From: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 03:13:10 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: 2nd reposting of a response to Enzo Michelangeli (on crypto archives)
Message-ID: <36715D15.D0C67C2D@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Note: There was some technical problem since yesterday to cypherpunks
postings, so that my posts to the list didn't result in copies back to 
me. This morning I reposted these, again without success. An hour
ago Igor Chudov informed me that the problem was solved and I have
just verified this with a test message. I am therefore reposting 
once again one of my posts of yesterday here (not exactly identical
to the original, being reconstructed from memory). It is a response 
to Enzo Michelangeli. Please ignore it if you have already seen it.

Enzo Michelangeli wrote:
 
> It would be helpful if the list included the approximate size in Mb of each
> archive. I'm making arrangements for some mirrors here in Hong Kong, and I
> need an estimate of the space needed.

I don't know. But a number of years ago I accessed some archive sites 
of software for processing of Asian languages. From that and the
fact that modern disks have become much bigger in capacity and cheaper,
I suppose that storage shouldn't be a bottleneck.

I like to take the opportunity to mention a non-trivial issue that
happens to have refreshed my attention by a reader's letter in a
computer journal, namely that software at public archives could be
infected by virus. I suppose one should give this potential risk
some consideration, since in the present context there could be
some third party particularly interested in disrupting the goals
of crypto archives.

Another point I like to raise is what to archive, i.e. whether only
program texts (which are small) or also executable files, and how
to let the archive contents be up-to-date. Related to this is
whether the archive owner has to fetch everything himself or there is
also a directory for uploading by contributors (this is the case
with the archives I mentioned above and is sensible for new software
and for updates.)

M. K. Shen