Itsara

Update (Wed, 9:42 pm): The Bit Torrent isn’t working, so Ray has a direct link here. But, as Ray said, be kind.

Ray has managed to get Jamie’s last sermon, “Should Christians try to legislate their morality?”, online in mp3 format. You’ll need to download BitTorrent (basically a fancy download manager) first in order to get it. Once you have that, download the torrent file and BitTorrent should take care of the rest.

I highly recommend all of you to listen to this sermon (if you haven’t heard it, of course). Not because I agree with it and want to advertise my opinion via Jamie, but because Jamie handles today’s touchiest topics with both truth and love simultaneously - something I think we all need to get better at (myself most definitely included). Jamie is careful not to cross the line into telling people how to vote, but rather his purpose is to start thoughtful and loving discussions of these issues. Feel free to discuss this stuff here.

Today’s Internet lesson is brought to you by BitTorrent. BT makes downloading large files super-efficient. A normal download requires you to ask another computer for the file. Then that computer sends you the file in pieces called packets, until you say you have the whole thing. For one person this is fine, but when 100 people are downloading the same file, suddenly there are thousands of packets being uploaded from the same computer causing a bottleneck.

The makers of BitTorrent realized that the average user had tons of upload bandwidth that they hardly use. So the BT client uploads part of the file to another user for every packet that it downloads. It uses bandwidth that would have gone unused anyway, causing a great relief on the part of the original server while still ensuring that you get your whole file.