Thanks for giving these challenges such good thought, steev. My 2 cents is as follows:
On reflection, it seems to me that the Weekend Sound Track's greatest strength is also it's weakness. The idea of having nodists from across the planet each contribute a set for a day & time is inspired, and that the global timezones are conspiring to play merry havoc to the plan is true. I don't believe, however, that this is fatal.
For me, the coolest thing is that I get to hear many of my friends and fellow nodist's sets. Being at the arse end of the world, I'm quite used to noding at a reasonable local time but seeing the greater population of E2 at their middle-of-the-night most interesting... &-) Being in a lesser timezone, I adjust, and quite enjoy the incongruities at times.
I say we keep it simple. My vote is for two simultaneous streams, one high-bitrate and one low-bitrate, synched to Server Time. Live Aid wasn't too shabby, and it was run from one timezone with "morning" and "night" music...
The alternative scheme of archiving at ftp sites for manual download etc is fine, I suppose, but to be honest, I will just enjoy the sets in Server Time and later have fun with the CDs.
As far as the actual streaming goes, would it be possible for us to find a kickass streaming ASP and get an account for a week? Perhaps those of us with a few spare shekels could kick in. I'd be up for US$20. That way we'd have plenty of bandwidth, reduced annoying dropouts, and an event to remember...