[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[ccp4bb]: (Ab)use of attachments and mailing lists



***  For details on how to be removed from this list visit the  ***
***    CCP4 home page http://www.dl.ac.uk/CCP/CCP4/main.html    ***

Can I ask people not to send attachments to the mailing list, and never
send an attachment at all without first checking how big it is.

Some of us sometimes read out mail at home over phone lines for which we
pay by the minute. If I get a message at home which is too large to
download, I can't get at anthing which comes after it.

Conference announcements seem to be the worse culprits. The recent ICCBM
announcement was 3.5Mb. If converted to a text file, it would have been
less than 10Kb. Just dropping the images would have left less than
100Kb.

Another common culprit is Word documents. I have received several single
page Word documents recently which took upwards of 250Kb each. I am told
that the reason for this is the use of a 'quicksave' option, and that
disabling this option and reloading the document before sending will cut
the file size down to a sensible level. (I haven't confirmed this,
because I don't do Microsoft).

To sumarize, todays computing tools are very powerful and convenient. As
a result, they make it very easy for inexperienced users to cause a
great deal of trouble. The following cartoon may be relevent:
    http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19991114&mode=classic