On Sunday, November 18, 2001, at 01:53 PM, Faustine wrote:

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Faustine wrote: Tim wrote:

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Getting away fron digital cash for a moment, If you'd care to point me to any examples of crypto companies really focused and committed to developing applications that are commercially appealing to Joe Sixpack AOLuser, I'd be interested to hear about them.

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SSL/RSA built into every financial transaction with the common browsers. Visit Amazon, Ebay, etc., and note the secure connections. User-transpaperent, of course, but then, of course, this is precisely what a "Joe Sixpack AOLuser" [SIC] application _must_ be.

Your quoting software (?) is still broken. You have the order wrong.

You know as well as I do that the real push for improving transaction security is coming from commercial interests, not demand by the average user.

You asked for an example, I gave a good one. As for who is asking for this, this is hard to say. Is the security of a bank vault being "asked for" by "commercial interests" or by "customers"?

I'm a neo-Schopenhauerian Cynic-Stoic eudaimonist. Which is entirely beside the point that if you or I were trying to _make money_ selling crypto directly to average home users, we certainly ought to put some real effort into hiring people who know what average home users really want and are comfortable with.

This was done _extensively_ by the PGP/NAI people and by others. They had staffs of people designing products, designing boxes for sale at computer stores, etc. You keep showing your basic unawareness of the past.

Even with a whole laundry list of reasons behind the recent troubles (i.e. failures) of ZKS and Network Associates, I don't think you ought to dismiss the "intelligence divide" problem out of hand. Maybe you can, but I think it's still worth considering.

Then contribute something more than saying that other people are not doing what they should be doing. Companies have been trying to convince the home computer user that they should be encrypting for years. Doesn't wrok. And for not very surprising reasons. Same thing seen in the home security business, backups, etc. (The average user doesn't make any backups. The average homeowner doesn't do any more to secure his house than what it came with. In other words, "the defaults." )

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As usual, you just bullshit about things you obviously know little about. Do some serious reading, get up to speed.

As usual, you round things off with an rallying cry of "whippersnapper!!!" No problem, I know the drill.

You keep chanting about "whippersnapper!" I have no idea how old you are...you could very well be one of those menopausal women who go back to grad school after being kicked out of the house...though usually they end up studying to become psychobabblers. Your problem is not your age, it's your ignorance of core issues. I suspect you are willfully uneducable. --Tim May "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." --Robert A. Heinlein