Stopped downloads

[JanetCoop]

I have had great luck recording from you...have some wonderful movies and even the Beatles cartoons!!! So thank you...

BUT!!!! I am trying to get the full TV series "Big Shots"; I have 9 of 11 episodes. However episodes 5 & 6 will not completely record; I have deleted and restarted them THREE times each!!! #5 stops dead at 77.8% and WILL NOT MOVE...#6 craps out at 67.6% and goes no farther...THREE TIMES!!! This is becoming really painful to me...

I've had other movies record completely even though they were seeded with a low number; at one point episode #5 had a 259% speed and higher... but it's gone dead-stick on me again...

I do not understand what the numbers mean and I can't figure out the language (geek-speak, computer-ese, whatever you guys call it)!! I just want to get my downloads and go home...

Please help fix this...

Thank you...JanetCoop (JANET COOPER)

[kluelos]

You will, alas, have to learn a little bit. Certainly enough to understand that it is useless to complain to the UPS driver, the guy in the brown truck, that the contents of the package he delivered is not the color that you ordered from Neiman Marcus' web site.

He will listen, most sympathetically (as will we), that this dress is red, and you never wear red, that it clashes with the shoes you had planned to wear with it, and that you emphatically ordered blue, not red and that the dress is, in your opinion, actually quite unbecomingly ugly in red.

But, reluctantly the UPS deliveryman will not take the red dress back and exchange it for a blue one.

Now, do you grasp why it is that he will not do that? That it is you who must make appropriate arrangements with Neiman Marcus to return and replace this dress?

So, similarly, are we not in a position to help you download video files from somewhere else. We don't offer any videos for transfer ourselves, because this would be likely to violate copyright laws and none of us wants to be sued for that.

The BitComet developers just make a bittorrent client which can be used for file transfers, just as Grumman manufactures trucks that UPS uses for deliveries. Neither of us is responsible for WHAT is carried by our software or their trucks. The BitComet developers give their product, for free, to anyone who wants it. Grumman charges a pretty penny for their trucks, which are custom-made to UPS's specifications, but Grumman still doesn't try to tell UPS what to carry.

We have no control over what is downloaded, (which, from the description you give, is in violation of copyright law in most countries), nor the quality of that download.

The support team here (myself, and others) volunteer their time to assist others like you in using the BitComet software. For this we are not paid or even given free T-shirts (which, as it turns out, would not fit anyway, sizes being different in China where Bittorrent is developed.) That being so, I think you can understand that, given free software and free support, you are expected to do a minimal amount to help yourself, to make an effort to try to understand, and that you cannot expect the sort of supportive hand-holding that you might expect with a product that you had paid for, and support that you had contracted (and likewise paid) for.

You may notice that your question has been moved here, to "Incomplete and Deleted Topics". It has been moved here because you've provided almost no information about the technical details of your problem. Now, you may not know them, as you say -- but Janet, we certainly don't know them either.

We're not trying to transfer those files from wherever you're getting them, we don't even know where that is because you didn't tell us, and we're not sitting in front of your computer looking at the error messages you're getting, so how is it possible for any of us unpaid volunteers to know what's going on? We can't. We must rely on you to tell us, in full and relevant detail.

That you don't understand what we need to know? This you need to learn, Janet. You do need to make some sort of effort here, to help yourself.

When you have a free product like this one, then you are required to exercise much more initiative than with things you pay for.

Hobbyists of various kinds used to say that you could, when faced with a problem, choose between spending money or sweat on it -- that is, if you couldn't afford the parts or the repairs, then you had to find ways to make them and learn how to install them yourself.

So, too, you need to spend more mental "sweat" on the issue, learning the terminology, the technology, and how it works. You need to learn geek-speak and become something of a geek yourself. That is how you get stuff for free.

The alternative is to simply buy prerecorded DVD set of the television series, then you don't need to learn any of this or worry about it. Spend money, or sweat.

[JanetCoop]

I read your extremely cruel and unkind letter, and perhaps you are right, I am stupid, I am computer illiterate, I am navel-lint, and as such, should be locked away from decent people, kept in a bricked-in room for the rest of my life or chucked into a concentration camp where I can die a miserable death with the rest of the non-computerized flotsam of society...

BUT I solved my download-sticking problem by myself without your gracious master's help -- I simply unchecked the excess junk files in the torrents, like pictures, posters, and unnecessary crap like samples & those stupid little files where the seeder tells you where he's from and how his parents were granted permission to reproduce and thus blessed the world with him and his torrent-creating genius. I throw away junk mail; this is the same thing...

Now I an always put it all back after I'm done & let the next goober down the line have it...

Thank you for your nastiness and your lack of assistance to a poor dumb old lady who never used a computer until a year ago and is thoroughly sorry for daring to approach the throne of the Great And Powerful Wizard Of a**(hole)...

May you receive back what you give 10-fold...

I speak fluent Sarcasm...

[kluelos]

You're not entitled to anything, Janet. All of us had to struggle and work to learn this, and you're not exempt. If you don't like it then don't use free software.

Glad you solved your problem for yourself.

See, that wasn't hard, was it?

When you stopped to actually think about what you were doing, the answer was obvious. You didn't actually need to waste anyone's time here and can save that for something that's actually difficult to figure out.

Now, get used to doing that.

You'll have to do a lot of it, and the world of free software expects you to.

There are no fancy printed manuals, there are no step-by-step instructions. You don't get those without paying several hundred dollars for the software, plus ongoing support fees for commercial software. You are on your own, and may I point out, wanted assistance in the theft of copyrighted material, so you don't exactly hold the moral high ground here.

If you're really lucky, there are only a few souls like us, unpaid, unappreciated volunteers struggling to provide basic support, dealing with abusive, ungrateful, self-entitled and mentally lazy folk like yourself who think we owe it to you, can't be bothered even to read what we do provide, and think we're nasty for telling them to at least try to figure it out for themselves.

Let's be clear, though: You're a crank.

You're bitching to General Motors about the condition of the roads. The condition of the roads is not GM's fault and they can't do anything about it. You're wasting your time. You're wasting GM's time. All of the people at GM think you're a head case. All of the people listening to you think you're a head case. You should be talking to whoever maintains your local roads, since there's a possibility they might be able to help you. There is no possibility that GM can.

GM makes trucks. BitComet makes bittorrent clients.

GM doesn't make the roads. BitComet doesn't make the torrents.

GM can't help you about the roads. BitComet can't help you about the torrents.

Yet in you come, proclaiming that you can't be arsed to learn what the numbers mean or what the terminology means. It mystifies me how you could then expect to understand any answer that might be given? Oh, I have to "dumb it down" for you? No, I do NOT have to. You ain't the boss of me, you ain't payin' me. I don't have to do anything for you. If you want to be here, then you have to learn what the numbers mean, learn the terminology. If you won't , then go buy the series on DVD.

[greywizard]

I do not understand what the numbers mean and I can't figure out the language (geek-speak, computer-ese, whatever you guys call it)!! I just want to get my downloads and go home...

Well, as far as I know everybody wants pretty much the same thing; in all aspects of life. But most of the times it doesn't work like that.

You just want to get in the car and arrive at the destination. But either you pay for the transport or you learn to drive the thing. (And even then you'll have to pay to be educated how to drive it and for the car itself).

That goes for most of the areas in life, doesn't it?

Here comes a free "transporter" (BitComet) and free "education" on how to use it provided in the form of the Guides and Tutorials on this forum and on the BitComet Wiki and even free assistance provided by us.

All you need to learn are at least some basics such as: which is the "steering wheel", which is the "gear shifter stick" and such, in order to even understand any answer that we may provide to whatever question you have and for us to understand the description and the details of the problem you may have. (That is, so we can use a minimally common "language" which reduces as much as possible the chances of confusion on both sides.)

You say that you don't know what the numbers mean; well we usually know what they mean. That's why we put the announcement titled Read This Before Posting on top of every help section of the forum.

All you had to do was read the "numbers" mentioned in that announcement and tell them to us for starters. If you had been confused about some of that info, we would have been happy to explain those requests better, since you had at least made the effort to read and try to understand the announcement.

If you can't be bothered to understand at least which is what and to read them to us then you certainly can't get very much help here or on any other support site for that matter. You can go on bitching about it as much as you like but it will be like chasing after the wind as the wise man said.

I've read both kluelos's reply and yours to his and I can't find a single phrase that was "cruel" or "unkind" nor where he called you "stupid" or "computer illiterate". That's probably just your own sentiment of low esteem combined with a powerful ego, twisting the meaning of his words.

He was merely trying to explain you how things work on the P2P scene and that you have to be at least aware of some of the terms used in this environment in order to understand how to ask a question or to comprehend an answer given to you by anybody else.

So, instead of trying to read between the lines, things he didn't put there, you'd be better off trying to heed his advice and inform yourself a little bit about P2P and BitTorrent, if you intend to spend more time using torrents.

You can easily do that by browsing the Wiki and the Tutorials I've mentioned above. Should you not understand any of the info in there or have more questions, again we'd be more than happy to help you with answers, since once again you put up an effort to try and self-educate yourself. As we all go through that process on an ongoing basis we certainly can sympathize with people doing the same thing.

Or you can just go about your business and ignore all this, but then you have no good reason complaining about this stuff not working the way you want.