cscbrkac@charon.unm.edu (Lazlo Nibble) (05/19/88)
If those of you who are arguing that "Binaries are for weenies" (--klee@daisy) would look a little past the Unix boxes on your desks and think about what you're arguing for, you'd realize that -- for PCs at least -- this argument is ridiculous. Sure, YOUR systems come with compilers or assemblers that are reasonably standardized. Pull something off comp.sources.unix and you can be reasonably sure that you've got the tools at hand to make the thing work on your machine. Hell, you HAVE to have the sources in most cases -- there's enough hardware and software differences out there that posted executables in the Unix groups would be virtually useless. But the rest of the world? Come on. Why should I have to buy an assembler or a compiler to use Davex or some other utility of the type that comes over c.b.apple2? A lot (I think it's probably safe to say "most") of the stuff that's coming across in the binaries groups now is stuff for which the sources aren't even legitimately available, and even if the sources WERE available, it wouldn't make much difference for most of us. There's just plain not enough differences between one Apple II and another to make source-posting NECESSARY to get something working on my machine. If you want to argue against *all* code-releated newsgroups for PCs on the net, I'm not going to fight you. I don't see much need for them either -- that's what local BBSes are for, after all. (Though I *do* read c.b.apple2, since things get there quicker and in more variety than the piss-poor local Apple II PD boards seem capable of.) But arguing for source postings *instead of* binary postings is ludicrous where low-end PCs are concerned. I was under the impression that the idea behind these groups was to provide quick distribution for widely-useful public-domain or shareware utilities that people could just pull off the net and use. That would become difficult if not impossible if the binaries groups became source-only groups. By the way, Ken, I don't think I'm a "weenie" just because I don't have or care to spend the money on an assembler or compiler for my PC that I'll never use. This net ISN'T just for Unix users, and I think your implication that those of us who don't make a living of Unix hacking (yet) don't belong here is pretty obnoxious. If you don't like the binaries groups, there's nothing forcing your site to carry them. -- Lazlo Nibble (cscbrkac@charon.unm.edu)
mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) (05/20/88)
The issue isn't particularly whether binaries are good or bad in some
absolute sense, nor whether PC users are weenies compared to the rest
of the Usenet community.
The real issue is whether binary postings are of sufficient utility
to a sufficiently large part of the net to justify their aggrgate
posting costs in terms of money, communications bandwidth, and disk
use on thousands of machines all over the world.
My own opinion is that the answer is "no, they are not." I say this
not because binaries aren't inherently useful to some people -- they
certainly are -- but because the existence of alternate communication
and distribution channels for binaries makes it *unnecessary* to
post them to the net at large in order to get them into the hands of
people who really want them.
To take just one example: the ready availability of Brian Reid's archive
server makes it possible for virtually any Unix machine on the net to
provide a cache of interesting binaries that can be encoded and MAILED
upon request to any site capable of sending and receiving mail (and if
you can read/post news, you can probably send/receive mail!)
Examples of people or groups using archive servers to distribute material
include Brian himself (for alt.recipes), the Sun-Spots mailing list (for
all sorts of things), the X11 developers at MIT (for distributing code
patches), Larry Wall (for all the wonderful toys he's given the net),
one or more comp.sources.* distribution points, etc.
With this kind of distribution mechanism available, it's not NECESSARY
to post large binaries (in multiple parts that get lost, generating an
endless stream of "please repost part 7 of frobnitz" messages). Instead,
one can post POINTERS to binaries -- descriptions of the available
software and email addresses of the archive servers that are willing to
provide it.
A network of archive servers supplying access to large binaries, in the
same way the currently provide access to sources, would have some
considerable advantages:
* The amount of news traffic would decrease significantly, and
we could save the bandwidth for more interesting things.
* The number of repost requests and other noise postings would
drop if people knew how to go get things for themselves.
* The aggregate savings in disk space across the net would be
tremendous. (Maybe my news spool wouldn't overflow once a
month :-)
* We could put an end to the endless arguments in news.admin
about binary postings :-)
So how about it? People have been clamoring about wanting binary news
groups, binary news hierarchies, a GIF images group (imagine the volume
*that* could take!), etc. Does anyone want to take the bold step of
withdrawing the call for a newsgroup and experimenting with an archive
server instead? You'd be doing the net as a whole a service, and maybe
even starting a trend for the future...
--
Matt Landau The happiest cold and lonely guy
mlandau@bbn.com stuck in the Yukon without a dog.sl@van-bc.UUCP (pri=-10 Stuart Lynne) (05/22/88)
In article <11055@jade.BBN.COM> mlandau@bbn.com (Matt Landau) writes: >The issue isn't particularly whether binaries are good or bad in some >The real issue is whether binary postings are of sufficient utility >to a sufficiently large part of the net to justify their aggrgate >A network of archive servers supplying access to large binaries, in the >same way the currently provide access to sources, would have some >considerable advantages: The big problem is keeping track of all of the archive servers. How about a new moderated group called comp.sources.archives. It's primary purpose in life would be a place to send automatically generated monthly posting's containing an ls-lR listing of the archive sites available files, instructions on how to download and any other information which might be required. This would probably cut down on network traffic a *great* deal as the continual stream of "where can I get part 6 of frobozz.hack for the blech?" would be unnecessary. It probably wouldn't create a great of new traffic. Most of the sites that do archiving now do send out these types of messages, they just are not all collected into one spot. With this group the archive information messages in comp.sources.unix and misc could be cross posted for example. The other thing to note is that it isn't necessary to offer a mail based service, but even just making a set of files available in your spool directory with a public uucp account works well. Site omen for example offers rz/sz/zmodem stuff this way. My site van-bc offers uupc sources. I've noticed that now that I know that I can download any comp.sources.unix files from uunet I am much less worried about getting them in the first place. I just track the indexes and pull anything I need and don't have direct from there. Why should I tie up 20 or 30 megs of disk space up with stuff which will probably be out of date before I can get around to using it. A nice uptodate listing of what sources are available and where would be much smaller and usable. -- {ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!Stuart.Lynne Vancouver,BC,604-937-7532
wisner@fenchurch.MIT.EDU (Bill Wisner) (05/22/88)
In article <1778@van-bc.UUCP> sl@van-bc.UUCP (Stuart Lynne) writes: >The big problem is keeping track of all of the archive servers. How about a >new moderated group called comp.sources.archives. And so history repeats itself. I proposed this one three months ago. ..b