On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 13:49:10 -0600 Kirk Strauser <kirk@strauser.com> wrote: > >> If the latter . . .man, that place has gone unbelievably downhill >> since the mid-90's. > > Unfortunately, that was my first contact with the group. I wrote to ask > about a problem that I couldn't quit thinking about, and got a royal > butt-chewing in return. Since apparently I'm no longer welcome in that > group, I no longer have anyone to pester regarding physics questions. Well, there used to be a lot of people there who made their living in academia doing physics at major research institutions. Maybe they got sick of it and left (like I did). But if any of them are still there, they wouldn't be frightened by PGP signatures. So you might give it another try, and ignore the bellyachers; if they're that clueless about computers, they're probably pretty clueless about physics. That said, it *is* true that people in newsgroups outside the alt.binaries.* hierarchy have historically been pretty antagonistic towards binary/mime-encoded attachments. The "no binary attachments outside of alt.binaries" dogma has been around for forever, and is intended primarily to avoid the wrath of news administrators. Because binaries (jpgs, MP3s, ISOs, etc.) make up such an enormous fraction of Usenet traffic, the alt.binaries.* hierarchy exists to create a ghetto where all that stuff should go. Admins who do not wish to commit server space to keeping that stuff can then choose to simply not carry/propagate anything in alt.binaries, and they don't have to deal with it anymore. Unfortunately, users cut off from alt.binaries this way have a habit of trying to use other groups to pass binaries to friends. So, many news admins as a result have scripts that hunt for "stealth binaries" newsgroups; upon finding a newsgroup with more than a certain percentage of its posts containing binaries, or more than a certain fraction of its byte traffic in binary attachments, the group gets dropped, and the users of that server and those downstream don't see the group anymore. To make sure this doesn't happen, a lot of old groups cover their ass with the draconian social custom of "no binaries of any type, ever." As a result, the only PGP signatures I've ever seen in Usenet have been inline ones. In reason, this is a completely different objection from the one your correspondants raised. But in practice, it has the same result -- binary attachments on Usenet outside of alt.binaries are discouraged. Anyway. -c -- Chris Metzler cmetzler@speakeasy.snip-me.net (remove "snip-me." to email) "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
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