I need help?

Question

Can you guys give me a 411 about bitTorrent? what is it? -the wiki explanation is a bit too advance for me-
What are the negative sides of downloading Torrent files (such as virus, hackers, etc)?
Is it available for macintosh? If it is, will Mac system face the same risk as PC system?
What is the advantages of having and using this program?

thanks so much..

Answer 1

I am no expert, but since noone answered you, let me give it a shot.

bitTorrent is for user-to-user file sharing. If you have it installed, and you are looking to download the oompa loompa song from the original chocolate factory, you can do a search and find out that Fred McStruddel in Dusselcromf, Albania, a user with bitTorrent on his computer, has the song. You can then download it directly from his computer.

You, as a user, can decide what files you are willing to share.

Unlike limewire, kazzaa, and the most famous one (the name is currently eluding me, but they spend years litigating the legitimacy of their business), bitTorrent is free, open source and the "free" version doesn't come with crappy spyware that slows down your computer.

The other difference is that whereas with Kazzaa and limewire each peer-to-peer transaction is of the entire file between just those 2 parties, bitTorrent enables distribution to more that one computer and distribution from more than one computer - if Fred and jane both had the song on their computer, you could share the bandwidth load between the two.... if you, sally, john and peter all wanted to download the song, the packets of wouldn't all have to be sent directly from fred to each of you individually, but rather the packets could be shared.

OK, now I am getting too complicated...

it is available for Windows, mac and linux.