December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

The Thread That Wouldn't Die (Was: Re: McCoy is Right!)
by foodie＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:24 PM 12/15/94, Alex Strasheim wrote: >As influential as Tim is, it doesn't matter whether he embraces MIME or >not. If he converted tonight, there'd still be millions of people who >feel the way he felt this morning. Getting Tim to capitulate isn't going >to solve the problem. Thank you, Alex. Can we give this one up yet? Pretty please? In any case, this is making the very recent "Can't we all get along?" posts amusing (*please*, don't nobody think that's a flame). -j -- On the internet, nobody knows you're a deity. __________________________________________________________ foodie(a)netcom.com

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Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim wrote: >It may be backward, but it is how a huge fraction of the list accesses >the Net. Am I wrong on this? Dial-up access to local POPs is a fact of >life for many, many people. Do a "who cypherpunks" on the list and >look at the sites. Many will be dial-ups, others will be access to >university machines, via dial-ups, etc. Others will be a mix of >corporate machines, some with better connectivity than others, and >many with proprietary e-mail systems, such as VAXMail and the like. My >guess is that fewer than 20% of the list are directly SLIP- or >PPP-connected, with good access to the tools praised here by Amanda, >Perry, you, and others. I have the same type of shell account with Netcom that you have. However, thanks to The Internet Adapter I turned that shell account into a SLIP connection. If you have a shell account, you can convert it into a SLIP account. It is as simple as that. Not that it mattered much for MIME email. Eudora can handle that via dial-up just as well. Sure helps for browsers, though. Accessing the web through Lynx is a joke. Even if you have image loading turned off in the browser to conserve bandwidth, _anything_ is better than Lynx. >It might be a good idea to get some real statistics on this. We did >this a couple of years ago, and there was talk about doing it again. > >For reasons I just addressed in another post, I foresee being on a >dial-up (not a SLIP or PPP, that is) for a while. And I have relatively >few complaints about it. My service provider keeps the 9446 current >newsgroups, provides ftp and suchlike tools, and I don't have to be a >sysadmin. Frankly, if I have to choose between not being able to see >someone's MIMEd GIF and becoming a Unix sysadmin for my own site, I'll >skip the GIFs. Perhaps we can find some common ground here. You don't want to have to use UNIX. You like your Mac, don't you? So why interact with a lousy terminal server if you can do all the things you can do there - and more - the Mac way? Think about it. All the benefits of a Mac interface without giving up the benefits you get from Netcom. (No, I don't work for TIA. I am just a VERY satisfied customer.) >Even Perry admits to using emacs, and Unix mailers like elm are not >exactly oxen. (I have a choice of several mailers, the usual ones. Big >deal.) I also have commercial Eudora, the PowerMac version no less, so >my offline mailer is adequate. This still doesn't mean non-ASCII >(graphics, fancy fonts, equations) can be plausible placed in >messages--and communicated to the list for reading/viewing. Any of the mailers that you can use on a shell are oxen. Anything that can be used over a VT100 emulator is an oxen. (At least where non-ASCII display data is concerned). >I'd like to see some evidence that I am one of the last of my tribe. > >Call me Ishi. You are fighting a lost cause and you know it. VT100 is dead. No, you are not the last of your tribe. I should hope that you have the good sense to come around before that happens. All your friends here sure hope for it. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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re: MIME
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellow Mime-punks, Perry said: > Naturally the idea is old -- I explicitly mentioned NeXT mail, > didn't I? The point is that this is an open, non-proprietary, and > STANDARDIZED framework for doing arbitrary recursive encapsulation of > data in EMail. Well, if "open, non-proprietary, and STANDARDIZED frameworks" are always going to lag behind by several years, then I say the general population will be better off by having entities such as Microsoft or ETH decree their own "standards" and let the market decide to follow them, or be niche players and imitate them. Maybe I have yet to see the value of MIME, especially on mailing lists such as this one. So far I've just seen hundreds of messages about how cool it will be, one MIME encapsulated gif signature, one screwed up MIME post, several "faux MIME" ascii messages (definitely no multimedia extensions, just ascii). Lots of exhortation on how it would be in my best interest to spend hours to upgrade to MIME compatible readers so I can read the same mail I get now, plus the 0.01% MIME messages that drift through (none of which exhibit the superior features MIME allows). I think the point Tim is making is that at the current time, our lives are not made easier or enriched by "MIME". If I want point and click spreadsheet opening, I can use other systems that have worked for 5 years or more, with apps that are already configured and easier to use.

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mime ad naseum
by anonymous-remailer＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Many people don't have mime mailers, and if you want to talk to them, you can't use mime features. You can tell them that they're stupid not to have better software or accounts, but until getting PPP running is as easy as installing the aol client, you'll just be pissing in the wind. <neil.young.mode>You don't know it but you are.<neil.young.mode/> Is this list supposed to convey ideas or demonstrate the latest email standards? I'm not sure the two goals are compatible.

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Re: The Thread That Wouldn't Die (Was: Re: McCoy is Right!)
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Jim "you don't have a fucking clue" McCoy writes: > Definitely. It was a strange sort of ego trip to have 10 messages an hour > proclaiming "McCoy is Right!" in the subject line, but it is beginning to > get a little too wierd for my tastes... :) How very convenient for you to say that now, several dozen messages after I observed that the list really _didn't_ need to revive this dumb flamewar. Thanks so much. Yours in disgust, L. Futplex McCarthy - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLvE4sGf7YYibNzjpAQHuMwP+JA6Ec1zIzKrFV7xO0NEnq99hZWDYACQZ fWVXf4d6LqZWjv6sjpXdc3vjCz9PxdyRe50lhkYNWlfB+Yjx/+Ny92A6tk6XagoI 0Gr7BinZSZkMrX1I2GrwEwFbAFt4fSt5p/KbCmepP2IJF79+pU5IHxfyS1/mIwgA w7y3zuiPL7I= =0INf - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLvE58ioZzwIn1bdtAQErhgF7BcNdKtCUAjN7PpE5v3pff2dndv6BND44 yEG+NKZVbhF9GccWLU7E2wTU0ThuGT04 =zJ4m -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: MIME acceptance test--where's the break-even point?
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- If you can't beat `em, join `em -- hence I wade into the fray.... Amanda Walker writes: >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: MIME acceptance test--where's the break-even point? >Content-Disposition: Inline > > >This message contains 'text/enriched'-format data. >Do you want to view it using the 'cat' command (y/n) [y] ? Yeah, I'm sure that'll help a lot.... [...] > This message, for example, is formatted as <fixed>text/enriched</ > fixed> instead of <fixed>text/plain</fixed>. It's still readable on > 80-column <smaller>ASCII</smaller> terminals. It's got some extra > stuff, but so does every <smaller>PGP</smaller>-signed message, or > worse yet a <smaller>PEM</smaller>-signed message, and I would argue > that the <smaller>MIME</smaller> formatting itself is no more > objectionable than these, just as I would argue that <fixed>base64</ > fixed> encoding (the format that graphics generally appear in when > <smaller>MIME</smaller> encapsulated) BTW, is that what that piece of obscura from Peter Cassidy the other day was supposed to be ? > is no more objectionable than > other mechanisms that serve the same purpose, such as <smaller>PGP</ > smaller> "<smaller>ASCII</smaller> armor", uuencoding, etc. [...] > Do you find this message to be "out of bounds" the way you found > my (intentionally excessive) <smaller>GIF</smaller> signature from a > while back to be? Yes and no. The .GIF you sent before caused my copy of elm to dump core, which was disconcerting but easy to remedy. I doubted that the picture you'd sent was worth viewing, so I didn't bother trying to view it with xv on my own. This message didn't prompt any error messages from elm, but it was a nightmare to read, thanks to the plethora of angle-bracketed font instructions embedded throughout the text. > If so, where's the boundary between this message and > the innumerable <smaller>PGP</smaller> formatted messages we see come by > on this list? The PGP-formatted messages don't cause my mailer to dump core, and don't have any embedded command sequences in their bodies, so I don't go cross-eyed trying to read them. That's a pretty clear line for me. YMMV. > How far are we willing to inconvenience the least common denominator > in order to provide the services we want (whether those services > be authentication & encryption, multimedia content, or anything > else)? Where to the cost and benefit curves cross? Actually, I wish you'd send a full test suite of MIME messages to the list, so I could compile a comprehensive list of the things I have to ask the tech support people here to fix. My copy of elm proclaims itself to be MIME-aware but hasn't done very well in practice. Another GIF enclosure would be handy, because I didn't keep the previous one. - - -L. Futplex McCarthy - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLvE9zGf7YYibNzjpAQHUHwP/UAyrTWjxiZDQBeSOL8cTCQ8xjM+lpsCN doALb8TtJCrypS0ihZzCZ6VpDi9E/JxKPF9lnLXqzCH0LVua3j0eiNXz7TCVfFP6 clziWY9RExiTRfREC8aphNw2XRVetjfhRIOsiBj7lSqNodKnN5GS2sUEDtIBNMdL EMfHAGIWTnU= =LxLk - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLvE+8SoZzwIn1bdtAQErRQF+OLFnCDXeznWHQws8LkxatRgaf6+F1ZuK N5e9/i52pI1gNQ4MQL5kEyWzXdH0XmMM =LceU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:12 PM 12/15/94, Timothy C. May wrote: >If we make the leap, I say make the leap to the Web: > >cave drawings --> text --> e-mail --> Web > >(By Web I of course mean the whole ball of wax involving HTML/HTTP/etc.) > >This is not a rejection of new technology, just a wise selection of >which technology to bet on. HTTP and email, serve different transport purposes. I don't think I really need to explain in what ways they are different, because we all know. Suffice it to say that mailing lists work better as a mailing list then it ever could as a web page, even with forms and all that stuff. A mailing list is a different transport-method choice then HTTP is. But there's no reason why you couldn't mail html documents. html isn't a "transport" choice, but a "content" choice. Maybe in the future all of our mail readers will be able to render html, and people will send html mail, with anchors and ordered lists and whatever else. That's something I think is likely to happen, eventually. Email and HTTP are transport mechanisms, whereas html and ascii text (which of course is a subset of html) are content formats. And MIME is a mechanism for describing what types of content formats are contained in the message, whether the message is a usenet article, a piece of email, or a web page. A given "transmission" of course can't be both email and HTTP, but it could be email and use MIME and be html. Or be http and mime and html. I don't think we'll ever stop using email in favor of the web and HTTP, because they serve different purposes. I don't think Tim really does thinks we'll stop using email either, since I've heard him deprecate the web several times. He is just trying to convince us not to use MIME (or html for that matter) in email we send to the list, and thinks maybe this argument will convince us and not result in us calling him a technophobe. :)

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Tim May the Luddite--His Last Message for A While
by blancw＠pylon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by Timothy C. May: Whatever, I'm fed up. . . . . As they say, you know what a Cypherpunks firing squad is? A circle. ............................................................. Cheap parting shot: " The record shows I took the blows and did it MYYYYYYYYYYYYYY Waaaaaaaaaaaaay." Blanc (I just had to say that) :>)

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Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alex Strasheim <alex(a)omaha.com> wrote: >The sociology and politics of evolving standards is an important issue on >the net, and it seems to me that things are a little more complicated than >some posters are admitting. If cypherpunks are going to have an influence >on how things turn out, we're going to have to come to terms with the >issues Tim has been raising. Can someone (Tim maybe?) clearly delimit exactly what the issues Tim has been raising _are_? As far as I can tell, the issue is simply that current tools out there to deal with enhanced mail features (like PGP encryption) just aren't easy enough to use yet. There seem to be two simple ways to deal with this: 1) Try to develop easier to use tools 2) Try to convince people that the current tools aren't as hard to use as they think. I am absolutely convinced that mailers supporting MIME in a rational way, along with the new PGP MIME specifications, are the answer to number 1. I feel confident that anyone who examines the MIME specs will agree that if mailers supported it reasonably, dealing with PGP would be easy. I'm not sure everyone here who is deprecating MIME understands what it really is. MIME has nothing to do with annoying messages on your screen, and a reasonable mailer wouldn't give you those messages. But I think people on the list are doing both of those two things. People who know how to code, and who think that current tools _aren't_ easy enough to use, are putting more emphasis on #1 (whether they're solution involves MIME or not). People who don't have the coding skills or inclination, or who think the current tools are significantly easier to use then most people realize, are putting more emphais on #2. Those are the real issues here I think. The convincing people part is really secondary, in my opinion, because the current tools are nowhere near good enough. The developing easier tools is important, and if anyone wants to discuss how to do this, I'm certainly interested in it. Like I said, I'm convinced MIME is the answer, but a lot more needs to be said then "MIME is the answer" (like what is meant by my phrase "supporting MIME in a rational way"), and I'm also certainly willing to consider the idea that MIME isn't the answer after all. But comments like "well, MIME is completely irrelevant, email will eventually disappear in favor the web," or similar stuff, just leaves me confused, and seems completely irrelevant to me. The issue is making PGP easier to use. If anyone really thinks that the way to do this somehow involves HTTP, then I'd be glad to listen to an explanation of that. But as far as I can tell, whether you are talking about email or ftp or HTTP, the answer is about MIME, and not about those transport protocols.

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Re: Remailers and Keyservers, active ones?
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Derek Atkins writes: > The active remailers get periodically posted. I forget the site > where you can request the current list. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html is the best source I know. For the WWW-deprived: finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu I'm not aware of a way to obtain the list purely via email; maybe I should establish a way to do that if it's not out there.... - - -L. Futplex McCarthy - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLvFFv2f7YYibNzjpAQFE3AP/blHKIhZTLOOEV+flzL/WFGXMsdTmO2xV GuAZ9P/WCfkMM3x46D+glH7GaLGuGvIMIV09XrvEsvppJ2H4PCMAF1ZhCkLyCDJW VZZTytM4Ws4ffHZzEJ6eyPYqoaKUTgqImj/hRTXIxVRETSlliwWfOJAE6rEAL+Pk RY2vAHoUG2o= =y1dI - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLvFG6yoZzwIn1bdtAQHu3QF+JhyYgYqqxBKuGiJA0iDTingK6MZutyHw N89rv2C28/9M0lGc21PJJbW1V5yadOgM =4gy2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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