This is an old news item (net.mail I think) circa '86.
I'd like to share with the net results of recent experiments performed at the University of Sydney concerning mail systems, in particular a comparison between mh and a Xerox mail system called Walnut. The experiment was prompted by a colleague who sent the source code for mh to the line printer. I don't wish to get into the morality of such an act, I like trees too. Anyway, there was this big pile of paper in my office and also a little bag of walnuts. Another colleague, well known for his investigative computing projects and with some experience with the Xerox system set out to discover if the printout could be used for cracking walnuts. I must admit I was sceptical. Indeed the first forceful thrust really creamed the nut as did subsequent less violent trials.
What can we learn from this? This test is hardly conclusive, we can't very well drop a walnut on a mh, can we? If more effort had gone into naming mh and less expended on all that typing we would be in a better position to judge the relative merits of the two mailers. If mh had been called "manhole-cover" we'd be laughing - we have one of those. Also "lead ingot", "nine empty coke bottles", "tumbling Möet bottles", or even "reinforced tissue box" would have sufficed, our lab is well equipped.
As a slight digression I would like to suggest that version numbers be replaced by weights (e.g. mh 3.456kg). Of course we would have to standardize on paper. Perhaps a printer with a built in scale, or even software simulation of the printing and weighing process should be examined. This would have helped us avoid a past incident where news 2.10.1.2 was deemed to be too big and subsequently thrown out of the window, disturbing possum feeding and causing untold traffic disruption. If it had arrived as news 2.784kg we could have been prepared.
brucee@basser
© 1996, Bruce Ellis: brucee@chunder.com, Home.