Hi.  Patch seems to work.  Tested on fresh emacs-snapshot (24.3.50.1) install on ubuntu with org-mode freshly pulled from git (7.9.2).

#+NAME: hobbits
| bilbo | frodo |

#+name: execOnExample.com
#+BEGIN_SRC sh :var foo=hobbits  :dir /gmj@example.com: :results output
hostname                                                                                                                                               
echo executed on `hostname` at `date`                                                                                                                  
echo two $foo                                                                                                                                          
#+END_SRC

Similar procedure on a mac still yeilds:

FYI/Thanks,
---George Jones

Couldn't write region to `/scpc:gmj@example.com:/var/folders/j6/j6w17khs3vl9s2_yg4rb5zsm0000gn/T/input-61683xyS', decode using `mimencode -u -b >%s' f\
ailed

On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
Hi Michael,

Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de> writes:

> The following patch I've committed to Emacs' trunk, it fixes the problem
> as far as I could test. Maybe somebody from the org maintainers could
> merge it into the org repository.

I've already merged it in maint and master.

Thanks a lot!