Regrettably the 3d modelworld site has closed.

Damn What A Shame One Of my Faves, Why Cant People just do the right thing. ( I could definately go off on a rand on this topic) roch222

Sad indication of where the world is at these days. 3D Modelworld was a great site and I'll really miss it, but you never know maybe it will come back. I heard in the Poser forum that this had happened before and they came back. So I'll stay optimistic. Cat

Last time it closed temporarily, but this time they said they are closed permanently and won't be back...

well, a d**n shame, really. But maybe this is a good time and place to ask. What is this mass downloading program thing I keep reading about? How does it work, and why does it close down sites? How can you damage a site that is made for downloading by downloading? I am missing a big chunk of information here. I know the damage that can be done by viruses and the like, but how can a program that allows one to download free items from a site in like a batch command thing where it downloads the items one after one without the user having to go through them one by one by hand (I am assuming this is how they work...I ain't got one anyway) cause problems on the site itself? Please enlighten me.

The problem with a mass downloader is that it sucks up bandwidth really fast by slamming the site hard. Some sites also track who is downloading through cookies or other means and a mass downloader will sometimes block those. Suppose one of these programs is hitting a site hard at the same time 50 other people are trying to get an object...the thing slows to a crawl and the other folks give up. I have some "friends" who have written mass hit scripts for "practice" that have closed sites down in seconds. Of course, that was years ago...cough, cough....

These mass downloaders would be ok if they just took a list of things you actually wanted, like you go there and think oh I'll have those 5 items, but what it does is take everything, from every page and soon nothing else can move. I got to admit I used one years ago when I got my first computer, but I didn't understand what they did until I was in my fav forum and they were talking about how our fav site might shut down because of this and I thought how awful until I realized that I was one of those awful people. Needless to say I have not used one since. Cat

Much of Lannie's site was downloads submitted by several different sites. So I suppose they are still available. Some free stuff there was specific to the site. Hopefully, maybe some of the other sites will carry Lannie's stuff soon. Hasn't anyone invented software for websites that can detect these mass downloaders and kick them off before they can do their damage? AgentSmith, clay, do these jokers run these programs on Renderosity? If so, what happpens? Am I asking too many questions? Huh? Am I? Seriously thanks for being such good listeners. :^)

There are software packages that stop "sniffers and scrapers" but they are typically used more in a business to business environment and cost what you would expect enterprise software would cost...lot's of 0's.

Renderosity is not such an easy target, because the free files are on other servers. :-) I remember Lannie complaining of an idiot leeching stuff, but she said she would talk to her hosting service, to prevent that. And I'd thought that the later system, with specific downloads through clicks would prevented leeching. Unless the directories were wide open... Nah, they were not. tjohn, the way to prevent leeching is to run a black/white list, to protect every file with a different password, to run the download through multiple clicks... The problem is, the leech programs send perfectly legitimate requests to servers. If you blocked them, you would block everything else. There's a way, I think, for instance, if you filter by IP address and if the downloads pass over an amount, the server automatically cuts the download. But that's just guessing, because I'm far from an expert on server stuff. And even if it's true, is it worth the effort?

Don't these things dig down as many levels as you tell it to, ie. follow every link to it's base, and stuff like that? The world seems to be in a sad state in all areas these days, fuelled by greed and malice. Very sad times we live in, sigh Cat

I noticed when I went to the site, it takes you to a page called TutorialHunt.com. When you click on the link "What happened to 3D Model World?" it explains why they closed and mentions a program Download Accelerator and others. I use Download Accelerator (not at 3D Model World which I haven't visited in a long time) to speed up downloading individual files because my connection is so slow. Should I not be using this program if it causes a bandwidth problem or are people using this program for other unintended purposes? I'm using the free version of the program and don't know much about it other than it splits download files four ways to speed up the process. Just curious if I'm using something that I shouldn't be. DSL isn't available in my area and won't be for several more years.

It's one thing when you program the downloader selectively to take only certain files that you might need for a project for instance, but when some of these characters get on there they sap everything available within a site and it just sucks out all the bandwidth allocated for that site for any given time period. This forces the site owner to have to pay extra (by bandwidth consumption after the allocated amount is reached) if that clause is within the contract. If its not within the contract then the host cuts the site off automatically. If you get several individuals doing this at any one given time, you can imagine the amount of stress put upon the bandwidth. The downloader usually allows people with slow connections to download something like 5 files at a time since the connection is slow, the more files you try to download at once, it strains and chokes the connection (bottleneck). If the owner of the site cant afford to keep the site opened and no one is helping to pay for the bandwidth, then what usually happens is that the site is forced to shut down because of a few greedy, must have all, leechers.

I think the one I had years ago was called WebWizard or something like that. When you don't know much about it and you're on a dialup connection it seems to be a great idea, it just appears that lots of folk who are using these programs don't stop using them when they find out what they do. Cat

5 files or the dial-up connections are not that much of a problem. It also depends on the number of nodes that the server for the site has which accommodates the users. People with slow connections linger longer on the nodes. Imagine a sow suckling her piglets. The one slow piglet will hog up the one node. It's the folks with the cable, DSL, T1 and the other large bandwidth connections that can download massive numbers of files while the users sleep. Several large bandwidth connections like these operating at the same time, especially on limited number of nodes, act as virtual vacuum cleaners on the sites bandwidth.

yep... this does suck.... personally I use a download manager. On my slow, dial-up connection at home, if there's five or six items that I would like from a site and each is over a couple of megs in size, then I would be sitting there forever waiting for one download to end so I can get the next file (forget two or more downloads at a time, I just don't have the bandwidth). So I line them up in my manager and download them, one at a time, just as if I was clicking 'ok' myself. That way I can get downloads done while I'm at work, sleeping, etc., and I don't think I use up any more of anyone's bandwidth than if I were clicking the links one at a time myself. (I may be wrong, If so, lemme know). Some others, though, have a different sense of morals, I guess. But last time I was cruising Lannie's, I thought she had changed to a system similar (identical?) to the one used here, to combat unscrupulous users. I know that my manager does not work with the way things are set up here (and Lannie's, last time it was up), so I'm pretty sure that I'm not part of the problem (I hope).

One thing I've noticed is that Download Accelerator doesn't work everywhere. It doesn't work at DAZ where I purchase regularly and I don't think it works in the MP either. It also doesn't work for some freebie sites as well which is why I never purchased the full program. I just wanted to be certain that I'm not using a program that is the enemy.