James Hightower writes:
Which brings me to the question; "What ARE people using, and what are they GOING to use?" Can anyone point me to a survey of the most used ways for e-mail to get on the net, and what will be most used in the future? The problem of insecure machines can be dealt with, but right now I have only knowledge of the insecure machine I use for email, and how I deal with it.
We did a survey of this nearly 2 years ago, at the second Cypherpunks meeting. Got about 10 main mail programs being used, about the same number of editors, and about as many platforms.
If no such surveys exist (which I find hard to believe) than I'll do one myself.
I think this is a great idea. I suggest we toss around a few questions, to make the poll as useful as possible (and so it doesn't have to be done a second time to fill in missing gaps). Here are a few questions I'd like to see (with *my* answers included to help show context): * Internet service provider: Netcom, SunOS Release 4.1.3 * Accessed via: Macintosh IIci, running VT100 emulator, White Knight 11.14 * Online mail program used (if any): elm * Online text editor used: emacs * Offline mail program used (if any): Eudora 2.0.2 * Offline text editor used: Eudora, Microsoft Word, etc. (any Mac program) * PGP version used: MacPGP 2.3 In the poll of two years ago, this was abbreviated into a message like: "Netcom/elm-Eudora/emacs/MacPGP 2.3" for easier processing. And the poll taker could simply list all the one-line responses so as to give developers/readers a better feel for the environments being used, a la: "Netcom/elm/emacs/PGP 2.6ui" "CRL/emacs/emacs/PGP 2.7" "Linux/xmail/pine/PGP 2.3" "AOL/??/??/not allowed" etc.
his movies-on-demand and access to the SuperMall(TM) and, incidentally, his E-mail capability, it might be a good thing to know in advance what J. Q. Consumer will be using so that we can be there with strong, usable crypto when he gets there.
Here I differ, as I don't think we can plausibly do a poll of what "J.Q. Consumer" is using, or plans to use. That's a huge job, fraught with polling problems. And J.Q. Consumer himself has no idea of what he "will be using," so why bother? I had assumed the poll was of *us*, which is both a manageable poll to take, and a useful one. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."