jbuck@epimass.UUCP (Joe Buck) (08/28/86)
In article <3313@brl-smoke.ARPA> bogstad@brl.arpa (William Bogstad (JHU|mike) <bogstad>) writes: > First, I would like to thank Glenn for keying in the original >Senate Bill 2575. I recently received a copy of the changes made >on August 12th and have merged them into the original posted by Glenn. >The uuencoded, compressed, context difference file of these changes >have been posted to net.sources. It seems appropriate that I read this announcement in net.crypt. Pardon the volume, but PLEASE DO NOT POST COMPRESSED AND UUENCODED TEXT. First, doing uuencode causes a 4/3 expansion, so you've already thrown away most of the advantage of compress. Second, most sites already compress all news before sending it over a phone line. Compressing text twice often leads to EXPANSION. Third, many sites on the net don't have uuencode/decode, though public-domain versions are available. These people will all post articles to net.sources (the wrong group) asking for uuencode. Fourth, it prevents people from using their favorite news interface to read the text. Fifth, a lot of new users will write and post asking "what's this gibberish? what's uuencode? what's compress?" Several already have. uuencode should only be used for binary files. I don't intend to flame anyone because the intention was good. But it increases, rather than decreases, phone costs. If on the other hand, you read this and still do it, I hope you have an asbestos suit. Followups have been directed to net.sources.d. Sorry for the wide distribution, but I was afraid I'd miss someone who'd do the same thing again when the bill is revised. -- - Joe Buck {ihnp4!pesnta,oliveb,nsc!csi}!epimass!jbuck Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, California