Liberation Technology: Known Secrets From The Millenial Generation

by: Jack's Smirking Revenge

Fri Nov 06, 2009 at 22:17:53 PM EST

Sometimes it's our laws that restrict the access to the information we seek, other times, it's our inability to use the vast array of programs and applications that can allow us to carve our own little place in the world wide web.

In respect to the latter, there have been a number of places that have attempted to make the internet easier to customize your own little space on it, "cookie-cutter" platforms that allow you to customize the appearance fairly easy, but you're still chained to the platform's format (Wordpress, Soapblox, etc.).

Outside of those, you usually need to learn javascript, CSS, or html to get what you want made.

However, there are "open-source" platforms (not commercial and for use by all) developing that are trying to bridge the gap between full customization of your own personal professional-grade website and the skills you have (or more likely don't have) to use it.

For example...

This is one of the best platforms that has extensions that help a lot in making your own website and is fully customizable...that is, if you have programming skills.

While someone like myself can figure things out eventually, it's still a pain in the ass and many times I'm scratching my head wondering what the fuck I have to look up next on YouTube in terms of a tutorial to give me the next little bit of info I need to go on to what I need to do next.

I'm keeping an eye on it to see when they come out with an "idiot-proof" set-up that gives you all the tools you need to do everything you want without any prior knowledge, but for now i'm just taking notes since I figured it out and will soon be confident enough to do websites for people who deserve it.  No money.

Another one that has been brought to my attention is Drupal:

Which I will testing out soon as well.  I've been told it's better and also "one of the best" by others. We'll see I guess.

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Now on to getting the "information you seek".

Despite what many might know about things such as "torrents", not all are illegal, choosing to use a bittorrent client to do such illegal activity is the choice of the individual and not the sole purpose of the application.  

I repeat, there are LEGAL torrents.

So, what is a torrent?

A Torrent is a small file (around few kilobytes) with the suffix .torrent, which contains all the information needed to download a file the torrent was made for. That means it contains file names, their sizes, where to download from and so on. You can get torrents for almost anything on lots of web sites and torrent search engines.

Torrent is the most popular way of downloading large files, including movies and games.

Downloading with a torrent is advantageous especially when downloading files, which are momentarily very popular and whitch lots of people are downloading. Because the more people download the file, the higher speed for everyone.

   * torrent is a file
   * with torrents you can download almost everything on the net
   * every file (or set of files) need to have an unique torrent file to download it
   * to download anything through a torrent you need a torrent client

You probably already tried another ways of p2p sharing - torrent is just another method. The original BitTorrent client was written in Python and it has been made open-source. Thanks to that, we have a large variety of torrent clients today.

http://www.what-is-torrent.com/

Here's the client I use, works the best in my view:

http://www.utorrent.com/

It's for P.C. and Mac so be sure to download the one you need.

Now, to protect yourself from any "malware" in general and especially for this peer-to-peer file sharing, I have some things you MUST do inorder to use these programs.

For P.C.:

http://www.peerblock.com/relea...

I know the people who made this (they're from NYC) and they have a valid driver signature for Windows so it's totally legitimate.  

Try to donate to them if you like it.

If you have a mac, then you have to download this:

For MAC:

http://www.macupdate.com/info....

Both will work fine.  What it does is block your ISP from being nosy as well as block "third party's" IP Addresses (industry, government, etc.)

The uTorrent site has many tutorials you would need in order to figure out how to setup and/or run the program.

The 3 most important things to do is to setup the folder it downloads to, as well as make sure that if your ISP isn't on this list:

http://www.azureuswiki.com/ind...

that you click on the "Preferences" tab at the top left on the utorrent aplication and click on "BitTorrent", check the box that says "Allow Legacy connections" and then set the "Outgoing" tab in the "Protocol Encryption" box to "Forced".  

If you use a wireless router to have wifi in your home (Linksys, Netgear, etc.), you might have to "forward" the "ports" on it to allow for maximum connection.  This is also on the site as well as "Google" searchable for your specific router.

ALSO, if you have a firewall/anti-virus you have to give it a "rule exception" in it to allow it to pass with incoming and outgoing connections to the people who have the files you want to download.

Now you can download any "torrent" file on the internet.  Everything from music, to books, to programs and software.  

There are legal torrents and illegal torrents and the existence of the illegal should NEVER brand the technology as being "evil" or illegal in general.  

Such a stereotype is unjustified.

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Maybe everyone knows this and maybe some actually don't.  The problem with these technologies is that they rarely get the spotlight they deserve because the younger generations hear about it from friends and then grow-up, lose touch and only know what they remember from the first days of the internet.  

What happens is that everyone assumes the others know it's out there and exists and then those who don't, miss out.  The truth is, if you took the time out to teach them the basic steps, more people can be included and be able to empower themselves.

Whichever route they take, legal or illegal, is just life and people.  If they have no ethical issues or any fears with doing the illegal then they're gonna do it, but that shouldn't take away from what it has to offer all of us.

At the same time, it shouldn't be a secret that gets held over everyone's head like is so prominent in the computer/technology/internet culture. One who asks a question that shows the person is "new" to the technology, some asshole's do something like this:

..and turn off people to the idea of even trying to figure any of the stuff out.

I promised myself that when I finally got to a point where I was the one giving the answers to such questions that I would never act like those douchebags and would go out of my fucking way to teach everybody what I find out so assholes like that can be exposed for what they are.  People who only know a little bit more over those who are ignorant, and aren't fucking worth the bandwidth they're using.

So here it is, everything you need to get started, and i'll be happy to assist you whether you choose to be a saint or a sinner.

Books(in .pdf, .chm, and eBook forms), movies, music, programs, software, if it's digitized...you can get it now.

Also, if you would like help in finding out legal from illegal or want to engage with people at a torrent site that is helping promote open-source and Creative Commons licensed legal material, here's an open invitation:

http://lobby.hexagon.cc/invita...

And for all the "sinners", may I suggest a group called "The Library"....I hear it's where all the cool kids hang out: