Hal wrote:
Another thing to keep in mind is that, probably, two years from now a considerable majority of people on the net will be people who aren't using it yet. They won't have twenty years of experience with ASCII and Unix and /bin/mail, etc. As Lucky Green says, they will get going with Mosaic or derivatives and never leave it. They will use Internet in a Box (or an equivalent from AOL or Microsoft) and get set up and running easily. They won't have to use Archie to find a JPEG or GIF viewer, it will be built in. Most of them will use a PC running Windows 95, a few will use Macs. That will be the net in two years, IMO.
We should be ready for that world and working to keep it safe for privacy. As Phil Z. said in the PGP docs, "skate to where the puck will be." We need to look forward, not look back to the good old days.
I agree, and made exactly this point at today's Cypherpunks meeting, during Raph Levien's talk on his "premail" work. (Note: Colin Plumb was also there, amongst others.) I expect to be switching to Netscape, or something similar, and a SLIP/PPP connection. So I'm all in favor of integrating things. And I agree that "Network" (Microsoft is preparing copyright infringement suits against all those also using the term they invented last week) will account for the majority of Net connections soon. Being built into Windows 95 will ensure this. --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. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tcmay