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From: hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Jtime.arc Posting [1 of 2]
Message-ID: <8704052149.AA15242@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Sun, 5-Apr-87 16:49:05 EST
Article-I.D.: ingres.8704052149.AA15242
Posted: Sun Apr  5 16:49:05 1987
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In article <3047@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer) writes:

[ ...much discussion of sending arc versus shar'ed uuencoded files... ]

I agree with most of Mike's points, but one thing is being overlooked
(although Mike probably agrees): "arc" is not standard nor even very widely
available on Unix systems, from the point of view of what percentage of
them currently have it, while "shar" and "uuencode" are standard enough
to be on lots of systems. Yes, I know this is not universally true, but as
an easy example, none of the 4 Unix systems I use regularly have "arc",
but they all have shar/uuencode (naturally I'll put/port arc to them as
soon as I have some free time, but meanwhile...) This issue is regularly
raised in various groups, and the usual concensus is to use standard
utilities. There's never total agreement, so the argument always starts up
again at some point (as it has here).

>.... As a concrete example, nobody has dropped of the
>net because netnews eats to much space. Several backbones have dropped
>signifcant portions of the news because of rising phone bills.

This is downright silly...if a site drops news, how likely are you to hear
about it? I personally know of a site that *did* drop off the net some years
ago precisely because "netnews eats too much space". They recently reconnected
via uucp and are receiving 4 news groups rather reluctantly (a management
versus employees battle). They flatly refuse to accept comp.sys.amiga due
to volume. My general impression is that this is more common than one might
think. Don't make baseless assumptions.
	Doug