From: "L. McCarthy" <lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 94 03:23:17 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: The Thread That Wouldn't Die (Was: Re: McCoy is Right!)
Message-ID: <199412161128.GAA14473@bb.hks.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Jim McCoy writes:
> L. McCarthy writes:
> > Jim McCoy writes:
> > > Actually this "dumb flamewar" has produced some good discussion regarding
> > > actual implementation issues. 
> > I beg to differ. If you think that was a good discussion, I'd hate to see
> > what you'd classify as a bad discussion. Crypto relevance was minimal, too.
> A bad discussion contains very little signal. 

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.

> The crypto relevance to the MIME discussion was quite apparent to me, 
> it is a shame you missed it.

If it was "quite apparent", it's a shame you didn't make that clearer at the
time, rather than claiming it now. I saw plenty of flaming about various 
people's mailers and net connections. If someone was making points about
crypto there, they were doing a damn fine job of hiding it. 

> Every argument that was used against MIME will one day be
> used to discourage the widespread use of cryptography.  

By this reasoning we should resurrect all the old firestorms about gun control
and child pornography. Analogies can be drawn, perhaps, but I don't feel
those discussions are appropriate here.

> Additionally, MIME
> is a necessary standard for encapsulating cryptographic messages in a
> package that can get through some of the stranger transport mechanisms used
> on the net,

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

> > > 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 ?

> Standards are important and instead of trying to tilt at
> windmills to no purpose perhaps it is worthwhile to examine how existing
> standards can be effectively marshaled towards cypherpunk goals.

Exactly.

- - -L. Futplex McCarthy


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