Talking about torrents is okay. Just as long as you're not talking about illegal torrents, such as pirated software, movies, or music.
Torrenting is pretty simple. Its a P2P based system. It works in the following way. The first person puts the file up in question. He then puts out the torrent so people can download it. He is now "Seeding" the file.
Now the first person to download has a download speed limited to the first Seeder's uploading limit. Once he finishes downloading the file, if he leaves his torrent program open, he also starts seeding the file.
The more people to download the file and seed it, the faster other people can download it down the line. Its typically common courtesy to seed every file you download for at least a week.
Now people who haven't finished downloading the file, but have any percent of it downloaded, are Leechs. You can download up to whatever they have, from them. So if you download a torrent and it only has leeches and no seeds, you won't be able to finish the file until someone who has the completed file seeds it.
Example: John finishes his MegaSuperDuperModV4, he puts it out on major downloading sites, He also creates a torrent of it and starts seeding it.
Bill Starts downloading. His speed is limited to John's connection. Bill finishes and their are now 2 Seeders. Daniel starts downloading, his speed is a mix of John's and Bills, depending on which parts of the torrent he is getting from who. Now Daniel gets to 95% when John and Bill go offline for whatever reason. Daniel is stuck at 95% until John or Bill start seeding the file again. Finally Chuck starts downloading the file too, he can download up to 95% from Daniel, but he also must wait until John or Bill start seeding again.
Also due to built in Hash Checkers in good torrenting programs, such as Bittorrent, its hard to add viruses to files, unless their was a virus in the original file.
So the pro's and cons are:
+It's fast if there are alot of people seeding the file.
+Its mostly secure
-It can be slow; or not finish downloading due to low seeders or leechers.
-still chance that a virus will weave its way in.
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