news@pyramid.UUCP (Usenet News Manager) (08/07/86)
In article <7817@watdaisy.UUCP> gsschaffer@watdaisy.UUCP (Greg Schaffer) writes: >Ken Wellsch (who posted Adventure) is currently off in Europe, so I will try >to respond for him. > I think he hoped that the savings in space, over-rode(?) the >inconvenience to some sites.... WRONG. The real mistake of this approach is that it INCREASES TRANSMISSION TIME. The overwhelming majority of news links already use compress between them; they will be compressing a compressed file -- and it will GROW in size. As for disk storage, there will be a modest saving, since most sites don't compress their news articles on disk. But the hassle of unpacking isn't worth it. I understand that the intentions were good. But it's an incorrect solution. Same goes for this current spate of uuencoded sources. If it's source, then use shar or something similar. If it's binary, then don't post it unless you have to, and then use uuencode. But don't compress that, either! <csg>