"rar.torrents" ??

[rotuts]

Cheers

continuing my RAR and PAR studies i downloaded something called RAR.Torrents.

don't know what it is. it seems like spam or worse. the mac didn't know what to do with it so I put it in the trash.

Im guessing its some sort of SPAM or worse ( if you had say a PC)

itn't torrents some sort of downloading service you subscribe to other than your ISP?

cheers again

rotuts

[rumplestiltskin]

You probably need to read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent

When/if you want to participate, I'll recommend Azureus. Find it by searching at www.macupdate.com.

[thoughton]

Never heard of Rar.Torrents. Give us a link to the page where you downloaded it from please. A quick Google shows no useful results.

Torrents are simply a P2P method for downloading very large files. The advantage is that everyone is sharing the portions they have already downloaded, so the load on the original server is drastically reduced. The content is often movies and TV etc, but there are also some legit uses such as downloading Linux packages. At least one publisher also makes audiobook CDs available via torrents.

My preferred torrent client is Transmission. Mainly because it is a universal binary and has stats in the dock icon. Downloading a torrent from a few dozen peers quickly becomes a notable CPU drain, going universal made quite a significant difference.

Azureus is powerful but the UI is butt ugly.

[rumplestiltskin]

Azureus is a Java app and is fugly, agreed. However, it has the advantage of being able to control which of the files included in the DL you actually wish to download. (ie, three files in the download but you may choose to DL only the one{s} that is{are} of interest to you).

Transmission is pretty but lacks such granular control.

[londor]

There is an universal binary version of Azureus.

http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Intel_Macs

[willrob]

the .rar format is of like using Stuffit to break up a really large file into smaller compressed pieces, which are uncompressed and joined together. So instead of downloading a 4G movie, you download six smaller pieces which get joined once they are all safely on your hard drive.

[terryj]

And to contribute lastly to this discussion,

rotus, think of it this way:
Reading from the last . then extension,
tells you what is the file type.
Reading from the second . tells you
what it is you are downloading.

So in your instance:
themovieshow.mpg.rar.torrent

tells you that this is a torrent locator file,
for downloading the RAR archive set
for a huge mpeg file.

and I third Azareus...nice client...doesn't suck as much CPU
as it used to, and it handles the legit Warner stuff off of
Bittorent.com fairly easily.

[londor]

And as a final note UnRarX is now universal

http://www.unrarx.com/