At 7:42 PM -0600 3/17/03, meor(_at_)mail(_dot_)SoftHome(_dot_)net wrote:
Dial-up user composes the E-Mail.
Dial-up user connects to the mail host.
Mail hosts requests the Dial-up user to find the encryption key to the cipher.
Dial-up user can disconnect while this computation is being performed.
Dial-up user connects to the mail host.
Dial-up user sends the cipher key and sends the E-Mail message.
I have no idea why your respondents have been so vitriolic--patience
seems to be going on this list. But for what it's worth, here are my
comments.
So. If I install this system on my computer, I presumably still need
to interact with the existing mail system until we all convert,
correct?
1. What do you do with incoming mail from the gateway?
2. Do you change the email addressing system so that the MUA can tell
the difference between outbound mail for a user of the new system or
an old user? If not, bear in mind that you are seriously
disincenting early adopters, because they'll be spending lots of time
generating keys that nobody will need. But at the same time they'll
see no benefit because they can't yet block email from people who
don't use the system.
The fundamental problem with new protocols for email has nothing to
do with how good the protocol is. It has to do with how the
transition is made from the old system to the new.
So far, every new protocol proposal I've seen has one of two adoption plans.
1. Everyone will just agree it's the best and all adopt it at once.
2. A small group of people will gamble that this solution is going to
be the one that wins in the marketplace, and they'll put up with a
lot of pain and no benefit until everyone else adopts it as well.
Of those two, I'd actually give #1 a better chance of succeeding. But
it would take a unanimous decision from at least a dozen of the
biggest ISPs, along with a real threat to turn off all access to the
old system within a certain amount of time. And when it was all said
and done, you'd still have to run two systems if you needed to
correspond with anyone in the third world--the two just wouldn't
interoperate.
I don't give #2 a chance in hell unless you come up with a protocol
change that actually gives the early adopters an immediate benefit.
(In other words, it cuts their spam and it doesn't annoy their
non-converted customers.) Otherwise you're asking them to make a big
gamble in time and money with no immediate benefit. They'd just be
doing it for the long term good of the community. The same forces
that have led to spam (tragedy of the commons) make it certain that
people won't do that.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.puremessaging.com/ Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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