BitTorrent

I love BitTorrent. I just thought I should mention that. I'm going to assume that, if you're reading my blog, you're already familiar with BitTorrent. For anybody who doesn't already know, it's a peer-to-peer file sharing program that allows you to download stuff from many different people at once. It basically makes sharing huge files much more feasible than it would otherwise be. For instance, you can download pretty much any episode of your favorite TV show if you missed it last week. (I know this because I had to download Studio 60 a few weeks ago. Slick.)

I know that many of you techies out there are yelling "It promotes Piracy!" and you're right, however, sometimes it's the only way to accomplish a goal.

Case-in-point- I had a client contact me asking if my company could teach her to use Adobe PageMaker 7.0. I have an instructor who's fluent in PageMaker, so he'd be able to teach her. The problem is that we don't have PageMaker in my classroom anymore and you can't buy it anymore, because Adobe quit producing it a couple years ago. Which is where BitTorrent comes in.

Using Azureus, (my BitTorrent client of choice) I was able to download someone else copy of PageMaker in a little less than an hour and use it to teach this person how to use it. And then I can throw it out we're done, because I don't need a copy of PageMaker.

Also, when it asked me to register the program when I installed it, I put in all my boss's contact information, so if Adobe wants to sue somebody for pirating their program, they'll know who to look at.