Is hotline dead?

I used to run a server back in the day... and I just got a BITCHIN' fast internet connection. I don't use it 95% of the time... have any ideas on what to do?

Carracho was better.

Why not run a massive Internet spamming operation. Fun AND $$$ for you.

Seriously is there something like hotline still around? Or is it all just bit torrent?

mostly bit torrent but some news groups and irc warez still around.

I taught my father how to torrent over Christmas.

Bit torrent is just so.... impersonal. Also, it's more dangerous.

It's not at all more dangerous, if by that you mean getting caught pirating stuff.

One of the reasons why there hasn't been a modern Hotline clone is because the file sharing model is outdated.

I'd much rather have a good tracker with people uploading quality encodings of things than downloading five versions of the file in hopes that one won't suck. Also most of my torrents are faster than downloading from iTunes.

client/server went the way of the dodo a loooong time ago. Hotline was dead even before the demise of client/server. some Carracho servers remained and KDX took the client/server application top spot away from Hotline for a few years but BT is such a more efficient way to distribute files; it scales upwards incredibly well.

I agree. The one thing client/server had going for it was that you had to interact with people on a much more personal level than private BT sites. I ran Hotline and KDX servers and still remember the handles of some of my regulars.

I got TWO cease/desist letters from my ISP at my parent's house a few years back. They were both for downloading stuff on Bit Torrent.

Perhaps I should remind my dad to restrain himself from his mad Eureka/Justified download spree.

I don't touch torrents. Too risky.

Having said that, there's little, if anything, I am interested that I can't access by legal means. Netflix, iTunes, BBC iPlayer take care of most entertainment needs.

Books, I've stopped buying ebooks and went back to paper. I read mostly in the evenings, and staring at a screen before bedtime plays havoc with my sleep patterns. Also, a paper book I own, I don't just buy a license. I can read it, lend it to a friend, sell it on. Amazon would have a hard time deleting it off my book shelf, the way they can from my kindle account.

I am still confused as why I can't get an e-book download code when buying a paper book, the way I get when buying music on vinyl.

Legal? BBC iPlayer. Canada? hmmm

The reason I showed my dad torrenting is because the BBC won't let non-UK users access their shows on iPlayer. It's no fun watching the Christmas Special 6 months later.

I'm very glad DVD makers have finally cottoned on and give digital versions with the bluray.

There are better ways than torrenting to get around the bbc surely?
Did line this years DW Christmas special though. Commander Straxx for his own series please!

My friend and I both downloaded the exact same Game of Thrones torrent file. He got a letter, I did not. He had Verizon, I have Comcast.

Comcast may be very hated, but I've always had no problems with their internet service and remaining anonymous in my, uh, travels.

Before I get pounced on, I would gladly pay HBO directly to stream their content, but they want to stick to the 1980s model of cable subscriptions and selling discs. So I don't care that GoT is the most pirated show of all time, they have only themselves to blame.

iPad iPlayer international. $9.00/month.

iTunes link

A VPN to the UK will give you all the BBC access you need, without worrying about any legal consequences. Cost is about $50/year. :)

From the vantage point of a downloader, it is safer to leech off of a Hotline site or Newsgroup (Newsgroups, AFAIK, being the primo source these days for Bluray rips and other very large files), because ISPs generally look for high upload usage patterns, but if you were to run a Hotline server any ISP looking for high upload usage patterns would shut you down completely in a heartbeat. It would not be in your best interest to run a Hotline server, hoping for complete ISP negligence.

Hotline died about ten years ago.

...and it sucked royally long before that, when admins started requiring people to visit several sponsored links to piece together the password.
that was rare on Carracho, which had the added benefit of being Mac-only, which shut out the nastiest louts from the get-go.

I had a really nice little community going on my Carracho server back in the day.

I was also contacted by an industry representative once who'd looked around and told me that he'd logged my IP address, but wouldn't do anything with it if I were so nice to immediately remove the following pieces of software from my download area:..."

It's nice, albeit I pity those supporting nothing but Windows Media. :screwy:

or this indispensable little application. Which rocks.
Get iPlayer Automator

ISPs don't generally try to find downloaders among their own subscribers - there are legal problems with trying to do so, and they have nothing to gain by doing it. Content owners locate downloaders by going on the same sites as the downloaders, picking a file for download and just watch the other IPs in the swarm. For Hotline/Carracho and similar they tend to focus on the server and getting it down.

Wowowowowowwwww!!!!!!!!

:eek::thumbsup:

I remember Hotline, back in the day. I remember it turning into a giant pain at one point.

I loved hotline. I had a healthy community on my server, I could just "request" something and one of my admins would find it for me, then upload it onto my hard drive. It rocked. :thumbsup:

Hotline was awesome until they released a PC version. Then the whole community went to shit. That's when I jumped ship and switched to Carracho.

It seemed like overnight when the PC version of Hotline was released, the server list was saturated with child porn. Most people switched to KDX or Carracho. Unfortunately neither KDX or Carracho are being actively developed.

Most boards are now run on First Class. It's really shitty looking and horrible to use, but at least it's still being developed.

If you have friend in UK with dropbox account just have them upload it to their acc.

Hint: Doc HM's little tool up there is amazing.

I remember using First Class for that purpose. Wasn't that great.

KDX was a really awesome piece of software, developed by Adam Hinks who created Hotline. It was a shame when he quit working on it.

From what I understand, KDX was horribly, horribly written. No programming guidelines were followed. A complete mess. Later on, a few people tried to update the code, but gave up. Then some people tried to write it from scratch, then gave up on that, too. There was also an effort to update Carracho, but that was canned as well.

I'd put up a Kickstarter for some good BBS software if I thought it had any chance. Would be neat to have something similar to Hotline, except allow files and folders to be gated from one server to another, and use Peer-2-Peer when downloading. Full IBM ANSI support in the News section would be neat. Bring back the good ol' days with a modern twist.

A door game emulator would be icing on the cake. :D

Ditto. Bit torrent is fast, but kinda bad news, and honestly, it's only good if something is really popular. What I liked about Hotline was you could find some obscure stuff. I ran my server and catered to underground ski movies. Just checked the torrent sites, found a bunch... with zero seeds. Neat. Pointless. Old school > this crap.

Why don't you look at the newsgroups?

I've gotten The Letter from Comcast, and I've heard of others too. Maybe the difference was just dumb luck?

USENET is still around but I guess it is mostly worthless.

No way, newsgroups are probably the best place to get very large high quality rips of Bluray movies. Newsgroups are huge.

I wouldn't use BitTorrent per say, just Peer to Peer between servers that link their files. The server itself would still seed, but if you have large popular files, it would help distribute the load. The files themselves would still be physically hosted on a server, it wouldn't be completely peerless.

So sort of like Hotline where you can host your own files, but if 2 people are downloading that same file, it'll share the bandwidth (or if two servers are linked, the two servers will share bandwidth.) However, after you're done downloading your copy, the client would no longer seed.

the only thing Hotline and client/server had over the bittorrent communities now is that it was a more centralized feeling. it forced social participation with other users on the server. Hotline forced the chat open, letting the user see what other users were discussing. a server felt like someone's home; it was your place to put your stuff to share with others.

the BT communities now are huge, with users in the six figures. I remember the most users at once on my server being about 25, with the larger Hotline/KDX servers hitting 60-80. the BT sites have forums and probably an IRC but using those are much more disjointed, with separate protocols: HTTP for content/forum, BT for file transfer, IRC/IM for chat.