Re: McCoy is Right! New Mail Format to Start Now.

> But this isn't 15 years ago, and I daresay there isn't a _single_
> subscriber to the Cypherpunks list using a VIC-20 or anything remotely
> similar. Of the 600 or so subscribers, and certainly of the 100-200
> involved posters, I would bet that essentially all of them can display
> ASCII text on an 80-column screen.

... when they're at their desk.  There has been an explosion, however, of
non-80-column-capable devices on which people want to read their email.
Alphanumeric pagers, Handheld PDAs, palmtop computers, etc.  Give me a radio
modem with reasonable service coverage, and I'd want to read at least some
kinds of mail on my Newton (about 32-48 characters across the display).
In fact, the ability to display graphics is becoming universal in areas
where 80 columns have been tossed aside.

Very few people use actual terminals any more.  I'd be amazed if any more
than 5-10% of the readership of this group (and the Internet at large)
were using anything but a graphics display, even if it's emulating a VT100.

I should stop now, though.  I feel the urge to bring up Hollerith cards
and keypunches again :).


Amanda Walker
InterCon Systems Corporation

Amanda Walker wrote:

(quoting me)
> > But this isn't 15 years ago, and I daresay there isn't a _single_
> > subscriber to the Cypherpunks list using a VIC-20 or anything remotely
> > similar. Of the 600 or so subscribers, and certainly of the 100-200
> > involved posters, I would bet that essentially all of them can display
> > ASCII text on an 80-column screen.
> 
> ... when they're at their desk.  There has been an explosion, however, of
> non-80-column-capable devices on which people want to read their email.
> Alphanumeric pagers, Handheld PDAs, palmtop computers, etc.  Give me a radio
> modem with reasonable service coverage, and I'd want to read at least some
> kinds of mail on my Newton (about 32-48 characters across the display).
> In fact, the ability to display graphics is becoming universal in areas
> where 80 columns have been tossed aside.

This of course is not an easily solvable problem. And I believe it
actually makes my point, that _text_ remains about the only lingua
franca we have: if I send messages out to the list that can be read by
the greatest number of subscribers, with Newtons, Magic Cap
doohickies, radiomail-to-fax, Suns, Ataris, Indigos, Amigas, and even
VIC-20s, it is almost certainly the case that text can be read by most
of them (I'm talking about the _contents_ of the message; the delivery
level is another set of issues).

> Very few people use actual terminals any more.  I'd be amazed if any more
> than 5-10% of the readership of this group (and the Internet at large)
> were using anything but a graphics display, even if it's emulating a VT100.

"Actual" terminals is not the issue, but "virtual" terminals *is*. I
haven't done a poll lately, or ever in fact, but my hunch is that 70%
of the list is emulating some form of terminal, e.g., a VT-100 or 102,
or maybe something slightly more exotic. Or a shell program, as in
America Online, which has its own standard.

Perry made the same point that Amanda makes, that my Macintosh _should
be_ usable as a graphics system, not just for ASCII text. Well, I
agree, but so what?

-- Netcom doesn't give me a convenient way to bypass the dial-up
terminal emulators (PPP and SLIP are no longer offered by Netcom)

-- Local Internet providers (ScruzNet, SenseMedia) are not, last I
checked, offering e-mail. (Harry Bartholomew, of our list, has been
looking into this and he tells me the best current strategy is to have
two accounts: a SLIP or PPP provider for the Web, and ftp, etc., and a
standard Netcom account for mail. I expect this to change, which is
the thrust of my comments about the Web, but this is how things now
change.)

-- The communication issue. What are _others_ using? I could certainly
use my _graphics_ capabilities in the ways that Amanda and Perry are
suggesting, and which I do all the time of course, but messages would
still best be generated with an ASCII terminal environment as the
intended destination. I note that all of Perry's messages, and most of
Amanda's messages, fit this ASCII model.

(The MIME stuff I'm not saying shouldn't be used, just that some of
us--perhaps most of us, is my hunch--will not be adopting the latest
bleeding edge technology. The comments here about Sun and Microsoft
not properly--or at all--supporting MIME tell us that it's not real
likely that most folks here will be sending spreadsheets out to the
list readers and attaching GIFs anytime soon. No great loss, either.)

Finally, Amanda mentioned "being away from out desks." Well, many of
us are _always_ away from our desks when we post. From home machines,
not from T3-connected Indigos on our desk.

And we're usually our own "mail support" staff: we have no one to turn
to help us set up the latest-and-greatest (especially for a very
minimal ROI). 

This is not, despite what it may look like, a bitch.

I am content to mainly communicate with most of you in the form of
these ASCII messages. I've done a _lot_ of desktop publishing in my
day, mostly for internal reports and conference papers, and I can't
really say that the fancy fonts, graphs, multicolumn displays, etc,
would have much effect on my ability to get my points across.

One thing I would like very much is the ability to include simple
diagrams and drawings in my posts, but this is clearly an _unsolved_
problem, from a practical point of view. (Before any of you scream to
me about how this can be done, ask yourself how many people could
plausibly _see_ the results, given the realities of the Net today, and
ask yourself where all these posts-with-diagrams are if they're so
easy to do.)

I'm really not happy at being portrayed as the list's leading Luddite,
but it's a cross I guess I'll have to bear.

I still say folks ought to read Arthur C. Clarke's short story,
"Superiority." 

--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/tc/tcmay

Timothy C. May says:
> -- Netcom doesn't give me a convenient way to bypass the dial-up
> terminal emulators (PPP and SLIP are no longer offered by Netcom)
> 
> -- Local Internet providers (ScruzNet, SenseMedia) are not, last I
> checked, offering e-mail.

Most of the service providers in New York support SLIP customers
running POP clients. The bay area has far more providers than New
York. Surely someone out there can help Tim find a provider that will
give him a SLIP connection and POP and NNTP servers.

> -- The communication issue. What are _others_ using? I could certainly
> use my _graphics_ capabilities in the ways that Amanda and Perry are
> suggesting, and which I do all the time of course, but messages would
> still best be generated with an ASCII terminal environment as the
> intended destination. I note that all of Perry's messages, and most of
> Amanda's messages, fit this ASCII model.

If you are using SLIP, you no longer care about graphics on your end
since the host you are talking to is your own. You would, however,
need to have a MIME capable mailer on your end. I understand that the
commercial version of Eudora is o.k. in this regard but not great --
it will let you deal with the stuff but not as cleanly as something
like NeXTMail would have. However, since you are going to have to go
in that direction eventually anyway I'd suggest that moving to using
your computer as a host and not as a very expensive VT102 clone is the
way to begin.

> Finally, Amanda mentioned "being away from out desks." Well, many of
> us are _always_ away from our desks when we post. From home machines,
> not from T3-connected Indigos on our desk.

Your Mac is quite a respectable machine -- its handling all your mail
traffic right now without any trouble, and I'm sure it will do just
fine handling everything directly as a host via SLIP or PPP.

> One thing I would like very much is the ability to include simple
> diagrams and drawings in my posts, but this is clearly an _unsolved_
> problem, from a practical point of view. (Before any of you scream to
> me about how this can be done, ask yourself how many people could
> plausibly _see_ the results, given the realities of the Net today, and
> ask yourself where all these posts-with-diagrams are if they're so
> easy to do.)

I'd say that most of us could. Almost no one is using a dumb terminal
-- just terminal emulator software. For those of us with MIME capable
readers (which for practical purposes could be everyone on the list if
they wanted them) you could enclose a set of line drawings with your
messages. If they are simple, they will compress very well and should
not take up very much room.

You are right, by the way, that I post in ASCII. Thats just because I
have no urge to include diagrams and I use Emacs as my mail reader out
of force of habit. If I want to look at MIME, though, I just pop into
another window and type "mhn NUMBER", where NUMBER is the number of
the message I want to view. Its not too inconvenient at all, although
it isn't as "gee whiz" as many people would like. I'm not the sort
that needs "gee whiz" though. I read about a dozen MIME messages a day
at this point, and when MIME ends up being all my traffic I'll rig up
a slightly cleaner interface.

I do send MIME on occassion, by the way, when I want to send graphics,
binary files, or other enclosures.

Perry

"Ishi" writes:
[...]
> (The MIME stuff I'm not saying shouldn't be used, just that some of
> us--perhaps most of us, is my hunch--will not be adopting the latest
> bleeding edge technology. The comments here about Sun and Microsoft
> not properly--or at all--supporting MIME tell us that it's not real
> likely that most folks here will be sending spreadsheets out to the
> list readers and attaching GIFs anytime soon. No great loss, either.)

Substitute PGP or "cryptography" for MIME in the paragraph above and you 
will probably see why your attitude regarding the usefulness of MIME has so
many of us in disagreement.  I agree with Amanda's opinion that MIME is
less bleeding-edge than PGP, it has a well-defined standard and there are
actually a few good implementations of it out there.  

The fact that Microsoft has succumbed to the necessity of including MIME
support is probably a good indication of how far MIME has progressed (not
good support at the moment, but two years ago they were refusing to support
MIME and suggesting the net adopt MAPI...)  I still cannot go out and buy a
mail program with PGP built into it, but I can find several with MIME.
MIME will even make PGP and strong encryption more widespread because it
will make encryption/decryption and signing/verifying messages simple and
standard callouts from the mail program to an encryption engine.  Instead
of someone needing to search around for patches to Pine to integrate PGP [a
task which significantly raises the clue level needed to easily encrypt
mail] they will just add a line to thier mailcap file (or it will already
be bundled into thier mail/news/www agents.) 

If you are truly interested in making strong encryption easy and
transparent to the vast majority of the users of future communications
systems you should be leading the MIME charge, not holding everyone back...


jim

It may be time for me to move on. More than 2 years on this list,
since the B.C. period, may be too long.

I'm fed up with fighting these battles, and no doubt many of you are
fed up with seeing contentious pitched battles. Cypherpunks is
increasingly a forum of strutting and posturing about who has the most
powerful tools, who is spending more of their lives staying at the
bleeding edge of technology. Depressing.

The consensus of the active posters in this latest thread (Perry,
Amanda, Lucky, Jim, others) is that I am a hopeless fuddy-duddy,
unwilling to begin posting in the latest modality.

(Funny, Netnews is still 99.999983% plain ASCII, by message count, and
nobody advocating a more advanced scheme is actually _using_ such ne
plus ultra formats here on this list. If it's so easy, and so 'punkly
correct, why not?)

Jim McCoy wrote:

> If you are truly interested in making strong encryption easy and
> transparent to the vast majority of the users of future communications
> systems you should be leading the MIME charge, not holding everyone back...

I don't care for this imputation that my views on communicating with
the list are somehow holding others back. Or that discussing these
issues is inconsistent with being "truly interested in making strong
encryption easy and transparent." 

Bluntly, I'm fucking sick and tired of these cheap shots and personal
innuendos. Maybe it's the "young guns" syndrome, with a codger like me
whose first Net account was in 1972 being a ripe target for the newest
pistoleros with their .486-caliber Linux boxes in their holsters.

Whatever, I'm fed up. 

I'm taking a break and unsubbing for a while. If I'm back in time for
the January meeting, we'll have the "Demo Day" as planned. If not,
you'll have to play it by ear.

As they say, you know what a Cypherpunks firing squad is? 

A circle.


--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/tc/tcmay

FWIW, here's to you, Tim, from another Luddite:

I learn and use new tools to the extent I think they make my
life better.  ASCII still looks good to me.

Signal-to-noise ratio on this list has fallen to zero.  
Arrogance-to-signal ratio is near infinite.

Brad 


On Thu, 15 Dec 1994, Timothy C. May wrote:

> 
> It may be time for me to move on. More than 2 years on this list,
> since the B.C. period, may be too long.
> 
> I'm fed up with fighting these battles, and no doubt many of you are
> fed up with seeing contentious pitched battles. Cypherpunks is
> increasingly a forum of strutting and posturing about who has the most
> powerful tools, who is spending more of their lives staying at the
> bleeding edge of technology. Depressing.
> 
> The consensus of the active posters in this latest thread (Perry,
> Amanda, Lucky, Jim, others) is that I am a hopeless fuddy-duddy,
> unwilling to begin posting in the latest modality.
> 
> (Funny, Netnews is still 99.999983% plain ASCII, by message count, and
> nobody advocating a more advanced scheme is actually _using_ such ne
> plus ultra formats here on this list. If it's so easy, and so 'punkly
> correct, why not?)
> 
> Jim McCoy wrote:
> 
> > If you are truly interested in making strong encryption easy and
> > transparent to the vast majority of the users of future communications
> > systems you should be leading the MIME charge, not holding everyone back...
> 
> I don't care for this imputation that my views on communicating with
> the list are somehow holding others back. Or that discussing these
> issues is inconsistent with being "truly interested in making strong
> encryption easy and transparent." 
> 
> Bluntly, I'm fucking sick and tired of these cheap shots and personal
> innuendos. Maybe it's the "young guns" syndrome, with a codger like me
> whose first Net account was in 1972 being a ripe target for the newest
> pistoleros with their .486-caliber Linux boxes in their holsters.
> 
> Whatever, I'm fed up. 
> 
> I'm taking a break and unsubbing for a while. If I'm back in time for
> the January meeting, we'll have the "Demo Day" as planned. If not,
> you'll have to play it by ear.
> 
> As they say, you know what a Cypherpunks firing squad is? 
> 
> A circle.
> 
> 
> --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/tc/tcmay
> 
> 
>

On Thu, 15 Dec 1994, Timothy C. May wrote:
> -- Netcom doesn't give me a convenient way to bypass the dial-up
> terminal emulators (PPP and SLIP are no longer offered by Netcom)

Use TIA

> The comments here about Sun and Microsoft
> not properly--or at all--supporting MIME tell us that it's not real
> likely that most folks here will be sending spreadsheets out to the
> list readers and attaching GIFs anytime soon. No great loss, either.

Very true.


 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we        James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.            jamesd@netcom.com