?SPAM? - Re: [tex-live] Re: [tug-board] Any news of DVDs ?

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Sat Jan 28 00:12:28 CET 2006


>>>>> "Philip" == Philip TAYLOR <P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk> writes:

  > Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

  >> You certainly will not understand what I mean unless you had been
  >> in Vietnam (12 PCs connected to a single voice modem in an
  >> internet cafe in Sa Pa).

  > Just returned from there, Reinhard (Viet Nam, I mean, not Sa Pa on
  > this occasion); ADSL ubiquitous :-) 

DSL is available in cities, in less populated regions you will be less
successful.  Even in Germany some people will never get DSL.  The
reason is that telephone lines had been designed to cover a frequency
spectrum up to 3.4 kHz.  Attenuation increases with frequency.  Hence,
the lengths of lines is quite limited for high speed data transfer. 

  > But no-one in Vietnam is going
  > to try to download the TeX Live DVD from an Internet cafe in Sa
  > Pa, nor would anyone in their right mind try to download it with
  > less than broadband, in which case 587Mb v. 616Mb is a noise-level
  > difference.

Sorry, but I forgot to mention that I did/do not regard the ISO images
as something special.  When we discuss whether we can expect from a
Windows user that he is able to extract a bzip2 file or not, I think
we talk about [de]compression programs and not about ISO images.

The images are an exception here because their content is compressed
already.  Thus, the gain is quite small. 

  >> I absolutely agree with Karl.
  >> 
  >> And I absolutely agree with the phrase "I don't think it's our
  >> job...".

  > And I absolutely disagree with both.  If you use standard
  > utilities, I accept there is no reason to document them; if you
  > use something as non-standard as BZ2, then there is every reason
  > to document it.

George´s suggestion (provide tar/bzip2 binaries along with TL) should
make everyone happy.

  > But overall, on TeX Live Live, the difference is less than 5%.
  > noise-level, IMHO.
  >>  Sticking with ZIP is as annoying as sticking with 8.3 filenames.
  >> Sorry, but in which world do we live today?

  > A world in which ZIP compression is uniquitous and BZ2 niche.
  > That's the /real/ world, Reinhard, not some ideallistic view of
  > how it might be.
  >>  Efficiency of compression algorithms does not matter very much
  >> if you have DSL (and maybe even a flatrate).  But many people
  >> have to live with their slow and expensive internet connection.

  > And they should /not/ be downloading the TeX Live ISO if that is
  > all they have; the probability of success is (I estimate) less
  > than 1% over a 56K modem.

I must admit that this example is not a good one.  However, very few
people in those countries have a flatrate.  Time is money. And 5% less
time means 5% less money.  In most cases it´s much more than 5%.

BTW, Thanh built a house in Long Thanh (halfway between Saigon and
Vung Tau) and he is waiting for DSL for more than a year now.  He does
all the mail exchange and downloads in an internet cafe.

He will probably get DSL when many of his neighbours ask for it or if
one of them dies. 

His parents (in Sai Gon) have DSL now.  This makes things easier, but
without a flatrate, time is money, as I said before.

On the other hand, I´m happy to see how fast Viet Nam evolves these
days.

Regards,
  Reinhard

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
Marschnerstr. 25
D-30167 Hannover	                      mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------




More information about the tex-live mailing list