Actually, IMNSHO (In My Not So Humble Opinion), binary protocols make much smarter sense for binary machines. Even with the discrepancies of the various flavors of binary formats (big vs little endian, etc), it is WAY MORE EFFICIENT for binary machines to use binary protocols than to interpret human readable formats (text, xml, etc) into binary formats so that they may be processed appropriately by processor and related software. Only humans think in the context of textual formats; computers do not. The overhead associated with textual translation is a horrible side effect of the web phenomenon.
Actually, the statement "no popular/common protocol is designed that way" is horribly inaccurate. True, the W3C has an inherent conflict of interest in driving the pervasive use of textual formats. However, there are tens of thousands of binary formats that predate the stupid web stack and continue to emerge daily. For example, consider TCP, which is a binary protocol and the actual core technology upon which this mail list and ICS is founded. I would consider TCP to be "popular" and "common". It is only the layer 7 centric, web focused protocols that are textual in nature. Unfortunately, the web has set computing back about 20 years, the effects of which has only recently begun to be realized in all of its awful consequences (slow cumbersome interfaces, security issues galore, etc). Quite some time back, before clients of various types were ubiquitous, it was necessary for servers to understand human readable formats (ftp, etc). That need has long been outlived and the perspective that drives it is seriously antiquated. With very few exceptions, the data needs of server systems are way too complex to be constrained by human readable formats. For example, are you going to type the binary values for a MIME image that you want to embed in an email? Try doing that via a textual SMTP interface. The whole need of MIME was to overcome the stupid limitations of a textual email standard. Let's see, how do I represent binary data in a textual format. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. In a web world, I guess it does. How about a word document? Do you want a format that you have to type the font details manually, like HTML? NO, you use a word processor that does all that for you and then stores it in format that the system understands. How about audio? Do you want a media stream protocol that is human readable? Such a media protocol would be too slow be feasible. MP3 is a BINARY solution that attempts to answer the audio data issues. Everyone uses a piece of software that understands MP3. I would consider MP3 to be "common" and "popular", even though it is BINARY. For computing needs, the future reality is surely a return to strong binary representations that can be interpreted into forms that humans can understand as needed, or can be handled by clients as necessary. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fastream Technologies Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 5:43 AM To: ICS support mailing Subject: Re: [twsocket] AN: New e-mail protocol (spam free and more!) I wonder why he chose a binary format instead of text as no popular/common protocol is designed that way (i.e. HTTP, FTP, IMAP--all telnet based)! Regards, SZ On 2/7/08, DZ-Jay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > So, rather than a new "protocol", you have created a new e-mail server > and client system which communicates in its own proprietary binary > format? > > dZ. > > On Feb 6, 2008, at 18:50, David A. G. wrote: > > > Dear friends, > > > > I have developed a complete and very improved e-mail protocol, highly > > immune > > to the SPAM, with data encryption and compression, with sender ID > > validation, etc. BUT not compatible with the standard email (SMTP). > > -- > DZ-Jay [TeamICS] > http://www.overbyte.be/eng/overbyte/teamics.html > > -- > To unsubscribe or change your settings for TWSocket mailing list > please goto http://lists.elists.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twsocket > Visit our website at http://www.overbyte.be > -- To unsubscribe or change your settings for TWSocket mailing list please goto http://lists.elists.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twsocket Visit our website at http://www.overbyte.be -- To unsubscribe or change your settings for TWSocket mailing list please goto http://lists.elists.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/twsocket Visit our website at http://www.overbyte.be
