bulk data too, which is significant considering that about a third of all Internet traffic is currently torrent data."

521 comments

  1. Good to see progress... by ratsnapple+tea · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The OS X client is still at 3.4.2. Is anyone working on an update? (I'd offer to help, but I don't program :p)

    1. Re:Good to see progress... by great+throwdini · · Score: 2, Informative
      The OS X client is still at 3.4.2. Is anyone working on an update?

      Better yet, now that BT 4.0.0 uses GTK instead of wxWidgets (as per the release notes), will this hamper the OS X frontend?

      The only other OS X native BT frontend I know is Tomato Torrent ... but that's just a tweaked 3.4.2 build. CLI / X Windows here I come...

    2. Re:Good to see progress... by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The OS X frontend is separate and uses Cocoa AFAIK.

    3. Re:Good to see progress... by Coryoth · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The OS X client is still at 3.4.2. Is anyone working on an update? (I'd offer to help, but I don't program :p)

      It's in python so you should be able to just grab the source and use btdownloadcurses.py in Terminal.app (or whatever it is). Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?

      Jedidiah.

    4. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Might want to try Bits on wheels

    5. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hahaha, that's awesome. Best BitTorrent client ever.

    6. Re:Good to see progress... by rsmith-mac · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?

      In all seriousness, it's a Mac. The userbase is not going to accept an application that doesn't have a "pretty GUI" because the GUI is much of what the platform is about. Just see OpenOffice for an example of software that's underutilized for its lack of an effective Mac GUI.

    7. Re:Good to see progress... by Coryoth · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm sure a Mac GUI is coming, my point was that if you want the new functionality now it is still entirely usable. The curses interface is actually quite nice, and was all I used for quite some time.

      Jedidiah.

    8. Re:Good to see progress... by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 1

      Interesting that they switched to gtk from wxWidgets. Given the fairly minimal gui on the official client anyway, it seems a bit odd that they'd go to the trouble. I wonder what the motivation was.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    9. Re:Good to see progress... by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I use the command line under screen on my mac, in fact, I ssh into my mac more than sit at the desktop. My wife will be playing World of warcraft on it, and I'll just ssh for irssi/bt underscreen.

      There are alot of new users that see what OSX is, a kick ass unix box with a great multi user desktop.

    10. Re:Good to see progress... by mattkinabrewmindspri · · Score: 4, Informative

      Azureus runs just fine on OS X as an Aqua application. It's probably the best OS X BitTorrent out there.

    11. Re:Good to see progress... by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Insightful
      There are alot of new users that see what OSX is, a kick ass unix box with a great multi user desktop.
      Yeah, and I'm one of them -- but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a good GUI too!
      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    12. Re:Good to see progress... by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      btdownloadcurses looks much better in this release. But the biggest change is how it handles save locations and torrent files.

      Before it was manditory to specify --saveas and --responsefile. Which means you had to know if the file you were downloading was a file or a folder. Now it seems to just accept the torrent file and defaults everything. The flags are still there, they're just not manditory.

      NEW:
      python ~/.bt/btdownloadcurses.py file.torrent

      OLD:
      python ~/.bt/btdownloadcurses.py --saveas ./ --responsefile file.torrent

      Put everything into a screen and you don't have to worry about any users on your computer accidentally closing your download.

      Jedediah (what are the odds?)

    13. Re:Good to see progress... by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 0, Offtopic
      What's this "Bittorrent Opensource License" thingee?

      Do we need another? Was there some subtle variation not covered under another? BSD? GPL? NPL? MPL? ETC?

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    14. Re:Good to see progress... by coaxial · · Score: 1

      In all seriousness, it's a Mac. The userbase is not going to accept an application that doesn't have a "pretty GUI" because the GUI is much of what the platform is about. Just see OpenOffice for an example of software that's underutilized for its lack of an effective Mac GUI.

      The main reason openoffice isn't used, has nothing to do with it not having a "pretty gui". It's because it's an x11 app, and x11 isn't preinstalled, and the vast majority of the people won't bother installing it.

    15. Re:Good to see progress... by xRobx · · Score: 2, Informative

      Looks like it is being worked on. I regularly checkout the cvs and I see tons of OSX changes being downloaded.

    16. Re:Good to see progress... by Lussarn · · Score: 1

      Possibly because wxWidets aren't stable on gtk2?

    17. Re:Good to see progress... by Chainsaw · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have used OpenOffice and StarOffice on OS/2, Windows and Linux (in that order). Wanted to try the Mac version too, and since X11 is already installed - no problem.

      One second after it launched, I knew exactly why Mac users hate it. Amongst my Mac applications, there is one ugly as Stephen's mom application breaking almost every user interface rule there is. Even the simplest one (there's a perfectly fine menubar at the top of my screen, you bastards) was ignored.

      THAT'S the main reason it's not used on the Mac.

      --
      War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
    18. Re:Good to see progress... by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      Holy non-sequitur Batman!

      How did you manage to (apparently) attach your post to the wrong thread, anyway?

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    19. Re:Good to see progress... by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 0

      Wasn't that fixed in the 2.5 branch? I'm using a couple wx applications, often for fairly extended periods of time, with a 2.5 gtk2 build and haven't seen any problems.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    20. Re:Good to see progress... by Chris+L.+Mason · · Score: 1


      Try Azureus, it works very well on Mac OS X.

    21. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are alot of new users that see what OSX is, a kick ass unix box with a great multi user desktop.

      actually, it's Mac OS with unix underneath.

      i make the distinction because your interpretation just supports the theory that the UI is "the easy part".

    22. Re:Good to see progress... by afd8856 · · Score: 1

      funny... I'm using right now btlaunchmanycurses.py and I've got no problem...
      I'm just using this command in screen:
      btlaunchmanycurses.py ./ --max_upload_rate 10
      and it will watch the curent directory for any changes (moving the torrent will abort the download, adding a new torrent in the directory will automaticaly start it). Works perfect :)

      --
      I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
    23. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the *fuck* is "5, Informative" about this?

    24. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What was being discussed wasn't if a good GUI would be appreciated, but if it would be required. The former sounds reasonable to me, and of course applies to all operating systems where the program should have a GUI at all, and the latter just sounds ridiculous to me. :-)

    25. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Just see OpenOffice for an example of software that's underutilized for its lack of an effective Mac GUI.

      Nonsense. OO.o is underused on the Mac because it is non-native (X11) and there are better alternatives that come bundled.

    26. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A 3-digit UID too...

    27. Re:Good to see progress... by clarkcox3 · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Better yet, now that BT 4.0.0 uses GTK instead of wxWidgets (as per the release notes), will this hamper the OS X frontend?

      The OSX client never used wxWidgets in the first place. It's a Cocoa/Python application. Besides, I always use the curses client anyway (very handy to run under screen so that I can check my progress remotely via ssh)

      --
      There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
    28. Re:Good to see progress... by siplus · · Score: 1
      I use Azureus on both Linux and Windows (ya, i know..)

      It is a well organized, seemingly well programmed open source bit torrent client

      I have never seen the official bit torrent client on their web site... it has always told me to search for the rpm's

    29. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your wife plays world of warcraft? Wanna trade?

    30. Re:Good to see progress... by generic-man · · Score: 1

      Try NeoOffice/J. It's every bit as enormous, slow, and ugly as OpenOffice, only it doesn't require X11 and it displays the menu bar at the top of the screen. All the other widgets and controls are very un-Mac-like, to a much greater extent than MS Office for Mac. (At least Microsoft pretended they were using native widgets for everything.)

      --
      For more information, click here.
    31. Re:Good to see progress... by Refrag · · Score: 1
      It sounds like half of the revisions (all of the user interface ones) were borrowed from the Mac client anyway.
      • All new queue-based user interface
      • Many options are now modifiable from the interface, including upload rate
      • Lots of other interface improvements
      • Extra stats are visible, for those who like it
      • Remembers what it was doing across restarts
      Does any of that sound new to you as a Mac user? It doesn't to me. I would love to see a screenshot of the new Windows client just to see if I'm right or not. They don't have one on their site.
      --
      I have a website. It's about Macs.
    32. Re:Good to see progress... by tommyth · · Score: 0

      Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?

      The majority of Mac users will probably want a GUI, but then again, the majority of Mac users won't care that BT is out in version 4 either. But the work-on-unix-and-play-on-mac users such as myself will probably do what you just described.

    33. Re:Good to see progress... by anothy · · Score: 1

      OpenOffice is "underutilized" on the Mac because the Mac version is awful. i've used it quite a bit, at various versions, and always been frustrated with things that didn't work right. NeoOffice does an excellent job of recasting OpenOffice into being a "real" Mac app, but it's still quite clunky. Keynote is vastly easier to use than [Neo,Open]Office's presentation bit (and, in my opinion, PowerPoint), and Pages is incrementally easier (not as dramatic a difference) than its [Neo,Open]Office counterpart, and both do import from other formats (most significantly, unfortunately, the relevant Microsoft formats) better than their counterparts.

      NeoOffice and OpenOffice are great projects: i wish them continued success, and personally use NeoOffice for spreadsheet stuff. but while i think your point may still be valid, these just aren't good examples.

      --

      i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
    34. Re:Good to see progress... by Echnin · · Score: 1

      When I was using Azureus on my now somewhat aging iBook, I was not getting good performance, with CPU usage pretty steady at 30% or so. Tomato Torrent gives me better performance, so I mainly use it instead. Just a point.

      --
      Lalala
    35. Re:Good to see progress... by NardofDoom · · Score: 1
      My wife will be playing World of warcraft on it...

      And this right here is how we know he's lying. ;)

      --
      You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
    36. Re:Good to see progress... by GileadGreene · · Score: 1

      Eh. I know people who have designed spacecraft using Excel...

    37. Re:Good to see progress... by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Erm... what are you talking about? For nearly a year I've used the same download command line (changing the torrent file, of course)

      ~/bin/btdownloadcurses.py --max_upload_rate 10 ~/torrents/MyTorrent.torrent

    38. Re:Good to see progress... by coaxial · · Score: 1

      I didn't mean to imply that OO's interface wasn't a very large barrier. It is. I just mean to say that it's the second barrier to adoption. Most people won't even get far enough to even see the horrid interface.

    39. Re:Good to see progress... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sounds like half of the revisions (all of the user interface ones) were borrowed from the Mac client anyway.

      Or from, say, every third-party bittorrent client released since the protocol was created?

      yawn...Mac users...

    40. Re:Good to see progress... by rekenner · · Score: 1

      "Just see OpenOffice for an example of software that's underutilized for its lack of an effective Mac GUI."

      Of course, NeoOffice/J being a resource hog and running things in X11 sucks has NOTHING to do with it, whatsoever.

      I am running a lower end iBook (1 GhZ and 256 MB RAM), to be fair. Bottom of the barrel of what apple is releasing now, but there are many G3s running OSX that would still balk at either program.

      I use AbiWord for word processing, and I believe Gnumeric can be run under Fink (But I've not used Fink, issues with getting it installed).

    41. Re:Good to see progress... by RedBear · · Score: 1

      Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?

      We may not need a good GUI, but we usually prefer it. Got a problem with that? Why bother with the command-line client, shouldn't you just be recreating a BT client by hand in assembly every time you want to download something?

      Now, all you Mac users, go download Azureus. It's the best BT client for the Mac I've seen. Very comprehensive, easy to use, lets you limit the upload/download rates so you don't saturate the connection. It actually works now, as opposed to when I downloaded it a few months back. It's the first BT client I've seen on any platform that doesn't suck.

      Azureus. Get it. I'm sure they will be updating internally to the new BitTorrent release before long, but it already works great. Cross platform, too. You'll need the latest Java installed.

  2. meh by Shining+Celebi · · Score: 0

    Of course, now we have to wait for all our favorite BT clients tp be updated.

    1. Re:meh by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Informative

      No you don't, because the protocol has not changed.

  3. 1/3rd of all traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    stop all the downloadin.

    1. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by ZackSchil · · Score: 4, Funny

      Help Computer.

    2. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by wheany · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't know much about computers.

    3. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Segway+Ninja · · Score: 1, Funny

      Other than the one one I got at my house, my mom put a couple of games on there and I play it...

    4. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'M A COMPUTAH

    5. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by PayPaI · · Score: 1

      PORKCHOP SANDWICHES!

    6. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You fail it.

    7. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

      stop all the downloadin.

      Pornography doesn't download itself you know...

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    8. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bzzzzzttttdztkstkzkzzkt!

    9. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 1

      OVERRIDE

    10. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by msormune · · Score: 1

      That's an awful number of Linux distribution ISOs, videos of your grandma ja your cat playing with a ball of lint. Since everyone is of course using BitTorrent to distribute legal stuff because suggesting something else would be Your Rights Online(tm) violation.

    11. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Headcase88 · · Score: 1

      Aw, c'mon now, where's the love for ocRemix? :(

      --
      "When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
    12. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by gid · · Score: 1

      I don't get it, what's up with all the garbled gibberish that comes after that?

    13. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Packets are now marked as bulk data too, which is significant considering that about a third of all Internet traffic is currently torrent data."

      if 1/3 of all traffic is bittorrent
      and 1/3 of all traffic is p0rn
      and 1/3 of all traffic is spam........

      what's left?

    14. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Take a look at the article that says a third of the the internet traffic is bittorrent related. It was published back on Nov. 4. Since then, some of the major bittorrent related sites have gone down, thanks to our friends at the RIAA and MPAA.

    15. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Moonlapse · · Score: 1

      3 I used BT to grab those mp3s. What is it, 10 gigs of legal mp3s? Some good stuff in there too.

      --
      - I got my free iPod and a free Nintendo DS....why not
    16. Re:1/3rd of all traffic? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's part of the "joke". There's a reason you don't get it - it's not bloody funny. I think the only real joke involved is enjoyed by the guy who made it.
      "I can't believe people are downloading this shit! Look, this one didn't even make sense!"

  4. But... by TheKidWho · · Score: 3, Funny

    Does it have an FM tuner?

    1. Re:But... by carpe_noctem · · Score: 1

      No, because then it would be a "kazaa-killer".

      --
      "Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
    2. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy shit. I must have seen that sig a dozen times, but I only just now realized how dirty that is. Holy shit.

    3. Re:But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get it can you explain?

    4. Re:But... by Freexe · · Score: 1

      did your cat come in a box?

      --
      "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
  5. The 'bulk data' tag by Raindance · · Score: 5, Informative

    Since it's a decentralized standard, we'll need other clients to mark packets as 'bulk data' as well to get full benefits in routing from this. Since companies are starting to use BT commonly to distribute files in-game (or will, shortly), their code will need to be updated too. So, no magic bullet but a step in the direction of creating a heirarchy of data packets.

    I'm interested to see where this'll go-- will ISPs absolutely choke 'bulk data' packets and drive folks into using older or fringe BT clients to get faster downloads? Will this help solve VoIP realtime bandwidth issues? Will the 'good net citizen' vibe surrounding writing the 'bulk data' flag into ones code overshadow potentially making ones users into second-class net citizens?

    Or will this not be a big deal at all?

    Probably some of everything, I suppose.

    1. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by ip_fired · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm interested to see where this'll go-- will ISPs absolutely choke 'bulk data' packets and drive folks into using older or fringe BT clients to get faster downloads?

      I don't think they'll choke "bulk data", because many other protocols mark their data bulk as well (ftp being one of them, if you have a modern client).

      It is very helpful to ISPs to have the bulk classification, so that their more time-sensitive data (ie, VOIP) doesn't get clobbered when someone starts using bittorrent.

      It's not like it's difficult to choke bittorrent traffic anyway, just look for communication on ports 6881 to 6888.

      If they do, it'll just make everyone remove the bulk flag, and then there will be no easy quality of service queing.

      --
      Don't count your messages before they ACK.
    2. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by garbletext · · Score: 2, Insightful

      6881 to 6888 are not mandatory. you can do any port range you desire in most clients; it'll just choose random free ports in the range to use. You need a packet shaper to chose BT traffic effectively

    3. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      It is very helpful to ISPs to have the bulk classification, so that their more time-sensitive data (ie, VOIP) doesn't get clobbered when someone starts using bittorrent.

      Doing QoS on a public net (whilest it would be nice) seems like a potentially bad idea unless you put some safeguards in place:

      If you always prioritise traffic with it's ToS key set to 0x10 (minimise delay) then that suddenly becomes an effective DoS vector - flood a network with packets set to ToS 0x10, they get priority and you just paralised all lower priority traffic. You could limit the amount of bandwidth that can be used for traffic marked as "minimise delay" and treat anything over that limit as normal unprioritised traffic but that raises the question of how to decide what this limit should be?

    4. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously, the router would ignore the markings on any packets marked for better than average service and downgrade service when necessary for packets marked as bulk in order to maintain normal service for other packets.

    5. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by theVP · · Score: 1

      My ISP (I use Charter) seems to be choking my BT upload already, anyways. I can't get more than 25k on my upload without flooding the pipe and reducing my dl to nothing (bandwidth tests show 4.5M down, 256k up). Will this 'bulk data' upgrade help any of that? I know Charter isn't the only ISP doing this nowadays.

      --
      "No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
    6. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 2, Informative

      I believe the ToS bits have been ignored by most routers for a LONG time.

      The reason being, IIRC, is that Microsoft decided not to play "good net citizen" and the Windows IP stack sets outgoing packets as 0x10 (or other similar "high priority" category) no matter what.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    7. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      I believe the ToS bits have been ignored by most routers for a LONG time.

      The reason being, IIRC, is that Microsoft decided not to play "good net citizen" and the Windows IP stack sets outgoing packets as 0x10 (or other similar "high priority" category) no matter what.


      Doh - I didn't realise they'd ever been implemented by public internet routers.

    8. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by jefftp · · Score: 1

      I just had to do some research to find out what "bulk data" meant. So for all you other network engineers, here's what I'm assuming this change brings...

      By bulk data they're setting the packets DiffServ, I presume according to RFC 2597. I still use good old IP Precedence rather than DiffServ, but after seeing RFC 2597 I have to say Assured Forwarding looks like a great standard for setting up DiffServ. Cisco has a decent article on DiffServ and QoS which has a great table showing off Assured Forwarding's model for traffic control.

      The recommended setting for Bulk Data is AF11. "Excess" bulk data, that is bulk data beyond whatever thresholds you've configured, is set to AF12 or AF13. So class 1 data (bulk and excess bulk) gets a certain share of bandwidth, with the excess bulk more likely to get dropped in the event of congestion.

      By volunteering to mark BitTorrent traffic as AF11, there's always a chance that more sites that block BitTorrent will be more likely to just QoS it into a happy corner.

      I'll let you networking folks do your own searches for more information. I've been fortunate in my current workplace that congestion is rarely an issue--since we've never had much network congestion (100 Meg to the desktop, Gig to the closet, Gig links to our remote sites, Gig Internet pipe, 4 Gig core backbone) QoS hasn't been a priority. But I'm happy to see where DiffServ is going.

      Sadly, I recently had to shut down BitTorrent at our site because of a few jerks downloading movies. IRC, P2P, BitTorrent... when 99% of their use is illegal, many times it's the Legal department and not IT that decides the course of action.

    9. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by loraksus · · Score: 1

      Not really, packeteer boxes on the market can slow / stop your torrent downloads, so a bulk data bit isn't really necessary.
      Besides, you don't really need anything that intelligent (and expensive) equipment to choke speeds from a certain ip once they start using massive amounts of bandwidth (i.e. if someone tries to defeat detection using a tunnel).
      A bunch of colleges and universities do this.

      Of course, the solution can be worse than the problem. I get periods of 500+ms ping on the campus (and keep in mind dual this is on dual oc3 lines) since they installed the packeteer boxes, which make VOIP, gaming et al unusable.
      In the wonderful tradition of govt run IT departments, getting something done about it takes months.

      --
      1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/
    10. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bittorrent only needs one port now, regardless of the number of downloads. Also, judging from the clients I see when downloading something, most of them don't use 6881 anyway (I know I don't)

    11. Re:The 'bulk data' tag by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

      Probably because the MS TCP/IP stack was playing "bad citizen" even when the backbone was in its infancy. Back then TOS wasn't needed. Now that it's needed, so many apps abuse it that it won't help in its current form.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  6. Link and Changelog by perlionex · · Score: 4, Informative

    The actual link is to the download is here.

    The changelog:

    # 2005-03-07: 4.0.0 is now available.
    Changes since the last stable release:

    All new queue-based user interface Many options are now modifiable from the interface, including upload rate Lots of other interface improvements Extra stats are visible, for those who like it Remembers what it was doing across restarts New .torrent maker "btmaketorrentgui" replaces "btcompletedir" Better performance, as always License has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License Torrent fields are correctly created and interpreted as utf8 Too many little things to list

    A few technical notes, for those interested:

    Single port: launchmany can seed and client can download many files from a single port and thread Interface now uses GTK instead of wxWidgets BitTorrent packets are marked as bulk data to make traffic shaping easier
    1. Re:Link and Changelog by reynaert · · Score: 1
      • License has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License

      I hate people who invent their own licenses. And this one is completely unintelligible, even the preamble is written in lawyerspeak.

      This pretty much guarantees I won't ever touch the code: I don't have a clue what I'm allowed, not allowed, and required to do. The GPL and BSD-like licenses are at least understandable for a non-lawyer.

    2. Re:Link and Changelog by NuclearDog · · Score: 5, Informative
      I'll translate the preamble to English...

      • The BitTorrent client and updates/etc are all covered under this license.
      • The license is considered a valid open source license.
      • You can give it (the software) away just by itself or on a cd/in a zip with multiple other programs. You don't have to pay royalties.
      • You have access to the source & binaries.
      • You can modify the source & fork the program.
      • Any modifications made to the program have to be licensed under this same license.
      • Use it however you want, but there is no warranty provided.
      • If you sublicense the code, you can charge for warranty/support or for offering indemnity for your customers, but the source must remain free.
      • If you file a patent claim against the BitTorrent software, you lose all rights under the license (right to re-distribute, etc.)
      • You can re-license any works you create based on the code, but you have to license it under an OSI-approved license that is compatible with this license.


      (Note: This may not be 100% accurate, IANAL, I am not responsible, etc, etc.)
      --
      This statement is forty-five characters long.
    3. Re:Link and Changelog by Storlek · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The GPL and BSD-like licenses are at least understandable for a non-lawyer.
      I can see how people can't understand the GPL; it's fairly long and "lawyery" looking. But the BSD license? It's about six sentences long! It pretty much comes down to "do anything you want with it, modify it or don't, distribute as source or binary, we don't care, as long as you give credit where it's due, don't use our names to endorse your product, and don't blame us if something goes wrong."

      --
      Bears don't normally eat things that talk and move backwards.
    4. Re:Link and Changelog by petard · · Score: 4, Informative

      fwiw, it's basically the jabber license with a couple of the restrictions lifted.

      HTH,

      petard

      --
      .sig: file not found
    5. Re:Link and Changelog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let us not mince words. Source-code licenses are massively stupid. The correct courses of action are either to release source code with your copyright intact or to waive your copyright and put the work in the public domain. This halfway shit is unnecessary and just makes life harder for everybody who gets momentarily suckered into trying to figure out just what the fuck a license is supposed to mean.

      Hint: Legally, licenses for free products aren't worth the paper they're printed on. In order for a license to be binding, an exchange has to occur. No exchange, no license. So the whole thing is just masturbation anyway.

    6. Re:Link and Changelog by joib · · Score: 1


      Interface now uses GTK instead of wxWidgets


      Any particular reason why? I haven't used pygtk2, but in my limited experience wxpython is nicer to use than pygtk1.

    7. Re:Link and Changelog by m50d · · Score: 1

      Why the license change? Is there a need for it? Do we still see his ugly mug begging for money every time you use the windows client?

      --
      I am trolling
    8. Re:Link and Changelog by CProgrammer98 · · Score: 1

      lol! so I guess "This Preamble is intended to describe, in plain English" didn't work for you then?

      --
      And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
    9. Re:Link and Changelog by Mycroft_VIII · · Score: 1

      Actauly there is an exchange offered. If you want the privilage of re-distributing you have to do x.
      If you don't wish to re-distribute then you are restricted to the no-liscence default (copyright law).
      That's why most open source liscences are concionable where-as most EULAS are crap. Shrink wrap licenses that spring on you at install time offer NO further consideration in exchange for thier proposed restrictions.
      However IANAL and if you think this is leagle advice I know a guy with famous bridge for sale....

      Mycroft

      --
      https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
    10. Re:Link and Changelog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about a torrent?

    11. Re:Link and Changelog by juhaz · · Score: 1

      And in my limited experience pygtk is much nicer to use than wxpython.

      See how these anecdotes aren't helping? Seriously, though, pygtk has come a long way and you might want to update your experience. It's one of the nicest GUI toolkits to develop for that I've ever encountered.

      Feels much more "pythonic" than wx, too and doesn't have nearly as many evil constants and functions that look like C macros ported over without further thinking.

    12. Re:Link and Changelog by swv3752 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It is basically the same as the GPL, so I don't see why Bram didn't just use the the GPL. Invariably the BT licence is incompatible with the GPL.* So now if you want to incorporate BT into something like say Konqueror, you can't.

      *I may be wrong about the compatibility, but it still does not seem to justify creating yet another licence that does nothing new.

      --
      Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
    13. Re:Link and Changelog by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not how licenses work. The license dictates the terms under which something is given in exchange for something else. It's not a "you scratch my back I scratch yours" situation. If you don't pay up front for the product, or give some other kind of tangible consideration, the license is just a piece of paper. It doesn't have any legal meaning whatsoever.

    14. Re:Link and Changelog by cavebear42 · · Score: 1

      i dont want to do the whole download from that link..... isn't there a .torrent somewhere that i could get it from?

    15. Re:Link and Changelog by dschadlich · · Score: 0

      now im wondering, will the "BitTorrent Open Source License" be approved the by Open Source Initiative anytime soon ?

    16. Re:Link and Changelog by HiThere · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That bit about "if you file a patent claim against this software, you lose all license rights under it" is, indeed, incompatible with the GPL. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

      Perhaps it should be considered for addition to the next version of the GPL? (Which might have the side effect of making the bittorrent license compatible.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    17. Re:Link and Changelog by Mycroft_VIII · · Score: 1

      Excuse me, but it shure looks like you contradict yourself there, unless your trying to distiguish between kinds of consideration.
      Copyrights granted authorities over reproduction are tangible considerations. The gpl offers a swap of the rights granted under copyright.
      In theory a copywrighted work can only be copied and distributed by the holder of the copyright.
      What the GPL does is make the following offer: IF you wish the permision of the copyright holder(s) to re-distribute copies of this software (this is an offer of something tangeable, or else copyright is meaningless) you may do so provided you do so in a specific manner and make simular offer of anything you add to this software.
      That's an offer for exchange of valid goods, that you are free to accept or not. If you don't accept the offer you are in the same boat as if the gpl wasn't offered with the software, you may not re-distribute the software.
      You scratch my back I'll scratch yours is a simple exchange of services. The gpl is a more complicated exchange of copyright rights.
      If the gpl is meaningless then you lose everything it grants you and gain nothing. If it's a valid offer you MAY choose to gain what it offers so long as you agree to abide by it's terms. And like any offer you are free to make your own offer to the owners of the copyright, such as "hey I'll pay you guys X dollars if you let me distribute a personal fork of the code as a closed binary" if you want.
      Again IANAL and real one could probably explain it better.
      However what you say does make some sense relative to shrink wrap licenses. They offer no further consideration in exchange for the consideration they ask from you AFTER you've already exchanged cash for the product.

      Mycroft

      --
      https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
  7. Azureus rocks... by patniemeyer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's Java based and seems to have every useful feature you can imagine:

    http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

    I haven't checked out the new official client yet, but Azureus has always been way ahead of the pack and I assume it still is. (Things like fast restart, nice visualizations of clients and file pieces, etc.)

    Pat

    1. Re:Azureus rocks... by slavemowgli · · Score: 4, Interesting

      BitTornado is another nice client, with the added benefit that it's not written in Java. Not that I've got much against Java personally, of course, but it's quite a resource hog that I'd rather avoid when possible.

      --
      quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
    2. Re:Azureus rocks... by nzkbuk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      While it's a very nice client I've always found it to be slower (in terms of network throughput) than other clients.

    3. Re:Azureus rocks... by MicroBerto · · Score: 4, Informative
      Yes, Azureus does rock. It seems that the development has slowed down a bit recently, since the 2.2 series release.

      This makes sense though, because it simply works incredibly, and they're probably working on some bigger things now for a new version. It's stabilized quite nicely, better than any closed-source software out there lately!

      --
      Berto
    4. Re:Azureus rocks... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 1, Informative
      After trying the new official BitTorrent client, I'm going to dump Azureus. Azureus is good, but it's big and clunky and always asking me things (do you want to download the update? do you want to restart now? do you want to donate, or would you prefer to wait until we decide you can click no?).

      The official client's new interface is streamlined and simple. It installs in a second (literally). It has all of the options that I need (I'm a simple man, I just want to download some files). And it never asks me annoying questions while I'm just trying to download something.

      In short, the new interface is great; I wholeheartedly recommend it (unless you have a fetish for tabs and arcane configuration dialogs, in which case by all means continue using Azureus).

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    5. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unfortunately BitTornado runs in Python, which can get almost as slow as client-side Java when you have a lot of stuff running. I'd recommend the pure C++ BitComet.

    6. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You will find the reference python implementation satisfactory.

    7. Re:Azureus rocks... by PxM · · Score: 1

      My main gripe with the default BT client is the lack of per file settings. BitTornado allows the user to download specific files in the torrent. This is useful since people can post aggregated torrents and the user can just select the files that he wants.

      --
      Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
      Or a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox
      Wired article as proof

    8. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's Java based and seems to have every useful feature you can imagine:

      One or the other of those two things can be true, but not both at the same time.

    9. Re:Azureus rocks... by dk01 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes Azureus does rock. Some of the features that have been around for a while are its support for pluggins. The one that seems to be most popular is its RSS feed reader. It monitors and filters RSS feeds for files that a user wants to have downloaded. This makes going on a several day vacation quite a bit easier. I use it to download my latest Al Franken Show from Air America. -dk

    10. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      UI on Azureus has more gloss than the old BitTorrent client, but the performance is attrocious in comparison. Can someone do a real speed test? I'm noticing better swapping with BitTorrent while Azureus peers just sit there and dont do anything. The new UI on BitTorrent is pretty nice and clean.. looks like the download manager from firefox.

    11. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that BitTornado doesn't disconnect correctly from the tracking server. Because of that it is on the "do not use" list on most of the torrent sites I frequent.

    12. Re:Azureus rocks... by BlueHands · · Score: 1

      I think it says something that the main gripe about Azureus is that it runs poorly on low-end machines. Java runs slower than C++? say it aint so! java apps use more ram? Dear Lord,save us! The one interesting comment I did read was suggestion that some other clients give better network speed. I would love to have that verified as a problem of Azureus.

      --
      I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
    13. Re:Azureus rocks... by metamatic · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unfortunately BitComet only runs on Windows.

      --
      GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
    14. Re:Azureus rocks... by Nogami_Saeko · · Score: 1

      Yup, there's nothing that would currently make me switch-away from Azureus. Heck, I even sent them money :P

      For the people who complain it's too slow - get a faster computer ;P.

      N.

      --
      "Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
    15. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Azureus performance on Windows really depends on having correct Java version (see Azureus wiki for info).
      If you are running old version of Java then it can run like a dog, new version will see big improvement ... BUT you may need to do uninstall and reinstall to solve this problem after updating your Java version.
      Also tweaking configuration can make a big difference to performance.
      I run it on a low spec PIII laptop 650 Mhz, just 256 Mb RAM with no hassles and get far better d/l speed than with BitTorrent because I can tweak my settings so much, and its got great UDP support which makes for easy connectability behind my router.

    16. Re:Azureus rocks... by uhmmmm · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you're downloading a lot, the overhead of running the one instance of Azureus needed to do that beats that of running, say, the dozen instances of the the official client, hands down.

    17. Re:Azureus rocks... by David+Horn · · Score: 1

      Azureus has never once asked up to donate. It minimizes to a taskbar icon and doesn't bug you after that.

      --
      PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
    18. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks! I honestly thought BitTornado was a C++ application, and avoid Azuerus for the reason I know it consumes quite a bit of resources, being in Java.

    19. Re:Azureus rocks... by bcmm · · Score: 1

      Azureus.
      So, either you have a high-end games machine but don't play games, or you don't use your machine for much other than BT, or you just like things slow...

      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    20. Re:Azureus rocks... by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 2, Informative

      And doesnt report stats right. Not a problem for some, but anyone that uses empornium should know that they get no upload credit and will end up throttled

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    21. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Unfortunately BitTornado runs in Python, which can get almost as slow as client-side Java when you have a lot of stuff running. I'd recommend the pure C++ BitComet.

      Unfortunately BitComet doesn't work well at all under non-admin accounts, from what I've experienced. Perhaps it will in the future, but not now, as it tries to write into its program folder instead of the user's home folder.

    22. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sure? I have an XP2200 system dedicated to Azureus. The pig java sucks the guts out of the machine.. All those java instances.

      Of course, I queue up dozens of torrents and have them auto import. That automation, and the limits that can be configured to limit max simultaneous downloads, etc, are what have me stuck on Azureus.

      The bandwidth limit features in Azureus are also very useful.

      I want to try the new client, but I don't look forward to writing a bunch of scripts to try and mimick the Azureus functionality.

    23. Re:Azureus rocks... by dahlek · · Score: 1
      yup, that's my choice of client...

      btlaunchmanycurses.bittornado specifically. You give it a folder and it downloads all torrents in that folder. This way, you can use the file manager to add or remove torrents...and since this flavor runs from the shell, I can run it on older hardware on another machine, so the hit on my desktop is nil. Normally, I run it via the wonderful "screen" utility.

      About time the official client stores some basic information...when I stop and restart tornado, it doesn't waste time re-checking the download - something that can take quite a while if it's dvd sized content... I understand that the very pretty java client out there does all this and more - but not on ancient hardware from the command line ;)

    24. Re:Azureus rocks... by Hard_Code · · Score: 1

      "Unfortunately BitTornado runs in Python, which can get almost as slow as client-side Java"

      Huh? Have you USED Azureus? You can't even tell it's a Java app. It uses the native SWT toolkit, not Swing. It's a beautiful and snappy app.

      --

      It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
    25. Re:Azureus rocks... by moonbender · · Score: 1

      I also use BitTornado, but simply because Azureus was too much client for me. I never have more than one or maybe two simultaneous torrents running anyway, and the Azureus interface was just unneccesarily complex for that task. It's got some neat little features, though, e.g. the ability to delete the torrent file after the download is complete. The BitTornado GUI isn't exactly beautiful, in fact it looks like ass, but it's simple and does the job.
      That said, I'm always looking for alternatives, but all that I have seen were horrendously overengineered. As for the underlying programming language, I don't really care - apart from the hashing, BT doesn't seem to be that much of a resource hog.

      --
      Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
    26. Re:Azureus rocks... by drunken+dash · · Score: 1

      Actually it does, after some period of time (not sure exactly how long), it will popup a colour dialog asking you to donate.

      You have the option of donating (which takes you to a Paypal donation page), putting off the decision until later, or outright refusing to donate (after which you are actually never bugged again).

      --
      Enjoy an e-piphany
    27. Re:Azureus rocks... by Matt+Perry · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I'd recommend the pure C++ BitComet.
      The fact that BitComet has downloads of MPAA movies queued in their screenshot don't help to legitimize BitTorrent. I'm not bashing BitTorrent but I am bashing the BitComet people for not putting up a less incriminating screenshot. We're having a hard enough time convincing lawmakers that there are legitimate uses of BitTorrent and that they shouldn't outlaw P2P without making their case for them.
      --
      Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
    28. Re:Azureus rocks... by /dev/zero · · Score: 1

      Well, I run it on my laptop (eMachines M5404), which is hardly "high-end", and it runs just fine, even with 7 or 8 files running and other tasks (OpenOffice, XMMX or Timidity, Firefox) or even watching a show.

      --

      He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
      -- J.R.R. Tolkien
    29. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unfortunately BitTornado runs in Python, which can get almost as slow as client-side Java when you have a lot of stuff running.

      Have you used any BT client? You're not playing some first person shooter in it, you're telling it to go out and download multi hundred MB files, which takes a lot of time. Who cares if the client is a little slow in refreshing?

    30. Re:Azureus rocks... by honestmonkey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes, to please be read the site and noticing that English is their second language. Not justifying anything, but they may look at these things differently. Also, BitComet is not open source, which makes me feel uncomfortable as well. All in all, I don't think I'd trust it, personally.

      --
      Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
    31. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've used Azureus and I can tell it's a Java app. It takes a long time to startup, it uses an absurd amount of memory, and it suffers from a lot of the interface problems SWT programs have: dialogues that can't be resized but are too small to render the text within them, poor redraw perfomance, etc.

      Comparatively, IDEA--which amusingly-enough is a Swing app--actually performs well. It's perhaps one of the few Java programs that I've used that don't piss me off. Azureus's major charm was that for a long time it just sucked a lot less than all of the wxWidgets-based single-download Python clients. A multiplatform Shareaza would be far, far preferable to Azureus.

    32. Re:Azureus rocks... by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what causes it to ask, it doesn't ask all the time (perhaps you have to download a certain amount first). But when it does, the dialog is big, flashy, and annoying, with a delay before you can dismiss it like those annoying shareware nag screens. It just happened to me when I started Azureus to compare with the new official client, and it's happened before.

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    33. Re:Azureus rocks... by funk_doc · · Score: 1

      Agreed. My favorite feature of Azureus is that you can bind it to a specific network interface. At my apartment I have two wireless cards and a number of open wireless networks to choose from. I can run multiple instances of Azureus on separate internet connections. Doubles the bandwidth for uploads and downloads.

    34. Re:Azureus rocks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But the 4.0 client has a queue system for you to download or seed a lot with a single client.

      I guess you didn't read the article...

    35. Re:Azureus rocks... by DisKurzion · · Score: 2, Interesting

      BitComet is also not Open Source. I may be confused, but doesn't that mean that they're violating the licence?

      I use it, and it's a nice client, but it isn't open source, and that worries me.

    36. Re:Azureus rocks... by plastik55 · · Score: 1

      Not in my experience... I have an ancient 120Mhz box I use for downloads. It can run ten instances of btdownloadcurses, no problem.

      Azureus, on the other hand, will bring my 600mhz laptop to its knees, just by being open.

      Spare a nickel? I'd like go buy myself a real computer...

      --

      I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!

    37. Re:Azureus rocks... by rbarreira · · Score: 1
      BitComet is also not Open Source. I may be confused, but doesn't that mean that they're violating the licence?

      No, since it's not based on the original code... I don't think Bram Cohen has licensed the bittorrent protocol as GPL or a similar license, I even doubt that it's possible to do...

      Bottom line - anyone is free to implement different programs which use the protocol...
      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    38. Re:Azureus rocks... by psi42 · · Score: 1

      Huh? Have you USED Azureus? You can't even tell it's a Java app. It uses the native SWT toolkit, not Swing. It's a beautiful and snappy app.


      It's not about how it [i]looks[/i]. It's the fact that it, just like every other java-based program I have used, manages to eat horrendous amounts of memory. It's a torrent client, not Doom 3...

      --
      Defenestrate Windows...
  8. Trying to get more users? by ProdigySim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It looks to me like this new client is adding alot of the features other clients added in themselves. The main part being the configurations from a GUI. Perhaps he's trying to get everyone using HIS client, so there's more control over the populus of BT users?

    1. Re:Trying to get more users? by Deliveranc3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most people started switching away with the intrusive pop-ups.

      Sites like IsoHunt have some features that are supported in some clients and not in others like multiple trackers with backups so if the main tracker goes down it will switch over.

      He's not trying to implement any sort of eXeem crapfest at least.

      I'm a bit confused about the bulk packets thing.

      Yea there are people who will want to use over their neighbors wifi and will need some stronger restrictions (when it spikes to 300 down neighbors internet goes kablooie) but I'm not sure that making it mandatory is the best solution.

    2. Re:Trying to get more users? by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 1

      yes, interesting when you consider it along with the license change he made.. surpised it didn't get mentioned in the article blurb.

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    3. Re:Trying to get more users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      maybe he's just trying to raise the bar in terms of the default feature set

    4. Re:Trying to get more users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you installed it, you were probably sent to a donation page. One of them has a picture with his son, and a couple donate buttons.

      The more people see the pages, the more that will take pity/feel compelled to donate. Therefore he wants people to use his client.

      I have no trouble with that motivation. It makes one of the people most knowledgeable about bittorrent want to improve the software.

    5. Re:Trying to get more users? by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 1

      Perhaps he's trying to get everyone using HIS client, so there's more control over the populus [sic] of BT users?

      Perhaps he's seen the traffic to his donation-begging page dropping off, and is worried that people will stop remembering what his ugly phiz looks like?

      If I were Bram Cohen, I would be doing everything I could to cede "control" over BitTorrent users to someone else. "Control" also means "liability" in this legal climate.

  9. Irony. by DarkHelmet · · Score: 5, Funny
    http://www.bittorrent.com/index.html

    Is it just me... but does anyone else find it ironic that there isn't a torrent available for downloading Bittorrent?

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
    1. Re:Irony. by jyxent · · Score: 1

      Not too ironic. It would be hard to get the client if you didn't already have an older version ;)

    2. Re:Irony. by perlionex · · Score: 1

      I think they figure: if you need to download BitTorrent, you probably don't already have it.

      Plus, the download is so small (the RPM's 256k), and the number of people downloading using BitTorrent's probably relatively few, so the gains from using BT might not be that great.

    3. Re:Irony. by ZackSchil · · Score: 1

      What's with the "News" navigation link being replaced with a garbage "search" link that just spews ads everywhere?

    4. Re:Irony. by mtrisk · · Score: 1

      http://bash.org/?332053

      Not irony, but avoiding user confusion...

      --

      Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
    5. Re:Irony. by cdsr · · Score: 5, Funny

      would you like to download winzip.zip too?

    6. Re:Irony. by Rie+Beam · · Score: 1

      "Is it just me... but does anyone else find it ironic that there isn't a torrent available for downloading Bittorrent?"

      Not really. Either A) You don't have a copy, in which case the link is useless, or B) You're upgrading, in which case it's probably a wise idea to get a fresh copy, just in case there's a slight "bug" in the last version (it's a contrived example, but I'm using it).

    7. Re:Irony. by Nermal6693 · · Score: 2, Funny

      StuffIt (essentially WinZip for Mac) was once distributed as a .sit file. :)

    8. Re:Irony. by strider44 · · Score: 1

      That's like having an ISP say "go to our website for more info on this wonderful deal". Always made me giggle.

      If you don't have bittorrent, how will you download it?

    9. Re:Irony. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same reason WinRAR doesn't come in a RAR file, I assume.

    10. Re:Irony. by ozzmosis · · Score: 1

      this isn't much difference from taring up tar

    11. Re:Irony. by brion · · Score: 1

      Well, if you take three seconds to look at a GNU mirror you'll find that the GNU tar source is distributed as a self-extracting shell archive and as a DOS executable as well as a tarball... no need to pollute yourself by extracting it with a non-free tar! ;)

      --

      Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?

    12. Re:Irony. by grondin · · Score: 1

      I remember that :) They suggested using Netscape to unStuffit - cause the engine was built in to the Browser at that time (or distributed with it).

    13. Re:Irony. by mboverload · · Score: 1

      Just so you know, it still is.

    14. Re:Irony. by arekq · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's probably because bittorrent isn't very efficient for small files.

    15. Re:Irony. by alannon · · Score: 1

      This isn't all that big of a deal, considering that some version or another of Stuffit Expander has been included, standard, in every install of MacOS for at least the last 10 years.

    16. Re:Irony. by grem · · Score: 1

      http://www.filerush.com/download.php?target=BitTor rent-4.0.0.exe
      Enjoy... :)

      --
      Murphy's law - "Anything that can go wrong, will." (Actually, this is Finagle's law, which in itself shows that Finagle
    17. Re:Irony. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GNU still provides tar as a tar.gz file. http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html

    18. Re:Irony. by Asprin · · Score: 1


      Azureus updates itself using a torrent.

      ...just sayin'.

      --
      "Lawyers are for sucks."
      - Doug McKenzie
    19. Re:Irony. by 88NoSoup4U88 · · Score: 1

      Reminds me of downloading a (warezed) version of WinRar... packed in a .rar file

    20. Re:Irony. by shish · · Score: 1

      It depends on server bandwidth, but small is normally under 1MB; the BT client is 3.5~

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    21. Re:Irony. by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      Who said you don't have bittorrent? It's possible that you have an older version :)

      I suspect that the reason is more like - the file is so small, it's not worth it to post a torrent for it.

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    22. Re:Irony. by EvilSporkMan · · Score: 1

      Yes, and then I'll compile the latest release of gcc with gcc...What's your point?

      --
      -insert a witty something-
  10. Great! I Love BitTorrent. by Murdock037 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because I hate going to the theater to see... uh, Linux binaries.

  11. bulk data by vespazzari · · Score: 5, Funny

    is bulk data what fat chick pr0n is being referred to nowdays?

    --
    "Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson
    1. Re:bulk data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually if you're into that thang some dude regularly posts VCDs from the "Phat Azz White Girls" series in alt.binaries.erotica.interracial...

  12. ABC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    has had a far better interface and featureset for years.

    1. Re:ABC by CammieCrookston · · Score: 4, Informative

      ABC is nice indeed. If you are an advocate of BitTornado, but prefer a single window for all of your downloads, ABC is the client for you. (It uses BitTornado as its core, so you get all of BitTornado + extra features + a single window).

    2. Re:ABC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ABC is my preferred BT client, but I wish there was an update to the linux version. I keep finding torrents that aren't compatible with it and having to bust out Azureus.

    3. Re:ABC by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 0

      btlaunchmany*.py?

      BitTornado has done the "all downloads in one window" thing for a long time.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  13. Indeed... by inertia187 · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...which is significant considering that about a third of all Internet traffic is currently torrent data.

    Too bad it's all broken copies of LG3D.

    --
    A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
  14. Different License by Raindance · · Score: 4, Informative

    Also of note is that BT 4.0 is using a modified version of the Jabber Open Source License.

    It's complient with the Open Source Definition. Not huge shaking news it seems like.

  15. Bulk data? by IntellectualCritic · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Packets are now marked as bulk data too

    Can somebody explain what that means?

    I'm assuming that's not like bulk mail over the internet. I'd hate to accidently download viagra when I just when a torrent file.

    1. Re:Bulk data? by PxM · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's a flag at the IP level which routers use to handle different traffic classes (realtime, low-bandwith/low-lag, etc. In particular, bulk data is high-bandwith and lag tolerant so that someone using a high lag system like a sat. connection can route the packets in a manner that improves overall performance. This normally involves allowing for bigger chunks of data at a time with less feedback (the ACKs) for each chunk.

      --
      Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
      Or a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox
      Wired article as proof

    2. Re:Bulk data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
      Let's look at a few options vis-a-vis protocols that make use of TCP-IP. You have, for example Voice over IP (VoIP); Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP); File Transfer Protocol (FTP); Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP); Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP); Internet Relay Chat (IRC); and Secure Shell (SSH). (This list is not complete, but it's for illustrating the point, not to list every damn protocol on the whole Internet.)

      Now, taking these one at a time. VoIP has certain needs: it needs a certain amount of bandwidth, and its data must be transferred within a short period of time, or it becomes unusable. A VoIP connection is generally held for of the order of minutes, so quick setup of a connection is not a high priority. HTTP needs quick setup/teardown, because you have one connection for each file (typically kilobytes in size; yes, I know that later versions of HTTP can transfer multiple files within one connection), but latency is not a huge concern; bandwidth might be, depending on the data. FTP is an interesting beast: low latency and low bandwidth for commands, but high bandwidth and don't-care latency for data. Setup/teardown times not a major issue. NNTP needs high bandwidth, but latency is not a concern at all. SMTP usually needs low bandwidth, and latency isn't a major issue, as long as the message gets through. SSH needs low latency, but bandwidth needs are generally low.

      You have a relatively small pipe to the rest of the Internet. There are high demands on this pipe. How do you decide what gets pushed through, and what gets dropped, or delayed until later?

      BitTorrent marking its packets as bulk means that quality of service systems can say "These packets aren't of major importance; they can be deferred until later". So the short-term throughput of BT is reduced, for the benefit of others who need the pipe for applications like VoIP (for example). When those other applications reduce their demands, BT is able to transfer its data.

      The understanding is simple: the urgency in the transfer of data via bittorrent is low, so if bandwidth is at a premium, the routers can drop, or throttle, the bittorrent data to make room for high priority data. It's the same principle as FedEx uses: if you have stuff that needs to be moved FAST, you pay a price premium, and it gets moved on the next plane, bumping off some low-urgency, low-price cargo to the plane afterwards. If there's a lot of high priority and low priority traffic, such that the low priority traffic is building up faster than it can be moved, it's time for FedEx to buy more planes, or start not accepting low priority traffic -- or, in the ISP business, to buy a fatter pipe.

      Hope this helps.

    3. Re:Bulk data? by advancedhair · · Score: 0

      My understanding is that the bulk data attribute denotes a packet of being a lower urgency than other packets. Whether or not routers implement rules to prioritise on this indicator is another matter.

      I think the rationale is to make a bittorrent a bit more traffic shapeable (eg let VOIP packets through before BT packets). IMO it's definitely a good idea.

      --
      The road to hell is paved with good inventions.
    4. Re:Bulk data? by ikkonoishi · · Score: 2, Informative

      The protocol section in the packet header is marked 30. As such it should follow the rfc969 guidelines.

    5. Re:Bulk data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "NNTP needs high bandwidth, but latency is not a concern at all."

      Speak for yourself!

      I like my news *fresh*

    6. Re:Bulk data? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      Does this mean it'll stop flooding out my ACKs and making my web browsing slow to a crawl?

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    7. Re:Bulk data? by John.P.Jones · · Score: 1

      Don't forget Streaming apps that are relatively latency tolerant but can't handle jitter (variance in the data rate) very well.

    8. Re:Bulk data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually quick connection under voip is a priority - at least of us who try and use it as a part of a backbone. It's called PDD - post dial delay - people don't like a lot of it - and after two seconds might think they misdialed and hang up - after several seconds you're toast. You want the shortest time possible between when that last digit comes across to when they hear ringing. Where as having a 80ms delay on getting back a setup packet might seem to be not-that-bad in the scope of things - if that connection has to pass between multiple links - it adds up to bad juju on the user side.

    9. Re:Bulk data? by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 4, Informative
      if bandwidth is at a premium, the routers can drop, or throttle, the bittorrent data to make room for high priority data.

      No. In order for users to voluntarily mark their packets as "bulk data", there has to be a benefit for them. That benefit is supposed to be higher overall transfer rate. The tradeoff is higher latency. So a router that receives a BitTorrent packet and a VOIP packet at the same time would send the VOIP packet first to reduce latency, and queue the BitTorrent packet for afterwards. But if the queue is full it would *not* preferentially drop the BitTorrent packet because that would reduce throughput. In fact, if the queue has many VOIP packets, the router should preferentially drop incoming VOIP packets, because it would not be able to send them with low latency anyway. This limits VOIP throughput, which is fine. In fact that's the result we want: VOIP = low latency low throughput, BitTorrent = high latency high throughput.

      At least, I hope this is how ISPs implement routing for packets marked as bulk data, because otherwise it will never be adopted.

      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
    10. Re:Bulk data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (Grandparent poster typing) You're right, and I stand corrected on those points. The purpose of my post wasn't so much to be one hundred percent technically correct, but rather to give the reader a feel for what goes on. Kind of like if you're travelling from city A to city B on the other side of the country -- you point your vehicle in the general direction first, and only refine your aim as you get closer to the destination. :) (The most "direct" path, based upon compass direction, might be a suburban street that only goes a few hundred metres to a dead end, for example. :)

    11. Re:Bulk data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Oh, yeah -- there's also the point that I'm talking short term in my comment for the most part. (Sorry -- half asleep.) So you have a temporary (say, a couple of minutes) surge in VoIP data for example -- then the BitTorrent data takes the hit in the short term whilst the VoIP stuff is dealt with, and is then restored once the surge dies back.

      Think seconds and minutes rather than days and weeks. If you have enough bandwidth issues that you'll be dropping bulk data to cope for any significant length of time, then as I said: it's time to buy a fatter pipe. In such circumstances, the overall user service is, as you say, appalling, and the users will take their business elsewhere (if they have any sense, that is.)

    12. Re:Bulk data? by amorsen · · Score: 1
      Does this mean it'll stop flooding out my ACKs and making my web browsing slow to a crawl?

      If all routers between you and the web sites are reasonably smart, then yes. That's unlikely, but if your access router does proper bandwidth allocation, that's sufficient too.

      --
      Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
    13. Re:Bulk data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's specified as part of Differential Services (diffserv) spec so only routers that use this will see any difference.

      As far as I know most ignore this flag anyway. The problem being its set by the client so someone could use iptables to mangle all their packets with high priority flag and get lower latencies than their neighbours.

    14. Re:Bulk data? by SillyWilly · · Score: 1

      How do I take advantage of this in PF on OpenBSD?

      --
      Online & Feelin' Fine
    15. Re:Bulk data? by Deven · · Score: 3, Informative

      In order for users to voluntarily mark their packets as "bulk data", there has to be a benefit for them. That benefit is supposed to be higher overall transfer rate.

      No, the benefit is that their Internet connection remains usable for interactive traffic instead of slowing to a crawl due to the BitTorrent traffic. (The overall transfer rate is likely to be the same either way.) You don't stop using the Internet just because you're downloading something, do you?

      If you're not using your connection for anything else, BitTorrent can max out the bandwidth, with or without the bulk data flag. If you have other traffic, the TCP/IP stack will have to make room in the stream of data for those other packets sooner or later -- and when those packets go through really won't affect the final download time because latency is of little importance. However, it may be critical to the other traffic, so it's best to label the bulk data to keep it from being prioritized before more urgent packets.

      Really, the only reason not to use the flag is because such traffic could be easily singled out for blocking. However, such action would be foolish, since people would just stop marking the data as "bulk" if that caused it to get dropped. This would cause all the bulk data to be transferred as if it were time-critical interactive traffic, defeating the value of the flag altogether. (Email can be marked as bulk email, but do spammers use that flag? Of course not! They know they'll be blocked.)

      It's best for everyone if all bulk data is labelled, the routers prioritize it intelligently, and nobody blocks bulk data transfers.

      --

      Deven

      "Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay

    16. Re:Bulk data? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 2, Informative

      If your cable modem's queue supports packet prioritization, yes. Most of them don't since they're simple devices. (In the VoIP age, this might start changing.)

      Set an upload cap on your BT client if you don't want it killing your connection, or replace your router with a Linux box that has more intelligent packet filtering. (Specifically, if you know your upstream cap, you can set up the Linux box to be the actual upstream bottleneck and not the cable modem, and when the router is the upstream bottleneck, it's a lot easier to prioritize packets effectively.)

      Also some BT clients support automatic upstream detection. The way they do it is by measuring your latency to a few sites, if they see the latency spike, they throttle themselves back until latency goes down.

      --
      retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
    17. Re:Bulk data? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But I don't want to lower my upload cap!

      Bittorrent will download faster the more upload bandwidth you give it. Basically your peers will favor those clients that send them a lot of data (I'm simplifying). So, lowering your upload cap is not necessarily a good thing.

      I spent 10 minutes reading this slashdot page, and a couple others in other tabs. I haven't used my connection for anything interactive in that time. I want my BT client to use all the upload/download bandwidth it can during that time, but to relinquish it as soon as I hit "reply" or "submit" on my browser.

      Of course, I could do it by hand, by changing the upload cap every time I'm about to load a page, but that's silly. That's what routing/traffic shaping is for.

      (And yes, automatic cap detection is nice. If I set my upload rate above 9, everything suffers, for dropping ACK packets, I guess. But that's ortogonal to routing decisions, sicne you want the whole connection to be capped together to 9 KB/s upstream, not just BT, and the bulk flag should help the decision of what gets sent when)

    18. Re:Bulk data? by chaoaretasty · · Score: 1

      Does this mean that those of us on asymmetric lines don't have to throttle BT uploads to stop it choking downloads because the HTTP packets would be given priority?

    19. Re:Bulk data? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      Well, I've got a Linksys WRT54G; maybe I ought to check if OpenWRT (or whatever) does that...

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    20. Re:Bulk data? by Deven · · Score: 1

      That's the theory. Ideally, all the BT traffic would be labelled as bulk data, while the HTTP traffic would not, and ideally the TCP/IP stacks would be smart enough to give the non-bulk HTTP packets priority.

      In theory, the HTTP traffic would be only slightly slower than it would be without the BT traffic. Obviously there's some inevitable delay required when waiting to finish transmitting a low-priority packet before the next higher-priority packet could begin, especially if the low-priority packet is large relative to the bandwidth of the link...

      --

      Deven

      "Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible." - Alan Kay

  16. Re:Great! I Love BitTorrent. by Visceral+Monkey · · Score: 1

    Heh. I laughed.

    --
    *Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
  17. Where is the OS X version? by Y-Crate · · Score: 1, Informative

    I tried the official website and it seems that their News area is non-functional at the time of this posting and Google just brings up tons of people asking the same question.

    I haven't heard so much as a peep regarding the new Mac version during the dev of the latest Windows client. Can anyone give us an ETA on 4.0 for OS X?

    1. Re:Where is the OS X version? by mbaciarello · · Score: 1

      On OS X, I'll stick to Azureus. It's had all these "new" features for months now, possibly years, plus many others. And it's a pretty active project, too, so I guess they'll be up-to-date in a few days, if it need be.

      For one, the ability to set per-file settings without having to run multiple instances was a major advantage some time ago. According to some comments here, it still is, at least over the "official" client.

      Use the Java VM >=1.5 to keep CPU usage from going through the roof though :)

    2. Re:Where is the OS X version? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Step one in ensuring a pleasant computer-using experience: Never, ever download anything from "Source Forge."

  18. BitTorrent Open Source License by IvyMike · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Dear Lazyweb:

    This version of bittorrent is licensed under the BitTorrent Open Source License. Could you please compare and contrast this with other open source licenses for me?

    Thank you, Lazyweb.

    1. Re:BitTorrent Open Source License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you care? The purpose of bit torrent is to distribute illegal copies of movies. If you don't care about whether the movie is somebody else's property, why should you care about whether the software is?

    2. Re:BitTorrent Open Source License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes you are correct.

      the thousand or so hours of live performances i have on dvd are all illegal.
      and stealing from the bands...

      oh wait, they allow that.

      just cause you steal/pirate/whatever term you want doesnt mean everyone does

    3. Re:BitTorrent Open Source License by IvyMike · · Score: 1

      The purpose of bit torrent is to distribute illegal copies of movies. If you don't care about whether the movie is somebody else's property, why should you care about whether the software is?

      First, let me say: Hi-Larious.

      But your comment is still completely irrelevant to the question of the specifics of why bitorrent has a custom open-source license.

    4. Re:BitTorrent Open Source License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So ... what? Are you saying that you don't have a good answer? Because you didn't answer the question.

    5. Re:BitTorrent Open Source License by ammoQ · · Score: 1

      From a user point of view, BitTorrent is just another file transfer protocol like http or ftp.
      It uses transparent p2p to save the bandwith of the original server, though. There is nothing special in BitTorrent that makes distributing illegal copies of movies its primary purpose. For me, its primary use is distributing (perfectly legal) ISOs of Linux distros.

    6. Re:BitTorrent Open Source License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The purpose of bit torrent is to distribute illegal copies of movies.

      No, the primary intent is to take load off servers, regardless the secondary intent.

      OK, next!

    7. Re:BitTorrent Open Source License by theVP · · Score: 1

      It should also be pointed out that Cohen has, on more than one occasion, said that using BT for piracy is "Stupid".

      --
      "No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing." -Emperor Claudius 10 BC - AD 54
  19. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Mac users are second-rate. There's maybe 1 of them for every, say, 20 Windows users.

    Why should Mac users be at the front of the line? Because they paid more?

  20. aww hell no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    whassup dog?

  21. Favourite torrent sites? by Indy+Media+Watch · · Score: 1, Interesting

    With the recent tragic death of everyone's favourite torrent site, what are people using these days for sourcing movies?

    --

    Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet

    1. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by bstadil · · Score: 1
      --
      Help fight continental drift.
    2. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Answer this question correctly, and insure the loss of your favorite site. Three can keep a secret when two are dead.

    3. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    4. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Answer this question correctly, and insure the loss of your favorite site. Three can keep a secret when two are dead.

      The fewer people who know about a site and who can access the torrents, the slower and less healthy the torrents will be.

    5. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      On the other hand, the more people that use and talk about a site, the more likely the various *AAs and such will discover it and threaten/sue the hell out of it.

    6. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Walker2323 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Yes, because without the Slashodotters talking about their favorite sites, the RIAA would never had found them. They're soooooo stupid!

    7. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by etnoy · · Score: 0

      The Pirate Bay , a swedish tracker by the swedish organization Piratbyrån. Piratbyrån was founded shortly after the advent of a swedish equalivent to {RI|MP}AA. It works with spreadig the word of, as they call it, pirating. Be sure to check out their legal section, too!

      --
      Quantum hacker.
    8. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Inda · · Score: 1

      Popular sites at http://del.icio.us/tag/bittorrent

      RSS feeds are available. Neat!

      Try other tags like warez, torrent, bt, etc, etc.

      --
      This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
    9. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by tooth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You forgot to add:

      Yours truly,
      The MPAA


    10. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So long as they're set up in the right country and don't keep logs, that's really not a big deal. Cut one down and two more will spring up.

    11. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by GodOfNothing · · Score: 1
      >The fewer people who know about a site and who can access the torrents, the slower and less healthy the torrents will be.

      Until the weight of the clients crushes the tracker.

    12. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's just hope that not 40 gazillion people will download stuff the same minute

    13. Re:Favourite torrent sites? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The first rule of movie-torrent sites is you don't talk about the movie-torrent sites.

      The second rule... oh alright, fine, I downloaded fight club last night. Cool movie.

      Oh, and no, no movies, just linux kernels and TV shows. (The daily show at #BT on efnet or their website since my cable provider doesn't show it, I'm currently outside the US)

  22. Great news... by jedimark · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now if only I could convince my stinking ISP that downloading linux ISO's is not illegal :-)

    1. Re:Great news... by andersa · · Score: 1

      If my ip told me I couldn't use bt, I'd soon be looking for a friendlier ISP.

    2. Re:Great news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reminds me of the guy that got an angry letter from his isp for portscanning.
      They included a log clipping showing the evil activity, but it was mostly ports around 27015... ;)
      (Which is the default port Counter-Strike servers listen on.)

  23. Looks Slick by yuriismaster · · Score: 2, Informative

    NOTE: This is the windows version

    Tried it out throwing down some linux torrent simultaneously.

    Downloads save to the desktop by default (although editable) and look like Firefox's Download Manager with details, progress bars, etc. Really nice because opening up 5 torrents used to mean 5 seperate windows. Client worked fine on most of the trackers given by A Quick Google Search.

    Download it quick! I'm sure someone will torrent the executable...

    1. Re:Looks Slick by Nermal6693 · · Score: 1

      3.4.2 (the Mac version at least) would queue up multiple downloads in one window. Is that new for the Windows version?

    2. Re:Looks Slick by grrrl · · Score: 1

      no, the mac client LISTS multiple downloads

      queing is when one finishes, another starts

      the mac client has *very little* features, but it does work well

      any chance a 4.0 for the mac would give a bit more control?

    3. Re:Looks Slick by yuriismaster · · Score: 1

      Not quite sure when they changed, but you CAN pull multiple torrents in this version at the same time in the same window by right-clicking on the paused torrent and clicking Download Now!

      Of course, this may/will kill your bandwidth, but you probably already knew that.

    4. Re:Looks Slick by Nermal6693 · · Score: 1

      Ah, yes, you're quite right about queuing vs listing. My mistake.

    5. Re:Looks Slick by nokilli · · Score: 1

      Isn't that going to kill throughput? I mean, half the time, the only reason a person continues to seed is because he isn't there at his computer to grab the next file, right?

    6. Re:Looks Slick by r.muk · · Score: 1

      "Really nice because opening up 5 torrents used to mean 5 seperate windows."

      Bram Cohen addressing a Stanford CS group earlier this year said this was a specific no-no. You don't get the d/l's any faster because the individual rates slow down so that you get them LATER than when they would have d/l'ed sequentially anyway.

      D/l sequentially and you get 100% of one d/l followed by 100% of the next etc.

      Of course if the idea is to leave BT to its own devices while the oh-so-busy user does 'real' work then ..

    7. Re:Looks Slick by grrrl · · Score: 1

      maybe, maybe not.

      if you have a crap upload rate, it probably wont matter, as any other torrents running will take the upstream bandwidth first (thats what seems to happen to me anyway)

      i find that on international torrents, i almost always have a 1:1 ratio anyway, so by the time im finished im happy to turn the torrent off.

    8. Re:Looks Slick by HardJeans · · Score: 0

      This would only be true if each individual torrent maxed out your connection. In many cases it does not, and wouldn't cause much(if any) slowdown on other torrents.

      --
      "I'm not talking to myself, I'm just the only one who's listening." - Jimmies Chicken Shack
    9. Re:Looks Slick by yuriismaster · · Score: 1

      Of course if the idea is to leave BT to its own devices while the oh-so-busy user does 'real' work then ..

      That's what I normally do. Thanks to high school, employment, and the occasional times of hibernation, my computer sits there idle, processing away on World Community Grid, etc. Leaving some linux ISOs, 'visual entertainment files', and random torrents open while away makes better use of my bandwidth.

      Coming home to "Download Completed" multiple times is a very nice thing to see ;-)

    10. Re:Looks Slick by r.muk · · Score: 1

      =="This would only be true if each individual torrent maxed out your connection. In many cases it does not, and wouldn't cause much(if any) slowdown on other torrents."==

      I'm no expert, just reporting what I've been listening to Bram Cohen saying.

      The torrent URL is: (it's a .wmv file - dang!).

      http://netnews.nctu.edu.tw/~gslin/tmp/050216-ee3 80 -100.wmv.torrent

    11. Re:Looks Slick by r.muk · · Score: 3, Informative

      From http://www.torrentocracy.com/blog/archives/2005/02 /bram_cohen_unde.shtml
      Bram Cohen gave a technical talk on Bit Torrent at Stanford.

      Update: 3/7/2005, The torrent in this entry was just audio only, but Thomas Winningham has gotten permission from both Bram and Stanford ("Stanford holds copyright on the material but returns the copyright immediately to the speaker, that is, Bram. Get him to agree and go ahead.") to post their video as a torrent on Prodigem. Cool! Updated again since that video posted seems to only have the first 10 minutes. Anyway, the audio is below, or just check out my notes.

      Bram Cohen gave a technical talk on Bit Torrent yesterday at Stanford. I had planned to make video from it available, but the video I captured somehow got corrupted (boo Panasonic). I salvaged the audio from the video and have released that via a torrent under a creative commons license (with Bram's approval). The audio is a bit low. It's okay, though, as I didn't realize that Stanford would be making it's video available to the general public (though in crummy windows streaming format). Here are some notes:

      - Academic setting ... so how to benchmark/measure bit torrent
      - benchmarking is hard because it needs to be like the internet (buy a bad router)
      - key problem among swarming software is how to get everyone involved to maximize upload, people don't realize

      - Single seeder problem
      - must be careful not to at first trade with people who are likely to disappear

      - Bit Torrent extremely non-cooperative
      - each peer in it for himself
      - tit for tat
      - editorial note: isn't this cooperative? Peter Kollock: tit for tat as the optimal cooperative strategy

      - How to deal with people behind and not behind NAT

      - Centralized tracker is needed to produce randomized graph so as to avoid
      network segmentation
      - gossip (peers telling peers about other peers with content) very easily segments the network such that pieces of the content get isolated into islands

      - Choking Algorithm
      - sophistication
      - people like to pretend it doesn't exit
      - lots of use of made up magic numbers
      - eg. how long to wait for reciprication?
      - motivation opaque
      - methodology (the traditional approach) is Bram firing up a client and observing behavior
      - lots of room for study

      - TCP does not look like RPC calls (BitTorrent treats TCP like a black box)
      - don't avoid making a state machine, because no matter what you'll end up with a state machine anyway
      - why threads are a bad idea

      - Magic numbers
      - makes them up based on what works
      - pulls them from his "magic ass"
      - if you need a magic number feel free to ask him for one

      - Estimated Time Left Algorithm
      - never gotten any fan mail on how well it works
      - lots of effort and thought put into making this work sanely
      - any time you see a computer telling you time left it is lieing
      - research needs to be done on better algorithms
      - would gladly place your better algorithm into bit torrent
      - problem at end about going down 2 seconds per every 1 second
      - tradeoff between smoothness now vs. smoothness later

      - Current Transfer Rate Algorithm
      - its a mess
      - very important for tit-for-tat to work

      - Bad idea to be downloading too many torrents at one time (e.g. 5)

      - Peers at first never randomly tried new connections
      - added optimistic unchoke to solve this
      - if new person recipricates then continue
      - otherwise move on to the next person
      - may unchoke 4 or 7 clients depending
      - it's voodoo
      - nobody has seriously studied this

      - Piece Selection Algorithm
      - trade off between finishing the piece you are currently downloading vs going after a more valuable piece
      - priority is currently finishing a piece you started even if many others have it
      - downloading from the beginning of the content for everyone is a maximally bad strategy

      Q: Who has w

  24. nobody should be at the front of the line by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We're not a small enough part of the market to always be last in consideration, though.

    Don't Mac desktops outnumber Linux desktops nowadays?

    1. Re:nobody should be at the front of the line by Nermal6693 · · Score: 0

      Don't Mac desktops outnumber Linux desktops nowadays?

      Yes.

    2. Re:nobody should be at the front of the line by thank-u-for-sharing · · Score: 1, Informative

      Not here at slashdot according to this.

      --
      The problem is the users
    3. Re:nobody should be at the front of the line by Afrosheen · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      No. Discuss.

    4. Re:nobody should be at the front of the line by ratsnapple+tea · · Score: 1

      Remember the Google Zeitgeist before they removed the OS stats last year? Mac 3%, Linux desktops 1%. Just another data point, I guess.

    5. Re:nobody should be at the front of the line by FireFury03 · · Score: 1

      Remember the Google Zeitgeist before they removed the OS stats last year? Mac 3%, Linux desktops 1%. Just another data point, I guess.

      I'd be curious to see those stats just prior to the release of the Mac Mini and 12 or 24 months after the release - I'm wondering just how many converts Apple are going to get from the windows crowd. (I'm hoping it's a lot - I personally am not a Mac user, I'm exclusively Linux, but I wholly support people using Macs since they have a proper operating system instead of the toy that Microsoft produces).

  25. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the attitude is, why bother with Firefox when we've got Safari? Can't say I disagree, either.

  26. Marking Packets Correctly by Red+Pointy+Tail · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope packets are also marked with the evil bit too, which is significant considering that most of all Torrent traffic is currently evil data.

    1. Re:Marking Packets Correctly by robogymnast · · Score: 1

      Adopting the broadcast flag early, are we? :)

      --
      unzip ; strip ; touch ; grep ; find ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; fsck ; umount ; sleep
    2. Re:Marking Packets Correctly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But it comes with a free frogurt!

  27. Lack of per file settings. by PxM · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My main gripe with the default BT client is the lack of per file settings. BitTornado (site's down at the moment) allows the user to download specific files in the torrent. This is useful since people can post aggregated torrents and the user can just select the files that he wants.

    --
    Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
    Or a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox
    Wired article as proof

    1. Re:Lack of per file settings. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please stop copy-and-pasting your pyramid scheme into your messages. Those of us who have disabled signatures have done so for a reason: We do not want to see your stupid advertisements. So please stop lest I find it necessary to shit on your head.

    2. Re:Lack of per file settings. by Norgus · · Score: 1

      This is neat from a leech perspective, but it means the torrent gets inconsistently seeded leading to only popular files being easy to get while relatively few peers can grab the other files.
      While its nice to have the choice, it doesn't exactly help spread your data.

    3. Re:Lack of per file settings. by TiggsPanther · · Score: 1

      Being able to set the download priorities has other advantages, though.

      Personally I've never used it to completely ignore files in a batch torrent, but it does mean that if I'm downloading a batch of ordered files then I can set the first file to a higher priority and the last file to be grabbed last.

      --
      Tiggs
      "120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
  28. BitSpirit... by Skates1616 · · Score: 1

    After trying out all the clients I have come to love BitSpirit. It's coded in C++, which in my opinion runs with less of a memory footprint then most of the Java clients, it also includes every feature imaginable!

    Check it out, its definitely a client worth looking at.

    1. Re:BitSpirit... by cheekyboy · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      I got sick of BS giving me 4x upload than download, seeing 2kb download and 11kb upload was real anoying not to mention after downloading 200meg, my ISP count said I downloaded ~300meg+ so obviously theres a lot of dupes of blocks/retries/bogus traffic.

      Maybe its better now, but ill stick to bitspirit

      --
      Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
    2. Re:BitSpirit... by Skates1616 · · Score: 1

      Exactly, totally different client, BitSpirit allows you to throttle Upload!

    3. Re:BitSpirit... by JoshRosenbaum · · Score: 1

      Hopefully it doesn't let you throttle it too much. Otherwise all our downloads are going to get a lot slower. :(

    4. Re:BitSpirit... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it also gets you the worst speed K for K of any other client.

      even that pos java one is faster.

      so far nothing has beat tornado for raw download speed.

    5. Re:BitSpirit... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone that desires to "leech" or throttle their upstream can already do so with their share of different clients and network configuration options. Leeching is an inevitable part of the system, much like people warezing movies, tv shows, games, music, and other intellectual property is an inevitable part of our entertainment system.

      The most amusing part, really, is the sheer amount of "NO LEECHERZ" sentiment from people that are basically taking the fruits of others' labors without compensating them. The hypocrisy is fantastic.

  29. Idea: Streaming Torrent by CedgeS · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Don't know if this is new or not, but a streaming peer-to-peer protocol like bittorrent would be pretty cool. It could be used to inexpensively broadcast audio or video almost live, potentially making news reporting available to a wider selection of journalists. Checksums on data would obviously be a problem here and malicious nodes in the network would have an easier time of disrupting communications. This mechanism needs to be independent of media type, and rely on being used in combination with file formats that can be picked up and played from any small chunk. The client could decide which portions of the stream it would rather get, sacrificing liveness to get as much as possible, trying to pick up the nearest blocks in the future first to stay as smooth as possible, or minimizing buffer size and going after the most recent blocks to stay as live as possible.

    1. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by wse7k · · Score: 1

      Your protocol (sp2pp) would have to work differently than BT, because BT sends chunks from arbitrary places in the file. Streaming needs the chunks to be ordered. sp2pp would need to work different. Ill bet you there is 'yet another abandoned p2p project' that 'does' that on sf.net.

      --
      foon!
    2. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 1

      You mean like ESM or TMesh?

    3. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by parcifal · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is already happening, wired even had an article on it, and the advance comes from the porn industry which has a number of contributions to the internet to its credit.

    4. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by CedgeS · · Score: 1

      Yep. Nice University projects. No source code for either, as far as I can tell.

    5. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by r.muk · · Score: 2, Informative

      AFAIK streaming won't work because the info. arrives in deliberately random chunks so as to even out which peers are u/l-ing and which is d/l-ing. Everyone gets to contribute within a pretty short time of joining a torrent.

    6. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by Henk+Poley · · Score: 1
    7. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by codemachine · · Score: 1

      If IP multicast were ever implemented across the internet, stuff like this would be trivial.

    8. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by ProphetPX777 · · Score: 1

      I don't think that is currently feasible, since the original Bit Torrent client rather randomly exchanges chunks or "pieces" of a .torrent, and does so in no progressive "from the bottom-up" type of order. Because of the nature of the Bit Torrent protocol, you would see lots of MPEG-like-artifacts from the very start of your video stream, because of the middle or the end of the file being transferred first before the beginning of the video stream was ever sent just yet. I do not believe BT makes any exact distinctions between exchanging data "from the bottom-up", as it really just trades what is most accessible amongst its peers, at the most convenient times:

      ie: sending a piece somewhere in the middle just because other clients need it, and downloading a piece somewhere at the end, simply because other clients have it.

      Streaming would not be a possible application from the abstraction of the BT protocol unless someone were to basically write a whole new other protocol. The logistical management of the BT protocol is just too random and different by design to fully promote a "bottom-up" type of fill request as would be needed for audio or video streaming. Not to mention all the horrible syncing errors one would get from all the packets flying about within no certain order (how could you sync an audio stream with a video stream, when entirely different parts of the whole file are basically flying about, random pieces exchanging amongst suddenly-appearing and disappearing peers, willy-nilly??? Not to mention with "ghost trackers" and never-guaranteed tracker downtimes. Its just impossible with BT).

      --
      9/11 Was An Inside Job! http://www.InfoWars.com/
    9. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe something like this could be built on multicast?

    10. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Uh, no.

      Bittorrent relies on being able to download the file in any order. When downloading a torrent, you're likely to get the end first, and this is very much wanted. You see, one of the main heuristics of the protocol is that the parts of the file which most people don't have get priority.

      So if only one other person has the end of the file, you start by downloading the end, so you can later help redistribute it.

      It might be possible to give priority to the first few chuncks so people can preview them and decide to quit the torrent if it isn't what they were looking for, but a straight download isn't what you'd want.

      Plus if you're streaming, you'd want to delete the parts you already watched, which defeats the purpose.

    11. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by sanjed · · Score: 1

      I may be wrong, but when i tried azeurus, i thought it was possible to prioritise the foremost files in the torrent. You could mark each 5 second block of video as a new file, incrementally added to a dynamic .torrent index file. You could get closer to working streaming by prioritising the earliest time indexed files which have not already been downloaded. This would need only need changes in the bittorrent protocol to allow a dynamic and expanding index file format. Add a client like azeurus to take advantage of it, perhaps with an inbuilt media player like avipreview, and you may have a working torrent streaming solution.

    12. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by ProphetPX777 · · Score: 1

      First of all, yes some bit torrent clients can prioritize file downloads, but this prioritization is only in like 4 levels ...

      1. High / get this file first
      2. Normal / get this file whenever u get around to it
      3. Low / get this file last
      4. None / Never get this file (exclude it)

      Even if u did alter the BT protocol to have the very first 5 seconds of a video prioritized as the 1st level of downloading (get it first), 5 seconds of video is never the same in bytes nor download time. 5 seconds of video could be as small as a 20-64K, or as big as 10s of megabytes .. depending on the encoding of the file before it was ever streamed in the first place. Standardization here only applies to formats that are streamable in the first place (and those formats do not use BT protocol but instead use Real Media, WMV, ASF, MOV, EV2, or likewise). And starting out on a stream is not always dependable because you would rely on peers unless there was always a dedicated seeder-server somewhere (and this would require the legitimacy of content as well, otherwise such seeder-servers would be taken down by erstwhile-Gestapo MPAA/RIAA :-) Thus, relying on other peers to provide you even those first 5 seconds of seeded video would not be feasible neither if they hadn't received it yet.

      My opinion seems to be that implementing a streaming-torrent type protocol is far too dependent on centralization, rather than the idealist movement towards de-centralization (and thus, perfection of privacy)...

      Your idea, about updating a dynamic torrent file, still requires a central seeded server, at the least, to get the updated torrent metadata (and the incremental video/audio streem), to get all of this from and, that is centralization, exactly which Bit Torrent was not meant for (trackers are not servers, they are merely resource aggregators of those peers that can serve, simultaneously). I think it would be far simpler to just use existing methods (SWF, EV2, MMS, RTSP, HTTP, FTP, or IP multi-casting) rather than reinventing the wheel. But I believe with those methods (all the application protocols I just mentioned as examples) they already use an indexing format - its embedded into the video stream and accounted-for at both ends in the first place ...

      So, congratulations, you have just described (in a roundabout way) and re-invented the wheel of, the aforementioned format concepts of what we have always known as streaming video, something which need not even involve Bit Torrent at all! lol

      --
      9/11 Was An Inside Job! http://www.InfoWars.com/
    13. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Something like this? http://wiki.xiph.org/IceShare

    14. Re:Idea: Streaming Torrent by sanjed · · Score: 1

      i'll get my coat. bah humbug.

  30. Inverted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For absolutely no good reason, the curses-based client now inverts the terminal window when it runs.

    I can't figure out how to turn this off. Any advice?

  31. ./ organization by kernel_dan · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't this story be under the Games section?

    --

    Illegal? Samir, This is America.
    1. Re:./ organization by stratjakt · · Score: 1

      /. needs a warez section for stories like this (and eXeem promotions).

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    2. Re:./ organization by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They have one already, but it's confusingly named "Your Rights On Line."

    3. Re:./ organization by openglx · · Score: 1

      It would be on the Games section just if you use to "play with yourself", if you know what I mean.

  32. Hmm by pHatidic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What ever happened to that new and decentralized torrent program?

    1. Re:Hmm by yuriismaster · · Score: 1

      You mean eXeem?

      Spyware is what happened to it. I couldn't find anything of use on it, but YMMV.

      Besides that, I really don't know too much. Apparently they released a new beta candidate.

    2. Re:Hmm by CammieCrookston · · Score: 0

      I found it incredibly slow. The first day I used it, I specifically looked for the torrent with the most seeds. Of course, the file with the most seeds was a porn clip, around 10M or so with several hundred seeds. Even with the high amount of seeds (and peers) I didn't download any faster than around 10kB/s, which is far from my limit. Even in subsequent tries I still find it slow.

    3. Re:Hmm by stratjakt · · Score: 5, Informative

      eXeem is a sloppy piece of crap, and a thinly veiled vehicle to get spyware and malware on your system (whse).

      Slashdot staff should be ashamed to have promoted it like they did. They did 2 or 3 articles about it, as if it were some great tech sent from the heavens.

      Besides the fact that the very notion of it is what's wrong with the internet, and why the government will eventually regulate the hell out of it. The entire point is to trade warez. I did an eXeem search for linux, and didn't get one result - so don't give me some bullshit about slackware isos. Society are like kindergarteners, they had a little freedom, and blew it. Now we're all going to be grounded.

      Actually, is that why michael left? It wasn't long after he "wrote" a couple "eXeem is great! get your warez on eXeem!" articles that he left.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    4. Re:Hmm by Burz · · Score: 1
      Society are like kindergarteners, they had a little freedom, and blew it. Now we're all going to be grounded.

      You want mods to screen for spyware before they submit stories about a great new idea? You want to be treated like a kindergartener here on Slashdot?

      What's it like being a Torry these days?

    5. Re:Hmm by codemachine · · Score: 1

      Heh, that would be asking a lot of the mods and editors around here, since most don't even RTFA.

    6. Re:Hmm by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 1

      eXeem isn't a torrent program. eXeem has NOTHING to do with torrents. It's "based on the idea" of bitTorrent, and that's a load of crap, because it's got spyware and the source is closed. Just like bitTorrent?

      The guys at suprnova decided to cash in on how popular their site was, just like the scammers they were so upset with at suprnova.com and .net

      It's kinda funny, the eXeem people are pissed that people were pirating the beta version of eXeem.

      I guess just about anyone will become a corporate jackass for some green.

      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
    7. Re:Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I guess just about anyone will become a corporate jackass for some green.

      Just like the "OMG FREE iBOOK!!!@" link in your sig.

    8. Re:Hmm by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 1

      Yes, I said anyone. That does include me.

      I really want to switch, but I don't have the monies for it. Maybe I can get a free one.

      --
      Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
  33. Control? by Chuck+Chunder · · Score: 4, Informative

    Look at the licence, it seems to me that's the "control" is something he certainly isn't overly interested in.

    He probably just wants to offer a product he can be proud of, maybe so people will appreciate his work and choose to support him.

    --
    Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
    1. Re:Control? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or for the people/companies that prefer to use/recommend a plain "official" client.

  34. Begs the question . . . by weighn · · Score: 1
    Because I hate going to the theater to see... uh, Linux binaries

    So, now that [ insert favorite DMCA/RIAA/MPAA C & D closed .torrent site here ] is closed, where do I get these Linux binaries that you speak of?

    --
    Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
    1. Re:Begs the question . . . by yuriismaster · · Score: 1

      I believe Google comes to the rescue

    2. Re:Begs the question . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is probably the first time Ive seen someone use the term "begs the question" without a gramma nazi coming in and spoiling the party.. oops.

    3. Re:Begs the question . . . by pcgabe · · Score: 1
      This is probably the first time Ive seen someone use the term "begs the question" without a gramma nazi coming in and spoiling the party.. oops.
      Really? This raises the question, 'How ironic were you intending to be?'
      --
      Don't put advice in your sig.
  35. Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Sark666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've tried to like azureus, and I actually still use it as there is pretty much no alternative gui wise in linux, but I really wish there was.

    Basically it brings my system to a crawl. Java vm (and yes i'm on 1.5) feels like a pig imo. We need a native gtk/qt gui that's in c/c++.

    And please don't be a smartass and point out there is the basic gui that the official comes with. It's way too lacking. AFAIK, the only way to throttle is by using the ncurses one. Never mind that you can't set ratio's (I set all of mine to 1:1.), or bind all torrents to one port instead of needing all open. Pretty much all of the other clients do that now, except the official so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

    So as you see, there are quite a few things lacking in the official client. I've checked freshmeat periodically but couldn't find anything for linux. I know there is bitorrando and some others but they require access to a mysql server wtf?

    My windows friends used to use azureus and didn't fair much better performance wise but now they pretty much all use bitcomet.

    I don't mean to knock the azureus team, cause as it is they've made a pretty good functional gui, but java just brings the performance down too much.

    1. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by saleenS281 · · Score: 1

      Did you happen to read the changelog AT ALL? Granted it hasn't been ported to linux at all but you know it will be sooner or later... And it has every feature you listed...

    2. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by pyros · · Score: 1

      try bittornado

    3. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Qtorrent is a QT-based client. It is, though, not much more than a basic client. If you don't need much more than that, though, it's quite useful.

      Link

    4. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by stratjakt · · Score: 1

      screen

      ctorrent

      What do you need a gui for a long running background process for?

      Frankly I prefer to run btlaunchmany.py on a shared folder in screen, so I can drag and drop .torrent files onto it, and grab them when they're finished.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    5. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      rtorrent (http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/) is indeed an ncurses interface, but it's one of the most effective interfaces I've ever used. Not only can you throttle downloads, set priorities on files, do session management with fast resume, it also displays any information on the torrent you'd ever want.

      I used qtorrent before, which has significantly less features, because as you say: java for linux sucks.

      If you can't for the life of it use a console interface, then it's your own fault. Also, I heard, people are planning on writing guis for the libtorrent library.

    6. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Sark666 · · Score: 1

      Hey thanks, that looks great. And nope, I have no qualms using a console based one as long as the functionality is there. I'll definately give this one a look.

    7. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Toy+G · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      You know what? You are right. Now, given that Azureus is OSS, and BitTorrent is OSS, and pretty much any other BT client is OSS, why don't YOU get started and use your C++ m4d sk1llZ to dig into their code and then build up this "required" application? Otherwise, please shut up and be grateful to the Azureus team.

      --
      -- Let's go Viridian.
    8. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A wee more RAM might help, but I suspect your problem's due to the Azureus crew choosing SWT over Swing. Theoretically it should be snappier, being a native peer and all, but I hear it's a real dog on linux.

      Time for an Azureus fork, perhaps?

    9. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GNU/Linux wi5ard reply to criticism #4:

      "You should be grateful to even have shoes. Shut up and fix the kernel yourself."

      Insightful??

    10. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I really love qtorrent. It's clean, functional, and the footprint isn't too big. And as a KDE user, having a client that actually matches my interface is a plus.

    11. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by greg_barton · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you have a 3D video card, try activating opengl acceleration in java. From the script launching azureus, add the following command line property:

      -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true

      This will activate the opengl pipeline for Java2D calls. (Swing uses Java2D for all rendering...)

    12. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Erik+Fish · · Score: 1
      I use ABC on linux almost exclusively. It has a GUI and doesn't require a database (just Python). I typically leave ABC open and pulling down torrents for many months at a time and the only issue I've encountered is that one in 20 or 30 torrents has a tracker that requires a newer version of the client. In these (rare) cases I use Azureus.

      I have found that the best way to go if you're even semi-serious about BT is to just dedicate a machine to it (I'm using an old 400Mhz Celeron). RAID a few good sized drives and install BNR if you have a decent usenet feed. Use VNC and run it headless.

      This post brought to you by the letters TLA.

    13. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I might use dtach for that.

    14. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (Score +1; Troll)

      I know my strengths and weaknesses. If I need to improve php or java website code I could do it. But rewriting a python or java gui app in c++ & gtk is way out of my league.

    15. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by gid · · Score: 1

      Azureus runs fine on my linux box.... as long as I'm not running much else. It typically eats up 300+ megs of ram with a few torrents running. And it's gone rogue twice eating up as much ram as possible as fast as it could, once it brought entire machine down.

      I know java is touted to be a "hog" that this seems a bit out of the ordinary, no? The memory usage is just crazy, seeing as how I only have 512 in the machine.

    16. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Azureus doesn't use Swing, though..

    17. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by greg_barton · · Score: 2, Informative

      Didn't know that, but if it touches the Java2D api at all there should be a speedup. Apparently Azureus uses SWT that does not use Java2D (as far as I know) but it can...

    18. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by shish · · Score: 1
      I know there is bitorrando and some others but they require access to a mysql server wtf?

      They do? I'm running bittornado fine without one... It still doesn't have as many features as azureus, but it's lighter on the CPU and RAM~

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    19. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to be a smartass, but you should try the 4.0 official client. Under windows at least, I get options for "seeding completed torrents until share ratio achieves X percent or for Y minutes" and a nice slider to control upload bandwidth. I do wish it had download throttling though. It can download multiple torrents in parallel also.

      I'm not sure about binding multiple torrents to a single port though.

      It's python so it's still a VM (can that be compiled to C?), but it's a GTK front end I believe.

      Let us know how it works in Linux

    20. Re:Linux needs a gui alt to azureus by Jagasian · · Score: 1

      Why would you care what language the program is written in. Assuming it runs efficiently on your system, shouldn't that be all that matters?

  36. This just in: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Too many stories about things in Washington causes cancer.

  37. Re:yep by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Funny
    why bother with Firefox when we've got Safari?

    You misspelled "Camino".

  38. Why is this news? by rm999 · · Score: 1

    no one uses the official bit torrent client. The most popular clients the last time I checked are Azureus and ABC, both fine programs.

    1. Re:Why is this news? by mark-t · · Score: 1

      Actually, I've _always_ used the official bittorrent client.

    2. Re:Why is this news? by kihjin · · Score: 1

      I've found the original BitTorrent client to be the most enjoyable of the many hundreds that seem to exist. Specifically, the ability to ssh into my remote machine and load up a torrent on a separate screen is absolutely fantastic.

      --
      This slashdot-related signature is a stub. You can help kihjin by expanding it.
    3. Re:Why is this news? by rm999 · · Score: 1

      You missed my point. 10x as many people (at least) use azureus than the official program. Most of the "new" options in the official program have been in a previous client. Why does the official program get slashdot front page coverage when other client upgrades don't?

    4. Re:Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because bram cohen is a friggin genius and the others are piggybacking on his code.. and in the case of azureus, azureus destroys bittorrent communities from the inside out because their sharing performance sucks compared to the official distribution

    5. Re:Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You want a cookie?

    6. Re:Why is this news? by mark-t · · Score: 1
      You've missed mine.

      A minority is not the same as no-one.

      The original statement is approximately the same as saying that nobody has real-world legitimate uses for P2P.

    7. Re:Why is this news? by Zed2K · · Score: 1

      I don't know anyone who uses Azureus. Its bloated and I can't stand something as simple as a bt client that doesn't load instantly.

  39. Initial impressions... by Rexz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Installer doesn't give any indication it's installing until you get a "Finished!" box. No choosing paths, no status indicator, nuffin.

    Two donation nag screens.

    Steals .torrent file associations.

    No scraping the server for total seeder/peer numbers.

    No moving completed downloads. No advanced seeding rules. No selecting of individual within a torrent. No download speed capping.

    25mb memory usage running just one torrent.

    Nothing excites me about this client. I look forward to its apparent efficiency increases being incorporated into Azureus et al, though.

    1. Re:Initial impressions... by Ex+Machina · · Score: 1

      Steals .torrent file associations.
      This is the official client! Jeez, how does it "steal" them.

    2. Re:Initial impressions... by shadowmatter · · Score: 3, Informative

      There isn't much improvement to this client that will carry over to other clients. That is, this is not the second version of the BitTorrent protocol, as explained here. Bram has been pretty mum on the second version of the protocol, although the official developer forum has had some heated debates over how some of these features should be incorporated and what their parameters should be (note that, although at times heated, purely constructive ;).

      So if already content with Azureus or BitComet or whatever, nothing to see here... Move along folks.

      - shadowmatter

    3. Re:Initial impressions... by natrius · · Score: 1

      This is the official client! Jeez, how does it "steal" them.

      It's polite to ask first. Sometimes people already have a client that they want to keep as their default, but they want to try a new program. It shouldn't steal the file associations unless told to do so.

    4. Re:Initial impressions... by me+at+werk · · Score: 2

      Here's some initial impressions of his website.

      If you click news, it takes you to a mysearch.com search for the word bittorrent. It's hosted by hotornot. Mysearch is a spyware (Oh, sorry, don't sue me, HELPFUL TOOLBAR) company. HotOrNot is, ah who cares about that one.

      Either way, wtf is with mysearch being the news link?

      --
      For context, click Parent.
    5. Re:Initial impressions... by Ex+Machina · · Score: 1

      It is not a 100% optimal solution, but I find that managing file type associations through the list interface provided is simpler than doing so through every program's own dialog. Its too bad there isn't a more grandma friendly way for managing program associations on a computer. Still, they should ask before changing it in the first place.

    6. Re:Initial impressions... by trawg · · Score: 1
      Either way, wtf is with mysearch being the news link?


      I assume they drove a dumptruck full of money to Bram's house and said, "if you help us whore our search page, you can have this truck. Also, the money in it."

      Every time there's a new BT release I get tricked into clicking on that damn news link to see what's changed!@#
    7. Re:Initial impressions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Source code README.txt says "Instructions for Unix installation are in INSTALL.unix.txt".

      Where that file exists is beyond me. It's not in the (latest) source archive.

    8. Re:Initial impressions... by DBA_01123 · · Score: 0

      - progress bar text is black and the finished part is dark blue, as you might guess thats barely readble

    9. Re:Initial impressions... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, those bugged me too. It was kind of refreshing to see a no-hassle instalation though. It only bugged me for being non-standard, though now that you mention it, being able to point it to a diferent directory would've been nice. No big deal since it's only 10 MB though.

      It also doesn't play too nice with non-english windows versions (It assumes that programs in the start menu go under "Programs", but it did install its files in the default "Archivos de programas").

      BTW, you can right-click on a torrent for the peer list, so you can see how many seeds are around, but yeah, a simple count on each torent would be really nice.

      From what I hear of azureus, I don't mind the two donation-screens on this client. Likewise don't mind not loading the JVM :)

      I'll give that bitcomet a try at some point though.

      Oh and the uninstall is on the control panel->add/remove rather than in its start menu folder. That's also nice and not-quite standard.

    10. Re:Initial impressions... by myth_of_sisyphus · · Score: 1
      Also, the download progress bar is dark blue. The text of the progress of the torrent is black. When the torrent is about 40% finished, you can no longer see the progress of your torrent unless you move your face inches from the screen.

      That's my only criticism.

    11. Re:Initial impressions... by gid · · Score: 1

      It's the same as the previous version, wonder what happened to that file? Look like he spent tons of time making a new gui, but not more than a few minutes to udpate some text files.

      python setup.py build
      python setup.py install
      btdownloadgui.py

      The queueing system is bizarre, the share percentage should be based off the selected torrent file size, not the amount of data downloaded. It also needs some kind of manual "yes damn it, seed all of these torrents until the cows come home" option.

  40. Re: The loss of supr? by MachDelta · · Score: 1

    "But i'm not dead yet!" ;)

    That and a few others.. Pirate Bay, Demonoid, Torrent Reactor, etc.

  41. Re: Long-Awaited BitTorrent 4.0 Released by yrogerg · · Score: 3, Funny

    To be honest, I haven't been waiting at all.

  42. Bittornado == no SQL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I don't know where you got the idea of bittornado requiring mysql. It most certainly does not.

    1. Re:Bittornado == no SQL by Sark666 · · Score: 1

      Yep sorry I'm wrong on the bitornado thing requiring mysql. Can't recall which one I was thinking of there. But the above post telling me all the features I named are already in the new official. Hmmm, I'll have to have a look but I don't think that's the case.

  43. Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The official client has been miles behind most of the unofficial ones, and as far as I know nobody with any sense uses it anymore. And as far as I can see, this new version only makes it slightly less inferior. So why does it matter that it's been released? For that matter, why was it even made?

    I don't see the point in reinventing the wheel as far as clients go when there are far better alternatives already out there. Let other people write the clients, and concentrate on improving the protocol.

    1. Re:Who cares? by DrEasy · · Score: 1

      Isn't the fact that the BT data is now labelled as bulk a change to the protocol?

      --
      "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
    2. Re:Who cares? by FlashBuster3000 · · Score: 1

      i guess you missed that this is the _official_ implementation.
      You want the protocol to improve? Then this would be the startingpoint since this is the protocol and others just took what you are complaining about to add some gui-features and perhaps tweaking options.
      I don't think that it's meant to be the best client out there, because, as you can see Cohen is mostly working on bittorrent itself not the gui.
      Isn't this about what you are complaining?
      He is not reinventing the wheel. In this case, he invented the wheel, gave his studies to the world and now is improving it (and others will benefit from this, too).

    3. Re:Who cares? by flynn_nrg · · Score: 1

      I do actually use it. Why? I don't need no stinking GUI, and don't want to run a bloated java app, like Azureus. I run btdownloadcurses.py inside screen on my home server. I log in, launch the program, log out and forget about it until it's done. I don't need to keep a desktop box up 24/7 because the app needs a working X environment.

    4. Re:Who cares? by TheAcousticMotrbiker · · Score: 2, Informative

      I care
      btdownloadmanycurses running under a screen session means that I can have my torrents up and downloading as long as my machine stays up.

      If I accidentally crash X whilst playing doom3 (or whatever) it does not hurt my torrents.

      In fact I can download .torrent files on any machine, then ftp them to the right directory on my main machine and voila yet another torrent downloading .

      Usually the stuff has downloaded by the time I get home again, and I can listen to them immediately (live concerts from easytree). Try that with any of the facny GUI clients

    5. Re:Who cares? by shish · · Score: 1

      I use bittornado the same way; it's the official client, with more.

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
  44. Holy shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get the fuck out of here!! Holy shit!! Come on you stupid idiots get the FUCK out of here!!! We're all going to die!!!!!

    1. Re:Holy shit! by w00d · · Score: 1

      PORKCHOP SANDWICHES

  45. In related news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...new versions of eDonkey and the NMDC client have been released. I can't wait!

  46. MOD PARENT UP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Maybe not the most eloquent post ever made, but it is based on a foundation of truth.

  47. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    The fact that the parent was marked insightful ever so briefly underlines the fact that for every idiot there is on Slashdot, there is someone equally as stupid who is willing to say "me agree with this post, duh."

    The Mac development community supports itself very well, thanks. The OP was stupid to expect immediate version parity when not every developer in the world has access to multiple platforms, and often the missing platform is a Mac. But it is also quite unintelligent to dismiss that there is even a Mac version in the first place (from a developer that probably doesn't even own one). Or that a current version is likely forthcoming very soon. Or that there are good reasons that many prefer Mac OS.

    There, not too hard to avoid coming off like an ass, no? Just keep your mouth shut and you'll have no problems.

  48. ...ever feature except speed by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    It's a great way to bring your system to a crawl, espically if you don't have the latest greatest hardware. It's neat if all you are doing is downloading, but if you want to like DL in the background and play a game, not so good. It is just too processor hungry.

    1. Re:...ever feature except speed by tasadar24 · · Score: 0

      This is wierd, because I certainly don't believe my computer to be top of the line, or even middle of the line, yet I'm fine, and hey, that all rhymed. -1ghz P3 -512 mb RAM

    2. Re:...ever feature except speed by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I have an old 400Mhz Dell Dimension L500cx with 512MB RAM. It does have a new 80GB hard-drive, but everything else is pretty old.

      Azureus works fine-- no big performance problems at all. I can download and my wife can still use iTunes and MS Word at the same time. Azureus maxes out our DSL connection, but that's the network, and all computers are affected.

    3. Re:...ever feature except speed by zonker · · Score: 1, Insightful

      i'd say that review would be accurate if you were reviewing 1) an older version of azureus and were using 2) an older version of the java library. the performance of azureus is directly related to the version of java you have.

      that said, there is still one issue that i have with any of these types of clients and that is when they do their final checksum on the downloaded file it usually snags a large amount of horsepower. in my opinion it should use very low priority doing that final check as quite frankly i don't care if it were to take 5 minutes to do the check if it didn't steal power from me while doing something important. i'm not usually in that big of a rush to get something to give up the juice...

  49. Btlaunchmany Uses Single Port! by sleeeper · · Score: 1
    Has anyone tested this? Is this backwards compatible with existing bittorrent clients?

    I maintain a tracker and seeds for my Air America Radio archive. I'd like to offer more seeds (like a whole week's worth of shows), but I don't want to open hundreds of ports in my firewalls. I also don't want to be so on the bleeding edge that no one can download the files - and of course I'm too lazy to test it myself....

    1. Re:Btlaunchmany Uses Single Port! by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 1

      1.) Assuming you have a normal broadband router, it allows you to forward port ranges.

      2.) There are 65,535 available ports. You could assign a thousand of them (or 65,000 for that matter) as dedicated bittorrent seeding ports without compromising performance or security beyond opening a single port.

      So... why are you worried about how many open ports you have again?

      --
      -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
    2. Re:Btlaunchmany Uses Single Port! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you stopped to consider the fact that nobody, but nobody, wants what you're pushing?

      It's like you said, "I've got a massive collection of naked pictures of Wilford Brimley. Can somebody help me figure out how to more efficiently pirate them over the internet?"

      Hate to tell you, Short Round, but nobody's buying.

    3. Re:Btlaunchmany Uses Single Port! by MisterTwo · · Score: 1

      Thanks, I've been looking for a site like this! I have been creating my own mp3's of my XM radio Air America, thanks for your service :) - Jason

    4. Re:Btlaunchmany Uses Single Port! by sleeeper · · Score: 1
      Again, I'm lazy, and I don't want to willy nilly open ports that may in the future overlap with other services. Yes, I could research this now, and wheneven I think about adding services to my internal and/or external network, but I don't care enough about it. Opening thousands of ports is sloppy, and offends my need for tidyness.

      For those making cracks about the whole idea of an Air America Archive:

      1) I was more interested in playing with streaming/encoding/torrents when I started the archive than in the content of Air America per se.

      2) Beyond wanting to play with audio, I have a stong aversion to commercials (a very early Tivo adopter), and having the these shows available makes it tolerable for me to listen to.

      3) There is actually a huge demand that has led me into the world of bandwidth throddling techniques (which again if it was not for the hacking fun of learning new things I would just shut the whole thing down).

  50. It's a reference implementation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's a reference implementation -- I don't think they're really trying to compete on usability.

  51. 4.0 bug report by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Submitter: RIAA/MPAA
    Bug: Internet users can download copyrighted files without permission
    Status: Pending
    Priority: -1

  52. Re:GI JOE PSAs by Wescotte · · Score: 3, Informative

    Might as well link to the joke so...

    http://media.ebaumsworld.com/index.php?e=gijoe-c om puter.mov

    and more can be found at

    http://www.ebaumsworld.com/gijoe.html

    It's one of those were either you laugh your ass off or become disturbed at the amount of free time people have. Personally I laugh my ass off.

  53. Hummm.... NO! by Luchio · · Score: 1

    BitTorrent allows

  54. Re:Great! I Love BitTorrent. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Mack the wrong choice some Friday evening and you may with you had....

  55. Test case.... 2.6 gigs of music. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Go check out the SXSW music torrent. 2.6 gigs of legal music goodness from the Austin music festival.

  56. No kidding... by mindaktiviti · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah no kidding, my two biggest memory hogging applications are:

    - javaw.exe @ 43,616K at the moment
    - firefox.exe @ 40,564K at the moment.

    I like Azureus enough that I'll let this slide since I don't use it all the time (newsgroups are fun), and I dislike IE enough that 50mb doesn't seem so bad, plus I have enough ram anyway.

    1. Re:No kidding... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and I dislike IE enough that 50mb doesn't seem so bad, plus I have enough ram anyway.

      Too bad most of the dlls IE requires to run are already loaded into memory at boot time on Windows anyhow :)

      That said, please keep using Firefox. You're making the internet a better place by not allowing your system to be infected via IE attack vectors.

    2. Re:No kidding... by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 0

      Fifty millibits? That's a pretty small memory footptint by any standards!

      --
      That was classic intercourse!
    3. Re:No kidding... by EvilIdler · · Score: 1

      My Azureus usually eats up 15-20% of my CPU time and 50-100MB of RAM.
      That's with just one or two files shared - it doesn't seem to release the
      memory after removing torrents, either. Still, it's the best interface :/

    4. Re:No kidding... by Hard_Code · · Score: 1

      A lot of that CPU time is hash/crc checking. It really can't be avoided.

      --

      It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
  57. It'd be funny if... by O-SUSHi · · Score: 0

    bittorrent.com was /.'ed

    --
    Remember children, all generalizations are wrong.
  58. seeding an already download file? by frankgod · · Score: 1

    Can you use the new version to seed a torrent you've already downloaded? I tried doing this and it didn't seem to recognize that I had already downloaded the file. Using windows version, and it generally seems a bit buggy.

  59. Why The Official Client Matters by EventHorizon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. There is actually no RFC or other detailed documentation for the BT protocol. The unofficial clients were all written based on the source code from the official client (and more recently, based on the source code of other unofficial clients). IMO Bram should create a formal RFC, but that is pretty unlikely (he's not interested and the IETF is probably too conservative to do p2p).

    2. Sadly the python clients are the only ones usable on 64MB virtual private servers. Most of the unofficial clients are platform-specific (Win32, GTK+), or require a bloated JVM that has no chance of working in less than 128MB.

    I find it tragic that noone has released a high quality POSIX C client. Maybe the OpenBSD guys will eventually get around to OpenBT?

    1. Re:Why The Official Client Matters by scotty · · Score: 2, Informative
      I find it tragic that noone has released a high quality POSIX C client.

      I use CTorrent, a console torrent client in plain C. Feature is a bit limited, but it works and has relatively small footprint.

    2. Re:Why The Official Client Matters by jpc · · Score: 1

      An RFC would be nice. No one seems that interested though, have suggested it on list. I am not sure they would accept the spec as is though, and it would need a design process.

      You can write a client from the specs that are on line (I have never read the source code).

      I am writing a client in C. The hard thing is getting the design right so the behaviour layer is seperate from the protocol side.

    3. Re:Why The Official Client Matters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, CTorrent is written in C++....

      http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/ctorrent/c to rrent/

      And it seems like the author has no idea what the difference between C and C++ is..

      http://ctorrent.sourceforge.net/?action=what

    4. Re:Why The Official Client Matters by kosmosik · · Score: 2, Informative

      > I find it tragic that noone has released a high
      > quality POSIX C client. Maybe the OpenBSD guys
      > will eventually get around to OpenBT?

      Well there is C BitTorrent client. A bit stagnated (meaning developement/releases) but it works usually and is under GPL so it is nice base to start off.

      http://ctorrent.sourceforge.net/

      Keep in mind that this client is writen in *nix way - meaning that it does not have fancy GUI at all, it does not do queue etc. - it just gets torrents.

      I've used to use ctorrent, but now I am only using BTQueue which is very extended original BitTorrent client. It has queue abilities, gives loads of info, can do throttling etc. extremely configurable. It is a bit raw but can be used once you get used to it. :)

      http://btqueue.sourceforge.net/

      It even exports WebService with ACL for full control. :)

    5. Re:Why The Official Client Matters by xt · · Score: 1

      I don't know if it fits your definition of high quality, but there is CTorrent, a console client written in C. You can check it at http://ctorrent.sourceforge.net/

  60. bit-torando i mean by cheekyboy · · Score: 1

    bit-torando

    btw that article was fro Thursday November 4, 3:01 AM

    --
    Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
  61. Fast internets... and packet flags by Gopal.V · · Score: 0, Troll
    > I'm interested to see where this'll go-- will ISPs absolutely choke 'bulk data' packets and drive folks into using older or fringe BT clients to get faster downloads?

    Also already Layer7 Firewalls can classify and demote packets... but they are a lot more CPU expensive. If I were a sysadmin, this would run on all packets just to classify outbound traffic. (would be less expensive than a proxy, I think).

    About Speed and ISPs. I don't know how often I say this. "What do you mean by FAST internet". I was talking with my sister and she was complaining how the asianet net connection was slower than the previous dialup. For my sister, "fast" internet means that Yahoo Mail shows up quickly. Being the gullible geek, I booted up the box with a knoppix I had handy and looked into the network. Ended up increasing positive DNS TTL - to get internet "FAST" :).

    1. Re:Fast internets... and packet flags by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Layer 7 firewalls suck CPU power. You couldn't run one on a 100mbit line anywhere near maxed out unless you had a beast of a system as your firewall. It'd cost far more than a proxy just in terms of the hardware you'd need.

      Using the diffserv field to mark packets as Bulk traffic in this way means the firewall only has to read IP data (layer 3) which is much less CPU intensive and that same firewall can now handle probably 1000x as much traffic.

  62. How about this new protocol? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The one where I fuck your virgin "Anal Gaming Port" with my BIG, BLACK, JOYSTICK!!!!

  63. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah. Second-rate, late, half-baked software that makes all of your books, all of your magazines, all of your movies, all of your newspapers, all of your music ... and that also sequences your DNA to help keep you alive. And, just for fun, does any aspect of your life depend on Oracle or Sybase? Does your employer use either of them? Do you use a bank, for instance, or do you ever buy airline tickets? I ask because in the past 2 years, both Oracle and Sybase have switched to Mac OS X exclusively for the development of their products.

    It always makes me laugh when people shit on the Mac, because it just goes to show that they don't understand just how much of their world depends on Macs.

  64. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "for YEARS you get second-rate, late, half-baked software (with one or two obvious exceptions)

    Oh, you mean like Linux? Except Linux doesn't even get apps like iTunes, iPhoto, FCP, Photoshop... well, maybe not much like Linux after all.

  65. What about the iPod? by b00m3rang · · Score: 1, Insightful

    PC users had to wait almost a year. It's not possible to complete PC and Mac versions of software at the exact same time, and they would lose money for every day they wait in order to make the releases concurrent. Windows = majoriy = more profit.

    1. Re:What about the iPod? by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 1

      Depends on the software, really.

      It's certainly possible to have parallel releases (I release to 6 platforms in a single day with another 4 or 5 tested).

      It's just a matter of priority, and how complex the UI is.

  66. Didn't anyone else read the version changes? by mike_lynn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What, no one is going to talk about the new BitTorrent Open Source License that has been slapped on this 4.0 version?

    Thoughts about this would be much appreciated. I'm reading through it right now.

  67. Re:"existing, rock-steady functionality" ... WTF! by IoN_PuLse · · Score: 1

    What does disappaering seeders and trackers have to do with the BT protocol?

  68. Suprnova by catprog · · Score: 1

    My First Post. Any one notic the link to Suprnova . I thought that they got shut down http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/05/005720 7&tid=95&tid=1 (slashdot.org)

    --
    My Transformation Website
    Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
    Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
    1. Re:Suprnova by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why we've got mininova now :)

  69. Re:Great! I Love BitTorrent. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That wasn't English. Was it intended to be?

  70. Re:yep by EvanED · · Score: 1

    Depends on your location. In some places overseas (from the US), punctuation such as "blah blah". is becoming accepted, if not preferred.

  71. Et tu BitTorrent!! by thewalled · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Noooooo!! not BitTorrent. As per www.bittorrent.com, the site's development was outsourced to a company called 'The GSI Group' OR may i say off-shored since 'The GSI Group' has an Indian development center.

    So do you americans (let me be more specific, US citizens) stop using bittorrent and start cribbing?? OR does life continue..

    - dhawal
    Proudly Indian

    1. Re:Et tu BitTorrent!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the gsi group donated the development to the bittorrent project.. indians are charitable too!

  72. Java 1.5 for OS X? by TrentC · · Score: 1

    Use the Java VM >=1.5 to keep CPU usage from going through the roof though

    Can you tell me where I can find Java 1.5 for Mac OS X? From what I gather, Apple is holding their release for OS X 10.4; does Sun have a build for Mac OS X?

    Jay (=

    1. Re:Java 1.5 for OS X? by mbaciarello · · Score: 1

      I guess that's right. The number came off the top of my head as I remembered what I did when Azureus was bogging down my Win desktop PC - on which I use Azureus the most. Java is currently 1.4.2 on OS X.

    2. Re:Java 1.5 for OS X? by aratuk · · Score: 1

      http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/install.html

      it looks like there isn't an OSX version available.

  73. Kenosis-BitTorrent by mcm · · Score: 1

    You mean the version of Kenosis that is integrated with BitTorrent?

    It's still alive and kicking. Check it out at http://kenosis.sourceforge.net/

  74. Re:GI JOE PSAs by mixmasterjake · · Score: 3, Interesting

    here's the dude in chicago that makes 'em

    http://www.fenslerfilm.com/

    --
    TODO: come up with a clever sig
  75. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Lots of people do it" is not a synonym for "it's becoming accepted." Wrong is wrong, no matter how popular it is.

  76. what would make me infiniately happy.. by IcarusMoth · · Score: 1

    would be a minimize to system tray option. I know thats not that hard to code in and makes the whole process a lot easier. I know for a fact that most people like to keep thier task bar pretty clean (and I can honestly state that on any of my systems I have less than 6 icons on my desk top.) I dislike clutter, and I know I know I should get a mac. The mini is on its way...

    1. Re:what would make me infiniately happy.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bit tornado does this by default.

  77. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's not just "becoming accepted" abroad; outside the United States (and perhaps Canada?) it's been the standard for at least the past century to put full stops outside the quotes, as appropriate.

    You fucking moron.

  78. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As a Mac user once said,

    "All modern science is based around Unix"

    hmm...

  79. Hrm.... by I+kan+Spl · · Score: 1

    I am actually working on writing a new Torrent client for a project of mine...

    I will be looking for the new documentation on the changes.. hopefully its better then the stuf that's out there (like not mentioning the bencoded dictionaries need to be sorted... grrrr)

    Anyways, anyone have any requests for what this one is to do? I already have both console and GUI with installers and speed capping planned. I'm not sure how but I would like to get a plugin system working too.

    The codebase right now is not yet working, otherwise I'd post a link.

    --
    My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
    1. Re:Hrm.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Scheduling.

      Here in Australia, and some other places, we only get to download xx gigs/month. Sometimes, though, the ISP offers free download periods. Mine just moved to 2 a.m. - 9 a.m. Kind of a pain to /start/ torrents early and take the hit.

      Azureus has a plugin that lets me do it, but Azureus kinda blows.

      Here's hoping you're reading a 2 day old thread, hah.

  80. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for YEARS you get second-rate, late, half-baked software (with one or two obvious exceptions), yet you STILL continue to use that platform!

    And during that time I was running Linux. *gasp* Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, fuckface.

  81. Re:yep by EvanED · · Score: 1

    Actually, as the other person replying has so eloquently made clear, my understanding was backwards. It's the period-goes-outside-the-quote-marks style that is preferred and the US (henceforth "stupid") style that is accepted.

    Just because the US uses the stupid style doesn't mean that other countries do.

  82. quick explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    First, let me say: Hi-Larious.

    But your comment is still completely irrelevant to the question of the specifics of why bitorrent has a custom open-source license.


    The best answer you're going to get is by reading it, line for line.

    A quick answer on WHY the license is needed, is:

    - unlike the BSD / MIT licenses, it requires to you make source code modifications to the bittorrent code available to the public.

    - unlike the GPL it does not require you to make the rest of your [non-bittorrent] source code available, if bittorrent is integrated into your project.

    - it includes a provision to void the entire license if you file a patent claim against the bittorrent code / its author.

    1. Re:quick explanation by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 1

      I'd have chosen the LGPL or MPL for the two first (maybe dual license between the two like Firefox), both are more well known that (a customized version of) the Jabber OSL.

      I hate custom licenses.

    2. Re:quick explanation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MPL is a custom license...

  83. Stop the stupid fake sig madness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please stop copy-and-pasting your pyramid scheme into your messages. Those of us who have disabled signatures have done so for a reason: We do not want to see your stupid advertisements. So please stop lest I find it necessary to shit on your head. Too.

  84. Re:yep by Oracle+of+Bandwidth · · Score: 1

    It may be wrong, but I actually prefer it for readability, like brackets around your code block. Does that peroid end your sentence or a quoted sentence?

  85. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Well, in countries such as mine (Spain) we have rules to deicde whether the period goes inside or outside the quotation marks. If the marks contain the full sentence, the period goes within the marks (and no additional period is afterwards needed), otherwise it doesn't.
    1) They said "We are the knights who say Ni."
    2) They repeatedly said "Ni".

    I don't know very well because it's not my native tongue, but it wouldn't surprise me that English has some similar rules. And when I say rules I mean as established by good English language literature...

  86. The new BitTorrent license isn't simple or brief. by jbn-o · · Score: 2, Informative

    If that were all he's interested in, he'd use some simple and brief non-copylefted free software license like the new BSD license or the MIT X11 license.

    There is considerably more in the new BitTorrent license than in either of those licenses. Among other things, the new BitTorrent license specifies which licenses can be used as sublicenses and how much one can charge for distributing the source code of sublicensed derivatives.

    Pride in one's work doesn't come from a license and people aren't going to give him money because of the license.

  87. so, for any one looking for new torrent sites by techefnet · · Score: 0

    you can check them out my list of my favorite torrent sites here

  88. DL legal stuff please :) by sla291 · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you want to follow the example of Bram who only downloads legal stuff, you can test your brand new BT 4.0 client with the excellent Wired CD, in Ogg Vorbis :

    Wired CD .torrent

  89. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Second-rate, late, half-baked software that [...] sequences your DNA to help keep you alive.
    think you're being a little dramatic there?
  90. libtorrent by rvalles · · Score: 2, Informative
    I use and recommend libtorrent, which is a C++ implementation for *nix. From their site: "It is designed to avoid redundant copying and storing of data that other clients and libraries suffer from. Licensed under the GPL.".

    In practice, it doesn't leak resources like all the python/java/etc implementations do, and its interactive ncurses client is the best bittorrent one I know of. It does also use our well-known GP L :).

    1. Re:libtorrent by keytoe · · Score: 3, Informative

      While it doesn't include much in the way of a client, there is another C++ based library called - um - libtorrent (as opposed to LibTorrent mentioned above - note the caps) released under the BSD license. It doesn't really include a client (just a 'demo' CLI client that shows how to use the lib), but this is slashdot and we should all be able to write our own clients using other peoples' libraries, right?

      When I started writing my OS X client (Shameless plug: Hurricane. Early beta.) I shopped around for BT libraries and found libtorrent to be better documented than LibTorrent (Sheesh - could that naming issue be any more confusing?). Also, the developer community seems very receptive and active - always a good thing!

      Cool Features? Sure! It runs all torrents over a single port in a background thread, offers configuration and stats for damned near everything BT can do, 'fast resume' data for quickly restarting a download and various other niceties.

      And great documentation - a rarity for an OSS project ;)

    2. Re:libtorrent by rvalles · · Score: 1
      While I knew this project, I didn't consider it serious since they show a copyright of 2003 in the site and while we're at 2005, they haven't released anything yet, just cvs; the idea I got was "yet another abandoned project", while the libtorrent I linked to released lots of tarballs in a timeframe of a few weeks; the reference client implementation for the library does fast resume, priorities per torrent and per file, settings like bandwidth limits or peer number min/max tweakable while running and all that in a nice ncurses interface.

      But then again, I haven't tested the libtorrent you suggest so I don't know if it's any good.

      If I had to develop a client I would have not chosen it because since they haven't released any files it would have looked to me that they're on early stages and so they don't have an stable api at all.

    3. Re:libtorrent by keytoe · · Score: 1

      Good points, actually. I looked at both libraries when 'shopping', and there were two issues that landed me on the libtorrent project (no caps) over LibTorrent: documentation and license. I didn't know what I was going to use for a license for my app, and GPL forced the issue for me. I ended up going BSD.

      The API and implementation are actually pretty stable for being 'under development' code - and I didn't expect anybody to have code that qualified as done at this stage in the BT growth curve (other than Bram's reference implementation). Plus, since I'm actively developing, I don't mind building on a project that is also actively developing.

      It's got it's issues, mind you - but the mailing list is active and Arvid does a good job keeping things moving forward. I just wanted to add to the list ;)

  91. Re:yep by badfish99 · · Score: 1

    In English, you can find examples of good literature that do all sorts of weird things. The "rules" are often just arbitrary, and are "enforced" by anal retentives who want to post to Slashdot, but have got nothing interesting to say on the topic under discussion.

  92. bittorrent official is the best performing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the official distribution is the best performing client i've used.. the other distributions allow a user to tweak and dial-in settings which clearly doesnt improve performance... just gives the user a feeling of control (and probably weakens the experience). if folks would just let the protocol do what it does, performance clearly rocks.. i think the official distribution best captures that. and the new 4.0.0 UI kinda reminds me of the download manager in firefox... which i love!

    as an aside, azureus clients are terrible swappers and drag down the larger bittorrent communities on the web. bittornado/bitcomet are based on the mainline code so no harm there.

  93. Re:GI JOE PSAs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aww, no, come on. Let's not start with that shit. That stuff is pretty much the opposite of funny (well, "whassup dog" was kinda funny, but the rest was just retarded).

    Let's not make this into the next star wars kid or William Hung. Please.

  94. Why Not Multicast? by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

    How much longer until true internet Multicasting gets here?

    Why can't a server send one packet, that gets multiplied where the network braches down to each branch that is listening?

    for something like file distribution, you could multicast parts in a loop, continously sending out part 1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5,... and a client can start listening at any point, and peice the file together.

    where's my IPv6?

    1. Re:Why Not Multicast? by jpc · · Score: 1


      I dont think multicast will ever be implemented.

      There are otehr ways of doing what you suggest, in fact P2P is a way of creating multicast networks that are more robust than the (tree not mesh) based IP multicast stuff.

      IPv6 is here now. I have it...

  95. Unix Gurus by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 3, Interesting
    A lot of the old Unix research gurus in university positions switched to OSX. I can't count the number of professors I've had who would set their Mac laptop down on the front desk, ssh straight into their home or office computer, and run their slides and code demos remotely.

    The idea of OSX as just a pretty GUI is a gross disservice. I wouldn't touch OSX (or any other proprietary OS) with a ten foot pole myself, but credit where credit is due.

  96. License and copyright by Per+Abrahamsen · · Score: 2, Informative

    If the license isn't valid, you are not allowed to redistribute the code. That is basic copyright law.

    The *only* thing that allows you to redistribute the code is the license. So it is in your own interest to defend the license.

    Of course, if you don't redistribute the code, you don't have to accept the license. The GPL is very specific about this, but it is true for all licenses. Or used to be, apparently there is a trend in some juristictions to consider the transfer of the program from harddisk to ram in order to run the code to be covered by copyright (very much against the spirit of copyright law), which mean accepting these licenses will be needed if you just want to run the program.

    1. Re:License and copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You, like most other Slashdotters, fundamentally misunderstand the laws governing copyrights.

      You are allowed to make and distribute copies. There are no laws prohibiting you from making and distributing copies.

      However, if you make and distribute copies without the author's permission, you may be liable for damages. If the value of the damages incurred by the author exceeds value X over time Y, you may face criminal charges as well.

      See how it works? You make copies. If you make copies, the police will not break down your door, because there is no law against what you're doing. However, if the author doesn't like it, he can sue you, and the court may find that you owe him money. If the amount of money you owe him is in excess of a value defined in the statutes, the author may ask for criminal remedies as well: i.e., jail time for you.

      See? You don't understand copyright law.

      The fact that the author distributes his work with a piece of paper that says, "Hey, make copies!" constitutes permission before the fact. It is, in essence, a waiving of exclusive copyright. The piece of paper is not a license, however, because there's no consideration given between the parties at the time of delivery.

      The notion that the permission goes away because the license isn't legally binding is incredibly naive, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the law of contracts.

    2. Re:License and copyright by HiThere · · Score: 1

      In the case of the GPL, however, there IS a consideration. The author expects to be able to get back an improved version, to facilitate this, you agree to allow any improvements that you make to be distributed to any other people (potential developers) that you distribute your improved version to.

      If you default (i.e., distribute without meeting the conditions), then you haven't lived up to the contract, so you license is cancelled. Under the GPL, this means that you no longer have permission to make copies.

      Whenever this has come up, the offending party has declined to attempt to challenge it. Even SCOX didn't have the timerity to push it very hard. (IBM is still trying to collect damages from them, but SCOX is wriggling madly in an attempt to get off the hook. This may actually yet get "tested" in front of a court is SCOX doesn't manage to slip into bankruptcy and get a directed settlement. Of course, the directed settlement would be "SCOX, everything you own, except your outstanding debts, now belongs to IBM. Then they'll agree to drop charges against the company, while reserving the right to continue against the executives and any principle investors that they can nail.", so that's hardly a win. But it does keep the GPL from being "tested".)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    3. Re:License and copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the case of the GPL, however, there IS a consideration.

      "Consideration" means money or some other tangible thing of value exchanged in return for the product, you idiot. You don't understand the first thing about how licenses work. Hint #1: A license is not a contract.

  97. BitTorrent for Piracy? Naw, it's Free Speech! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From The Official BitTorrent Home Page:

    What is BitTorrent?

    BitTorrent is a free speech tool.

    BitTorrent gives you the same freedom to publish previously enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment and lots of money. ("Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one" -- journalist A.J. Liebling.)

    You have something terrific to publish -- a large music or video file, software, a game or anything else that many people would like to have. But the more popular your file becomes, the more you are punished by soaring bandwidth costs. If your file becomes phenomenally successful and a flash crowd of hundreds or thousands try to get it at once, your server simply crashes and no one gets it.

    There is a solution to this vicious cycle. BitTorrent, the result of over two years of intensive development, is a simple and free software product that addresses all of these problems.

    The key to scaleable and robust distribution is cooperation. With BitTorrent, those who get your file tap into their upload capacity to give the file to others at the same time. Those that provide the most to others get the best treatment in return. ("Give and ye shall receive!")

    Cooperative distribution can grow almost without limit, because each new participant brings not only demand, but also supply. Instead of a vicious cycle, popularity creates a virtuous circle. And because each new participant brings new resources to the distribution, you get limitless scalability for a nearly fixed cost.

    BitTorrent is not just a concept, but has an easy-to-use implementation capable of swarming downloads across unreliable networks. BitTorrent has been embraced by numerous publishers to distribute to millions of users.

    With BitTorrent free speech no longer has a high price.


    Is this a joke? BitTorrent is suddenly a "free speech tool"?

  98. Re:yep by BritishNick · · Score: 1

    Actually, his use of the Full-Stop(.)* was perfect, but his use of speech marks ("") was wrong, these are used for Quoted Text only. The correct sentence would have been: You miss-spelled 'Camino'. But it was still funny :) * The proper term for the (.) is 'full-stop', not 'period'

    --
    No good deed ever goes unpunished.
  99. I have the same problem on win32 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have used Azureus on both win32 and on linux. Sometimes it locks up in something like a spinlock or at least a very slow and long lasting loop that gulps up 100% CPU. This is not a problem in java, this is a problem with Azureus that should be fixed.

    Too bad i don't have time now to run a java debugger and to make a stacktrace of spinlocked threads.

    --Coder

  100. Re:yep by BritishNick · · Score: 1
    Actually, his use of the Full-Stop(.)* was perfect, but his use of speech marks ("") was wrong, these are used for quoted text only.

    The correct sentence would have been:

    You miss-spelled 'Camino'.

    But it was still funny :)

    * The proper term for the (.) is 'full-stop', not 'period'

    Sorry about the Double-Post I forgot the formatting and didn't preview - "Doh!".

    --
    No good deed ever goes unpunished.
  101. Damn Gui by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gui Still doesn't work. I want more doucmentation damn it.

  102. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I do believe you misspelled 'miss-spelled'.

    You also missed the full-stop after:

    * The proper term for the (.) is 'full-stop', not 'period'

    Hope this helps.

  103. "a third of all Internet traffic" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ..this is so much bullshit. I wish people would stop refering to that useless article already. There are no facts to prove that 1/3 of all internet traffic is bittorrent data. And c'mon now.. even suggesting such as thing is just plain silly!

    Bittorrent is NOT the largest (or most traffic consuming) service/technology on the internet. Please stop saying so.

    Thanks!

  104. Re:yep by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 0

    No, Linux would be "for YEARS you get fifth-rate, monstrously late, half-baked noodleware (with one or two arguable exceptions)".

    --
    That was classic intercourse!
  105. Re:yep by X0563511 · · Score: 1

    OK, genius. Let's all revert to speaking greek or something then, because obviously English is WRONG.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  106. interesting by amcdiarmid · · Score: 1

    that there is no torrent link on the download page...

  107. QTorrent by anno1602 · · Score: 1

    QTorrent is quite decent.

  108. Bulk data is not new... by GeekDork · · Score: 1

    In some CVS revision quite some time ago (several months, perhaps a year?), that feature had already been introduced. It's not that big an issue, too, since it's only been about four lines of code.

    --

    Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.

  109. Have they multithreaded the client? by wowbagger · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if the new version has multithreaded the client so that receive and transmit are in separate threads?

    This is important if you are using traffic shaping on your upstream connection, as I am. I'm on ADSL, and so my upstream bandwidth is less than my downstream. To prevent BT from consuming all my upstream bandwidth I am using the tc module in the kernel to restrict the BT packets (the rate limiting in BT is next to useless, as each instance of the client will use the programmed bandwidth - there is no "global" sharing of the bandwidth, so if you have 4 clients running it will take 4 times the bandwidth of 1 client).

    The problem is that if the client is blocked sending an outbound torrent packet (because the traffic shaper queue is full), the client will not process any available incoming data packets, and this will hammer the download speed - I have expermimentally verified this.

    Now, if there were separate threads for downloading and for uploading, the uploading threads would block as the TC queue filled, but the download threads would not be blocked, and could handle the download at full speed.

    1. Re:Have they multithreaded the client? by MikeBabcock · · Score: 1

      This is total FUD.

      Multithreading is a very inefficient way to handle something that can be done with a simple select in this case.

      Threads have overhead, select (almost) does not. For the way BitTorrent works, select for read/write decisions is a much better goal, imho.

      PS, using Twisted allows this to happen behind the scenes.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
    2. Re:Have they multithreaded the client? by wowbagger · · Score: 1

      A select can only tell you that a given write descriptor can accept one byte or more. It does not guarantee that a write to that FD won't block.

      So, you have to make all your outbound descriptors O_NOBLOCK and add code to check each write to verify the amount of data written on each write, which adds overhead.

      Additionally, in an SMP machine, using one big loop plus a select prevents the operations from being spread across the processors.

      Lastly, by multithreading the task, you greatly simplify the code as you do NOT have to be constantly checking for short reads/writes - and all that checking has overhead.

      The cost of a thread switch is very small - this thinking that "threads are expensive, context switches are expensive" dates from a long-gone age.

      Lastly - you DID notice that little bit about "I've experimentally verified this", did you? I can demonstrate that the previous version of Bittorrent would block downloads if the uploads were being throttled, and that by cutting back the upload bandwidth that BT tried to use to a pathetic trickle of the TC rate limit the download rates were restored to full speed, demonstrating that it was the blocking of the uploads that was throttling the downloads.

    3. Re:Have they multithreaded the client? by groomed · · Score: 1

      Even if context switching is really fast, a large number of threads still require the scheduler to do more work. Which leads to issues such as to how to ensure fairness and timeliness. Which may require OS dependant or library dependant solutions, making the code less portable.

      There is little benefit to spreading the threads across CPUs since the transfer code is I/O bound. In fact it can be positively harmful since you're blowing away the CPU caches. You might get improved responsiveness, but this is wasted on a protocol like BitTorrent.

      The use of threads also introduces the possibility of deadlocks and race conditions, which can be hard to reproduce and therefore debug.

      Finally, well, you have to check the return value of read/write regardless of whether the fd is blocking or not.

    4. Re:Have they multithreaded the client? by MikeBabcock · · Score: 1

      You set your writes to non-blocking of course; ... /* looping */ ...

      if (/* select says outfd is writable */) {
      wrote = write(outfd, buf + offset, buflen - offset);
      offset += wrote;
      } ... /* more looping */ ...

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
  110. my laptop runs it fine with HL2 :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pentium M 1.7 based dell inspiron 8600 with a gig of ram. bought about this time last year

    i can run azerus at full tilt over wireless whilst playing single player Half Life 2. Ok you get the odd stutter but thats only when HL & Az are arguing over who should have the disk the time (only 4000rpm drive)

    i just never seem to see these bit performance problems...

  111. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I believe you mean to say "but have nothing intersting". In reply to the grandparent post, English indeed has identical rules for quotes, not that anyone observes them. The rules are more guidelines than anything else.

  112. Not suited for file replication by anno1602 · · Score: 1

    Multicast is not suited for file replication. If clients join a multicast stream, they can only get what the server is spewing out now, not the history. Fine for live braodcasts, sucks for everything else. You can't say: "Dear server, give me that file." The server will broadcast the file, and you get whatever portion is currently broadcasted wehn you join.

    Then, there's also the issue of bandwidth/error correction. Mutlicast is UDP, you can't go and say: "Sorry, server, I didn't get that last packet, send it again". Multicast is purely uni-directional in that way. Again, fine for broadcast, sucks for file download. Any error correction info would have to be distributed along with the stream, dramatically increasing bandwidth requirements. Also, if the server is broadcasting at a highe rate than the client can receive, packets are gonna get dropped, and the client looses.

    To sum up: Multicast was never meant to do downloads, and it shows.

  113. Re:yep by spleck · · Score: 1

    Actually, a full stop is any punctuation mark used to end a sentence. This would include (.), (?), (!), etc. According to a google search, it also includes (:) and (;). If you're so inclined, each of these full stops has a name: period, question mark, exclamation point, colon, and semicolon.

  114. Azureus CVS has decentralized tracking... by kikawala · · Score: 1


    Speaking of new features in Azureus. If you install the latest version from CVS, http://azureus.sourceforge.net/index_CVS.php, you will notice a few things, one being "decentralized tracking"...

  115. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  116. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  117. Re:yep by BritishNick · · Score: 1
    Er.. whatever site told you that is living on Mars.

    A full-stop is what you Americans call a period. In English it's only a period when used to indicate a long pause... like that one.

    Even if you considered a Question mark or an exclamation mark to be in the same category as a full-stop,(because they end a sentence) The colon(:) & Semicolon(;) are never used to end a sentence, but rather to continue one

    American - English Conversion
    How to use punctuation

    There are countless ways in which the English language has been bastardised by America... one of the funniest ones I heard recently was when I was on hold waiting to speak to someone over there. The message said: "Please wait, someone will be with you momentarily." The funny thing is that this actually means that someone will be with me FOR a very short length of time, not IN an short length of time as it was obviously intended to mean.

    --
    No good deed ever goes unpunished.
  118. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  119. Re:yep by BritishNick · · Score: 1

    And misuse of punctuation is very easy to do... can anyone spot the not-so deliberate mistake in the above post? :)

    --
    No good deed ever goes unpunished.
  120. l4m3r by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please stop copy-and-pasting your pyramid scheme into your messages. Those of us who have disabled signatures have done so for a reason: We do not want to see your stupid advertisements. So please stop lest I find it necessary to shit on your head as well.

  121. Re:yep by legojenn · · Score: 1

    I'd like to see an American-English one for the other English-speaking countries of the world, being Canadian, we take on a lot of both English and US usage and throw in a few terms of our own. I'd like to see what words other countries use.

    --
    I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
  122. No more wxwidgets? by mattr · · Score: 1

    Changelog: using GTK not wxwindows (wxwidgets).

    Well you can use wxwidgets and build with gtk but I guess they are just going straight to gtk. Is that for speed or memory savings? I'd like to know why.

    Also the FAQ still says they use wx.

    P.S. Azureus is cool but a memory hog whereas screen ctorrent is mighty nice.

    1. Re:No more wxwidgets? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most likely it's to reduce memory consumption, since the speed overhead for this application would be mostly irrelevant. wxWindows has always been a serious memory hog.

  123. Re:yep by BritishNick · · Score: 1
    Google is thy friend.

    Canadian English

    --
    No good deed ever goes unpunished.
  124. Inaccurate by RehabDJ · · Score: 0

    For more than a year most bittorrent clients have had the option of allowing you to use non standard ports, so the concept of all BT data using 6881 thru 6888 is quite outdated.

  125. Still blocked at Universities? by Thedalek · · Score: 1

    I recall some time ago, the author of BitTornado penned an open letter to University IT offices, to the effect of, "Stop blocking bittorrent, or else the next version of the bittorrent standard will be next to impossible to block."

    Do any of the new features provide for this non-blockability? I'm particularly interested, as mine is one of the Universities which dislikes BT in general. (Official quote from our OIT dept: "Sorry about Bittorrent. We have to block that site.")

    Interesting claim that BT accounts for 1/3 of all internet traffic. My University OIT recently claimed that IRC was taking up 1/3 of their traffic, and blocked it. Apparently, OIT people like having piles and piles of unused bandwidth.

    --
    Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
    1. Re:Still blocked at Universities? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They like not having to pay for things. They especially like to not pay for things that they feel could cost them more money in the future, such as venues for warez.

      I'm sure when they claimed IRC represented one third of their overall traffic, they were referring to DCC bots and such. IRC, Usenet, BitTorrent, Kazaa, Gnutella, ...

    2. Re:Still blocked at Universities? by scottv67 · · Score: 1

      Apparently, OIT people like having piles and piles of unused bandwidth.

      No, dickhead. OIT people don't like days when they get nastygrams from the MPAA/RIAA.

      They also dis-like days when when a faculty member makes the front page of the local newspaper for downloading kidding porn onto his PC at work.

      It's not a bandwidth issue. It's a "gee, I don't want us to get sued and/or end up on the front page" issue.

      -Scott
      One of those OIT people

  126. Re:yep by menace3society · · Score: 1
    why bother with Firefox when we've got Safari?

    You misspelled "Camino".

    Wait, is that supposed to read

    "Why bother with Camino when we've got Safari?"

    or

    "Why bother with Firefox when we've got Camino?"

    ?

  127. How to make this firewall friendly? by bluGill · · Score: 1

    I've been wondering, how can I make bittorrent firewall friendly. I think my setup is typical of slashdot: a nat firewall turning my IP into one of many behind the firewall. Sure I can forward the bittorrent ports, but only if I always use the one machine, a restriction that I cannot use.

    What I'd like is a proxy that I can run somewhere. The proxy is bittorrent running on some machine on the network. My client isn't really bittorrent, it is a look-alike to the user that just tells the proxy to download this file. The proxy can then automatically remain a seed until space runs low. (I only download legal files so I don't care if the RIAA finds me)

    Is there a better way? Has someone done this? What do you do?

    1. Re:How to make this firewall friendly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What I have setup is a linux box (p300, 384meg, 450gig) which acts as router/mail/dns etc and i just leave btlaunchmanycurses monitoring a Downloads directory which is shared by samba.

      Just drop your torrent files in there from any machien on the network and it will automatically download them and you can just delete the .torrent file when the download is finished.

      I use screen so I can ssh in and out to check progress, but I've been meaning to get some script that will dump that info every 15 mins or something and I could check it on the lan webserver.

      Bonus aswell is you can ssh in from anywhere and just wget some_torrent_file.torrent in case you ever need to.

    2. Re:How to make this firewall friendly? by LodCrappo · · Score: 1
      Depending on your situation, you might like the way that TorrentFlux works. www.torrentflux.com

      Basically it is a php based cgi that allows all users on your network (or even outside your net if you prefer) to manage torrent downloads on a single server. You forward the ports to that server, everyone uses an easy web interface to manage their downloads, and life is good. Very nice for a small dorm or home network with a handful of torrent users.

      Another neat trick is to mount shares on each user's workstation on the torrentflux server so that the torrents are actually downloaded right onto the user's workstations. It has a nice builtin interface to RSS torrent feeds as well.

      --
      -Lod
  128. Waving the Red Flag by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 1

    This really ought to wave the red flag in front of the MPAA. A better, easier to use, BitTorrent. And all at a time when I would think they'd be better off keeping a low profile while the case is still in the courts.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
    1. Re:Waving the Red Flag by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      The MPAA doesn't care a bit about this bittorrent client. Most movie sharers use clients such as Azureus or BitComet...

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  129. Grab the source. by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

    BitTorrent is written in Python. It runs on any platform that has Python.

    The EXE and prepackaged OS X clients are merely clients that were compiled from the original Python. If you simply install Python and use the source distribution, you'll never need to worry about waiting for someone to deliver you a prepackaged compiled version.

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  130. Beta is available by burris · · Score: 1

    The official mac client is close to release. There is a beta available here. Note that it might resume torrents running from the old client in a different spot, making them start over again. In that case you should stop the torrent, clear it, open the torrent file, and point it at your old download.

    There isn't that much left to be done so release should be soon. Mostly remaining is localization, documentation, and a little more polish.

    It's got an updated UI, uses a single port, resumes torrents without re-checking, fully customizable toolbar, torrent inspector/editor, and everything can be controlled from the keyboard. Also, the number one request has been filled: you can choose a location for all your torrents to go to seperate from your usual InternetConfig download folder.

    burris

  131. Re:yep by shotfeel · · Score: 1

    because obviously English is WRONG

    No English isn't wrong. Just the idea that it is governed by rules.

  132. A stepback for cross-platform. by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1

    wxWidgets is the de-facto standard on cross-platform ui's. Why did he change it?

    Whatever, I'm still using ABC client. After all, the bittorrent PROTOCOL hasn't changed, right?

    1. Re:A stepback for cross-platform. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I recently switched from WX to GTK in a project I'm working on. I did this because some widgets on some platforms did not meet my requirements. The main win was that it now works and behaves the same on all supported platforms. I'm very happy with the result. My main grudge is it's C-ish API, arcane function naming etc. It can also be a bit to low-level but on the other hand it gives you total control. Also Unicode support is excellent.

  133. Re:Great! I Love BitTorrent. by philntc · · Score: 1

    Me too!!

    Mod me up! *g*

  134. Beta is available by burris · · Score: 1

    There is a beta available and release should be very soon. Mostly remaining is documentation, localization, and polish.

  135. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No.

  136. Global upload caps by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1

    The new version might have global caps.

    Almost all other BT clients already have them. BitTornado most definately has a global UL cap.

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  137. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The proper term for the (.) is 'full-stop', not 'period'

    Not since the last telegraph line came down. Wrong on top of wrong.

  138. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's funny. The OED says that "momentarily" means either "for a moment" or "in a moment."

    Guess you're just wrong about everything, huh?

    Also, you need to let this "America sucks" thing go. Do you speak German? As the old saying goes, "You're welcome."

  139. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SO if they stop, I'll die?

  140. Re:Azureus rocks... not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't need to run multiple instances of the official client, and the single instance uses much less resources than Azureus. Even though the client supports it you shouldn't run many torrents at same time unless you have your own T1 line or something faster.
    Azureus has lots of features, but many of them are badly implemented. It also encourages people to misuse multiple-torrents-at-once by running lots of them simultaneously when the connection can only sanely support 1 or 2.

  141. Get some new material by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of all the cliche jokes on slashdot, this (slashdotters don't meet/date/exchange bodily fluids with women) is about the lowest of the low hanging fruit. Only Duke nukem forever jokes manage to be less funny..

    Get some material. Any material. No one laughs when you're vomiting yesterdays leftovers.

    1. Re:Get some new material by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well this is awkward. You're trying to be clever by making fun of someone for making a joke, when in fact they are making a completely different joke then the one your ridiculing.

      He is saying that he knows the guy was lying because he said his wife plays WoW, not that he has a wife.

      I have to say #3 on the list of most unfunny things here at /. is your post.

      You can only be witty if you have enough intelligence to understand what people are saying.

  142. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes. You'll die of heart disease, or a stroke, or diabetes or cancer, most likely, because the drugs that researchers are currently developing using Macs won't be available to keep you alive.

    It's not a joke, and it's not an exaggeration. Having Macs available to run programs like BLAST and other bioinformatics applications really is a matter of life and death. These programs run up to 40 times faster on the Mac than they do on any other computer, which means we'll understand the body and disease sooner, which means we'll have new drugs sooner, which means lives will be saved.

    Maybe yours.

  143. Azureus uses SWT, not Swing by Software · · Score: 1
    The Azureus FAQ says that Azureus uses SWT, not Swing. Does SWT use Java2D?

    Plus, how would a 3D video card improve 2D performance?

    1. Re:Azureus uses SWT, not Swing by greg_barton · · Score: 1

      Does SWT use Java2D?
      linky

      And any direct rendering hardware acceleration helps. 3D cards also have to draw the 2D bits, like textures, surface coloring, etc.

  144. Re:yep by nigelo · · Score: 1

    Rules?

    Will all the anarchist mathematicians gather in the larger half of the hall, please?

    --
    *Still* negative function...
  145. New License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm surprised nobody mentioned that Bram changed the license, and no longer supports CVS on SourceForge (apparently he's using a private Codeville server). The license was MIT, but is now "BitTorrent Open Source License".

    The new license looks more restrictive as it's GPL-ish.

  146. Re:"existing, rock-steady functionality" ... WTF! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All I have to say is, "right on!" I guess I'm showing my age now.

    We played around with BT to distribute videos of the sports teams and band at the high school where I teach. Crap is the one word I'd use to describe the system. When we would, for example, on Saturday morning seed the five videos (each quarter plus half-time) of the football game the night before, we found it took over a week for any of the clients to download a complete copy of any of the videos. Our seeder machine was connected to a mostly empty T3 to Sprint that the county used. Some of the clients were connected to T1's in local businesses. It should have taken a matter of a few hours. BT is so damn slow and buggy, it took over a week for the first one to finish. Since BT was such a failure, we ended-up just making a bunch of copies on DVD's and giving them out around town. It cost us a lot of time and money.

    For next season, the district is adding a new T3 to Level3. I think we're spending $15k on it a month. The videos are going to be the biggest bandwidth user. If BT had worked, and we tried and tried, we could have put-off that $15k per month for probably two or three years.

  147. Nethack by raisedbyrobots · · Score: 1

    Now if only Nethack would follow suit.

  148. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sad thing is, you actually believe these things you're saying. OK, the Mac is cool but there's no reason to drama-queen it up.

  149. Poor Attitude by spleck · · Score: 1

    Er.. whatever site told you that is living on Mars.
    After further research, I'll agree. I had never heard of a full stop before and my searching was limited. However, I will refuse to call it a 'full-stop' because it just doesn't work for me. I will however probably start calling it a dot since I don't like how the origins of using a 'period' started.

    The proper term for the (.) is 'full-stop', not 'period'.
    A full-stop is what you Americans call a period.

    Your earlier comment was that Americans are incorrect in calling (.) a period. When generations of people in a country of over 200 million people call (.) a period, its not wrong, its just different. Your second comment reflects the facts: there are syntactic and grammatic differences between the countries.

    There are countless ways in which the English language has been bastardised by America...
    Yeah, I hate how we don't say "ye olde english"! I suppose the last grunting caveman was also upset that the others began using words and bastardizing his language. ...one of the funniest ones I heard recently was when I was on hold waiting to speak to someone over there. The message said: "Please wait, someone will be with you momentarily."It is unlikely that every American uses English improperly and that every Brit speaks perfect English.

    As an aside, I guess I should be happy you call us Americans living in America, instead of USians in US.

    Further, my wife just overheard a conversation (I live in the South; yes, they capitalize it here): The woman was complaining that she could never remember how to spell it. Was it with a 'y' or an 'i'? F-L-I-E-D or F-L-Y-E-D, you know like 'I just flied on over there!' My wife didn't have the heart to tell her.

    1. Re:Poor Attitude by BritishNick · · Score: 1
      Your earlier comment was that Americans are incorrect in calling (.) a period

      Well in English, the proper term *is* 'Full-Stop', but in American it's 'Period'. I really wasn't intending to insult anyone, and I apologise if anyone was offended, this particular thread was about puctuation and grammar and I was merely putting across an English perspective.

      Yeah, I hate how we don't say "ye olde english"

      Now you're just being silly. Old(e) English and Modern English are about as closely related as Italian and Latin. The core of the English Dictionary has changed very little since America was colonised by Europe.

      It is unlikely that every American uses English improperly and that every Brit speaks perfect English.

      Absolutely, some Brits speak absolutely terrible English; the same as in the US, ("I aint done nothin' wrong" being one example that we share.) but if it was a message that would be heard by thousands of people (this was a BIG company I was phoning) you can be sure that it would be correct English, with the correct words used for the correct purposes.

      As an aside, I guess I should be happy you call us Americans living in America, instead of USians in US

      I'm not quite sure what you're digging at here, but I hope you aren't implying that the British are ignorent of the US. You really don't want to get me on my soapbox about American ignorance of the outside world, I'll talk your ear off.

      After a bit of digging around I found a very interesting article you might want to read about the evolution of the British / American English Language. It seems that many of the differences were introduced deliberately, possibly due to the friction between the two nations at the time.

      Holy crap I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

      --
      No good deed ever goes unpunished.
  150. QTorrent by timothy · · Score: 1

    I see that a few people have recommended QTorrent; I will second (or 3rd, or 4th ...) that recommendation.

    See, I am lazy: when I wanted to download something in the form of a torrent, and found that the client that's supposed to be integrated into Firefox on my distro (Mepis) didn't work, complaining about missing wxWindows or somesuch, I did what sanely insane people do. I fired up Synaptic, updated, searched for anything that had "torrent" in its name or description, and installed them all.

    Then I used them, one by one. Azureus -- which many people seem to love, and on which I am obviously the farthest thing from an expert! -- I found mildly confusing because I couldn't get it working with a few minutes of futzing (needs more helpfiles, examples, etc, IMO), so went on to the next one, which was QTorrent. QTorrent was simple to get going (passed my 60-second test), so it's my new choice :)

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  151. Re:yep by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you don't have a rebuttal, just shut up. These "the sad thing is you believe that" posts are childish and lame.

  152. Long Awaited? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yawn.

  153. Thank you for your calm and well stated post... by Thedalek · · Score: 1

    Which completely loses its point by namecalling at the front end.

    My post was not meant as a jab at OIT people in general (although it was badly phrased to sound like it was). It was primarily targeted at my own university's OIT, who, for clarity's sake, are imbeciles. Just because you're intelligent, don't assume that all OIT people are.

    And, backing up the claim that my local OIT are not quite on par, intelligence-wise: When I cited that claim regarding IRC, that wasn't entirely correct. They claimed that 1/3 of their traffic was occuring on port 6667, saying that IRC was causing this. DCC transfers don't take place on 6667. It was later shown that they were lying about the bandwidth issue.

    Further, the kiddie-porn thing is a non issue here. There's too many other methods of obtaining such content that P2P isn't the real contender.

    So, Scott, apologies to you and your fellows, but please don't stand up for other OIT people just because they are OIT people. They could be OIT and still be jerks/morons/malevolent demons from a dimension of suffering.

    Of course, this still leaves the original question ("Is bittorrent 4.0 mostly unblockable?") unanswered.

    --
    Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
  154. Re:"existing, rock-steady functionality" ... WTF! by FictionPimp · · Score: 1

    you know what your problem was? you were trying to distribute legal content. next time try a movie. it will go faster

  155. Re:"existing, rock-steady functionality" ... WTF! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've had bit torrent crash many many times on me, rock-solid my ass.

  156. Marking packets is useless by bungeejumper · · Score: 1

    All major ISPs use policymaps on their 'edge' routers to groom user traffic as per their internal network QoS model. What this means is that *all* incoming packets have their IP TOS field rewritten to predetermined values...low pri for home users, med pri for business DSL and VPN users etc. Whether BitTorrent marks a packet as bulk or not will not matter, heck, for that matter, all users would mark ALL their traffic as high priority and then where would the ISPs be ? Try long distance traffic tests and measure latency and traffic loss with various TOS field values...you will not notice any difference.

  157. Re:"existing, rock-steady functionality" ... WTF! by bungeejumper · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you had it misconfigured ? I would expect little DSL/cable links to take a while to download but the T1s should have done a much better job. One question is whether those T1 machines were actually uploading anything to the others ? There is a leech criteria - if a machine is downloading a lot but uploading very little (or cannot upload because no one can connect to it because it is firewalled), then it will be throttled waaaaaaay back. That's why I suspect a configuration issue. When the Tsunami videos were posted to BT, nothing worked expect BT links, and there were 1000s of peers up/downloading so everything ran great.

  158. Protocol Change? by Necroist · · Score: 1

    Will this change by Cohen affect how the other BT clients communicate with it?

  159. My thoughts on BitTorrent 4.0 by Yeechang+Lee · · Score: 1

    Here's my observations on BitTorrent 4.0. It's a slight-edited version of something I sent to a colleague of Cohen's.

    Overall, the new version is a vast improvement over the 3.4.x line for those of us who prefer using a console client (I keep btlaunchmanycurses.py running all the time under GNU screen). A global --max_upload_rate is much appreciated for everyone who doesn't have bandwidth shaping in their router (I do now, but for a long time I didn't). All in all, many very welcome changes.

    The below comments are based on use of just btlaunchmanycurses.py 3.9.1/4.0, not any of the other console clients or the GUI clients, and are sorted in order of seriousness.

    * --saveas_style absolutely, positively should not have 1 as the default. Stripping file extensions from downloaded files' names, and changing downloaded files' names at all from what's encoded in the torrents, is very bad form.
    * I can cause a semi-reproducible crash by running more than about 70 torrents at once at a time.
    * On my 80x40 screen, there often isn't enough room to completely display the second line in each torrent's section. "17 peers 5 seeds 0 dist copies" could easily be shortened to "17p/5s/0d."
    * Ctrl-L ought to redraw the screen as in other well-behaved Unix console apps.
    * Saving the hashes is very appreciated. How about also saving cumulative up/download byte totals across sessions? (I wonder if the data/metainfo directory is meant for this; it seems unused at the present.)
    * While the scrolling torrent listing is much appreciated (and incidentally also takes care of the notorious "exceed available screen space and instantly crash the client" bug in the 3.4.x series), I'd prefer the scrolling be controllable. I'm thinking a static list that the user can page up/down in manually.
    * The version notes are far too skimpy. Speaking of the previous, I can't find any documentation on (for example) how 4.0 differentiates between "peers," "seeds," and "dist copies." The figures don't seem to correspond with what the trackers report.
    * Shouldn't the total up/downloaded bytes readouts appear directly under the "Download" and "Upload" column headings, instead of being switched? Perhaps even better would be to preserve their relative positions but move total uploaded bytes directly under the "Size" column heading. (I always try to keep a torrent running until I've uploaded as much as I've downloaded. It's possible the "dist copies" indicator is an easier way to learn when I've achieved this, but again, I don't know due to the lack of documentation.)
    * --parse_dir_interval probably ought to have a default lower than the current 60 seconds (I use 3, but would be happy with 3.4.x's hardwired 0).