Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!cognos!garym From: garym@cognos.uucp@uunet.uu.net (Gary Murphy) Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin Subject: Re: ftpmail data Message-ID: Date: 6 Jun 91 13:39:06 GMT References: <4139@motcsd.csd.mot.com> <1991Jun6.023815.19212@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Sender: garym@cognos.UUCP Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada Lines: 40 In-reply-to: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG's message of 6 Jun 91 02:38:15 GMT Visual information is no more or less catagorically rejectable than anything else on-line but it is a good point that while I might take only one of a 700k archive and then take a week to digest it, .GIF's are likely to be downloaded in large numbers and consumed in an instant. The only hope I've seen so far is to store on-line images as very low-quality JPEG files and make those interested in obtaining the real image arrange the transfer themselves. While JPEG might save upwards of 80% on the image bandwidth (and provide images suitable for 90% of the requests), the downside is most prohibitive: the only vendor to date only supplies shareware decoders ($US20 and a whopping $US65 for the deluxe encoder) and it is unreasonable to expect EVERYONE to buy one. As with .ZIP files, which previously saved us the bandwidth of pure shar/tar files, JPEG will probably never take off until the decoders become public domain. -- Gary Murphy - Cognos Incorporated | "You think you're human. P.O.Box 9707 Ottawa K1G 3N3 | But what if you've made a mistake, (613) 738-1338 x5537 | As humans sometimes do, garym%cognos.uucp@ccs.carleton.ca | And you is an Angel, instead?" uucp: cognos!garym | -- Sun Ra