MacGUI Downloads gone

[Phipli]

I agree regarding his site, or anyones, but it would be nice if his reasons were clearly stated or made sense. There will always be entitled people.


I wouldn't, personally. We are adults here and I don't feel like this has gotten disrespectful. The theme is mostly confused from what I gather.


It's also other people's choice to point that out, especially respectfully. For me, true friends are the ones who ask you the hard questions or tell you what you might not want to hear when you aren't acting logically.

I'd love to have a real talk with him regarding his reasoning, but for now I've withheld from posting in the google group. I walk by the guys name on my bookshelf multiple times a day, it's not like I have a personal dislike for him. I'm just confused as to why he did this and what he thought could happen as a positive result (if that was thought through).

Complete understand, my comment isn't aimed at anyone in particular and I don't think the thread is nasty...

I'm just worried that if I read it about me and was feeling like they must be feeling, I'd be upset.

I assume we're all grateful that they've been hosting old and rare software for decades. Its awesome to see new software being produced. There are positives as well as us being disappointed to have lost an awesome resource.

People do things like this when they have general pressures in their life beyond what we're seeing. I'm hugely sensitive to criticism these days because I'm running 5% above or below the despair line most of the time. It makes me over react to things I shouldn't and hurts me more than anyone else, but also makes me behave in ways that are not appreciated by others.

 

[Skate323k137]

That's honestly really compassionate and mindful. And I didn't take anything personally just in case you thought I may have.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Was the downloads section a single download archive, or was it individual files that one could download?

Just curious because I hadn’t been to the site before reading of this all here.

 

[joshc]

Was the downloads section a single download archive, or was it individual files that one could download?

Just curious because I hadn’t been to the site before reading of this all here.

Individual files/pages with information for each software title, organised by category.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

So it's probably best to avoid scraping his site, as he'll just stop it.

Yeah if/when it does come back up I wouldn’t go all at once or anything like that, would pace it so as to not overload the site or anything, probably over several days or weeks depending on how large it is.

 

[Phipli]

Yeah if/when it does come back up I wouldn’t go all at once or anything like that, would pace it so as to not overload the site or anything, probably over several days or weeks depending on how large it is.

Its big. It was over 10GB ten years ago.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

10GB isn’t that much space, but yeah if that’s spread out across a bunch of small files then that is a bit large. I suppose we’ll have to see if they put them back up.

 

[Phipli]

10GB isn’t that much space, but yeah if that’s spread out across a bunch of small files then that is a bit large. I suppose we’ll have to see if they put them back up.

It is when people usually download 100k files and then 5 people scrape 10GB. That's a huge uptick in traffic.

It would likely push him past his ISP or host's limit if too many people did it.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Yeah I suppose so. I’d probably only grab a handful a day. No matter what though I think he’s going to have a bandwidth rush if/when they come back as people who were meaning to grab “x” file will all go to do so.

Like others have pointed out, you just can’t trust the stuff to stay up long-term if something like this has happened.

 

[joshc]

He is still sending out up to date DVD copies of the site so that'll be the easiest way to obtain a copy of the site rather than trying to scrape it.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

For free? Hope someone dumps the DVDs and archives them then.

 

[Phipli]

Like others have pointed out, you just can’t trust the stuff to stay up long-term if something like this has happened.

Welcome to the internet. This isn't specifically this site. We've lost about 3 retro Mac sites in the last few years.

Hardly any of the sites we used in the early 2000s are still there. Damn, the great Geocities purge of 2009... We lost a lot then.

For free? Hope someone dumps the DVDs and archives them then.

Why should he do that for free?!

 

[joshc]

For free? Hope someone dumps the DVDs and archives them then.

I presume not, why would he do that for free?

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Not sure… it wouldn’t make much sense wouldnt it.

Thought that because people said “he’ll send a DVD set” instead of “he’ll sell people a DVD set”.

And yeah web preservation is really so important nowadays. Old web’s fading fast. Stuff like zone6400 and others…

 

[Crutch]

I think it’s great if he’s selling the DVDs and hopefully making a few extra bucks from doing so. I am going to ask if I can buy a set. I also hope the Vault comes back online.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

For free? Hope someone dumps the DVDs and archives them then.

I already mentioned earlier I have a contact that is receiving a DVD set, and they will be uploading them to an archive site (like Macintosh Garden or archive.org).

No need to panic.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

Okay, so there is a concern now.

The DVD sets are apparently from a backup done in 2015, so missing roughly 7-8,000 files.

He charges $20 per DVD set for people in the US. More for overseas.

Not sure if the motivation to only provide a set of files that are from 8 years ago.

 

[joshc]

 

[Quadraman]

Try Internet Archive. If it's ever been available for download, they probably have a copy of it, without copy protection. That's probably why they shut down.

 

[Phipli]

Try Internet Archive. If it's ever been available for download, they probably have a copy of it, without copy protection. That's probably why they shut down.

Doesn't look that way. I suspect their robots file said no scraping.