Re: ADMIN: proposed new policy on the mailing list

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I am among those "generally supportive" of E. Hughes' suggestion that
signed messages be encouraged in some way.  It wouldn't bother me a
bit if that led to a decline in CypherPunks mailing list membership;
with luck, the quality of the list would improve.  Furthermore, class
consciousness is a good thing (?), so let's create classes of CypherPunks
and try generally to elevate consciousness.

DEADBEAT <na5877@anon.penet.fi>

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I think the major benefit of requiring signatures on the cypherpunks list
is not the authentication it will give, but the new software which cypherpunks
will be forced to develop to make adding signatures with mail readers 
automatic. After the user interface work has evolved enough to make signatures
ubiquitous, we can then switch to some kind of trusted-key system and
really authenticate list members if we want.

   I think the most important and needed software is yet to be developed:

   Offline mail readers which work from home over the serial port and
which incorporate PGP abilities. I know there are lots of POP readers,
but we need one which is in ANSI C, portable, and easily extendable to
serve as a base for incorporation of crypto. Preferably, it should
use curses, or an abstracted window model so it can be easily ported
to Mac, Windows, AmigaDOS, X-Windows with little change. 

-Ray



-- Ray Cromwell        |    Engineering is the implementation of science;    --
-- EE/Math Student     |       politics is the implementation of faith.      --
-- rjc@gnu.ai.mit.edu  |                         - Zetetic Commentaries      --