Unready practices of information transport in the light of Green IT and Ockham's razor - measures of wastefulness and sucklessity

important messages

• Paragraph Eleven of to-day's date. Acknowledge. - Paragraph Elf. Bestaetigen. Scapa Flow, 11:20 a.m. 21 June 1919
• Cast not your pearls before swine, Jesus of Nazareth, Matthew 7:6
• cat -v considered harmful, Kernighan/Pike 1983
• One more megabyte, Toy Dolls 1995
• Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim. George Santayana
• Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. Albert Einstein
• Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Hanlons's razor
• It is possible for good people in badly designed systems to perpetrate acts of great evil completely unthinkingly. Ben Goldacre
• yes
• no

The length of these messages doesn't say anything about the impact it can have. Also the medium which transports the message from the source to the reciever is content-neutral. However, it is well advised to strive for efficient transportation and indeed, in the history of civilization the driving force of technological advancement has often shown to rely on efficiency gain through reduction or minimization.

Let's compare some orders of magnitude:

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