On Mon, 15 Sep 1997 12:18:51 -0400, you wrote:
On Mon, 15 Sep 1997, Lucky Green wrote:
At 04:36 AM 9/15/97 GMT, Douglas L. Peterson wrote:
Ok, we write code. But as James S. Tyre pointed out, if the code is too difficult to use it will not be. And as Declan pointed out many/most people will not use the crypto if they must think about it.
Writing the code is no longer enough. The code must be usable by the sheeple to work. How do we do that?
Write better code.
I can think of many examples of very bad code that is difficult to use but is very popular, an obvious one is that Apple wrote better code than MS.
Even most sheeple rely on whatever is built in to MSWord or Excel than on PGP, so on that basis there is *NO* existing example of such code.
So, not only do cypherpunks have to write code, it has to be better quality than Apple, with more marketing push than Microsoft. And it must do something useful so they also have to invent a new application that would justify using the crypto it contains.
All while they do something else to pay for things like food and heat.
At this point it is easier to write laws.
No. Just difficult. Look at the rise of Linux and Free/Net/OpenBSD. They are slowly making it into the mainstream (I found a copy of RedHat Linux and InfoMagic Linux for sale at a CompUSA last week). Linux was slow to take off because it is an OS and difficult to learn from scratch. If we make programs for mainstream (Windows, MacOS, OS/2) that are VERY easy to use, do somthing everyone wants, and are free (with source code), I think they will take off. -Doug ------------------- Douglas L. Peterson mailto:fnorky@geocities.com http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/1271/