The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Downloading bit by bit, no matter what!

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 25, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Downloading bit by bit, no matter what!

‘Access to information is power’ is clearly seen in the trends which have evolved in recent years

Hyderabad: Movies, music, software - you name it. The possibility of the stuff that you ask for could be on your desktop in a jiffy. ‘Downloading’ seems to be the new mantra of college going students these days as access to information is as simple as brushing one’s teeth.

Switch on the computer and click resume, voila!! The file resumes downloading from where it was ‘paused’. This is what happens when people get addicted to downloading information from the Internet. From movies to latest software, everything being freely available on the net, youngsters in Hyderabad are taking to downloading them just to get a cut above the rest.

“It’s a matter of having everything that everyone is searching for. My friends ask me for the latest music, movies and that’s what makes me one of the popular guys in the group”, says Rahul, a student of the JNTU in Hyderabad.

Earlier, data was acquired using ‘peer-to-peer’ softwares a.k.a sharewares. These sharewares connected users in the network from where data was accessed. However, they posed a threat as spyware applications were making their way to users’ computer, enabling hackers to check all the information like bank accounts and credit card numbers.

Now this doesn’t stop here, with music companies and production firms tracking down people using shareware (Peer-to-peer), the alternative was to start downloading from ‘Torrents’- which people consider a blessing in disguise.

Unlike shareware, Torrents use a split-and-download mechanism where the user downloads a Torrent downloader like Ares, Azureus, Bitlord, MainLine and BitComet. These programmes enable the user to download Torrent files that are uploaded on Torrent sites. Once the user finds what he is looking for, the file is downloaded with the help of the Torrent downloader.

Torrent files use ‘seeders’- people who have the whole file and ‘peers’- those who are downloading the file along with you. That way bits and pieces of the file are downloaded onto one’s computer and then merged into a single file.

Internet speed

Moreover, the speed at which internet connectivity is available nowadays in Hyderabad, especially in colleges, enable the students download huge amounts of data, be it the latest movies to music albums and even the latest applications.

“Torrents download faster and every thing is available on Torrent sites. Most of the movies that we download are up on the web before they are released in theatres here”, says Nagmesh Kumar, an engineering student of Osmania University.

The main idea that ‘access to information is power’ is clearly seen in the trends which have evolved in the recent years. Considering downloading, no matter what the road block is, the average user still finds a way to dump files from the internet onto his computer.

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