[Shotimes] FordCDs.com Site Update

[Jon Heese]

FordCDs.com Site Update:

For those of you interested in my recent post regarding publishing the 
ALLDATA disc images (for service data on all makes and models 1982-2005) 
on the site: rest assured that I am still working toward the cause, but 
I have not yet found a working solution to make these disc images usable 
by the public at large.

On another note, the site has been gaining popularity by huge leaps and 
bounds.  About a year ago, this originally started out as a side project 
to take advantage of some unutilized bandwidth to my dedicated Linux 
server at ServerBeach.  As of this month, traffic to and from 
FordCDs.com routinely fills the 10Mb/s pipe to my server, slowing down 
the whole server (which I use for my personal website, email, and 
BitTorrenting).  Also, my server account is limited to 2000GB/month of 
transfer, and at the current rate, I am headed to use about 2300GB, 
meaning I'll have to pay an overage charge of about 40% over my normal 
bill.  FYI: that comes to about 4600 CD .ISO downloads per month...

Now since I set up the PayPal donation account (about 6 months ago), 
I've received about $50 in donations, and for that I'm very grateful. 
Those of you who know me know that I'm not the type to beg or complain 
about sponsorship; after all, no one forced me to take on this endeavor.

So: I'm going to give it a month, watch my bandwidth numbers (taking the 
site down as necessary to keep them under my limits), and probably 
eventually post a poll to find out how useful these discs are to the 
people downloading them.  In the end, I will likely either a) switch to 
a 100% BitTorrent-based system, b) figure out some kind of "mandatory 
donation" scheme so I'm not throwing away my server bandwidth for free, 
or c) both.

I will keep the lists posted on the changes.  Thanks for making this 
project a success.

Regards,
Jon Heese
http://www.FordCDs.com