Compulsory water metering

[dennis]

Html *is* text and doesn't take up a vast amount of space. More is wasted by peoples stupid and pointless sigs.

[Gordon]

"dennis@home" wrote

Irritating and unnecessary though, innit?

Two wrongs?.....

[Bob Eager]

It takes up a great deal. Just because the markup is textual, doesn't make it right.

[dennis]

Why is it irritating? If you have a modern reader it just looks like a news posting the same as any other.

The only real difference is that it is easier to get the quoting correct.

[dennis]

[Tumbleweed]

Its not the size that matters (!!), its the viruses and malware that can be carried in it.

[dennis]

That is a function of the reader. If it doesn't execute scripts, which aren't really html anyway, it is perfectly safe.

[Terry]

A damn nuisance. Perhaps? Sorry, couldn't resist!

[Bob Eager]

So where does it have an opportunity to be compressed? There's no compression in NNTP, or the underlying protocols.

[Andy Hall]

Now come on Bob, don't let a technical reality spoil a good story :-)

[dennis]

It would be a shame to admit that he didn't understand where compression can be used if it is worth it.

like:-

Compressed file systems to save disk space. Modem compression to save bandwidth.

and that's only the ones most end users have been using for years.

Neither of them requires the "standard" to include compression to work.

[Bob Eager]

LOL! Well, I was probably influenced by the fact that I was teaching the TCP/IP stack last week...

[Bob Eager]

That's not a problem. The problem is the vast amount of extra bandwidth required on the Internet.

Again, that doesn't affect the Internet at large. Each news article is transmitted thousands of times...and each time it can be bloated by HTML. No compression there.

[John Cartmell]

Unless you wish to remain isolated you will change your mind to co-operate rather than stick two fingers up to everyone. There is only one good answer to your stupid comments and that's to kill-file you.

Just don't expect any help from anyone - because they won't be listening.

[kill-filed]

[dennis]

You are inventing problems to support your beliefs. Usenet traffic is insignificant so you can forget it in the big picture as far as the internet goes. Even with binaries thrown in it is still a tiny amount of the total. It is not a valid reason to avoid html.

[Bob Eager]

OK, I'll leave you to your 'beliefs'.

[Andy Hall]

That's fine but comes at the expense of performance and/or cost.

That happens anyway.

However, the issues begin to show themselves as soon as graphics are added (which tends to happen in HTML environments). Graphics file formats are already compressed.

This is why well designed web sites targetted at an audience that might have low bandwidth have carefully chosen graphics of limited sites.

Even with high speed connections, it becomes very apparent when somebody has produced a crappy site with lots of megapixel images.

This is missing the point. Usenet was intended and remains primarily a text medium. It was and is designed to be accessible regardless of bandwidth available. Many groups have a no-graphics policy.

People wanting a rich text and pretty pictures experience can do so via web based groups. For example, Yahoo Groups does that quite well.

However, Usenet using NNTP is not that place.

[Andy Hall]

Good, solid learning. I wonder what Jon Postel would think of it all (wastage of internet resources) if he were still alive.

It's all too easy nowadays....

I think that anybody wanting to put graphics in Usenet articles should have to configure UUCP connections to run with obscure and flakey modems run over transatlantic links and make them work reliably without running up a phone bill the size of the national debt.....

That would learn 'em.

[dennis]

Try some common sense.

How many text Usenet messages are there a day?

Compare that to 60 billion+ emails, web browsing, P2P and you will also see that Usenet is insignificant. It is becoming even more insignificant every day. You really do need to rethink some of your out of date, meaningless arguments.

[Frank Erskine]

It is.