Date: Wed, 26 Apr 1995 10:13:25 -0400 (EDT) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.misc From: STEPPIC Subject: Re: Beamish Genuine Irish Stout Rory Clancy wrote: I'd like to announce the presence of BEAMISH GENIUNE IRISH STOUT on the WWW the URL is URL:http://symphony.ucc.ie/~niall/beamish.html I think that it would be a good idea to clarify the methods by which Beamish will be made available on the WWW. Presumably, it's going to be UUencoded, right? Will it be compressed, as well? Will you have "lossy" compression, i.e. using the Joint Beer Experts Group (JBEG), or the Brew Interface Format (BIF)? If you are going to use the latter, I'd recommend at least keeping an eye on the current state of litigation between CompuServe, inventor of this particular technique, and Jim Koch, Owner/El Presidente/Grand Poobah of the Boston Beer Company, plaintiff in a lawsuit against CompuServe over trademark infringement. Is Beamish also going to be available via Fourier Transform of Beer (FTB)? I think this technique is my favorite, since it doesn't cause a significant loss of the hop character of the nose, unlike other compression techniques. Unfortunately, there are only a limited number of software packages that can do an inverse Fourier Transform, and these are quite expensive, so I guess people will just have to deal with some loss of aroma. This is too bad, as I think that this technique is the least memory-hogging. I also think that perhaps we should make an addition to the FAQ, "How to UUdecode beers on the net." It's a little tiring to have to wade through reams of posts from college freshman, asking how to get free beer on the 'net. >This Stout comes from one of the oldest breweries in Ireland. Since 1792 >on the same site they have been brewing Stouts, Ales and Beers. Glad that the proverb about "teaching old dogs" doesn't hold true here... >An information page on the correct way to pour a pint of this dark nectar >will also be appearing shortly Ah. This brings up another *very* important point. More than one university sysadmin has disabled JBEG and BIF decoding capabilities after having expensive hardware destroyed by overzealous and woefully underinformed newbies who failed to follow precautions. When you UUdecode beer, make sure that A) you have the right funnel to transfer the beer from your hard drive to the container, and B) make sure the container is big enough! Beer *WILL* short out your hard drive if you don't download it *immediately*!!! And the faster the modem, the faster it's going to pour! In fact, it is recommended that your modem be set to no faster than 4800 baud, otherwise the beer will foam all over the desk, and it'll end up flat.