richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (06/22/88)
This is to respond to the ``Binaries on the net'' thread that has Peter's
knickers in such a twist.
First of all, the reason I've been so vehement about my opinions on this
matter is Peter is guilty of overreacting. Mere suggestions from the
news.* groups (which are for discussion about the NET and news software)
Peter has taken as inevitablities. This is not borne out by fact or
experience. To wit:
1) Binaries on the net.
This is one of those great philosophical questions like ``is there a god''.
There have always been binaries on the NET. There will always be binaries
on the NET. This subject comes up every now and again, and came up this
time because of two things:
a) the binaries group for the IBM-PC was made unmoderated. This
was a very bad thing. First because taste and decorum went
out the door - somebody posted a 770K COMMERCIAL DEMO called
``PSPICE''. It wasnt usefull to a lot of people but my oh my
did people notice. Much discussion ensued. (About 771K worth
by my reckoning :-) Secondly, people started posting IBM-PC
binaries, lots of them, whatever they could get their hands
on. It's fine to post a binary of a program you wrote yourself
but to just post everything you find on your local BBS is
just plain idiocy.
b) Somebody else asked for a newsgroup to post Compu$erve ``GIF''
pictures to. Increadably bad idea. First of all, Compu$erve
seems to impose is usual draconian rules and limitiations
as to what you can do with the pictures (whether or not
they are legally binding), and secondly, the information
content per byte of picture is about 10X lower than text.
The result of this would be lots and lots and lots of pictures
of big breasted women being posted. Let's not kid ourselves.
The really annoying thing about this proposal is the proposer
of the group claimed there were already .GIF pictures being
posted in the IBM, Atari, MAC and Amiga groups. Hey hey, is it
just me, or did I miss all the Amiga .GIF pictures ?
The traffic in the IBM-PC group was four times the volume of the next
most volumous group.
So, at this point the collective intelligence of the news.* folks was raised
into a ``anti-binary'' mindset.
Currently there is a proposal underway to move all binaries into their own
heirarchy, so we will have comp.*, sci.* rec.*, talk.*, and bin.*.
This is a proposal made by one person, and supported by three others. It
is very doubtfull this will ever happen. If a USENET site can't handle
the traffic from a binary group, it should drop that group, or buy
itself some more bandwith in the form of a faster modem (Telebit) or
more disk space or a faster CPU. It's as simple as that. The Amiga binary
group is about as tastefull as you can get.
2) Death of the micro groups.
Another fallacy. I can sort of understand why Peter would feel this way.
He only brings in comp.* (and I assume news.*) to his site. When he sees
a note saying ``The net cannot survive with ALL THIS TRAFFIC - the
micro groups have to go''. Yeah right. Two observations here:
A) This happens every now and again when some site runs
out of something - modem time (usually because of
a 1200 baud modem) or disk space or CPU cycles.
The less thinking of sys_admin's then scream in
news.admin: ``My site can't handle the volume,
talk.bizarre HAS TO GO''. You never see the obvious
response: ``Look twit, if talk.* takes up too much
space on your system, dont carry it'' because
the knowledgeable people who say this do it in
private email, like they are supposed to.
B) In reality the net at large has more unused bamdwidth
than anyone suspects, but even if this were not so, one
cannont lose sight of the fact that the NET is a growing
entity, and will continue to grow. In other words, if you
want to remain a part of the NET, you have to be prepared
to grow with it. Life, like the net is not static.
3) The NET is for UNIX, dammit!
USENET may have been invented by and for UNIX, but that is no longer the
case. It runs on PC's, IBM mainframes, Amiga's, all sorts of bizarre
hardware, and while the underlying theme is UNIX, it is, the medium, not
the message, anymore. If the entire backbone decided that only the comp.*
groups would be passed by them (something they are not about to do, BTW)
there would still exists all thise other groups. Out of 9000 systems on
this NET, there exists a large number of people who care bout the net
and have the resources to continue propogating the non-UNIX groups just
as sharks teeth - when one is knocked out, another replaces it, almost
immediately.
So relax. USENET as you know it is not about to undergo any drastic
changes overnight. Technology in the form of disks, memory, cpu's and
modems improving will see to this.
Oh, and since I can't resist a good flame when the oppertunity arises,
Matt Dillon: Where in hell do you get off requesting a discussion between
two people go to email in a POST ? Do you know the cost ? Hundreds
if not thousands of dollars. I checked the Berkely Netiquette manual
and it specifically states, P14, section 4, Para 2: ``Requests for heated
discussions to be moved to Email will not be posted, they will be emailed
to eliminate the massive cost waste you are complaining about''.
--
"Shrimp Ahoy"
richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {backbone}!gryphon!richardUH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) (06/22/88)
Here's a way to keep the heat off comp.sys.amiga.
Post Amiga binaries in comp.sys.atari. 8-)
leefoy@aero.ARPA (Richard Foy) (06/23/88)
In article <4571@gryphon.CTS.COM> richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >.... > they are legally binding), and secondly, the information > content per byte of picture is about 10X lower than text. > The result of this would be lots and lots and lots of pictures > of big breasted women being posted. Let's not kid ourselves. >... > "Shrimp Ahoy" >richard@gryphon.CTS.COM {backbone}!gryphon!richard I agree with your assessment of the relative merits of pictures vs text. However I wonder why this is true. Techncal briefings come to mind. Sometimes one good chart showing a sketch conveys a lot more more information a lot better than do a lot of text charts or verbal statements. I wonder if we the users of teh Amiga have not yet learned to fully apreciate the power of the machine. So when we find a great graphics capability, we tend to use this for emotionally powerful subjects ie for males the subject is females or action type games. Perhaps we need to think a little more about how the technical community can use the graphics and sound capability to deal with the technical world. Any comments? /|\ | The above opinions are all my own. Richard Foy
nsw@cord.UUCP (N Weinstock) (06/23/88)
In article <32674@aero.ARPA> foy@aero.UUCP (Richard Foy) writes: >Techncal briefings come to mind. Sometimes one good chart showing a sketch >conveys a lot more more information a lot better than do a lot of text charts >or verbal statements. > > [ some other stuff deleted ] > >Any comments? > Yeah. It seems like the proposed "Amiga quickdraw" object-oriented drawing format would make the posting of charts, technical sketches etc. fairly economical. I would guess that most diagrams which are not tremendously intricate would be much more compact as a set of object drawing commands than as a bitmap. So, I don't think that technical diagrams would really impact the bandwidth consumed by the group they're posted in all that much. It would be nice to be able to post diagrams easily to the net, but until the standard is established and everybody has a generic reader they got from a Fish disk it won't be all that universally helpful. P.S. So what's the status of that old discussion anyway? > /|\ > | >The above opinions are all my own. >Richard Foy .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ... .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ... | Neil Weinstock | ihnp4!cord!nsw | "I think my cerebellum just | | AT&T Bell Labs | nsw@cord.att.com | fused." - Calvin | .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ... .- -- .. --. .- .-. ..- .-.. . ...
vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) (06/24/88)
In article <32674@aero.ARPA>, foy@aero.ARPA (Richard Foy) writes: > I agree with your assessment of the relative merits of pictures vs text. > However I wonder why this is true. > Techncal briefings come to mind. Sometimes one good chart showing a sketch > conveys a lot more more information a lot better than do a lot of text charts > or verbal statements. The key is the qualifying 'sometimes'. Charts often serve as summaries or as mnemonics. Thus the preceding discussion or shared knowledge in essential. Pictures are neccessary only when the knowledge involved is not shared or when the language being used is unfamiliar. When I hear people taking about the superiority of pictures over text, I wonder how they reacted the first time they saw the standardized 'pictures without words' in traffic signs, safety cards found in aircraft etc. -Nath vkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu
sean@ms.uky.edu (Sean Casey) (06/24/88)
You know, a good compression scheme designed for pictures would help. I
saw an article in SIGGRAPH about this. I'll go look it up.
Sean
--
*** Sean Casey sean@ms.uky.edu, sean@ukma.bitnet
*** The Empire select() Monster {backbone|rutgers|uunet}!ukma!sean
*** ``I'm not gonna mail it, YOU mail it. I'M not gonna mail it... Hey! Let's
*** send it to Rutgers! Yeah! They won't mail it. They return everything.''bakken@hrsw2.UUCP (David E. Bakken) (07/02/88)
In article <4571@gryphon.CTS.COM>, richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: > USENET may have been invented by and for UNIX, but that is no longer the > case. It runs on PC's, IBM mainframes, Amiga's, [etc.] You mean UUCP, not USENET, don't you, Richard? Or has someone ported the USENET software to Amy? -- Dave Bakken Boeing Commercial Airplanes (206) 277-2571 uw-beaver!apcisea!hrsw2!bakken Disclaimer: These are my own views, not those of my employers. Don't let them deter you from buying the 747 you've been saving hard for.
sneakers@heimat.UUCP (Dan "Sneakers" Schein) (07/11/88)
In Message <116@hrsw2.UUCP>, bakken@hrsw2.UUCP (David E. Bakken) writes: >In article <4571@gryphon.CTS.COM>, richard@gryphon.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) writes: >> USENET may have been invented by and for UNIX, but that is no longer the >> case. It runs on PC's, IBM mainframes, Amiga's, [etc.] > >You mean UUCP, not USENET, don't you, Richard? Or has someone ported >the USENET software to Amy? Well I wouldnt say "port", but I would say "programmed something similar". I have been running UseNet and UUCP on my Amiga for about 1 month now. The UUCP software is the work of William Loftus and is available directly from him. The UseNet software is still under co-development by Bill & myself. It uses Bill's UUCP as a basis but is not available yet. (Still in its early beta stage) >Dave Bakken Boeing Commercial Airplanes (206) 277-2571 -- Dan "Sneakers" Schein {ihnp4|allegra|burdvax|rutgers}!cbmvax!heimat!sneakers Sneakers Computing 2455 McKinley Ave West Lawn PA 19609 BERKS AMIGA BBS 24 Hrs - 3/12/2400 Baud Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed are 40 Meg -=- 215/678-7691 those of Sneakers Computing Those who worked the hardest are the last to surrender. (Gary Ward)
egranthm@jackson.UUCP (Ewan Grantham) (07/12/88)
In article <1356.AA1356@heimat>, sneakers@heimat.UUCP (Dan "Sneakers" Schein) writes: :> :> I have been running UseNet and UUCP on my Amiga for about 1 month now. The :> UUCP software is the work of William Loftus and is available directly from :> him. The UseNet software is still under co-development by Bill & myself. It :> uses Bill's UUCP as a basis but is not available yet. (Still in its early :> beta stage) :> :> > Dan "Sneakers" Schein {ihnp4|allegra|burdvax|rutgers}!cbmvax!heimat!sneakers OK, so would someone please tell me how I can get the UUCP software from Mr. Loftus (where do I send the check)? And perhaps info on how to get involved on Beta testing/programming? Thanks, Ewan Grantham -- Ewan Grantham (601) 354-6454 ext.358 ...!uunet!nuchat!amyerg!egranthm or {pyramid or bellcore or tness..}!swbatl!jackson!egranthm I'm not responsible for my bosses, and vice-versa