Zero crypto content.... tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) writes:
We are getting bogged down in banal details and platform idiosyncracies. Dozens of platforms, dozens of flavors of Unix and other operating systems, half a dozen major display options (as noted above), lots of image formats (at least that's relatively standardized, to GIF, PICT, JPEG, etc....and yet many people spend _days_ trying to convert, download, uncompress, read, display, etc.)
There's got to be a better way.
The better way is the spontantous order that markets generate. We are too early in the cycle to have figured out that having a standard 2 by 4 is better than cutting boards to custom sizes for each job. But some of this is self inflicted by the folks on this list, and other serious netheads. The vast majority of the world's populations would have no idea what Tim is ranting about. The last figure I saw had the percentage of home computers in the US with modems at 14%, but only 4% had accounts at a service provider of any type. The folks on this list are on the leading edge, and are exposed to more of the leading edge, failure prone experiments. MIME's encryption of ASCII so it is unreadible is just an example of a false start. Tim's approach to SLIP/PPP is the solution to the rest of his problems -- wait until there is a compelling reason to change. Let the academics with time on their hands invent possible standards with incremental improvements at the cost of incompatibility. Eventually the tiller will be replaced with a steering wheel, and the brakes and accelerator controls will be two or three pedals. Contrary to Tim's claim, ASCII is not the ideal way to read information. Fixed font, 78 character lines are hard to read. There is a reason that books are printed using proportional type on lines only two and a half alphabets wide -- it is easier for our eyes to read and our brains to comprehend. But studying typography is like studying cryptogrophy, something that takes time and effort and concentration. Interestingly, the net is a fairly weak place to learn typography, as it is impossible to see what is meant by "color" of a page of text unless it is properly typeset, which requires the fonts, kerning, leading, etc... so get a book :-) Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>