On Fri, 25 Aug 1995, Bryce Wilcox wrote:
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I have PGP installed on my pc and if I want to use it, I can save the message in ascii, then upload it to the server where I have my Internet account, then mail it.
I use PGP on every outgoing message and about 20% of incoming messages. And I send/receive a *lot* of messages. No way I would be able to do a process like the above on my mail.
In a few weeks I will be able to get mail on my home computer, but most (80%?) Internet users will still not have that luxury.
Is that assumption based on the fact that most inet users are using shell accounts? Using a PPP or SLIP dialup and managing your mail locally using POP is pretty easy. Clients like Private Idaho and PGPclip then make the PGP transition painless. Here at USIS, we have 305 entries in the password file. Subtract 10 entries for system accounts (root, news, majordomo, bin, etc) Now of the entries left 80 are PPP, 48 SLIP. There are shell accounts for each slip/ppp user, thus we have 39 people left over who are shell only. So, 70% of our users have the ability to locally manage and pgp encrypt mail. Now that winblows 95 is out and ppp dialup into the i-net is point and gruntable, I expect this disparity to worsen. Why learn icky unix commands when you can follow some simple instructions and have ras up and running ppp in 10 minutes? Since people will _already_ be using windows mail interfaces, the transition to PGP wil be quick and painless. Hell, I hear the latest version of Eudora has it integrated. David Neal <dneal@usis.com> - GNU Planet Aerospace 1-800-PLN-8-GNU Unix, Sybase and Networking consultant. "...you have a personal responsibility to be pro-active in the defense of your own civil liberties." - S. McCandlish