From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 95 21:38:37 PST
To: dan@chopin.udel.edu (The Dalai Lama)
Subject: Re: The Remailer Crisis
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950120221331.8346B-100000@chopin.udel.edu>
Message-ID: <199501210537.VAA19112@netcom13.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


The Dalai Lama wrote:

(By the way, Hello, Dalai!)

> So why not just implement remailers for the DOS/OS/2/Windows NT crowd?  
> I think we'd see more remailers if people didn't need to leave their OS 
> of choice just to run UNIX and a remailer.  OS/2 and Windows NT are 
> stable platforms.  If there was little performance impact caused by an 
> OS/2 remailer process, I'd be more than willing to let it run.
> 	Is anyone working on porting remailer code to one of the 
> IBM/Microsoft operating systems?  Perhaps I'll get cracking on an OS/2 
> version....

I addressed this main issue in the posting about writing remailers for
Macs, so I'll be ultra-brief here.

Had DOS/Windows/OS/2 boxes been "on the Net" in a serious way when
Eric wrote the first remailer in 1992, he could have written the
remailer for the DOS box he then owned.

The issue has been that Unix boxes have dominated the Net, with lots
of tools for handling mail, redirecting output, etc. DOS tends to have
standalone apps, with cumbersome communication, and DOS has not had
preemptime multitasking as Unix of course has had.

"The network is the computer," as Scott McNeally used to say, and a
reliable and continuous Net connection is much more important for a
remailer than a fast CPU or GUI environment.

This will change, based on the numbers of Windows and OS/2 systems
being sold, and based on moves to build-in Net connection
capabilities.

--Tim May


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