Heather Morrison, a colleague of mine, researched this. She estimated savings as high as 96%. The details are in her dissertation, Freedom for scholarship in the internet age - which is, of course, open access. The cost estimates are on page 86 (the 98th page of the PDF).

I agree that it's a stupid idea, but there is almost nothing about text that makes it special. If the HTTP/2.0 standard is actually a standard, then it will be pretty easy to make an app or a plugin that translates it.

There's almost nothing about English that makes it special, but I wouldn't recommend documenting the spec in Klingon. (To be fair, you agree that binary is a bad idea.) Or hey, would could use APL for the reference implementation!

Intrinsically, you are correct: there's nothing much special about text. But the significance of text isn't intrinsic: it is extrinsic. Text is special because it's standard. We have a rich selection and history of tools, techniques, idioms and sober experience to draw on when it comes to dealing with text. With a new binary format we would have none of that. Your imagined translator has a lot of work to do before it can match up to the existing capabilities of text-oriented tools, let alone exceed them. Unnecessary binary formats effectively fork the development infrastructure.

If you ask me, it makes about as much sense as replacing the Roman alphabet with Chinese idiograms for English. Chinese characters are for more information dense: you can fit more on a page and you can read it faster. In many respects it's more efficient (it has even proven effective as a shared written form for diverse spoken dialects). That doesn't make it a good idea, regardless of the availability of translators.

We have plenty of historical examples of text protocols providing advantages over their binary equivalents. Do we have any good examples of the opposite: in which a binary protocol replaced a text protocol and proved superior by virtue of being binary?

From her blog (her post is long and detailed):

I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to get caught up in anything to do with this women in infosec bit. Everyone who does get lambasted so badly at this point I’d rather avoid it entirely. You can’t say anything about sexism without getting lumped in with the creeper cards or the talk canceling at Bsides SF. . . . I’m bogged down in book edits. I’m teaching a lot of new classes this summer and fall. Needless to say, I don’t have time to process this much less write about it. Plus I’ve gotten enough pushback already. People I thought were my friends and colleagues have said things to me about this that have cut deeper than the actual assault ever could. I don’t want to deal with more of that. I don’t want to see the comments for this post. But I feel like I have to do this. I weighed my options. If I shut up and do nothing and later hear he did this to someone else, I will feel personally responsible. I have to do everything I can to make sure another speaker or attendee doesn’t get worse than I got.

This wasn’t like any of those grey areas that make anybody question the validity of any rape claim. . . . . We talk for a little bit about nothing consequential. Guy jumps on me and pins me down. . . . Perhaps I was not making myself clear, “No!” “Stop!” “I don’t want to do this!” . . . Once he had my pants down and his pants down and was completely ignoring my shouting for him to stop, it suddenly became clear to me what was about to go down. He was holding my arms down of course, so I leaned up and bit him on the arm as hard as I could, at which point he started swearing and punched me in the face. . . . I managed to lunge up towards the table and grab hold of a coffee cup. I knew I only had one shot. So I hit him with everything I had, and I got him right in the temple. And guess what, he let me go.

This is the last thing I have to say about all this. My duty is done. I don’t want to be the poster girl for infosec feminism. I want to be a researcher, and a trainer, and a speaker, and an icon.

From his blog (he wrote very little):

It was brought to my attention a recent flood of Twitter messages containing a number of accusations (ranging from "horrible", to "very horrible") against my person. The accusations were originated by someone who happened to be a speaker at the same Conference . . . and, for reasons that I didn't and don't understand, has been repeating blatant lies, every time magnifying it a bit more -- which nobody in their right mind could believe. . . . think about events that happened in the last decade based on "assumptions", or the kind of anti-humanitarian scenarios this world has experienced simply because some mentally-disordered person came up with a blatant lie that everyone followed with questioning. I will personally not contribute to the existing drama, since it someone else's game to get attention at any price.

What disturbs me here is the knee-jerk suggestion that she invented the story for some unspecified reason. Statistically, only a very small number of rape accusations turn out to be fabricated. Of course I don't know for sure what happened. I've never even heard of these people before. But based on the little evidence I have seen, I know who I believe.

You're incorrect. Wow, that was easy.

Oh, I noticed every word in your post. Saying that not all Americans are part of a tyrannical mob doesn't preclude the bigotry I pointed out. You conveniently ignore the other countries' mobs, singling out Americans as if it they're especially tyrannical, as I said. Somehow in your undeserved condescesion you missed all those words in my post, its only point.

And pointing out your fallacy and your bigotry it comes from isn't an "attack", it's the mildest reprimand of something I don't like (because it's dislikable). Then there's how you say one person criticizing the logic and spirit of your post is "tyrannical". You should look that word up. Probably look up most of them. Don't bother getting back to me until you can speak English, or some other language Google translates adequately.

No, I get joy out of exposing people who are full of shit, and those who are bigots (mostly the same thing). I'm not interested in your backwards "tolerance" fallacy. I'm not tolerant of bigots, and that's not "ironic".

I didn't call you homosexual as an insult. I called you bigot, which is actually an insult, though I meant it as the plain truth - and you didn't seem to be insulted by it. You're the one who says "homosexual" is an insult, though of course you'll now deny that.

I also note you said "what if I was [homosexual]", not "what if I were". A shrink would ask why you're referring to your past homosexuality as definite, not conditional. But what gave you away already was that homophobes like you typically are repressed homosexuals, and repressed homosexuals typically try to keep homosexuals repressed. Too much temptation to bear it seems. Oh, and your choice of insult to me, "asshole", would also keep your shrink busy. You should try one. Or try some homosexuality. If you're not gay, what's the harm? If you are gay, it'll save your life (and the lives of other you help oppress).

The rulings protecting gay marriage in California are precisely on Constitutional grounds.

The courts are the ultimate umpire of whether a law or an act is protected or prohibited by the Constitution, the judiciary's role in chain after the specifier of government action (legislative) and its executor (executive) have played their role.

You are a fool, a bigot and an America hater. Shut up already, Osama.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution says "[...] nor deny to any person within [any state's] jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.". Those are the words in the Constitution to the effect that all people are equal. Sadly, it took an Amendment, a bloody Civil War, and nearly a century of constituted "liberty" before we got it in there. But we did, nearly a century and a half ago.

Sadly, we're still far from practicing it. But we're closer than ever before, and I think our approach is accelerating. I just hope it's not asymptotic.

No, the only logic you cited was the procreative limits of human sexuality. They argued against that.

The Constitution also creates many powers of government, not just limits them.

Except there are people with XXX or with XXY chromosomes.

And even if there weren't, just because there's a binary pair of genetic conditions doesn't force us to treat people in a binary way, just to suit your anxiety at ambiguity.

Because marriage offers many protections, some legal and others social, as well as conventions guiding the behavior of parties within the marriage according to mutually recognized expectations.

Your ignorance of the many benefits of marriage, despite the penalties for violating it, obligates you to look into it more before talking like an authority on it.

You're arguing semantics. These people aren't "gender changers", they're "gender identity changers", going to more or less extreme effort to change gender identity cues.

They certainly can pick their gender identity. Many of them do on the basis of an involuntary compulsion that defines their every moment just as much as a person without the compulsion is defined by their own identity - and its voluntary cues. That is who they are, which is different from others.

As long as they're not doing anything to you, why should you care? Why should you even care if someone has surgery to look like a different species, if that's how they feel?

That's right: involuntarily identifying completely as the opposite gender is just like thinking you're a different species. And people who cross-gender identify are exactly like people of the opposite gender. That's not a salami, that's a sack of fallacies.