- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: MIME (again)
by Michael Conlen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Wed, 14 Dec 1994, L. McCarthy wrote: > I'm using a version of ELM which claims to be MIME-compliant and usually is, > but all I saw in Peter Cassidy's message was a collection of random-looking > extended-ASCII characters. Usually when something arrives in a locally- > unsupported MIME format (like Amanda's GIF a while back), I just get an > "unrecognized format" error message. I didn't see any error messages at all > this time, just a meaningless jumble of characters (different, incidentally, > from the PGP-cipherptext-like characters Tim quoted). Thats what that thing was susposed to be. I got the same things with pine, which I know is susposed to be mime aware. Anyway all this talk about it gave me an idea. A PGP mime extention, where your mail says that you have a PGP encoded message, enter secret pass phrase to contiue. I think this would do a couple of things First get PGP installed on more machines. Sys Admins who install MIME aware applications would almost be required to install PGP beacuse it is a part of MIME. Secone more people would be introduced to PGP. The first time they use a MIME aware application ie. PINE they would be given a message that they do not have a public/private key set up, ect. That time could be used to explain the basics of encryption, public/private key's, and security issuse of using PGP. Third PGP would be more frequently used beacuse it would be right there with there E-Mail, ect. It would not require as much work to set up beacuse the programs could prompt to do things ... Do you want to encrypt this E-Mail with the recipiants public key [Yn] ... Groove on dude Michael Conlen - --- [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 iQBFAwUBLvCAzyoZzwIn1bdtAQFCnQGAi19XGrhhoUi7gaAJnG6UUeUjUqvX9yL+ m7qc768s3wEs5sdEqY2mT+JVCT1ES3PB =tQFE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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E-Lets
by Claborne, Chris 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following article has some unique ties to digital cash and what some people would like to see. In summary it is a description of bartering being used in Europe the removes money and replaces it with "Lets". Money no good? May I be the first to coin "E-Lets" :) ================================================================ >From "The European" 23-29 September 1994. Title: "Money no good? Try bartering" ... Additional reporting by Betrice Newbery. The Single Market was launched with the Single European Act of 1987, and with it the vision of a single European currency. But while governments seek a future of trading in ecus, people across the continent are looking to the past - to the days when bartering was the way of the world. Local Exchange Trading Systems (lets) are a form of moneyless trading, with more in common with 19th century anarchism than late 20th-century capitalism. The inhabitants of Stroud, a village in the west of England, can now pay for legal advice from a solicitor in "strouds" as well as sterling. In Madrid, masseurs and furniture removers accept both valle kas and pesetas. In Berlin, talents or deutschmarks are used to pay for babysitting or carpentry. Lets are proving remarkably popular. In Britain, there are more than 200 systems involving as many as 20,000 people. In Spain, the success of the Trueque Lets in Madrid has served as a modle for similar systems to be created in Barcelona, Alicante and the Canary Islands. Switzerland has the Troc de Service in Onex and Demark has a "Ring of Exchange". They could even spread to eastern Europe. A pilot scheme was started this summer in the city of Magdeburg in east Germany. "Because of high unemployment and limited capital, Lets could help people in the east to use their skills and talents," said Hugo Godscalk of Paysys, a German constancy firm which specializes in forms of payment. Although the organization of each Lets is discreetly different they all share a basic tenet: that by tapping local skills and spending power, it is possible to improve the economic and psychological health of the community. They work by creating a local currency, the "bobbin" in Manchester, for example, and encouraging local people and business to accept that currency in pay-ment, or part-payment, of goods and services. Joining a Lets is a quick and painless process. On payment of an initial, one-off registration fee (mainstream money), and a negligible annual administration fee (local money), you are issued with an account in the local currency, a cheque book and a local directory, which lists the goods an services available. You are then free, for example, to start paying for your gardner or bying your groceries in local currency. A small levy is charged on each transaction to cover the administration costs of the system and to pay the salary of the administrator. However, there are no interest charges when you go into debt and no restrictions on credit. While their simplicity makes them accessible, the growing popularity of alternative currencies has less to do with alternatives then the lack of them. Recession, unemployment and the high interest rates have left many people unable to earn, borrow, or spend conventional money. The Trueque (meaning barter) in Madrid was founded in January by Dan Wagman, an American who has been living in Spain for 16 years. "The present system of conventional money is not working too well," he says. "in Spain, 20 per cent of people are unemployed. It is a terrible waste of talent and time. Lets give the unemployed the chance to use their skills and the impoverished immediate access to services that they couldn't otherwise afford." Liz Shepard, who runs the national coordinating organization, Lets Link, in Britain, agrees: "one in six United Kingdom households were experiencing severe debt problems because of high interest rates and recession. An interest-free, non- profit-making system appeals to them." Christine Schoeb and Carlo Jelmini were both students in Geneva when they set up the Troc de Service in Onex as part of their course work. Another ten groups in Bern, Basel, Winterthur and elsewhere operate their own scheme based on talents. One of the founders, Simcha Piwnik, said: "We get professional workers advertising a whole range of services, from electricians to furniture restorers to kitchen-fitters. You can buy furniture, bicycles, organic vegetables - anything. It almost makes traditional street markets redundant." Yet the proliferation of Lets has not been problem-free. According to Michael Jacobs, an economist at Lancaster University and author of "Green Economy", Lets must overcome two main difficulties if they are to survive. "the first is common to all voluntary organisations: will enough people join and remain involved to make them work? The second is peculiar to Lets: is there a tendency for people to leave the local system once they secure employment within the mainstream economy? If so, they may well fail unless there is a continual supply of new members." While survival can be difficult, growth can prove equally problematic. As they have become more wide-spread, Lets have attracted the attention of national treasuries who are con cerned that local currencies could be exploited as a way of avoiding paying tax. Moreover, growth has prompted fears among Lets users that people could accumulate sizable debts and then leave the community without repaying. In August, more than 60 people attended a conference near Montpellier in southern France to discuss ways of introducing Lets to that country. In Dessau, in Germany, a recent conference relulted in the setting up of six new systems. Henk van Arkel, from Utrecht, who runs a series of systems in the Netherlands, was one of the participants, "We are planning with the Irish, Flemish and German and probably the UK systems, for international co-operation across Europe," he said. "We do need more exchange of ideas and improvements. But we are not going to link the currencies. The most important part of the idea is the local aspect." There are, however, sign that Lets are starting to encroach on some of the traditional functions of conventional money. Trading between groups, for example, is just beginning in some areas. But it will be a long time before they rival the ecu. ... __o .. -\<, chris.claborne(a)sandiegoca.attgis.com ...(*)/(*). CI$: 76340.2422 PGP Pub Key fingerprint = A8 FA 55 92 23 20 72 69 52 AB 64 CC C7 D9 4F CA Avail on Pub Key server. PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome!

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Re: properties of FV
by Nathaniel Borenstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Excerpts from fv: 15-Dec-94 Re: properties of FV Eric Hughes(a)remailer.net (3987) > I'm not trying to imply that you couldn't cobble something up fairly > quickly, but I have my doubts that a good quick hack will scale > appropriately for even a modest sized operation. Assuming that thing that you're "cobbling together" is based on a reasonably robust database engine, it should scale a long, long way. Basically all you need is a set of three-part records: account-id, cumulative amount, and timestamp of oldest transaction. (You might want a fourth field that gives all the purchasing details as text, if your services sells a range of different kinds of things). Any good commercial db system should be able to handle a LOT of such records. > > The very nature > > of such a net billing system requires linkability of transaction to > > transaction, or in other words generates identity. So FV is > > unsuitable for small value anonymous transactions. > I would still like to you address this issue, if only to acknowledge > the above characterization. This goes back to the two kinds of anonymity that you so usefully defined in your earlier message. These small transactions would have counterparty anonymity -- all that the seller knows is your first virtual id, which is essentially a user-chosen pseudonym -- but not issuer anonymity. > As I had recalled from reading your materials, you were charging 29 > cents plus 2% on one leg of the transaction plus an additional 2% on > the other. Rereading, this is not the case. Am I remembering a > previous situation? No, you're just confused. Our charges have not changed, this is what they've always been. Probably our materials weren't clear enough somewhere, in which case I apologize. > Partial security is better than no security. That's a *very* interesting statement. I'm not at all sure what it means, so I'm not sure if I believe it or not. Sometimes partial security is worse than no security because it gives people a false *sense* of security. (People who know their email is going in the clear are likely to be more prudent than people who believe their email is "encrypted" even though the encryption algorithm might be a very poor one. I've even known people to pass real secrets around using rot13, amazingly enough. People can be quite naive.) > One of the underlying conceptual problems with allowing a key to be at > risk is some sort of belief that compromises of secret keys should > never ever EVER be allowed to happen. This is ludicrous. When the > benefit of the use of a private key means that it might be > compromised, don't rely upon it's not being compromised. This is a very good point. It is one that is often missed in analyses of digital banks, in particular, where the consequences of compromising the bank's keys are often not sufficiently considered. > In particular, if a digital signature does not, by agreement, carry an > implied warrantee of identity, then there's no problem at all. Use > the crypto entirely for transit security. If someone hacks your > machine and grabs your passphrase and forges a transaction, at least > the intruder has to grab your passphrase. This is exactly the way we would expect to use crypto layered on top of First Virtual's protocols, if and when such cryptographic protocols are deployed widely enough to have penetrated af meaningful portion of our market. -- Nathaniel

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Algebra
by A5713643665＠attpls.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Eric and Cypherpunks, So, how is division defined in Fp? Tom

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Re: properties of FV
by Nathaniel Borenstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Excerpts from fv: 15-Dec-94 Re: properties of FV Andrew Lowenstern(a)il.us. (718*) > > This goes back to the two kinds of anonymity that you so usefully > > defined in your earlier message. These small transactions would > > have counterparty anonymity -- all that the seller knows is your > > first virtual id, which is essentially a user-chosen pseudonym -- > > but not issuer anonymity. > That would make this counterparty pseudonymity, not anonymity. The merchant, > while not knowing the true identity of his clients, is still able to > correlate the transactions of individual accounts (and must be able to under > FV's policies). A malicious merchant, for instance, could recognize that a > particular account is more interested in certain types of information and > charge accordingly. Good point. I stand corrected, at least as far as the terminology is concerned. However, as far as the particular malicious-merchant scenario is concerned, I must say I'd be skeptical about any merchant who didn't tell me the price up front, *before* he asked me for my account-id... -- Nathaniel

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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 5:27 PM 12/15/94, Timothy C. May wrote: >For example, I could spend some number of hours switching from my >current mail progam (elm) to some other editor which perhaps >better-supported the MIME messages seen here. But if all I got for >several hours of using, learning, and becoming comfortable with, say, >"pine," was the ability to see an _italicized_ word, or a word in >Cyrillic, then I would consider this a poor ROI. Well, I certainly agree with you, and I expect most everyone else does too. No one expects anyone to spend lots of time with minimal returns on that time. But the reason I think you are meeting so much animosity is because there are lots of people here who think MIME is the solution to making encryption easier to use. Whether or not Joe Random User switches to a MIME compliant app so he can see italicized words is irrelevant. But what _is_ relevant is whether Joe Programmer writes his mail reader to be MIME compliant, and specifically, writes it to appropriately deal with the about-to-be-standardized PGP types. We all agree that it's currently much too hard to deal with PGP on a regular basis, for most people. Some people are satisfied with the tools they have, but the vast majority of people either don't have access to those tools, or dont' think the available tools are sufficient. It's not currently easy to use PGP on a regular basis, and this is a big problem. A lot of people are convinced that MIME is the solution to this problem, and rightly so in my opinion. And they take many of your comments to be counter productive, in that we "should" be encouraging MIME, and we "should" be excited about MIMEs possibilities in this area. And of course people like MIME for other reasons too. But I don't think anyone is trying to blame Tim C. May, or anyone else, for thinking the current tools suck, and for not wanting to deal with MIME with the current tools. Everything is a cost benefit equation, and it's up to you to weigh the costs and benefits. But people see MIME as exciting technology, which if properly implemented, can do lots of really cool things. Not the least of which is make it easy/possible for mailers to deal with PGP correctly. Steve Dorner, who writes Eudora, is working on a new version that will interact with PGP transparently. He's been talking about it a bit on the MCIP list, and I'm very excited about it. It should make using PGP with Eudora incredibly easy. And he's relying on MIME, and the incipient PGP and encryption MIME standards, to make it work.

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Re: FV & PGP (was Re: First Virtual email security)
by NetSurfer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Thanks for the clarification - I missed that part. - --- [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 iQBFAwUBLvDgUCoZzwIn1bdtAQEyiQF/edj0wFAtJz50I9VQpRFpz7pMFKL6ffIo /QiLNqjus8bKRStqz5hr2obb8w7OoBlw =JFF+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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The End of the Forged Post Controversey
by werewolf＠io.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- It would appear that the "Bob Rae Forgery" had its standard 15 minutes of fame: From: eye(a)interlog.com (eye WEEKLY) Newsgroups: eye.news,ont.general,alt.internet.media-coverage Subject: EYE.NET: Mike Harris -- Roasted Alive Followup-To: eye.general,ont.general,alt.internet.media-coverage Date: 14 Dec 1994 11:00:20 -0500 Organization: eye -- Toronto's Arts Newspaper Lines: 160 Approved: eye(a)interlog.com Message-ID: <3cn4qk$ec0(a)gold.interlog.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gold.interlog.com Summary: Ontario PC leader pulls net.related bonehead political stunt Xref: io.org eye.news:307 ont.general:20751 alt.internet.media-coverage:2470 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ eye WEEKLY December 15 1994 Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EYE.NET EYE.NET MIKE HARRIS: ROASTED ALIVE Clueless PC leader mercilessly flamed for net-related political stunt by K.K. CAMPBELL On Dec 8, provincial PC leader Mike Harris stood in the Legislature and introduced a copy of a post to the newsgroup ont.general -- a public forum where anything of general interest to Ontarians is discussed. The post in question was signed "Bob Rae." It talked about the sexual orientation of Marion Boyd, the Karla Homolka case, and a few other things. Harris wasn't claiming Rae actually wrote it, he was suggesting it was proof of a serious "security violation" in government computer systems. Simulataneously, the PCS issued a press release entitled "Our Premier: Roadkill on the Information Highway." We regularly warn Our Faithful Readers about eyeNET's Rule#1: When strangers approach wielding the "highway metaphor," run. Do not speak with them. Do not make eye contact. Last week, eyeNET predicted many new and entertaining adventures could result from Ontario's premier getting online. We expected the shenanigans would come from anonymous net.weenies and assorted loons, not Mike Harris. ARTIFICIAL BOB It began innocently on Sunday Dec 3, at 1:22:41 a.m. (EST), when an anonymous individual posted a message called "Greetings to People of Ontario's Information Highway" to ont.general . It was faked so the "From:" line said "premier(a)govonca.gov.on.ca", Rae's office. Ontarians read it. Ontarians ignored it. The general response was best summed up by Toronto's Val Dodge (val(a)io.org) who wrote: "Am I the only one getting tired of [these spoof posts]? OK, the first couple were funny, but this is getting really tedious." No one thought it was from Rae. No one thought it was from "hackers invading government computers." Netters just looked at the PATH line and could see the post worked its way to Ontario from a California computer. On top of that, in the header it plainly says: "This message is NOT from the person listed in the from line. It is from an automated software remailing service..." Fake posts are part of net.life, but this one wasn't even a "forgery" (a real attempt to pretend to be someone else), it was a "spoof" (an "imitation" no one is expected to believe). A parody. Hardly a "security violation," unless Harris thinks all political impersonators represent "security violations." What if terminally dense Americans thought impersonator Dana Carvey really _was_ George Bush? Oh my GAWD! Call the cops! Rae's staff had noticed the fake post. Like the rest of the net.community, they just ignored it. After all, even the stupidest elements of the net community hadn't been fooled... why worry? They didn't account for Mike Harris. Five days later Harris issued his now famous "Roadkill" press release which includes the line "Internet Bob: the hacker is hacked." PC press secretary, Peter Varney, told eye the Conservatives weren't trying to score political points. They sincerely thought this harmless post was a "threat to Ontario's security" -- though Varney couldn't explain why Harris attempted to grandstand. And it's exactly that attempt to make political points from the matter that most angers Ontario netters. Sensationalization and playing on the ignorance of the press (which was as rampant as ever). The PCs swear they never saw the very explicit disclaimer in the fake Rae post because the newsreader of the person who "slipped" them this oh-so-dangerous document edited out most header information. It's plausible -- many newsreaders chop stuff from headers (headers contain info to help direct and organize posts for ease of reading). But ignorance hardly excuses Harris. In our conversation, Varney, trying to save face, actually suggested the simple ability to make a spoof post (and fool Mike Harris, I guess) is still a "security threat." So what are they asking Rae to do about it? Call in the OPP and stormtroop around cyberspace? THE NET STRIKES BACK The net.community's responses in ont.general have been a virtually unanimous condemnation of Harris. Several threads (i.e., discussions) developed, the longest one entitled "MIKE HARRIS IS SLIME." It originated with Brampton's Evan Leibovitch (evan(a)telly.on.ca) who wrote he didn't blame the "impersonator" because "children will be children", but "the people who fed this item to Harris are absolute assholes... My respect for Harris and the Ontario PCs has just taken a nosedive, and I hope the scum who were behind this realize that they have scored *NO* political points for pulling this stunt." In another thread, Toronto's Jamie Mason (g1jmason(a)cdf.toronto.edu) wrote: "Anyone who has been on the net for more than about FIVE MINUTES would realize that the message was a forgery. Anyone who has been on the net for more that about TEN minutes wouldn't even take notice of the message." T. Kim Nguyen (kim(a)algorithmics.com) likened the Harris bluff to "the way he paraded the woman quitting her job to go on welfare last year. His antics of the last few weeks trying to make the NDP look bad have simply succeeded in showing how much of a ridiculous opportunist he is." GENUINE BOB Late Friday afternoon (Dec 9, 5:24 pm), the Premier of Ontario (premier(a)govonca.gov.on.ca) issued his first real post to ont.general. It was called "Thanks" and read, in its entirety: "Many thanks to those of you who flamed the PC pranksters. I knew when I went online that I would have to deal with fake posts and related chaff. That's the price of being on the Net. I'm not about to delete my account. I still want to hear from people with *real* concerns and *real* suggestions." Signed: "Bob*The Genuine Article*Rae" eye called the premier's office. They confirm it's real. The premier's office made it clear it won't launch any investigation as to where the parody post came from -- and for that it should be applauded. I've talked with many people who don't understand the net and when something they don't like happens they invariably respond: "I'm going to shut the Internet down!" The Rae team is doing it's best to fit into the net.community, not remake it. Varney, on the other hand, says the PCs will actively pursue anyone who "impersonates" Mike Harris online. FRESH ROADKILL! Oh no! Look! Just spotted in ont.general! A breach in PC security!! Alert! Alert! Call the newsmedia! On Dec 10, "Mike Harris" supposedly posted a missive called "Mike Harris Fights Back - Kiss My Ass Rae!" to the net. It reads, in part: "You listen here Rae, my sources informed me that your article was on the level. You sleazy NDP wimps are more than capable of resorting to cheap shots like this, so I thought I'd pin one on your grain-fed ass... DAMN I'm mad!!!" Signed: "Mike Harris, Progressive Consevative (sic) Party of Ontario." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Retransmit freely in cyberspace Author holds standard copyright Issues of eye in archive gopher://interlog.com Coupla Mailing lists available http://www.interlog.com/eye eye(a)interlog.com "Break the Gutenberg Lock..." 416-971-8421 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBLvD223BFBj7pSNyhAQElcwf/Yv79UuYHOa8YJHDpZGHp8GlmD7WpoddK HaUr/EHvGJdB18UaSX99lZtLVDErFdrgk1xVvXQbIYAeLFpd1SmxMDUAqKUjqcMJ 4zZbqR7hKS66D++MRCWE/JCrxyEcyQPGXDNEXRel4XQZBv83FKI6qsLTccLfYaQN zozSr7CLjvM7Fv877znvLYQ/wvcvBRO4B1yCbj++/ENP4o7xL/BXSeoWYMJcdcFO X+qTqNj4b3A1YU6Phc5ciTHy/UeOUAtyWDAXXDmswXAkwDPWBUT3f0twJcIzjiRP RzkYASYIa21DYxhiR89vWL7NfcfnLYj7YHuG3Rc83wZLaxMhNLPCKw== =RZZ8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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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: >"Actual" terminals is not the issue, but "virtual" terminals *is*. I >haven't done a poll lately, or ever in fact, but my hunch is that 70% >of the list is emulating some form of terminal, e.g., a VT-100 or 102, >or maybe something slightly more exotic. Or a shell program, as in >America Online, which has its own standard. If they are using terminal emulation they have only themselves to blame. [...] >-- Netcom doesn't give me a convenient way to bypass the dial-up >terminal emulators (PPP and SLIP are no longer offered by Netcom) The Internet Adapter ($25) http://marketplace.com/ >-- Local Internet providers (ScruzNet, SenseMedia) are not, last I >checked, offering e-mail. (Harry Bartholomew, of our list, has been >looking into this and he tells me the best current strategy is to have >two accounts: a SLIP or PPP provider for the Web, and ftp, etc., and a >standard Netcom account for mail. I expect this to change, which is >the thrust of my comments about the Web, but this is how things now >change.) The Internet Adapter ($25) http://marketplace.com/ >-- The communication issue. What are _others_ using? I could certainly >use my _graphics_ capabilities in the ways that Amanda and Perry are >suggesting, and which I do all the time of course, but messages would >still best be generated with an ASCII terminal environment as the >intended destination. I note that all of Perry's messages, and most of >Amanda's messages, fit this ASCII model. I can't help but wondering how big of a part you play in this. >(The MIME stuff I'm not saying shouldn't be used, just that some of >us--perhaps most of us, is my hunch--will not be adopting the latest >bleeding edge technology. The comments here about Sun and Microsoft >not properly--or at all--supporting MIME tell us that it's not real >likely that most folks here will be sending spreadsheets out to the >list readers and attaching GIFs anytime soon. No great loss, either.) Not to the list, but to others -- over email. >Finally, Amanda mentioned "being away from out desks." Well, many of >us are _always_ away from our desks when we post. From home machines, >not from T3-connected Indigos on our desk. DUO 230. Can't go to 14.4, because I am "too far from the switch." PacBell won't do anything about it. "All we guarantee is audible voice communication." ObPlug: Today we received the first two engineering samples of our new lan/phone/video devices that give you 16Mbps using the very same 4 phone wires that are already in your wall. At less than $100 per node. Call your congressman today and demand local telco deregulation :-) >And we're usually our own "mail support" staff: we have no one to turn >to help us set up the latest-and-greatest (especially for a very >minimal ROI). I volunteer. >I am content to mainly communicate with most of you in the form of >these ASCII messages. I've done a _lot_ of desktop publishing in my >day, mostly for internal reports and conference papers, and I can't >really say that the fancy fonts, graphs, multicolumn displays, etc, >would have much effect on my ability to get my points across. Agreed. >One thing I would like very much is the ability to include simple >diagrams and drawings in my posts, but this is clearly an _unsolved_ >problem, from a practical point of view. (Before any of you scream to >me about how this can be done, ask yourself how many people could >plausibly _see_ the results, given the realities of the Net today, and >ask yourself where all these posts-with-diagrams are if they're so >easy to do.) Uhm, most people? -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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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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