Although I appreciate that the team at LL is trying to come up with a DVD that will be nicely produced and will contain extra features, I hope that they will consider harnessing the enormous power of torrent file-sharing to distribute some or all of the RAW files.

This will allow LL to distribute the files to thousands of users with minimal load to their own servers. It's a well-proven and very smart technology so how about it, LL?

Torrent works for some people, but many in the more than 100 countries where we have readers don't have high speed access. And even with Torrent, 4.5 GB of files is a huge amount of data to download, even with a high speed connection.

Many people, even those with high speed connections have monthly bandwidth limitations imposed by their ISPs as well.

We prefer to distribute on DVD-ROM. Almost every computer user in the world has a DVD drive, and the disk are inexpensive. $10 plus a few dollars for mailing is no impediment to anyone who wants to have the data.

Michael

I didn't mean that you should drop the DVD, just to offer this as an alternative for those who find it convenient. They can just click on a link and have all the data 1 or 2 days later. Very convenient. Video DVDs have already been file-shared on this network for years so the size is clearly not a problem for many.

Anyway, just a suggestion in case you hadn't considered it already.

It would be so awesome to download the data via torrent. I routinely download 3-4GB of data for Linux install DVDs. It works pretty good. The cool thing about torrent is the more people interested in the data, the faster the downloads. Anyway, I agree that this could be in addition to the physical DVD to spread the data to more people to get the word out.

Please have a thought for those who regularly read your news and tests with immense interest and who do not live in the US or Canada. Here in France I would have greatly liked to get hold of your Raw files, but unfortunately you do not send them, even for an appropriate fee, to countries other than the above mentioned.
What to do?

The Video Journal ships worldwide, what makes you think that it would be different for the Managing Megabytes DVD?

Indeed. Why would you think we don't ship worldwide? We do.

We do not ship to Elbonia though. The inhabitants there will likely eat the disks rather than play them, but it's the exception that proves the rule. (Non-Dilbert fans may safely ignore the previous sentance).

Michael

My mistake then, sorry. But I had clicked on the thumbnail labeled "Estimate Shipping" and what I got(http://img370.imageshack.us/my.php?image=capture181505333nn.jpg) made me react in the sort I reacted. I must have missed something. Will retry. And thanks for the humour...

Even simpler:
YouSendIt<1GB for files up to 1GB (tested).
YouSendIt<100MB for files up to 100MB (tested).

I was about to suggest the same thing. If you care about spreading information more than making money (which in this case is quite appropriate) Bittorent is the way to go.

Michael,

$10 is far to cheap for this crowd.

I think something around $19.99 is in order (and tie it into the price of gas so that it will go
up in price through the summer :>))

Mark

The cost per disk goes down as more disks are sold. If the files are available for free the poor sob that actually buys the disk will have to pay $600 for it.

Not to mention some ISPs are throttling bittorrent traffic down (along with other things) in their attempt to impose their tiered internet horse-[censored]. But that's a whole 'nutther ball of wax.

I too am a bit bittorrent proponent- when it works. It does raise some issues other than what has been mentioned too regarding the youth of the technology. It's still a bit of a geek-toy so to speak and it's debatable how many people would A) use it or even B ) know how to use it. And there lies another issue. Without enough people seeding it, the download speed can drop to mind-numbing slowness or even halt all together.

In order to get it going, or even keep it going long-run there must be people seeding it or Michael would have to set up a series of servers to help seed it out.

How about whoever gets the disc first just start putting the raws up on yousendit in chunks.

Why yousendit when you have bittorrent?

If the files are really useful they'll end up on bittorrent anyhow... How is it a geek-toy when it accounts for one third of the traffic on the net?

Its used mostly for movies and video. Duh.

And then,for fun,Michael and the other testers could (and should) pursue that indiuvidual
for distributing copyrighted material without permission.

Mark

Yeah, those geeks sure love movies, and especially videos.