Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
To me, there's something deeply fascinating with downloading things using BitTorrent. You click a link to the torrent file for something you'd like to fetch. Tell the browser to open the file using the default program, and the BitTorrent client comes up, asking you where to save the file. Then, after a few moments of connecting to peers, it starts downloading.
And here comes the really cool part: the more people that are downloading or leaving their clients open after downloading, the faster it goes. Slashdot readers nowadays quickly put up torrent files for content on Slashdotted servers, and because everyone tries to get those files at the same time the download speed is usually equal to all the spare bandwidth my connection has.
Not only that, even while downloading you're also sharing the file with others. I've just now finished downloading a 48 Mb file, and already people have been able to get 14 Mb of it from me. The longer I leave the client window open after finishing the download the more people can get from me and the better speed for everyone.
Of course, once the popularity of a file drops download speeds go down a whole lot too. But for getting something popular, BitTorrent is just too cool a solution.
Remember: always leave the client window open after the download finishes! Share and enjoy!