Well, with the many helpful comments here by fellow Cypherpunks, I've begun to explore how to use the new Postal Service system. I really must say that Al Gore's Reinventing Government Task Farce has outdone itself. The new "PowerVisualMail" system is much more powerful than the old "seal the envelope, put a stamp on it, and mail it" approach. But I'm having some problems in the conversion. Perhaps some of you can help. I did the Archie search and found the Installer script at ftp.gore.gov, fetched it, used MIME_Decode on it, checked the PGP sig to make sure no one had tampered with Tipper's code, then installed it as a client on my Mac (which I bought AUX for, to run this client). After reconfiguring metamail and setting the NOMETAMAIL environmental variable (under csh, "setenv NOMETAMAIL") to the AUX agent symbol, I was able to recompile PowerVisualMail to (sort of) run on my system. I found the new O'Reilly and Associates book, "How to Mail a Letter with PowerVisualMail," to be very helpful, especially Chapter 17. I hope to spend the next couple of days ironing out the bugs and getting my mail client to properly communicate with the PowerVisualMail agent. But it'll all be worth it! This will all be so much easier than licking stamps and sending those b-o-r-i-n-g paper letters. Of course, now I've got to teach my father how to decode my PowerVisualMail letters...and he doesn't even have a computer yet! I've told him that PowerVisualMail just runs too slowly on 486 machines, so I'm hoping he gets a 90 MHz Pentium. And the phone company seems stuck in the Dark Ages, completely unwilling to accept my PowerVisualMail items! I guess they're just late getting on the Information Superhighway. Well, sorry I'll be missing today's Cypherpunks meeting in Mountain View....I'm busy making my life easier. --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