From: shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 94 14:32:13 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: The Thread That Wouldn't Die (Was: Re: McCoy is Right!)
Message-ID: <v01510103ab17bfb85681@[192.0.2.1]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


L. McCarthy wrote:

>Right. We went through dozens of messages to establish that some people like
>MIME and others don't, just as we did several weeks ago. What a surprise that
>not much has changed since then. Bleeding wonderful.

And we will go through it again and again and again until the ones who
don't like MIME wake up to the fact that MIME is essential for todays and
tomorrows email messages, namely solid email encryption that doesn't
require much user intervention. Regardless what machine you use and what
part of the net you live on.

>Good standards are good. There's a revelation. Yep, we sure needed dozens of
>messages to rehash that. Right.

I agree it shouldn't take dozens of messages to get people to accept that.
I have no idea why anyone who followed these threads still won't accept
that MIME is a Good Thing and that MIME capable mailers (no mailers that
claim to be MIME capable and aren't) are a Good Thing as well.

>> > > Everything that has happened with MIME will happen again when people
>> > > try to add cryptography to the structure of the net.
>> > It seems to me that people are *already* trying to add cryptography to the
>> > structure of the net, and that would actually be worth discussing.
>> Yeah, like the PGP-MIME draft, which will open up the ability to
>> effectively use PGP to more people than anything the cypherpunks have ever
>> done :)
>
>So why not talk about that instead ?

But we have. And everytime we do, someone out there says:

"But my mailer doens't even handle todays MIME'd messages right. So it
won't do tomorrows either."

Why do you think this tread keeps comming back?


-- Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.