DO NOT put more "SoundSamples" on cco.caltech.edu

[toddpw@cco.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)]

The next time I see a 10 megabyte directory of sounds on cco.caltech.edu
I will delete it just as fast as I deleted "SoundSamples" this time. There
is a reason I deleted it the first time; it does not justify the space it
occupies. There are plenty of other FTP sites carrying sounds, and it is
extremely wasteful to store multiple megabytes of non Apple II specific
data in an Apple II specific format in a hierarchy dedicated to Apple II
specific material. This "CANYON" thing in the uploads directory had better
be damn impressive, or else it will be summarily nuked as well.

I'm sorry, but the days of cavalier archive bloating on CCO are over.
The pub/apple2 hierarchy is currently 55 megabytes (after I wiped the
SoundSamples directory again), down from _80_ which it was a month ago
when the admins sent me an ominous little email asking me how big the
archive was getting. Back when pub/apple2 was 20 or 30 megs, no one cared.
But it was and still is easily the second largest directory in ~ftp/pub,
and the only thing bigger is X11, which a lot of people want. In fact,
I am surprised that virtually no one noticed or said anything, because
I wiped a lot of stuff, some of which was not bad at all. But 10 megs
of data that does not need to be on CCO simply will no longer be on CCO.

The original idea for tybalt/CCO was to maintain all the really cool stuff
and the unique things that you might not be able to find at the standard
archiving FTP sites. Stuff that is not Apple II specific should mostly stay
on _other_ sites, with enough data files on tybalt/CCO to get somebody
started and whet their appetite when they download something like
NoiseTracker for the first time. Once they get serious, they had better
learn to look on other sites for the mass quantities anyway, so there is no
reason to keep redundant copies in pub/apple2.

If you think this is harsh, then here is something you should know: the
pub/apple2 directory is larger than the free space available on its disk.
Every other pub/ directory (besides X11) is less than 20 megs, and most are
less than 10. Be glad we have not been ejected from Caltech yet.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ cco.caltech.edu