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GL Premuim Download Server? Comments wanted 11-May-2008 by Albie (0 comments)
We have always been very against charging people for downloads, but I keep getting emails requesting it, so I thought I'd get some general views on this...
For a flat monthly fee, users would get "Premium" access to all of our sites. Premium access would include:
Main things:
* 250-500 KB/s on all download files (Description: We already have a secret download daemon on our download server that can do this.. It has a global 70Mbit/s limit - the public download server has a 30Mbit/s for about a thousand times more users).. The Premium server will have a 70Mbit/s limit.. So most downloads will reach very high speeds
* Downloads allowed from all browsers (even IE)
* up to 5 simultaneous connections allowed from an IP at any one time (x5 speed using download accelerators OR 5 files downloading at a time)

Other features that are not so important
- No Ads
- No security check on downloads

The price for this would most probably be between US$5 to $10 per month.. payable only through PayPal.

Please post your thoughts & if you think you would ever be interested in this.

Further notes:
VIPs (the likes of master5o1, exp hog, gouki, hinky, amnesiac, and everyone else i've forgotten) would get this free if there were enough people paying. You would also get it free if you refer 3 friends (or 1 month free for every 3 months that you refered)
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GL Contact Us 2-May-2008 by Albie (0 comments)
Most of you know that our email server was one of the big problems on our old server. On this server, we've decided to disable it completely. we have created a GMail account to handle all inquiries, you can contact us by emailing: RomBomb.com@gmail.com
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GL Court precedent & emulation relevance 29-Apr-2008 by Albie (2 comments)
As I spent a year studying law for my business degree, I always like to pick apart court decisions and explain their relevence to you guys.. Here's the latest... http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-993200 ... g=nefd.top

In this case, a precedent has been set. That is - Where files (movies, music, isos, roms) have been personally ripped by you from original media that you own, and automatically shared by programs like limewire, kazaa, etc. This does not constitute an attempt to distribute copyright infringing materials. My impression from the 17 page decision is that the RIAA/ MPAA/ ESA would have to prove that you actually transferred the file(s) to someone (therefore they would be proving distribtion, rather than an attempt to distribute). Creating and uploading a torrent of your files would constitute an attempt to distribute copyright infringing material, however.

Relevance to emulation - If you have a bunch of PSX, GCN, SDC, whatever disks, but no console. You could back the disks up to your PC to play through emulators (this is legal). If you happened to have a file sharing program that found the files and listed them to share without your knowledge, you can argue that the computer was the one sharing the files, not you; and unless the people accusing you of copyright infringement are able to prove that you shared the files, you will be fine on the "attempted distribution" front.

In this case, the judge ruled "Merely making an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work available to the public does not violate a copyright holder's exclusive right of distribution.". This is something that is already part of the law in my country - it was made legal just recently by an act passed into law by the government... At least they can do one thing right (they even went as far to say that you can change the form of media you own so that you can use it in other devices, i.e. CD to iPod, book to eBook, PSX Game to ISO); But I believe this will be important for future cases in the US.

This precedent can be overturned by a judgment in a court higher up, or if the RIAA appeals and wins the appeal.

Unfortunately, there is still mixed opinions in the legal world on whether or not downloading music/roms/movies is a legitimate form of backing up your media; my opinion is that it is - especially for things like books, old gaming cartridges, etc. where it is hard to personally back these things up without special hardware, knowledge or resources. As always, there's no such thing as the "Internet privacy act signed by bill clinton in 1995", it's illegal to possess roms if you do not own the original - even if you delete it within 24 hours, and it's considered copyright infringement to run a rom site. Being unaware of the law is not a legitimate defense.
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GL More bandwidth things 29-Apr-2008 by Albie (0 comments)
Lots of news about bandwidth lately...
My apologies to all who had their downloads cut off over the past couple of hours. I understand your distress.
I just finished blocking a certain site that was abusing our download server. This immediately cut bandwidth and speed usage of the server (you can see the page that leechers get at http://www.emubomb.com/kickass.html

What this means for you:
If the new current bandwidth usage stays steady for a few more days, we will be able to increase the max download speeds.
Will update further tomorrow.

Update:
It appears that kickass.com wasn't leeching from us, but a bot (my guess is that it was designed specifically to waste our bandwidth) was using kickass as a referer. The rickroll provided some lulz for all, but i've set up an access log monitor to catch IP's with a lot of connections, re-enabled human image testing across all sites, and set the download links to die after 30 seconds. Also added some fairly basic anti- script-kiddie code to provide a few more lulz in the future.
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GL Bandwidth Update 27-Apr-2008 by Albie (0 comments)
Hey guys,
Looks like the download server upgrade went well, we are now using double the bandwidth we were before - I've projected a month's worth of bandwidth is now 7500GB, which will cost us about $300 a month on top of the server lease. The amount we are earning from our sponsor, Google, has been unusually high this month - about 1.5 times the old record for most turnover in a month. For this reason, I've decided to just sit and watch the bandwidth for now.

Because our billing and payment schedules are in sync, we will be able to severely limit bandwidth usage, should we not earn enough in a month. So this is just a warning, that the quick downloads you are experiencing now may not last - we make the bulk of our money from people who have never been here before, so start telling your friends and help us out!

Final Note:
We will hit "the wall" at 10TB (or 10 000GB) of bandwidth, After we go over this limit, our bandwidth goes from being $20 for 500GB to $1000 for 500GB - as you can tell, it is then no longer worth keeping the download server up
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GL Update on download system 26-Apr-2008 by Albie (1 comments)
An email to our webhost brought our max throughput (max data being transferred at any one time) from 10Mbits to 100Mbits, meaning faster speeds are now a reality. To limit bandwidth usage, we've capped the max download speed at 50KB/s for now, but I am currently working on a complex rule set that will allow for IE downloads and 200KB/s on our least popular systems (everything but SDC, NDS, N64, GBA, PSX). Expect a few more interruptions in downloads today, but after that, we should have it sussed.

Update:
The new download ruleset is as follows:
Everyone can download the following systems at 150KB/s:
Gameboy
Nintendo
Sega Game Gear
Sega Genesis
Sega Master System
Sega Model 2
Super Nintendo

Non-IE Users can download the following at 50KB/s:
Nintendo DS
Nintendo 64
Gameboy Advance
Sega Dreamcast
Sony Playstation
(IE users will need to use a different browser to get these files)

Please let us know what you think of this. I'm considering allowing IE users a small limit for the popular systems - maybe 15KB/s, for those who are absolutely unable to use a different browser.
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GL Download Server Tweaking 25-Apr-2008 by Albie (0 comments)
For the past couple of hours, i've been messing around the the configuration of the download server. I've shut down all non-essential processes, moved the server to port 80 (the standard for web transfers), and installed a neat little status panel that will let me monitor transfers.

While this has only resulted in a doubling of most download speeds (your download speed still depends on the amount of other people downloading), it does increase stability and we will be able to monitor server load. etc.

Sorry to all those who got corrupt files from me rebooting the server every five minutes.
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GL Server Format 20-Apr-2008 by Albie (0 comments)
Last night at around midnight, the site server, messiah, lost connectivity. I was forced to format it, and backups were restored at about 6am. I just finished ironing out the last of the configuration problems, and everything seems to be running well.
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GL Server Instability & Server Move 15-Apr-2008 by Albie (0 comments)
There are two issues that you need to be aware of with the servers.
Currently everything is on the 'phoenix' server, but this is not handling a double in traffic well, so we recently purchased a second server, 'messiah'. Beginning tomorrow, I will be transferring sites over to messiah, and phoenix will be used as a primary download server. This should speed things up.
Also, for whatever reason, phoenix is being hit with masses of spam - about 50GB a day actually. We are doing what we can to minimise the effects of this, but there will be some instability from time to time. This problem will be fixed after the server transition is complete, as the messiah will use google's mail servers to deal with all mail

That is all.

Update: 17-APR-08
All sites have now been moved over to messiah except for DS-Downloads. I'll complete DSDown in a few days... In the meantime, I'm working on the BETA of our new search engine, http://www.romspider.com
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GL Infrastructure upgrade.. Any thoughts? 8-Apr-2008 by Albie (2 comments)
Well our server is running at about 130% of it's processing capacity (or something like that, i'm not sure how it works). In Spades informs me that when it hits 150%, everything will crash / it will start rebooting itself or something, so we've decided to purchase another dedicated server to deliver the site files (what you're seeing now) and use the current one as a stripped down download server. Before we decide on the final specs we need, I would like to know if anyone has any thoughts on anything they'd like to see. New download sections etc. are not really included in this, as they don't relate to processing capabilities... but new sections/ features are included.
Current plans:
- fix Emulounge.com (we're all sick of the errors)
- add an advanced search engine to the network (i'm going to use an index table for words, rather than rely on mysql to sort things out)

Also, keep up the submissions to the Idea Pool topic, we're watching!

Please also note that I believe the email server is down. If you need to contact us, please post on the forums until the server switch is complete.
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