TOS and UUE.

Having started to get a bit more serious about this Blog, I thought I'd review the Terms of Service.

For the most part it looks like the usual. Do no harm, you can quit, we can quit, and come on you're getting this for free so what do you expect?

This passage caught my funny bone:

"..11. STORAGE AND OTHER LIMITATIONS Pyra assumes no responsibility for the deletion or failure to store information entered into Blogger. Pyra has set no fixed upper limit on the number or posts Member may send or receive through the Service or the amount of storage spaced used; however, Pyra retains the right, at Pyra's sole discretion, to determine whether or not Member's conduct is consistent with the letter and spirit of the BTS and may terminate Service if a Member's conduct is found to be inconsistent with the BTS. .."

Hmm. That terminology would limit one absurd use of blogs storing uuencoded data.... If you've been reading my blog you may have noticed I'm concerned about long-term archiving. - My VCR recordings from 10 years ago are fading, so I'm less than impressed with tape backup.

It occurs to me that a number of readers might not know what uuencodeing is.

Per google 'define:uuencode':

• Many file formats are 8-bit (also called binary) which means that the basic unit of information - a byte - comprises 8 on/off signals. Email, however, is a 7-bit (or text) medium, preventing the transfer of 8-bit data. UUencoding compensates for this restriction by converting 8-bit data to 7-bit data. UUencode accomplishes this by joining all of the file's bits together into a single stream, and then dividing the stream into 7-bit chunks. ...
  www.ontrack.com/glossary/

  (Unix to Unix Encoding) -- A method for converting files from Binary to ASCII (text) so that they can be sent across the Internet via e-mail. See Also: Binhex , MIME
  www.thescratchpost.com/resources/web/web_dict_u.shtml

Perhaps an example would be illustrative. NOTE: This is an absurd example only to illustrate the concept. In practice this process will work with LARGE binary files as well.

Overview Steps:

1. uunecode a file
2. transmit via email or to blog
3. uudecode and get original file back.

Suppose I have a large file I want to transmit, and for some reason file attachments don't work (or didn't exist). The text can be embedded.

Sample file: named 'hi.txt' contents below line:

---

hello world

---

Simple file right?

1. uuencode the file 'hi.txt'
From a command prompt run the uuencode program:

> uuencode hi.txt hi_txt.uue
> hitxt.uue created
> type hi_txt.uue
begin 600 hi.txt
-2&5L;&\@5V]R;&0-"@V`
`
end

2. Transmit file. Already done! It's here!

3. uudecode the file.

From a command prompt run the uudecode program:

> uudecode hitxt.uue

Like I said, it's an absurd example. But before the internet was ubiquitous, and mail programs were in their infancy, people used uuencoding for file attachments. People still do so, though improvements in email clients have made the process transparent to the end-user. Attachments are still encoded, though mime format has supplanted uue.

Free uuencode and uudecode programs can be found at Simtel

A test for the reader if they care - UUDECODE the following:

begin 600 oldjoke.txt
M43H@2&]W(&UA;GD@<')O9W)A;6UE<G,@9&]E<R!I="!T86ME('1O('-C<F5W
M(&EN(&$@;&EG:'1B=6QB/PT*03H@3F]N92X@(%1H870G<R!A(&AA<F1W87)E
+('!R;V)L96TN#0H@
`
end