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

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Sun, 2010-02-07 at 15:23 -0500, Ben Rousch wrote:
> 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.

+1, this sounds to me like a rather dodgy form of backup, not all that
much better than when people can copying-to-another-drive "backup".

But there may be a kernel of a good idea.  If you have n data centers
that need backup capability [meaning off-site reliable storage] each
contributing some storage to a private cloud and peering would seem like
a good idea.  Of course [having tried this] negotiating that in reality
is rather unlikely.

> > 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.

And I've seen his code...  Yikes!  It is almost as bad as mine - which
is scary.

> > 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.

The concept of "dark fiber" is almost entirely mythological.  There is a
lot of unused fiber capacity but that doesn't make it any cheaper to
connect to.

> 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/