NODE 21c9aa78Re: plugging in
Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com>Wed, 12 Jun 1996 15:04:53 +0800
> Indeed -- the notion is that one could do things like put support for
> encrypted/signed pages or other cryptographic tools (I haven't checked
> if Netscape mail handles plugins, too) directly into Netscape where
> ordinary users could smoothly use them.
Doing tech support at my ISP has made me very skeptical of anything that
requires a plug in. Most people aren't willing or able to download and
install them. Obviously that's not a problem for large organizations who
want to run something internally -- they can make people install them and
provide support to make sure it happens. But if you want to publish to
the mainstream of people who use the net, using a plug in is a very bad
idea.
(I don't know anyone that doesn't design web pages for a living who's
installed the shockwave plugin, for example. I'm sure that people do,
just not the people I know. Only a marketing hack would download a
couple of megabyte plug in to look at a soda company's web page.)
SSL has a lot of problems (Verisign's pound of flesh, signatures on sites
rather than documents, etc.), and those problems make a PGP based system
attractive. But SSL's ubiquity (is that a word?) and the inherent
kludginess of a PGP based plug-in make me think that the latter wouldn't
have a snowball's chance in hell of catching on.
NODE 111590d2Re: plugging in
snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>Wed, 12 Jun 1996 19:15:49 +0800
On Tue, 11 Jun 1996, Alex Strasheim wrote:
> > Indeed -- the notion is that one could do things like put support for
> > encrypted/signed pages or other cryptographic tools (I haven't checked
> > if Netscape mail handles plugins, too) directly into Netscape where
> > ordinary users could smoothly use them.
>
> Doing tech support at my ISP has made me very skeptical of anything that
> requires a plug in. Most people aren't willing or able to download and
> install them. Obviously that's not a problem for large organizations who
As Mr. Strasheim's front line in tech support, would like to add
capable. Many people simply cannot understand enough of what they are
doing to put things in the right places.
It gets very trying some times. See my post on murder.
Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@crash.suba.com