[geeks] my head just went explodey

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 @ 11:38 -0500, Joshua Boyd said:

> On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 05:32:31PM -0500, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> 
> > The industry has done nothing to disuade them, and is going further by
> > making audio and video part of email.  I just can't wait...
> 
> The painful part is when it comes from companies that should know
> better.  Didn't NeXT put audio in email and SGI and Sun as well?  

Yes.

It's not so much that it is a bad idea, it is just that email shouldn't
be the transfer system.

I don't have a problem with people sending email that links to a video
or audio file.

That way I am in control of when and if the content is loaded.

Further, it allows us to use transfer protocols that are far more
efficient than attachments.

Even for necessary attachments, consider this scenario:

A worker needs to send a spreadsheet to a division of 1000 people.  He
doesn't know who actually needs it, but is required to provide access to
everyone as part of company policy, law, or something like that.

Let's say that 250 people really need it.

The common "solution" is to put it in an attachment and send it out to
1000 people.  If it is 10MB, that's 10 gigs of data transferred and
stored.

A better solution is to send a link to the file.  That way only 2.5 gigs
of data are transferred and stored, a savings of 75%.  There are other
benefits too of course.

The primary flaw with this is that it is a manual process.  There is no
standard in email systems to handle automation of sending someone a URL
and also copying the file to whatever distribution service is in the
URL.

If you don't send much, it isn't a big deal, but for people who send
files a lot, some automation and standards would be nice.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Meddle not in the affairs of Wizards, for
thou art crunchy, and taste good with ketchup." -- unknown]