[GRLUG] "real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ; ) "

[Ben Rousch]

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Ben DeMott <ben.demott at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it's a really cool idea - lot's of open source projects distribute
> their distributions this way -> and it seems to work quite well.

This works well for distributions because they have a lot of users who
want the data (Install CD) they're downloading and sharing. In the
example initially brought up in this thread, the people joining the
torrent have little to no incentive for downloading the data other
than they are interested in Rosetta Code. Call me a pessimist, but I'd
prefer that the integrity of my backup system depend on more than just
someone's whim to give me hard drive space and bandwidth.

> Thanks for being willing and open to share unique ideas, even if it is
> (just) a thought experiment, I feel people are too afraid to throw out ideas
> for fear of criticism so thanks for helping to break down that stigma.  I
> really would like grpug, and grlug to be an environment that no matter the
> topic or idea people can throw out their thoughts and experiences without
> having to be worried about judgment or criticism.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you here. I would like to see grlug be a
place where people can express their ideas specifically so that the
idea can be picked over by people who know more than I do. If I ask
something on the grlug list, I ask it because I value the criticism of
the people on this list. There is a lot of experience here, and I want
to tap into that. Of course, I'd prefer that people be friendly and
constructive with their criticism, but I also don't want them to not
criticise a silly idea because they're afraid of bruising my ego.

I started GRPUG because I had no experience with Python and I wanted
to learn the correct way of doing things from better programmers with
more experience than I have. When I write some bad code, I want them
to tell me so, and also let me know what I can do to make it better.

> Someone should start a business around this, that is privatized or the
> backbone is dark fiber -> like a CDN, just the content would be large files
> that was distributed for quicker downloads.

I heard of a company doing this a couple of years ago, but I can't
recall the name. This is a different company, but is using the same
idea http://www.symform.com/

-- 
  Ben Rousch
  brousch at gmail.com
  http://ishmilok.blogspot.com/