M> What's the point, M size or online costs ? The point is I don't want to swallow a million sucker bytes. My 20 modem minutes a week are only for downloading good things. I mean even my sink has a strainer for not letting big things down the hole.
One could do wget --no-proxy $url|head --bytes=200000 > file but that wouldn't be as nice as [<URL-SPEC>] maximum-bytes = 200000 whereupon WWWOFFLE could put a message in the header or even body saying that it is truncating at 200000 bytes. M> timeouts ? I mean, it the server isn't responding then you probably M> don't want to waste time and money either ? Timeouts aren't the problem. I hang up the line before another "coin drops into the phone company's coffers" anyway. It's just that the sucker bytes have caused my good bytes download not to complete by that time. There I am, "at one time a near Computer Science Ph.D." left holding a bag of sucker bytes. I got my email spam conquered with a fine tooth comb (spamassassin + procmail), but there I am, (short of http://jidanni.org/comp/wwwoffle/wwwoffle-swat which requires interaction), hanging up the phone only to discover a pile of embarrassing uninvited sucker bytes. Why it's just like I was a Microsoft user, accepting that one's computer is merely only partially under one's control. OK WWWOFFLE is a Ferrari, but where are the brakes? There are timeout setting, maximum process settings, DontGet settings, but no way set an intelligent limit once the bytes start flowing. Never runs out of gas either.
