> -----Original Message-----
> From: J. Noel Chiappa [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 3:30 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: Email messages: How large is too large?
>
>
> > From: Jon Knight <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> > sending an email with a large Word attachment to all
> 15000 users on
> > campus isn't a good idea as our mail servers will melt.
> ... especially
> > from non-academic departments who are used to doing
> paper based mass
> > mailings to students. ... depite us offering to put the
> Word document
> > on a web page and then send a small email pointing at it
>
>
> The caveat about using the email system to transfer things
> from one user to
> another is that it is, after all, an *email* system, and
> engineered for that,
> not a generic bulk-data-transfer system. To use a real-world
> analogy, the
> post-office may take parcels, but above a certain size, you
> have to switch to
> a shipping company, which is set up to deal with larger
> items. In a similar
> vein, the email system was designed for certain
> characteristic payloads,
> particularly size - i.e. *email*.
Speaking of University campuses:
The University of Minnesota has a great looking mall. They spend a
lot of time and money maintaining the trees, shrubs, and grass. The
sidewalks running between buildings were a great idea. A lot of people
used them and stayed off the grass. But you know, a lot of other people
did the math and the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight
line. Too bad the sidewalks weren't designed to run along that line.
So a lot of nice pretty grass turned to ugly mud as more and more people
stomped over the grass to get were they needed to be in the most "optimal"
way.
This practice continued for a long time. Sure, eventually signs went up
telling people not to step on the grass. But that didn't work.
Eventually the University put chain fences on every corner of the mall.
The chain fences look nice. The grass is well maintained now. I guess they
decided not to add sidewalks.
E-mail should either be able to handle a message of any size or the user
should be told right away that the message can't be sent. People have
already mentioned the GUI aspect of this problem. I agree to a large
extent
with them.
So the problem essentially comes down to money. When are message sizes
causing too many problems for admins to cost justify their efforts on? At
that point we either decide to put up nice fences or we build sidewalks.
The post-office has a nice fence in place. They didn't want to build a
sidewalk. I think eventually we are going to opt for the sidewalk.
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