Re: Email messages: How large is too large?

[Peter Deutsch <peterd at videotron.ca>]

Kent Crispin wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 16, 1999 at 06:00:09PM -0600, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> > Customers are generally much happier when you give them what they ask for
> > instead of forcing them to use something else; if people want to be able to
> > mail full DVDs to each other, it's our job to determine how to make that
> > technically feasible and (hopefully) efficient.
> 
> To switch analogies from sidwalks back to the postal service: therefore,
> it is the postal services job to determine how to send pianos from your
> mailbox...
> 
> But it seldom does any good to push analogies too far :-)

Right idea, wrong analogy. We are geeks, so think of it in terms of
transport. Most users think in terms of "shipping departments". So, if
Alice wants that video of her new cryptographic byte scrambling plant
sent to Bob, she's gonna call the shipping department. Now, Alice has
the launch codes, so we should realize it's in our interest to give her
what she wants. That doesn't necessarily mean putting it all in one
humongous MIME-encoded file, and it's probably fair to say that her mail
service could be tapped for the spool/archive directory, but Alice and
Bob (to return to *your* analogy for the finish) want the piano
delivered. They leave the choice of carrier, packaging and labeling to
the shipping department...

					- peterd
> 
> SMTP is not a file transport protocol, and it will always be less
> efficient at transporting files than a protocol that is designed for
> that purpose.  Not to say that some new protocol couldn't be designed
> that had the desirable addressing features of email, and the efficiency
> of FTP.  But that would be a new protocol...

Sounds eminently reasonable... ;-)

				- peterd
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