Re: ASIMOV GS SITE

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Todd P. Whitesel writes ...
> 
> Slick <PAYSlick_RCBD@hotmail.com> writes:
> 
> >pirate sites often require people who download to also upload software.
> >This was supposedly true with BBSs as well. Leechers are people who
> >don't upload after downloading lots of stuff. I could be mistaken, but I
> >think that is how he described warez sites.
> 
> Correct. Warez sites often have a "bank account" counting how many K you
> have uploaded vs. how much you have downloaded. Leeches are those who have
> "overdrawn" their bank account.
>

 ....

     Actually, that was standard practice for many non-pirate BBS's. As
a check of Ground will show, there is an enormous quantity of
non-commercial A2 software. This is the kind of stuff most A2 BBS's
maintained and the stuff most users were uploading for credit.


 
> A decade ago when I was in high school, warez bbs's were generally always
> run like this. In the days when 1200 baud was fast, and multi-line bbs's
> were unheard of, you really cared about letting as many different people
> use the system as possible. That meant preventing people from sucking your
> entire site over the phone line for hours and hours. Hence the term leech.

 ....

     No doubt, Asimov-GS would not mind getting uploads; but, according
to a friend, this was not the site's reason for the "leech" notice.
Evidently, a few persons were doing 20-30MB 'grom everything at once'
downloads. This turned out to tie up the system for hours and block
access to many users who started posting "can't connect to Asimov-GS",
etc. notices to Csa2. The Asimov-GS site manager was, mainly, interested
in opening things up to more users.  

     I do not know how much downloading qualifies one for Leechhood. A
guess would be that a connection exceeding 20 minutes is probably
getting close. 



Rubywand