[DECtalk] For Tony, about BitTorrent tracker Mininova.org

Tony Baechler tony at baechler.net
Fri Aug 8 12:43:21 EDT 2008


Hi,

I suggest that you don't compress the archive if possible.  A torrent 
can easily handle multiple files and directories as well as a big single 
file.  As you said, you can add files as new files are uploaded but not 
remove them, so I see no advantage in a huge zip file.  Also, because of 
how torrents work, it makes all the directories immediately as you start 
downloading and populates them with files as they are completed.  This 
easily gives people a way to look at what is in the archive as it 
downloads, but of course the files are incomplete so you can't actually 
play them.  Finally, the bigger the file, the more chance of corruption 
and I really don't want to deal with a 1.3 GB zip file.  Another thing 
to remember is that mp3 files won't compress so zipping won't solve 
anything.

That's great if you want to run your own tracker, but the point of 
hosting one elsewhere is to give the archive more exposure.  The more 
people who know about it, the more possible seeders there are and the 
more interest there is generally.  I won't go into the speech about how 
the blind need to be ambassadors to the sighted who are ignorant of how 
blind people do things except to say that lots of people have no idea 
how blind people use computers and would probably find a singing 
synthesizer fascinating.  I just had my nephew visit and he had no idea 
how I could use a computer.  The other reason why I suggested hosting 
the torrent is that I am reasonably sure that I have more bandwidth than 
Jayson, I want my own copy anyway, and when the torrent is actually 
created, it would have two seeders instead of one.

Jayson Smith wrote:
> will probably do it. Should I zip up the archive as it currently stands at 
> some point, then torrent that?
>   




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