File transfer & sharing ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At the begining I'd like to define my view of difference between transfer and sharing. Transfer is about moving or copying files from computer to computer, from place to place. Sharing is more about offering files without concretes target at any time. For transfering files you can use hardware devices, cable or wireless connection instead of cable. By hardware devices I mean compact discs, DVDs, memory sticks, harddrives or obsolete diskettes. Each device offers you differnet capacity. On diskette you can store for exaple 1.4 megabytes, on CD you can put five hudred of disketes and on one DVD you can place six or seven CDs. Nowadays harddrives have capacity over 400 gigabytes. If you want to use those devices for transfering files, first, you have to copy file on the device and than transfer that device manualy in a real space. When you decide to use cable - we call it network - you can sit and relax by your computer and everything else do the hardware and software. There are two basic types of network - Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN). For using LAN you have to have installed network supporting operating system like, Unix/Linux, older Novel Netware or most common Microsoft Windows. If you want to share or transfer worldwide, you can use one special WAN called Internet. As the internet is wide as it offers many options how to transfer files. You can runyour own server or can use one from many free or payed services. Some are good for sharing some are better for transfers. One of the oldes, but still one of best is FTP, that means File Transfer Protocol. It's used for clinet-server type file transers. You have to upload the file on the FTP server and anyone who has the address, login and password can download it. The second service which is also clinet-server based but running on Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is called Web. Today it's most common way for offering legal files to anyone on the Earth. It's more user friendly because you can use the most common browser aplication and you can add pages with comments and pictures. The last method of sharing or transfering files is through pear to pear (P2P) networks. It means that the file transfer runs directly from one to one, from client to client and the server is only for coordinating the clients - e.g. for chatting or searching between clients. The main advantage is that anyone can connect and ofer all the data which he das on harddrive without uploading them to some server. The second is that the network is less under control of authorities and that's why the most of the stuff there is illegal but you can still share your own data or download only legal software. You can find a lot of films that has never been in czech cinemas, music albus that will never come into our shops or that was released only for days. The games that you can read only about or applications that cost thousands. If you want to try one of those I can sudgest you DirectConnect, there are a lot of new stuff and the second one called SoulSeek where's a lot of good music. And on the end on of the warez slogans - If you like it, go and buy it. Matt