On 3/14/06, John Summerfied <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I believe bittorrent doesn't force you to share, but then I've not used it.
The clients I have seen do share the portion of the file you already downloaded while you are downloading the last bits and pieces. When I downloaded the CentOS DVD it turned out I was the only one doing so at that time so there was nobody to upload to (and the 3 mirrors had the full file and did not need my contribution). We've been there. FTP used to be a popular way to download illegal content, so we could not use FTP in the company (other than through a authenticated proxy that logged all traffic). When I did the statistics of the e-mail backbone I found that a lot of mails were 1.44MB in size originating from various bitftp servers (youngsters: that's the size of what we called HD floppy). I expect that some day we will go and educate users about illegal activities rather than block ports for everyone. Given the audience, I think it would make sense to host the CentOS download on an FTP or HTTP server as well but that's not up to me. If you're not able to get yourself an ADSL connection and a spare PC for this, you can buy from someone who did. I see that http://www.cheeplinux.com/ explictly lists the s390 and s390x CD's (you want to make sure not to get the obvious default) at GBP 10 per set, but there may be places that are wiser w.r.t. shipping cost. Rob -- Rob van der Heij Velocity Software, Inc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For LINUX-390 subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: INFO LINUX-390 or visit http://www.marist.edu/htbin/wlvindex?LINUX-390
