🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1990Aug23.200043.17259@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes:
   In article <BOB.90Aug22102618@volitans.MorningStar.Com> bob@MorningStar.Com (Bob Sutterfield) writes:
      A mail-based archive server is an impolite and destructive way
      to distribute large amounts of information, and should be
      discouraged in such applications.

   ...if this message is in response to my request for information
   about mail servers, it doen't really apply.

Yours prompted it, but it's really in response to the general trend.

   What I want to do is to set up something resembling a library
   service within our organization to help avoid duplication of effort
   by various branches.  The transport is already established and
   would be unlikely to send anything beyond our own offices.

You're right - this is unrelated to the subject of my diatribe (:-)
since it doesn't involve other people's money.  In fact, it sounds
like a pretty good idea!

   It seems like this is something that every group with an
   established electronic mail service would need, so I'm kind of
   surprised that the current crop of programs seem pretty much
   oriented towards distributing program sources.

People just haven't generalized the idea yet.  I've toyed with the
idea of using RFC822 envelopes to carry, e.g., SQL queries and
responses...

      Any number of schemes are possible, usually based around a
      reliable file transfer protocol.  

   How would you like to train a few hundred people to adapt to "any
   number of schemes"?  ... they already know how to use a mail
   program for other reasons.

They shouldn't need to adapt to anything they don't already know how
to use.  I was saying that, no matter what users are already using, a
user-compatible scheme could probably be hacked together.

   Virtually every other question of human time vs. computer resources
   these days is answered with "computer resources are cheap".

They're particularly cheap if someone else is paying for it :-) In
fact, Steven Wolff said about NSFnet bandwidth, something along the
lines of `crunch all you want, we'll make more'.

   If mail transport of bulky items is a problem, then perhaps we
   should fix the problem rather than avoiding it.

Telebit Trailblazers and other high-speed modems; advanced compression
techniques; the increasing pervasiveness of the Internet, BITnet,
SPAN, and friends; and other factors are rapidly bringing transport
costs down.  But only one of those types of factors provides
zero-incremental-cost data transfer.  There are still a lot of folks
out there who pay Ma Bell (or whomever) for every minute they use
slinging bits hither and yon.  And if those bits belong to someone
else, they are slung out of either ignorance or the goodness of their
hearts.  In either case, let's not take advantage of the hospitality.