The best magazine in the world has posted edition 13:01, including a fantastic article on the BitTorrent effect. For most of us, BitTorrent is a lot like when Marlin decides to jump in the "EAC" with Crush to find Nemo. You may not understand exactly how it works and maybe it's a little dangerous, but it's way cool and will accelerate your journey to digital content nirvana to such a degree that you actually get there.
My first experience with BitTorrent was using BitTornado to download a SUSe Linux distro, and although I'm not sure exactly how, I know that I managed to get a digitally-intact and verified copy of the open source operating system without hurling, much like Marlin. Read up Clive Thompson's take, then check out Brian's BitTorrent FAQ for some quality how-to.