To archive what I consider important from our last 6 months communiques I cut
and paste to a text based dbase programming tool. My e-mail occupies less than
200 k of disc space. Most e-mail occoupies less than 300 bits of test based
space, I do not save every comment in e-mail only relevant.
And yes I do learn, but you have stuck yourself in a save mode for items that
become obsolete and have not taken advantage of operating system to save to
text based disk storage space. There is no need to save 50% of stuff (maybe
90%).
We could dedicate reams of text to our opposing viewpoints... Yet not arrive
at a conclusion satisfactory to both. You have your opinion and I have mine
based on years of experience in programming and systems analysis. 60% of the
features in most software is wasted on the common public. Yet to appeal to
all, they are stuck in with the accompanying reduction in system speed and
efficiency. Spaghetti code is alive and well and creating millions of new
jobs...
I have a limitation on how much I can type... You probably do not. So you
could drown me out in the typing dept.
If instead of putting your comment at bottom, you placed them at top (as this
message does) you could save reader time and energy of paging down to your
comments. That in itself would eliminate one of your arguments about "Human
bandwidth" which I quote below:
"It's actually not machine bandwidth that bothers me, it's my *human*
bandwidth. Scanning through a couple of hundred lines of quoted material
that I have already seen carried repetitively through the previous 5
messages, to find the two line pearl of wisdom that you have added, is not
the best use of any of our time. "
"In other words, it's not the absolute size that matters, it is the
efficiency."
So in essence it's not the amount of info you complain about but the location
of the relevant pieces...
So I encourage you and all users to do as I do and place their comments on top
of the query or argument. Then paging down is necessary only to refresh the
mind...
Best
Solar Fry
BTW: Notice how irrelevant portions on salutation get deleted. Do we really
need the subject repeated in the body of the message in addition to time and
date?
In a message, pres@whitehous.gov (Bill Clinton) writes to wwpotter@tscnet.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On Mon, Nov 09, 1998 at 11:47:37AM -0500, SolarFry@aol.com wrote:
>E-mail is text based and uses very little disc space unless graphics or
>downloads are attached...
You are quite the feather merchant when it comes to email, I'm
afraid :-). This is my personal Mail directory:
B/home/kent/Mail[241]du -s .
465593 .
B/home/kent/Mail[242]
The units are kilobytes -- I have half a gig of archived email. The
wwpotter file is small potatoes, relatively speaking, but it is
still 3 megabytes of mail. (I receive many email messages a day.)
In fact, I was thinking of making a public archive of the wwpotter
list -- something that could be searched online, unlike the current
monolithic-file-download-archive -- but the excess quoting behavior
of some of the wwpotter list members makes for a relatively low
density of useful information.
>Sometimes we cannot get in on the messages at the right time and miss out on
a
>lot of good info for all the trimming... I personally like it when the
>backgrounds are still attached to all the replies...
You will learn, my son...
>Bandwidth? shandwith... This is all text based... You save maybe 150 bits.
>Ain't worth it... Now, if it were graphics based, that would suck up some
>power....
It's actually not machine bandwidth that bothers me, it's my *human*
bandwidth. Scanning through a couple of hundred lines of quoted
material that I have already seen carried repetitively through the
previous 5 messages, to find the two line pearl of wisdom that you
have added, is not the best use of any of our time.
In other words, it's not the absolute size that matters, it is the
efficiency.
>The reason the stuff is slow is cause it has to go through those 180
gigabits
>of AOL and Win 95 software to get to you...
Actually, I read my mail on a unix system, and use a small,
text-based email program called "mutt". It has powerful features
for keeping mail organized, very good capabilities for searching,
and allows easy access to mail headers, for the occasional practical
joke...
kent
>>