After cleaning up my brother's computer of spyware and such, I wanted to show him a safer way of using LimeWire (he was searching all file types and thus downloading executables as well as mp3s). I tried to explain torrents to him and how to use them, but he's too stupid, so this way was the best.

Anyway, I enter a query as an example search and I get an interesting error message:

I assume limewire is parsing the "." as being the beginning of a file extention, but even so, that's a bad assumption to make, especially when searching the artist of an audio file.

 Oh god, I just tried to click 'OK'.

Ah, brotherly love--showing the younger sibling how to violate intellectual property rights.

http://www.frostwire.com - if you must break the law, you could use a better client.

yeah i have that weird "bittorrent is to complicated to use" thing from a few of my friends too who are still sticking with limewire. It always amuses me that the extra layer of abstraction in bittorrent seems to make it inaccessible to most users. The irony is if you told them to download a word document and open it in word that would be fine but downloading a torrent file and opening it in uTorrent or whatever is "too complicated". Many users simply don't get that the torrent file says where a file is and is not the actual file itself. I've gotten a number of calls from friends after i've directed them to torrents saying "i've got this file and it won't open in media player".

element[0]:

yeah i have that weird "bittorrent is to complicated to use" thing from a few of my friends too who are still sticking with limewire. It always amuses me that the extra layer of abstraction in bittorrent seems to make it inaccessible to most users. The irony is if you told them to download a word document and open it in word that would be fine but downloading a torrent file and opening it in uTorrent or whatever is "too complicated". Many users simply don't get that the torrent file says where a file is and is not the actual file itself. I've gotten a number of calls from friends after i've directed them to torrents saying "i've got this file and it won't open in media player".

I hate to sound like one of those "use Opera" people, but use Opera. Its built-in torrent client means there is no extra step. I've successfully taught several Mac graphic artists how to use torrents this way.

Torrent clients really seem complicated. They usually give you no way to look for files, use meaningless words like "tracker", "seed", "leech" etc. 

There are simpler ways to get that *cough* Ubuntu dvd image *cough* or whatever you're downloading.

 I do use opera for testing websites etc but i prefer using a server with a web interface for downloading torrents. For example utorrent with the web ui or Vuze(Azureus with a web UI). This means when i'm at work i can start torrents going at home so the latest daily show unbuntu ISO can be there when i get home from work. Also it's more conveniant having one download server in the house and starting all your torrents on there via the web interface, even when you're at home anyway.

 

Kiss me I'm Polish:

They usually give you no way to look for files

i prefer using google to find torrents rather than, for example, the search in limewire

 

Kiss me I'm Polish:

There are simpler ways to get that *cough* Ubuntu dvd image *cough* or whatever you're downloading.

What are you using? i'd be interested to know. 

While torrents are excellent for tv, you can find some really obscure documentaries and shows sometimes i do find it hard to find some more obscure music via torrents, do you have application you recommend?

 

element[0]:

 

Kiss me I'm Polish:

They usually give you no way to look for files

i prefer using google to find torrents rather than, for example, the search in limewire

That's what YOU prefer. Why?

Joe Average launches a bit torrent client and gets frustrated, because there's no search option. I'm not a bit torrent hater, I'm just saying.

element[0]:

  

Kiss me I'm Polish:

There are simpler ways to get that *cough* Ubuntu dvd image *cough* or whatever you're downloading.

What are you using? i'd be interested to know. 

While torrents are excellent for tv, you can find some really obscure documentaries and shows sometimes i do find it hard to find some more obscure music via torrents, do you have application you recommend?

 

The problem with torrents is that for rare stuff there are often 0 seeds or so. You can't tell if there is a better source other way than looking on another server. In clients like emule you get a list of global search results to choose from, and you can sort them by number of sources.

On the other hand, why would you use an application recommended by a total stranger? :)

 To be fair to the original poster's younger brother, it's not that hard to disguise malware as an MP3 or other audio files. I used Limewire for one specific song I couldn't find on YouTube a few days ago, and every single file that came up in the search list was a trojan.