Posting pictures on this group

In a previous article, "Marco Leon" said:
That said, I wonder if feelings will change with the increasing
popularity of broadband connections. As long as this does not start
filling with SPAM, I personally would not mind a few aviation-related
pics from time to time.

Speaking as a news administrator with 20 years experience, I say broadband
has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's server space, and you let in
one binary and soon the group will be nothing but pictures, and then I'll
have to boot it from my servers.


--
Paul Tomblin http://blog.xcski.com/
Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.

"Paul Tomblin" wrote in message
...

Speaking as a news administrator with 20 years experience, I say broadband
has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's server space, and you let in
one binary and soon the group will be nothing but pictures, and then I'll
have to boot it from my servers.

You too, eh?

The network provider I worked for had to outsource its newsfeed in about
1999 because it couldn't keep up with the server load associated with binary
usenet posts. Most of it was porn, (which, strangely, almost all sourced
from Salt Lake City.)

-c

("Marco Leon" wrote)
Is picture posting not permitted on this group as I would like to post
some pictures I took from a recent flight down the Hudson Corridor
(pre-Lidle)?

I personally would not mind a few aviation-related pics from time to time.


http://new.photos.yahoo.com/landof10klakes/albums
For the OP, dump them into Yahoo.photo ...like these aviation-related pics.

It's easy to use. It's FREE. It's fast. Best of all ...it's linkable.


Montblack

That said, I wonder if feelings will change with the increasing
popularity of broadband connections.

No, they won't change. Besides being huge (with consequences beyond
connection speed), classification and segregation of topics is a Good
Thing. It helps readers find what they want, and ignore what they don't
want.

Jose
--
"There are 3 secrets to the perfect landing. Unfortunately, nobody knows
what they are." - (mike).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Marco Leon" wrote in message
ups.com...
This is considered by most a text-only group. Many folks post to
alt.binaries.pictures.aviation and let people know with a post to this
group.

That said, I wonder if feelings will change with the increasing
popularity of broadband connections. As long as this does not start
filling with SPAM, I personally would not mind a few aviation-related
pics from time to time.

Marco


It's not so much the broadband connection that come into play with this
issue, though it is part of it. The main thing is the news servers desire to
reduce storage on their servers. There are lots of USENET servers that don't
even have the binary newsgroups because of the amount of storage required.

Gig 601XL Builder wrote:

It's not so much the broadband connection that come into play with this
issue, though it is part of it. The main thing is the news servers desire to
reduce storage on their servers. There are lots of USENET servers that don't
even have the binary newsgroups because of the amount of storage required.

Well, OK, then if not broadband, then the increasing availability of
cheaper storage. Regardless, I don't think a non-binary titled
newsgroup will ever reach a critical mass of images being uploaded to
cause an issue (especially given the relatively low volume of messages
this group gets).

The volume of posts that the flight simmer wannabe/troll would probably
exceed the minimal size a few images take up.

But you know what? It ain't worth arguing because it's not a big issue
for me.

Marco

"Marco Leon" wrote in message
oups.com...
Gig 601XL Builder wrote:

It's not so much the broadband connection that come into play with this
issue, though it is part of it. The main thing is the news servers desire
to
reduce storage on their servers. There are lots of USENET servers that
don't
even have the binary newsgroups because of the amount of storage
required.

Well, OK, then if not broadband, then the increasing availability of
cheaper storage. Regardless, I don't think a non-binary titled
newsgroup will ever reach a critical mass of images being uploaded to
cause an issue (especially given the relatively low volume of messages
this group gets).

The volume of posts that the flight simmer wannabe/troll would probably
exceed the minimal size a few images take up.

But you know what? It ain't worth arguing because it's not a big issue
for me.

Marco


The cost of storage has dropped but the amount of volume on USENET has
increased just as fast if not faster. Binaries are one reason for this
increase. Below are the DAILY volumes on USENET and the source of the info.

4.5 GB 1996-12 Altopia.com
9 GB 1997-07 Altopia.com
12 GB 1998-01 Altopia.com
26 GB 1999-01 Altopia.com
82 GB 2000-01 Altopia.com
181 GB 2001-01 Altopia.com
257 GB 2002-01 Altopia.com
492 GB 2003-01 Altopia.com
969 GB 2004-01 Altopia.com
1.30 TB 2004-09-30 Octanews.net
1.27 TB 2004-11-30 Octanews.net
1.38 TB 2004-12-31 Octanews.net
1.34 TB 2005-01-01 Octanews.net
1.30 TB 2005-01-01 Newsreader.com
1.67 TB 2005-01-31 Octanews.net
1.63 TB 2005-02-01 Newsreader.com
1.81 TB 2005-02-28 Octanews.net
1.87 TB 2005-03-08 Newsreader.com
2.00 TB 2005-03-11 Various sources

Gig 601XL Builder wrote:
The cost of storage has dropped but the amount of volume on USENET has
increased just as fast if not faster. Binaries are one reason for this
increase. Below are the DAILY volumes on USENET and the source of the info.

4.5 GB 1996-12 Altopia.com
9 GB 1997-07 Altopia.com
12 GB 1998-01 Altopia.com
26 GB 1999-01 Altopia.com
82 GB 2000-01 Altopia.com
181 GB 2001-01 Altopia.com
257 GB 2002-01 Altopia.com
492 GB 2003-01 Altopia.com
969 GB 2004-01 Altopia.com
1.30 TB 2004-09-30 Octanews.net
1.27 TB 2004-11-30 Octanews.net
1.38 TB 2004-12-31 Octanews.net
1.34 TB 2005-01-01 Octanews.net
1.30 TB 2005-01-01 Newsreader.com
1.67 TB 2005-01-31 Octanews.net
1.63 TB 2005-02-01 Newsreader.com
1.81 TB 2005-02-28 Octanews.net
1.87 TB 2005-03-08 Newsreader.com
2.00 TB 2005-03-11 Various sources

Yeah, but you need to qualify "binaries." You know very well the
volume is more due to DVD and music posts rather than pictures. Good
research though.

"Marco Leon" wrote in message
oups.com...
Well, OK, then if not broadband, then the increasing availability of
cheaper storage. Regardless, I don't think a non-binary titled
newsgroup will ever reach a critical mass of images being uploaded to
cause an issue (especially given the relatively low volume of messages
this group gets).

In addition to what else has already been pointed out, keep in mind that a
given newsgroup may be subject to a fixed storage quota. In a text
newsgroup, a single binary could easily be equivalent to hundreds of regular
messages, and allowing that single binary would cause hundreds of regular
messages to be discarded earlier than they otherwise would have been.

Text and binaries just aren't compatible in a single newsgroup. If the
newsgroup is not a binary newsgroup in the first place, allowing binaries
can have serious ramifications on the normal use of the newsgroup
(obviously, the converse of posting text messages to a binary newsgroup
isn't a problem).

The volume of posts that the flight simmer wannabe/troll would probably
exceed the minimal size a few images take up.

Depends on the size of the images. However, today a *small* image file is
between 500K and 1MB. With text messages running around 2K to 5K, maybe 20K
for a really really large one that hasn't had the quoted trimmed properly,
just ONE image file represents hundreds of text messages. Even a few
quickly overtake any undesirable text messages, and there's no reason to
expect that image files will be restricted in size to what passes for a
small one today.

And all of that is before considering the inflation in data size: text
encoding of binaries is incredibly wasteful (depending on the encoding being
used, it could inflate the size of the data by 30-50%).

Of course, there's also the issue that when posted to a newsgroup, a message
(binary or not) gets transmitted to each and every news server carrying that
newsgroup, whether or not any user using that news server will ever even
bother to download the message. That is also wasteful

Furthermore, many users have their news readers configured to download every
message, without a limit on size, even though they may have no interest in
looking at the binary file. So not only are news servers forced to receive,
store, and retransmit data that they never actually use, so too are users
(and many users today are still subject either to bandwidth quotas or
bandwidth charges). This is wasteful as well.

In fact, there's very little about binaries in newsgroups (whether in a
newsgroup for binaries or not) that is not wasteful.

Frankly, I'm a bit surprised that ISPs still bother to carry *any* binary
newsgroups. Even in the old days, when binary file transmission was pretty
much restricted to FTP or text encoding, it would have been much better to
use FTP. But at least then, one could point out that there weren't that
many freely available FTP sites where users could store binary data for
redistribution. Today, free web server space is easy to come by, and using
it solves a variety of issues, including not having to use an inefficient
encoding mechanism as well as avoiding transmitting the data to users who
don't actually need or want it.

If this discussion is to be had, what it really ought to be about is the
complete abolishment of binary newsgroups in the first place. That debate
seems to still have valid open arguments for both sides, even as clearly the
world should be moving away from them. But IMHO, the question of binaries
in a text newsgroup is obvious: they don't belong. Usenet should be moving
*forward* with the progress elsewhere in the computer industry, not
backwards.

But you know what? It ain't worth arguing because it's not a big issue
for me.

I'm not so sure it's about arguing about it. It's not like you have in your
power to change the way this newsgroup handles binaries. None of us do.
It's not a designated binary newsgroup, and so most ISPs simply don't allow
binaries in it.

To me, the question is more about education. That is, there are very real
reasons that binaries aren't allowed here, and it seems to me that a person
who believes that binaries *should* be allowed could use more information.
Rather than trying to debate with them (that is, you ) the merits of
allowing binaries, it's more about educating them about why binaries
shouldn't be allowed.

Pete

Well, OK, then if not broadband, then the increasing availability of
cheaper storage.

Simplified a bit, the way Usenet works, you make a post. That post gets
copied again and again and again, making its way to umpteen servers all
over the world, so that it can be read. If it's a small binary it is
still lots bigger than a long post. No matter how cheap storage and
bandwidth is, it is still finite, and many servers will only hold so
much. Every single binary therefore kicks out lots of text posts.

The way the web works, you upload to your site, and it sits there. ONLY
when people come to look at the site is it transmitted to another
server. So even a =huge= binary on the web has far less impact as if it
were on Usenet.

Jose
--
"There are 3 secrets to the perfect landing. Unfortunately, nobody knows
what they are." - (mike).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.