Oolite Bulletins

Just so it's covered -

Be sure to check the licenses of each of those OXP's to make sure you can distribute them in such a method. You may or may not be able to do so. And no license does NOT mean you can do whatever you want. It actually means the opposite.

CheeseRedux wrote:

...I've been toying with the idea of utilizing this snazzy feature that has been included in the world's best browser for some time now.

Oh, I didn't know Lynx had that feature...

CheeseRedux wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

Oh well… I’ll keep them in my box, just in case. I couldn’t find S-Ships, though.

They are cleverly disguised as "Selezen's S-Ships" on the wiki. And the dowload worked for me, so I now have a local copy.

Speaking of local copies:
I've been toying with the idea of utilizing this snazzy feature that has been included in the world's best browser for some time now. Though I haven't really tested things out, it appears to me that it would allow me to open up my anything-oolite-related-ever-downloaded folder to anyone with the correct password. If we had a small cluster of those, it would pretty much ensure other options if the main download location crashed.

It seems to be less complicated than setting up your own FTP server or what have you, but it requires that you leave your desktop always on. To have our own P2P network would be nice, then the load would be spread and it wouldn't matter if a node is down as long as there are others.

CheeseRedux wrote:

They are cleverly disguised as "Selezen's S-Ships" on the wiki.

Fiendish... no wonder I couldn't find it.

Cmd. Cheyd wrote:

Just so it's covered -

Be sure to check the licenses of each of those OXP's to make sure you can distribute them in such a method. You may or may not be able to do so. And no license does NOT mean you can do whatever you want. It actually means the opposite.

But of course.

As with so many of my ideas, the time from idea being formed to idea being implemented can be pretty close to infinite. And before I'd actually go ahead and do such a thing, I'd naturally check the legalese side of things.
Without having dived into that side of things, my initial - and admittedly uninformed - view is that if I'm allowed to give you the OXP on a memory stick or as an email attachment, I'm allowed to use the Unite feature. Since the whole thing requires a password, it is actually far more restrictive than uploading to eg box.net.

Edit:

maik wrote:

it requires that you leave your desktop always on.

Yeah, that is why a small cluster of those would be good. If one is down, try the next.

maik wrote:

I put the remaining ones up on box.net now as well. As far as I can tell there is no dependency on Oosat2 from the Wiki anymore. Rest in Peace, we barely knew ye.

I went through the OXPs from the other end (read: the Wiki) as well and found a few that still were hosted on oosat2. As the corpse was still warm I took them out and put them on the box, too.

maik wrote:

I went through the OXPs from the other end (read: the Wiki) as well and found a few that still were hosted on oosat2. As the corpse was still warm I took them out and put them on the box, too.

Good job, maik!

When possible keep Oosat2 links as well, assuming it will still be running in a year...because for some awful reason, theBox could go down -- if only briefly.

Switeck wrote:

When possible keep Oosat2 links as well, assuming it will still be running in a year...because for some awful reason, theBox could go down -- if only briefly.

Mmh, the more mirrors the merrier I guess .

I don't have much faith in oosat2 though. While the files have been accessible most of the time, the actual site has been broken since at least the time I joined in March this year. That just doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence...

maik wrote:

I don't have much faith in oosat2 though. While the files have been accessible most of the time, the actual site has been broken since at least the time I joined in March this year. That just doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence...

Oosat2 is defunct since 2007. We only have an OXP list on the Wiki, because Oosat2 stopped working and its code-base was broken beyond repair.

Much of the stuff that once was on it is still accessible, as long as you know how to do it (you must not use the broken-beyond-repair domain oosat.alioth.net, but its mirror oldsat.alioth.net, onto which Winston managed to copy a lot of the data after oosat went down). For me it is still a valuable resource for OXPs and stuff from the "middle" time-period of Oolite (the stuff from the "old" period is still on Oosat1, and the "new" stuff obviously available through the Wiki).

However, I have noticed that chunks of it have been bitten off over time. The total number of nodes which still carry content is shrinking over time. There are more nodes now than there were two years ago which lead to a "file not found" type of error.

Commander McLane wrote:

Much of the stuff that once was on it is still accessible, as long as you know how to do it (you must not use the broken-beyond-repair domain oosat.alioth.net, but its mirror oldsat.alioth.net, onto which Winston managed to copy a lot of the data after oosat went down)

Good pointer, thanks! Will get my brush and pincers and do some archaeological work!

Edit: I arrive at a page not found and the links in the menu on the left produce the same kind of errors as I get on oosat.alioth.net.

maik wrote:

Edit: I arrive at a page not found and the links in the menu on the left produce the same kind of errors as I get on oosat.alioth.net.

That's because the site was mirrored wholesale. The links were untouched and are still pointing to the non-existing "oosat.alioth.net". You have to replace the string "oosat" with "oldsat" in the browser's address line every single time you want to access something.

To rephrase: the site is completely and utterly destroyed (and not since February this year, but for more than four years now; it crashed in September 2006), and you cannot expect any link on it to work anymore.

You have to know its basic file-structure, which is that each page forms a "node". Whatever node contained the front page, doesn't exist anymore. You simply have to try which nodes do still exist by addressing them directly and manually in the form of "oldsat.alioth.net/node/1", "oldsat.alioth.net/node/2" etc. That works until up to node 119 with a few blanks (= "page not found") in-between.

By looking at who uploaded a specific OXP you get also a good idea about its author, except for those which were collectively uploaded by Winston in March 2006, after the first version of the site had crashed. But Winston usually also included the information who made or uploaded the OXP in the first place.

Commander McLane wrote:

By looking at who uploaded a specific OXP you get also a good idea about its author, except for those which were collectively uploaded by Winston in March 2006, after the first version of the site had crashed. But Winston usually also included the information who made or uploaded the OXP in the first place.

I already did this, based on the archive.org copy (see above), so we're now down to only two(!) OXPs that do not have author information (G-HUD Mk2 and Phoenix)--if someone knows the authoritative answer we can fill those blanks as well.

May I point you to the Anarchies readMe for one of them:

Featured Stations and Ships

...

6) The Salvager Phoenix. Defense ship of Salvage Gang and Renegade Station, and scavenger. Modelled by Cmdr Wyvern for phoenix.oxp and taken from that OXP. Salvager logo was added to the original texture.

Commander McLane wrote:

May I point you to the Anarchies readMe for one of them:

Featured Stations and Ships

...

6) The Salvager Phoenix. Defense ship of Salvage Gang and Renegade Station, and scavenger. Modelled by Cmdr Wyvern for phoenix.oxp and taken from that OXP. Salvager logo was added to the original texture.

Thanks, only one to go!