I remember back in elementary school, having English as a second language, I learned a new word and concept: sharing. I kept some toy blocks to myself and I was told to share. I also had some crayons that belonged to the teacher's that I had to share. Being so young back then, I had always wondered why I had to share items with other people. I just could not understand why I couldn't have all of these things to myself. Of course, I have outgrown that phase, and I now share things with almost no hesitation.
Sharing is basically dividing what you have and giving it to others; it can also mean giving another person a copy of what you have on the computer via online or storage such as a
hard drive, or file sharing.
File sharing is "the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as
computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books." The ability to share has gone from sharing to the people around you to sharing to the world wide web. There are many ways to share files: hard drives, e-mail, and file sharing websites.
Sharing files is only a click away. If someone wanted to put a file online so others or himself can access on another device, then he can put it on file sharing websites. Some common websites used to share include MediaFire and DropBox. There are also peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs such as LimeWire and Vuze. To define
P2P, it "connects in to a peer-to-peer network to search for shared files on the computers of other
users connected to the network." Lastly, there are also
BitTorrent methods of sharing. Also known as torrents, this method uses the P2P file sharing method to share large files through the Internet. Many files can be downloaded from torrents such as programs, movies, and games.
Although there may be legal issues when downloading some files on the Internet, file sharing is practiced by everyone. It is a great way to send/receive copies of many different files. Everyone can get what they want and everyone can be selfish, though I'm not saying you should be selfish!
Hi Ryan, this is a very great post. I agree with you that sharing is basically dividing what you have and giving it to others. However, I see that how we can securely share a file is more important. If you are trying to collaborate on a confidential document or presentation, the last thing you want to do is be emailing it back and forth over the Internet without some form of protection. So, encrypted data is required in most sharing files that contain important and sensitive information.
ReplyDeleteThis post is very informative and readable, and I really like your picture story at the beginning. Keep doing the good work.
Hey Ryan,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post. Your use of personal experience with sharing was relevant, and I liked how you tied it into file sharing. Your point on how easy it is to share files is the one most relevant to me. We live in an era where a decision to share a file isn't really a hard one. We are given the means to share with just a click, and off the file goes to however many millions of people that could use it. In your example of sharing blocks, you lost your blocks when you had to share. With files though we don't even lose our original file!
You covered a lot of bases in your post, an the links and pictures were great. Good post!