Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!pyramid!csg From: csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Usenet and ARC'd files Message-ID: <2319@pyramid.UUCP> Date: Sun, 3-May-87 20:33:28 EDT Article-I.D.: pyramid.2319 Posted: Sun May 3 20:33:28 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 4-May-87 01:39:24 EDT References: <3540@mirror.TMC.COM> Reply-To: csg@pyramid.UUCP (Carl S. Gutekunst) Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA Lines: 22 In article <3540@mirror.TMC.COM> rs@mirror.TMC.COM (Rich Salz) writes: >Last week I posted an article in comp.sys.amiga saying that posting >ARC'd files increases the transmission costs to most Usenet sites. In >subsequent e-mail exchanges I have been called a fool, a jerk, and a >liar. Needless to say, this bothers me a bit. It should bother you, considering that you are right. Curiously, I've sent notices to many people about this; none of the few replies I got were hostile. Using ARC on posted sources makes even less sense than using tar or cpio. It wastes resources. You have to have a magic program to decode it, and working versions of ARC for UNIX seem to be rarer than hen's teeth. (OK, so maybe someone has finally posted one that works. I gave up caring a long time ago.) Putting compression in that high a transmission level is just wrong. And how many different "levels" of ARC are there floating around out there? Shar files, on the other hand, are crude but effective. All you need to decode one is a text editor. For binaries, there's always uuencode when you need it. DEATH TO ARC ON THE USENET!