🚀 go-pugleaf

For things like rich text, non-ASCII characters, I agree that using
encodings that fit into ASCII is a good idea.

However, when it comes to graphics and other binary information in
multimedia news articles, I find this to be too much of a kludge in the
service of old software.

I say, let such articles break on machines with old software.

We're not running the same sort of net any more.  So many links are tcp/ip
now.  What this means is that:

	a) If you're a leaf, and you don't upgrade, you simply don't get
	multimedia articles.  Your choice.

	b) If you're a truly major node, one of the top 100 on Brian's
	graph, you had better have 8 bit clean news software.  But there
	are only a small number of you, so we can manage it.

	c) If you're a non-leaf, your downstreamers will complain to you
	if you can't handle articles they want.  But because so many
	links are on the internet and can be easily moved, what this means
	is that if you don't upgrade, people just switch to other sites for
	their feeds, and you become a leaf, or a site feeding leaves that
	don't care.

	d) If no hub in an entire town of uucp links upgrades, then you
	are stuck.  However, this is a much smaller case than it used to
	be.

Full speed ahead to binary clean news, and damn the torpedos.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366