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- Newsgroups: rec.railroad
- Path: sparky!uunet!well!bobmacd
- From: bobmacd@well.sf.ca.us (Robert MacDowell)
- Subject: Posting binaries in rec.railroad
- Message-ID: <By7Cvy.A0s@well.sf.ca.us>
- Sender: news@well.sf.ca.us
- Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
- Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 04:09:34 GMT
- Lines: 119
-
-
- Hello, my name is Robert MacDowell, and I've just discovered
- rec.railroad. I'm a train buff of eight years, and a director at the
- Southern Michigan Railroad Society, which runs passenger service on an
- NYC branch out of Toledo. (As usual my opinions not the SMRS's...)
- I'm just moving to San Francisco so I can take a train to work. :)
-
- Someone commented that the group needs intelligent and interested
- folk, and I like to think I am one... :-)
-
- I rather hate that my first posting is a flame, but maybe it's a flame
- that best comes from a newbie. Especially since it has a direct
- bearing on whether I am able to remain here, and maybe whether many
- readers can remain here.
-
- I hope I don't embarrass anyone, it's not my intent.
- --------------
-
- Tom Reilly said:
- > If anyone happens to have any .gif color images/photos of the
- > Pennsylvania RR, especially any steam locomotives, I'd appreciate it
- > if you could post it here or send it to me via e-mail.
- >
- > I'm posting here because of the specialized nature of the subject
- > :-) rather than in alt.binaries.pictures, etc.
-
- It's a good idea to *ask* here for a message to be posted in
- alt.binaries.pictures, but...
-
- wmcfadde@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (William McFadden) sez:
- > My sysadmin doesn't give us access to the alt.binaries.pictures.*
- > newsgroups. Can you consider posting this pictures, and others like
- > it to this newsgroup,
- >
- >Thanks.
- >Eric.
-
- <flame-on>
- Uh, folks, this is a **Bad** idea. There's a REASON your sysadmin
- doesn't carry alt.binaries.pictures.*. He's not prepared to allocate
- the many megabytes of disk space those feeds take up, or he doesn't
- have the bandwidth to transfer them in and out.
-
- Consider that a lot of sites are local BBS's, operated free by
- volunteers who pay for the computers and hard disks out of their own
- pockets, and ask little or nothing for the service. They don't carry
- alt.binaries.* because they can't afford the hard disk and bandwidth.
- Many even get their feeds via modem!
-
- Or a larger site is cleaning house. Maybe a drive went down and they
- can't afford a replacement. Maybe new newsgroups formed that they
- need to carry. Maybe other critical newsgroups have increased in
- traffic. Like Loren Cantrell's situation:
- > I want to add another argument against a seperate news group. We've
- > just been informed by sysadmin that because of the number of news
- > groups, some will have to be deleted. This means that most likely
- > I'll never have access to aus.rail and will be lucky to keep
- > rec.railroad.
-
- Those sites exclude alt.binaries.* for a reason. By posting a
- near-megabyte GIF to rec.railroad, you circumvent their decision and
- place a huge load on their hard drives and modems. Most sysops don't
- appreciate that.
-
- Imagine this scenario: Someone *finally* convinces their local sysop
- to carry rec.railroad on his BBS. The sysop is hesitant to carry a
- group for just one user, but it seems to be pretty low traffic.
- Then one night, while getting news feeds, the BBS crashes. The sysop
- investigates and finds one 1952 Porter 0-6-0T has lodged itself on his
- hard drive. Result: the newsgroup is dropped by one very hacked off
- sysop.
-
- And the folks on rec.railroad suddenly and mysteriously lose a friend.
-
- There are many readers of USENET, who for one reason or another can't
- discriminate one message from the rest. Either they download them all
- in batch (like me), or their non-Unix newsreader doesn't allow them to
- skip messages or use Kill-files. Or they don't know how. (Many of us
- are railroad buffs NOT computer buffs.)
-
- Ralph Marshall's sig is germane:
- > "Whatever you think, you are under no compulsion to broadcast it.
- > Free speech is a restraint on government, not an incitement to the
- > citizen."
- > Dean Acheson to Harry Truman, regarding attacks on JFK
-
- Well said. Applies to GIF's.
-
- Somebody posted:
- > Subject: 717.01
- > Lines: 971
- >
- > # This is part 1 of a multipart archive
- > # do not concatenate these parts, unpack them in order with /bin/sh
- > #
- > # This shar contains:
- > # length mode name
- > # ------ ---------- ------------------------------------------
- > # 493966 -rw-r--r-- 717.gif
-
- This is the aforementioned Porter 0-6-0-T.
-
- Nothing against the poster, or the person who asked for it, their
- intentions were admirable. But IMHO it was a mistake for reasons cited
- above. E-mail or posting to an ftp are the right ways to handle this.
- (How 'bout a alt.binaries.pictures.railroad? Seems natural given the
- photographic tendencies of most railfans... :-)
-
- <Flame-off>
-
- I don't know. I'm new. Maybe people post binaries here all the time.
- Maybe it's normal here and *I'm* out of line. If so I apologize, and
- you won't be seeing much of me (I can't handle the bandwidth), which
- is too bad.
-
- But if not, I'll try to hang around.
-
- -- Bob MacDowell, who can't be too mad, he just spent a day in an
- RS-1325. :-] I *want* one... actually I want *both*... :-)
-