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Academic Torrents

academictorrents.com

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Re: Academic Torrents

#31

Post by glomph »

runarberg wrote: post #30
_delirium wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one reason I'd prefer that academics just put data into some kind of local university archive, where possible. Many universities provide resources to host scientific data (and have done so for decades, since the days of ftp.dept.university.edu servers), and putting it there makes it more likely that it'll still be there in 10 years. Torrents by comparison tend to be: 1) slow, as you rely on random seeders rath…

Perhaps if universities would robustly seed their staffs and students torrents?

Kind of solves a problem that doesn't exist though doesn't it? It isn't like these universities are crying about bandwidth costs and it isn't like demand is maxing out their upstream.

Re: Academic Torrents

#33

Post by gog »

henryzlo wrote: post #17
TheBiv wrote: post #10

This is really cool. I simply wished that the messaging was more clear and told a story that I could tell to my friends who ultimately are "too busy" to think about the value of this product. Unfortunately "We've designed a distributed system for sharing enormous datasets - for researchers, by researchers. The result is a scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant repository for data, with blazing fast download speeds." Ju…

Thanks for the comment. We've created a shorter "pitch" style presentation for the non-technical / too-busy, which summarizes the benefits etc. in a short several minute description. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JC2d1g9U6HaenGSn_Xvk...

What do you use for the tracker?

Re: Academic Torrents

#34

Post by voltagex_ »

_delirium wrote: post #27
cing wrote: post #7

The team should learn from the ghost-town that is BioTorrents[1] and offer more than just a tracker. [1] http://www.biotorrents.net/browse.php?incldead=1

That's one reason I'd prefer that academics just put data into some kind of local university archive, where possible. Many universities provide resources to host scientific data (and have done so for decades, since the days of ftp.dept.university.edu servers), and putting it there makes it more likely that it'll still be there in 10 years. Torrents by comparison tend to be: 1) slow, as you rely on random seeders rath…

You can have both an use a web seed with most clients.

Re: Academic Torrents

#36

Post by reitzensteinm »

cing wrote: post #7

The team should learn from the ghost-town that is BioTorrents[1] and offer more than just a tracker. [1] http://www.biotorrents.net/browse.php?incldead=1

So, it's quite cheap to get a seeding box from LeaseWeb, in ascending levels of sophistication:

* 100mbps unmetered 2x2tb 39 eur/mo

* 1gbps unmetered 24x2tb 349 eur/mo

* 10gbps unmetered 24x2tb 1089 eur/mo

I'm tempted to grab the first, and open a GitTip account in case anyone wants to chip in towards the second (4tb isn't a lot of space as far as this stuff goes). The third is unlikely to be useful; this stuff is long tail by its nature, so storage is probably more important.

Though in a world containing Google Fiber, would it still be a valuable service?

There's a university box seeding the torrent I'm grabbing (2011 weather patterns), but it still seems to be going quite slowly.

Re: Academic Torrents

#37

Post by mineo »

jsumrall wrote: post #21
nvdk wrote: post #19

this seems to be very focused on US academics, at least that is what impression I'm given by labeling ".edu" addresses. It gives a feeling that these torrents/datasets are of better quality. I'm also missing a catalog on this tracker, some basic taxonomy would be most welcome...

I didn't get that impression. Are you referring to the ".edu" address of the creators of the site? Do you mean people with a ".edu" address, and therefore at an American institution, give you a sense of their work being higher quality?

I think he's referring to the "[edu]" label on the browsing pages (like [0]) which indicates that the uploader has a .edu email address. I'm not too sure about other countries, but at least in Germany, not many academical institutions actually have those, just normal .de ones.

[0] http://academictorrents.com/browse.php?cat=5

Re: Academic Torrents

#38

Post by nvdk »

jsumrall wrote: post #21
nvdk wrote: post #19

this seems to be very focused on US academics, at least that is what impression I'm given by labeling ".edu" addresses. It gives a feeling that these torrents/datasets are of better quality. I'm also missing a catalog on this tracker, some basic taxonomy would be most welcome...

I didn't get that impression. Are you referring to the ".edu" address of the creators of the site? Do you mean people with a ".edu" address, and therefore at an American institution, give you a sense of their work being higher quality?

to clarify: torrents are marked "edu" if the user has a .edu address, this makes those torrents stand out. The majority of non us universities do not offer *.edu addresses to their staff and students.

Re: Academic Torrents

#39

Post by ses »

Projects like this confirm my suspicion that traditional academic publishing is going to take a nosedive in the next few years. Working in this industry as I do, I don't see commercial publishers moving quickly enough to change. Really love the idea of this and can't help but support the general ethos of it, even if it / its descendants will put a lot of us out of a job.

Re: Academic Torrents

#40

Post by blueblob »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #36
cing wrote: post #7

The team should learn from the ghost-town that is BioTorrents[1] and offer more than just a tracker. [1] http://www.biotorrents.net/browse.php?incldead=1

So, it's quite cheap to get a seeding box from LeaseWeb, in ascending levels of sophistication: * 100mbps unmetered 2x2tb 39 eur/mo * 1gbps unmetered 24x2tb 349 eur/mo * 10gbps unmetered 24x2tb 1089 eur/mo I'm tempted to grab the first, and open a GitTip account in case anyone wants to chip in towards the second (4tb isn't a lot of space as far as this stuff goes). The third is unlikely to be useful; this stuff is lo…

That does not sound cheap to me as a graduate student.
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