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Date: Tue, 19 Dec 1995 11:17:42 EST From: John Dowdell <71333.42@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Re: Attachments"John Doe", after a number of prefatory posts, begins a 40K+ one on Dec 18 with the line,
"Okay, I'm sick and tired of waiting for a response from my web page provider, so I'm going to post it to the list. I've gotten many requests, so I figured this would be about the best way to distribute it... It's small (40 KB), so it shouldn't take long at all to download," and closes with, "Please don't write me complaining about my posting an attached file to the list! I understand that some of you don't want it, but please, I won't make a habit of this...."
Take off those scarves and thick outer socks, kiddies, 'cause Unca John is gonna build a nice, roaring fire here....
Let's see, last I checked DIRECT-L went out to 1700 sites. Some of these are mirrored or group accounts, so we can assume, very conservatively, that at least 2000 people received yesterday's message. At 40K each, that's about 80M of hard disk space you've consumed, around the world.
Or, looking at time resources instead of space resources, a 28.8k modem with clean lines would take about twelve seconds, while slower or noisy lines could take just over two minutes. Very unscientifically splitting the difference and calling it a minute, that's 2000 minutes, or about 33 hours removed from the worldwide multimedia development community. Those of us in digest mode have no opportunity to avoid this imposition.
Let's consider opportunity costs. What are the odds that someone will ask the list, by the end of the month, for similar navigation code? Quite high, I'd imagine, if we can judge by the number of people who ask each week about Windows NT, or why they can't play audio and QuickTime simultaneously on PCs, or how to open an app or bar exits or backdrop a Projector et al. Granted, many of these enquirers would not use the ReadMe files or existing web sites or code repositories anyway, and so it's rather improbable (though still highly to be desired) that they would use the sterling and wonderful search engine donated to the community by Alan & Co at the Maricopa site, but this navigable QT movie has, essentially, a halflife of three days if posted to the list. A short-lived waif, it is.
Speaking of which, what of the effect on the server space donated for the DIRECT-L archives? 40K here, 300K there... DIRECT-L already takes about a meg a week in its raw form to store. There would likely be costs on search speed for those viewing it, too.
Now, I know full well that I'm a verbose blowhard myself, one who wantonly slaughters kilos on a daily basis, and so I'm in no real position to advise on this. But the disingenuousness of the "oh please don't complain" and the apparent vacuity of environmental awareness, particularly with the propinquity of the Disc2Disc devastation, prompts me to nominate the following fantasy "List Wishlist" for your collective enjoyment during this holiday season: