So, Duke, is there a way around this?

Yes, there is.

For music files, one might wish to keep an eye on the download speed. Those files that have twenty seconds of Living On A Prayer and then three minutes of squealing noise, tend to start downloading at a normal pace, then speed up remarkably after about 500kb or thereabouts. For example, if the file has started downloading at 2 KB a second, then jumps up to 6 or 7 or 9 KB all of a sudden, chances are it's fake. This is why you preview files, by right clicking and selecting play or, indeed, preview. Broadband users will obviously have little way of knowing if the file is downloading too quick, but for crying out loud, it only takes fifty seconds, what's the problem?

The real problems arise when one starts downloading American Pie Part 3 - The American Pie's Get Married, and then spends half a day waiting for the damn thing to finish, not knowing whether or not it is indeed the conclusion to the trilogy about shagging pastry, or if it is some other nonsense entirely. Help is at hand, though, as Andre Jefremov has done the needful and created a free program called AVI Preview, which you can download HERE, and which will do what the title of the programme suggests, which is it allows one to preview a video file. What you do is, you wait till a few megabytes of the file have downloaded, then copy and paste the file from My Shared Folder or whatever, into another folder, possibly titled New Folder (2) or similar. Then, one opens AVI Preview, selects the file in question, and hey presto, the file will load. This means that one can tell if they are the proud owners of The Zombies Attack The Mall, or, by way of contrast, a black screen.

One should also ensure they have the correct codec's, otherwise AVI Preview will not recognise the file, and one could end up deleting a perfectly good copy of Zombie Creeping Flesh for no good reason at all. The latest DIVX codec's can be found HERE, and the latest Windows Media Player can be grabbed HERE.

Of course, the penalty of eternal hell for your P2P crimes can be solved only by a quick jaunt to the nearest confessional, although it is possible that Microsoft are developing a programme to remedy this at present.

For an article on the latest P2P device, see The Duke's Article On Satan-Net

The Duke resides at Mondo Irlando.