From: Leon Brocard Date: 14:48 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: SourceForge's download links I think SourceForge is the only site that manages to get the simple idea of letting people download files horribly wrong. If I'm in a download section, and I click on a filename, it should let me download the file. Not a very tricky concept to grasp, you might think. Fairly simple UI design. See file. Click file. Get file. But no, if I click on a file on SourceForget, I get a page saying "You are requesting file: /foobar/quux-1.2.0.tar.gz. Please select a mirror". Errr, hello? No, I just want the file. I don't care if you have mirrors, we have computers which can reasonably guess about mirrors which might work for me. So I hate it a bit, and then I click on a mirror. What does it do? Of course I don't get the file, no, I get another page telling me what I clicked on (errr, I know). And I have to wait 5 seconds for META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="5; URL=http://... to do its thing. Of course, I almost never want to download to the computer my browser is running on, so I abort that, copy the link and use wget. Having to use SourceForge is hate enough, but two extra links for no reason. HATE. Leon ps I did mean it about the previous hate, but I'm slowly recovering
From: Juerd Date: 14:51 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: Re: SourceForge's download links Leon Brocard skribis 2005-02-03 14:48 (+0000): > Having to use SourceForge is hate enough, but two extra links for no > reason. HATE. Yeah, it's really great to have to download 150 kB worth of HTML, images and ads to access a 4 kB file from a mirror. Using mirrors really reduces bandwidth usage! Sure... Juerd
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 20:39 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: Re: SourceForge's download links On Thu, Feb 03, 2005 at 02:48:36PM +0000, Leon Brocard wrote: > I think SourceForge is the only site that manages to get the simple > idea of letting people download files horribly wrong. Oh no, Fileplanet has trumped this. To download something from Fileplanet, from Gamespy for example, you click on the download link. Do I get my file? No. First I have to register and log in! Don't worry, registration is quick and free. All you have to do is give them a username, your email address and a password. Oh and your date of birth. And your gender. Postal code. And country. And skip past a whole bunch of profile gathering crap, but don't ignore it all because if you're not careful to uncheck a few key boxes you'll find yourself signed up to one daily and three weekly spam^Wmailing lists. Now can I have my file please? Nope. Welcome to the dreaded high lord of all idiotic mirroring systems, the fileplanet download queue. You are presented with a list of high-speed servers, their location and their wait time. Wait time? Yes, fileplanet servers have queues. No worries though, the wait time on all those high-speed servers is "NONE!" Great! Oh, I'm sorry. Are you not FilePlanet Subscriber? Did you not pay $6.95 a month? You can't use these gleaming examples of 21st century technology. You have to use the public servers. As you scroll a bit further down the page to find the public servers you realize that "public server" is said with much the same tones as "public bathroom". "Wait Time: 43 minutes". "Wait Time: 27 minutes." "Wait Time: 23 minutes". But I just want a 1 meg patch file!!!! With a resigned sigh you click on the download link. A window pops up and perhaps you go off to make a sandwich while your computer sits in the queue. Coming back 20 minutes later... what do you mean I'm not in line?! Amongst all the text in the window, with such informative information such as the reasons why FilePlanet was unable to violate your browser with the FilePlanet Download Control, is crammed one very important line. Its another link you have to click on to get into the queue! Clicking on that you are now in the queue. Which means you are not in the queue yet. You are now told that the public server is full, thanks for the tip THEY'RE ALWAYS FULL, and that there are 236 happy people downloading with 197 waiting in line ahead of you with an estimated wait time of... oh its not 23 minutes anymore now its 37 minutes. Would you like to subscribe to fileplanet now? Its just $6.95/month and you could jump right through all this nonsense. One final click, a meta refresh and you're finally in the queue. For real. A nice little refreshing window keeps you up to date as to how far you've slogged ahead in the line and how much longer this gulag will last. There's even the option to ring a little bell when your download is ready because there's just one last hurdle to leap over. You can't walk away at this point, oh no. When you finally reach the head of the queue you have to click on YET ANOTHER LINK to download the file. So let's take a tally. Click. Registration with default mailing lists. Click. Click. Click. Wait queue. Click. Registration, mailing lists, 5 clicks and a poorly implemented wait queue. This is nothing new. Fileplanet has always been this way. As I'm an optimist I want to believe that this is all a maniacal scheme to drive folks to come to the decision that $7 isn't worth all this and sign up for FilePlanet's protection racket. Because the only alternative is a dark distopian world where someone believes this is a good system. The best that can be done to manage their mirrors and handle their high load of slobbering gamers wanting the latest "Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball" [1] trailer. Yours in hate. [1] Why no, I only wish I had the genius to have made that up. http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/dead-or-alive-xtreme-beach-volleyball/5556p1.html?fromint=1
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 21:06 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: Re: SourceForge's download links You're too kind. > point, oh no. When you finally reach the head of the queue you have to > click on YET ANOTHER LINK to download the file. Which you don't notice, so it times out, and you have to start over. > So let's take a tally. > > Click. > Registration with default mailing lists. > Click. > Click. > Click. > Wait queue. Walk away. Come back. Discover you timed out. Click. Click. Click. Wait queue. Attend to child with cut finger. Get back. Discover you timed out again. Click. Click. Click. Wait queue. > Click. Forget what you wanted the file for. Stick it in "Downloads-ToDo". Go do something actually productive until you remember what that was all about. Next time, bribe kid to download it.
From: Smylers Date: 22:47 on 03 Feb 2005 Subject: Re: SourceForge's download links Leon Brocard writes: > ...if I click on a file on SourceForget, I get a page saying "You are > requesting file: /foobar/quux-1.2.0.tar.gz. Please select a mirror". > [much snippage] Of course, I almost never want to download to the > computer my browser is running on, so I abort that, copy the link and > use wget. It's even worse than that if you forget the system. I tend to remember how irritating SourceForge is in general enough to avoid it where possible, but that only means I get tripped up by the same thing whenever encountering it is unavoidable. I tend to start by using my browser to copy to the clipboard the URL from the link that's apparently to the filename, then use wget to download URL to the server I actually want the file on. That results in the HTML 'pick a mirror' page being downloaded to the server, with a .tar.gz extension. I then spend some time wondering why tar can't process the file, before examining it in an editor, realizing what's happened, and trying to click 'Undo Close Tab' enough times in my browser to get back to the page that had it on, which I closed while the file was downloading. > ps I did mean it about the previous hate, Good! > but I'm slowly recovering That's a shame -- I was hoping that it might've been sufficiently contagious that we'd all give up on computers ... Smylers
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