Jargons of Info Tech industry

[Xah Lee]

Jargons of Info Tech industry

(A Love of Jargons)

Xah Lee, 2002 Feb

People in the computing field like to spur the use of spurious jargons.
The less educated they are, the more they like extraneous jargons, such
as in the Unix & Perl community. Unlike mathematicians, where in
mathematics there are no fewer jargons but each and every one are
absolutely necessary. For example, polytope, manifold,
injection/bijection/surjection, group/ring/field.., homological,
projective, pencil, bundle, lattice, affine, topology, isomorphism,
isometry, homeomorphism, aleph-0, fractal, supremum/infimum, simplex,
matrix, quaternions, derivative/integral, ... and so on. Each and every
one of these captures a concept, for which practical and theoretical
considerations made the terms a necessity. Often there are synonyms for
them because of historical developments, but never “jargons for
jargon's sake� because mathematicians hate bloats and irrelevance.

The jargon-soaked stupidity in computing field can be grouped into
classes. First of all, there are jargons for marketing purposes. Thus
you have Mac OS “X�, Windows “XP�, Sun OS to Solaris and the
versioning confusion of 4.x to 7 to 8 and also the so called
“Platform� instead of OS. One flagrant example is Sun Microsystem's
Java stuff. Oak, Java, JDK, JSDK, J2EE, J2SE enterprise edition or no,
from java 1.x to 1.2 == Java 2 now 1.3, JavaOne, JFC, Jini, JavaBeans,
entity Beans, Awk, Swing... fucking stupid Java and fuck Sun
Microsystems. This is just one example of Jargon hodgepodge of one
single commercial entity. Marketing jargons cannot be avoided in modern
society. They abound outside computing field too. The Jargons of
marketing came from business practice, and they can be excusable
because they are kinda a necessity or can be considered as a naturally
evolved strategy for attracting attention in a laissez-faire economy
system.

The other class of jargon stupidity is from computing practitioners, of
which the Unix/Perl community is exemplary. For example, the name Unix
& Perl themselves are good examples of buzzing jargons. Unix is
supposed to be opposed of Multics and hints on the offensive and
tasteless term eunuchs. PERL is cooked up to be “Practical Extraction
& Reporting Language� and for the precise marketing drama of being
also “Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister�. These types of
jargons exudes juvenile humor. Cheesiness and low-taste is their
hall-mark. If you are familiar with unixism and perl programing, you'll
find tons and tons of such jargons embraced and verbalized by unix &
perl lovers. e.g. grep, glob, shell, pipe, man, regex, more, less,
tarball, shebang, Schwartzian Transform, croak, bless, interpolation,
TIMTOWTDI, DWIM, RFC, RTFM, I-ANAL, YMMV and so on.

There is another class of jargon moronicity, which i find them most
damaging to society, are jargons or spurious and vague terms used and
brandished about by programers that we see and hear daily among design
meetings, online tech group postings, or even in lots of computing
textbooks or tutorials. I think the reason for these, is that these
massive body of average programers usually don't have much knowledge of
significant mathematics, yet they are capable of technical thinking
that is not too abstract, thus you ends up with these people defining
or hatching terms a-dime-a-dozen that's vague, context dependent,
vacuous, and their commonality are often a result of sopho-morons
trying to sound big.

Here are some examples of the terms in question:

• anonymous functions or lambda or lamba function
• closure
• exceptions (as in Java)
• list, array, vector, aggregate
• hash (or hash table) � fantastically stupid
• rehash (as in csh or tcsh)
• regular expression (as in regex, grep, egrep, fgrep)
• name space (as in Scheme vs Common Lisp debates)
• depth first/breadth first (as in tree traversing.)
• operator
• operator overloading
• polymorphism
• inheritance
• first class objects
• pointers, references
• tail recursion

My time is limited, so i'll just give a brief explanation of my thesis
on selective few of these examples among the umpteen.

In a branch of math called lambda calculus, in which much theories of
computation are based on, is the origin of the jargon _lambda function_
that is so frequently reciprocated by advanced programering donkeys. In
practice, a subroutine without side-effects is supposed to be what
“lambda function� means. Functional languages often can define them
without assigning them to some variable (name), therefore the
“function without side-effects� are also called “anonymous
functions�. One can see that these are two distinct concepts. If
mathematicians are designing computer languages, they would probably
just called such thing _pure functions_. The term conveys the meaning,
without the “lamba� abstruseness. (in fact, the mathematics
oriented language Mathematica refers to lambda function as pure
function, with the keyword Function.) Because most programers are
sopho-morons who are less capable of clear thinking but nevertheless
possess human vanity, we can see that they have not adopted the clear
and fitting term, but instead you see lambda function this and that
obfuscations dropping from their mouths constantly.

Now the term “closure� can and indeed have meant several things in
the computing field. The most common is for it to mean a subroutine
that holds some memory but without some disadvantages of modifying a
global variable. Usually such is a feature of a programing language.
When taken to extreme, we have the what's called Object Oriented
Programing methodology and languages. The other meaning of
“closure� i have seen in text books, is for it to indicate that the
things in the language is “closed� under the operations of the
language. For example, for some languages you can apply operations or
subroutines to any thing in the language. (These languages are often
what's called “dynamic typing� or “typeless�). However, in
other languages, things have types and cannot be passed around
subroutines or operators arbitrarily. One can see that the term
“closure� is quite vague in conveying its meaning. The term
nevertheless is very popular among talkative programers and dense
tutorials, precisely because it is vague and mysterious. These
pseudo-wit living zombies, never thought for a moment that they are
using a moronic term, mostly because they never clearly understand the
concepts behind the term among the contexts. One can particular see
this exhibition among Perl programers. (for an example of the
fantastically stupid write-up on closure by the Perl folks, see
“perldoc perlfaq7� and “perldoc perlref�.)

in the so-called “high-level� computing languages, there are often
data types that's some kind of a collection. The most illustrative is
LISt Processing language's lists. Essentially, the essential concept is
that the language can treat a collection of things as if it's a single
entity. As computer languages evolve, such collection entity feature
also diversified, from syntax to semantics to implementation. Thus,
beside lists, there are also terms like vector, array, matrix, tree,
hash/“hash table�/dictionary. Often each particular term isto
convey a particular implementation of collection so that it has certain
properties to facilitate specialized uses of such groupy. The Java
language has such groupy that can illustrate the point well. In Java,
there are these hierarchy of collection-type of things:

Collection
Set (AbstractSet, HashSet)
SortedSet (TreeSet)
List (AbstractList, LinkedList, Vector, ArrayList)

Map (AbstractMap, HashMap, Hashtable)
SortedMap (TreeMap)

The words without parenthesis are Java Interfaces, and ones in are
implementations. The interface hold a concept. The deeper the level,
the more specific or specialized. The implementation carry out
concepts. Different implementation gives different algorithmic
properties. Essentially, these hierarchies of Java show the potential
complexity and confusion around groupy entities in computer languages.
Now, among the programers we see daily, who never really thought out of
these things, will attach their own specific meaning to
list/array/vector/matrix/etc type of jargons in driveling and
arguments, oblivious to any thought of formalizing what the fuck they
are really talking about. (one may think from the above tree-diagram
that Java the language has at least put clear distinction to interface
and implementation, whereas in my opinion they are one fantastic fuck
up too, in many respects.)

---------------------
This post is archived at
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/jargons.html
© Copyright 2002 by Xah Lee.

Xah
xa*@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/

[Casper H.S. Dik]

Steven D'Aprano <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> writes:

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 14:27:30 +0000, axel wrote:

I don't know how much spam other people receive but on one account I
hardly receive any as I reserve it for friends and business. On another
I had about 40 spam messages which took all of ten seconds to delete.
Hardly a serious matter.

Can I remind you that spam is approximately 70% of all email traffic these
days? Most of that is blocked by the ISPs, but even so you are obviously
one of the lucky few.
95% - 99% of all email, not 70% (just ask your ISP).

A large percentage of the cost of email is the cost of getting
rid of SPAM; and that cannot happen without colleteral damage in the
form of lost valid email, not just because of improper filtering but
also because the more layers are there to touch the email the bigger
the chances that it does not arrive.
My work email address, on the other hand, is another story. We run a two
layer defence: blocking blacklisted addresses at our mail server, and spam
assassin at the individual user level. Even with that, I get about 100
spams a day delivered into my inbox, although many of those are addressed
to generic email addresses which are automatically forwarded to me.

Same here: Sun probably tosses 99% of the email directed at me, yet
I get well over 100 spams/day.

Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions. They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.

[Mike Meyer]

Casper H.S. Dik <Ca********@Sun.COM> writes:

Steven D'Aprano <st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> writes:

Can I remind you that spam is approximately 70% of all email traffic these
days? Most of that is blocked by the ISPs, but even so you are obviously
one of the lucky few.

95% - 99% of all email, not 70% (just ask your ISP).

A large percentage of the cost of email is the cost of getting
rid of SPAM; and that cannot happen without colleteral damage in the
form of lost valid email, not just because of improper filtering but
also because the more layers are there to touch the email the bigger
the chances that it does not arrive.

I'd like to take this opportunity to correct myself. I said that I
(and another poster) "didn't have a spam problem". That's wrong. We
don't *appear* to have a spam problem, but that's just an
illusion. Our ISPs are spending money - as indicated by Mr. Dik - on
filtering spam. They're also spending money to deal with complaints
about spam from their customers - in both senses of the sentence, and
to pay for the bandwidth the spam is eating up. The bulk providers
they buy their bandwidth from also have higher costs to provide
bandwidth for spam.

These costs are passed on to us. So while we may not have an obvious
spam problem, we have one in the sense that spam takes money from our
pockets.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Roedy Green]

On Tue, 11 Oct 2005 11:45:03 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

Jeff Poskanzer, now *he* has a spam problem. He gets a few million
spams a day: <URL: http://www.acme.com/mail_filtering/ >.

It is a bit like termites. If we don't do something drastic to deal
with spam, the ruddy things will eventually make the entire Internet
unusable.

the three keys to me are:

1. flipping to a digital id based email system so that the sender of
any piece of mail can be legally identified and prosecuted.
If every piece of anonymous email disappeared that would go a long way
to clearing up spam. Let those sending ransom notes, death threats
and hate mail use snail mail. As a second best, correspondents are
identified by permission/identity/encryption keys given to them by
their recipients.

2. flipping to a sender pays system so that the Internet does not
subsidise spam.

3. Mail is not transported without prior permission. The receiver can
turn that permission on and off any time he chooses. This is
basically an automated version of what Zaep does where the sender is
not consciously aware of the permission-getting step.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On 12 Oct 2005 01:43:32 GMT, John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote
or quoted :

So let's say I decide to send an email to Donald Knuth.

:-)

I did write him, snail mail, and he responded giving us permission to
rewrite any of the algorithms in his famous set of books in to Java.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On 09 Oct 2005 14:06:20 -0700, Paul Rubin
<http://ph****@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote or quoted :

That's the worst of all. I certainly don't want my mail reader
opening network connections to arbitrary places when I read my mail.
I have no willingness at all to reveal my mail reading habits or IP
address to everyone who sends me email.

Obviously you can't trust anything code-like that arrives from
strangers. It is an extension of the law Mommy laid down not to take
candy from strangers.

However, formatted text is not code. Pictures are not code. It is
unfair to tar them with the brush of JavaScript or the goofy things
Outlook does with enclosures.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005 21:53:52 +0200, "Dr.Ruud" <rv********@isolution.nl>
wrote or quoted :

Don't think that that is true for everybody. For example not for people
that are behind central filters that already cope with common spam.

The variants of the Nigerian spam are getting cleverer and cleverer to
get though the filters. I can't always immediately recognise them. No
wonder the spam filter gets fooled too.

We victims of spam collectively are about the silliest of victims
imaginable. We provide a FREE service to the spammers to torment us
with. WE SUBSIDISE THEM. It costs them almost nothing to send a spam,
and even at the weakest response percentages they still make money.

It is almost like providing ladders and setting out cookies and milk
for the burglars.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Tim Tyler]

In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote or quoted:

Tim Tyler <ti*@tt1lock.org> writes:

In comp.lang.java.programmer Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote or quoted:

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes: > Read my essay.
> http://mindprod.com/projects.html/ma...ewsreader.html
>
> I talk around those problems.

Virus writers will love the ability to change peoples address books
remotely.

Since - in Roedy's essay - messages are digitally signed, authority
to advise about any email address updates would presumably be confined
to those people with access to the sender's private key.

It's not confined to just people - software can do this as well. In
particular, you should expect that the users mail agent will have to
have access to the key, so it can automatically send out the change of
address notice when the user changes their address (it actually needs
it to send any mail). Viruses regularly make users mail agents do
thing. "Change my address" becomes much more entertaining when that
triggers sending out change of addresses notices to everyone in the
address book. More likely, though, there'll be an API for getting the
key so that users can change mail agents without invalidating the
public key that everyone they correspond with has for them, and the
virus will just use that API.

Viruses can mail out change of address messages to everyone in the
compromised machine's address book today.

Of course, viruses don't bother doing that - since it's stupid and
pointless.

If you've compromised someone's machine there are typically lots more
rewarding things to do with it than spoof change-of-address notices.

Top of the cracker's list seems to be:

* Attack organisations;
* Relay spam;
* Attempt to compromise other machines;
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ ti*@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply.

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 08:58:42 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

Sheesh Roedy, to listen to you go anyone would think that human
communication was impossible before HTML email was invented.

People got along fine wearing untanned moosehides too. I don't see
any advantage in wearing a hair shirt. That is an unnatural way to
talk.

I know hundreds of people who would have not the tiniest clue what
that email meant. You are indeed fortunate to have landed such a
wife.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Dave Hansen]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:44:22 GMT, Roedy Green
<my******************************@munged.invalid > wrote:

[...]

Obviously you can't trust anything code-like that arrives from
strangers. It is an extension of the law Mommy laid down not to take
candy from strangers.

However, formatted text is not code. Pictures are not code. It is
unfair to tar them with the brush of JavaScript or the goofy things
Outlook does with enclosures.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../MS04-028.mspx

Summary: a buffer overflow problem in Microsoft's JPEG redering
library, used my almost all Windoze email and web clients, would allow
an attacker to execute any arbitrary code he wished on your computer
simply by tricking you into viewing a doctored JPEG image. Since
solved (this problem is _so_ last year, dahling), but it belies your
assertion that "pictures are not code."

Regards,

-=Dave
--
Change is inevitable, progress is not.

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 08:49:32 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

Oh gosh, pictures of a new house. Why didn't you say so??? If you're
sending pictures named "my_new_house1.jpg" etc then OF COURSE they have
to be imbedded in a HTML email, otherwise how could anyone know what they
were?

I suppose your subscribe to the shoebox theory of picture handling.
Just dump them in a box. It is OBVIOUS what they are. Go back to them
years later, and you would be surprised how baffling they can be, or
if the next generation wants to understand them.

You suggest there is something nefarious about wanting to caption and
share images by email. Why NOT?
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 00:42:18 +0200, Stefaan A Eeckels
<te***@DELETEMEecc.lu> wrote or quoted :

"I don't understand that attitude. Don't we want email that has dancing
bears, cute little videos, musical tunes, animated waving hands, sixty
fonts, and looks like it's been done with crayolas? Good grief, man,
think like a three year old!"

that excuse could also be used to explain why you have not cracked a
book since high school. The same tools that create dancing bears can
do a UML diagram.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:06:34 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

Nah, I've just know people who spend a lot of time - and money -
dealing with spam, and we've discussed these issues at great
length. You haven't proposed anything that hasn't been proposed
before, and rejected for various reasons.

As if what we are living with now were preferable to what I propose.
It is inertia. It is herd mentality that dare not leap out of the
current rut. It is not a particularly difficult technical problem. It
is figuring out how to get people to switch over.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 9 Oct 2005 16:42:02 +0200, Stefaan A Eeckels
<te***@DELETEMEecc.lu> wrote or quoted :

> http://mindprod.com/projects.html/ma...ewsreader.html

It's gone :-)

arghh. try http://mindprod.com/projects/mailreadernewsreader.html
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 01:33:43 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

...is pretty confusing - because "public key" is a term with a technical
meaning in cryptography - and a public key really *is* public.

The term you want is "wrong", not "confusing".

In encryption the key you give others to encrypt messages to you is
called the "public key". It is not public in the sense of everyone
knows it.

What term do you suggest?

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:25:46 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

The downside is that I have no idea how many people try to contact me
out of the blue, or from an address other than the one I sent mail to,
but don't bother to answer the response.

This is why I wanted a protocol where that was automated.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:25:46 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

Right. Nobody sends email to addresses that come off business cards,
or off a web site, or ....

Nowadays website email addresses are becoming rarer. Instead you fill
in a form to initiate your conversation.

In a business card exchange both parties might set up a permission for
the other, so they are not exactly strangers.

There are some people who naturally get mail from the general public,
e.g. newspaper editors, salesmen, me. However, if you block a
sufficiently high percentage of spam, the spam industry will go away
and these people will be the natural beneficiaries.

You don't need 100% spam blocking to effectively solve the spam
problem. You just have to make spam uneconomic.

There was an analogous problem with telephone spam. It was even
easier for the telepest to get addresses, just add one. That was
solved by legal means. It could come back as long distance rates drop
and some country harbours them.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 23:04:49 -0000, go***********@burditt.org (Gordon
Burditt) wrote or quoted :

Read my essay.
http://mindprod.com/projects.html/ma...ewsreader.html

I talk around those problems.

It requires a fresh start.

that should read:
http://mindprod.com/projects/mailreadernewsreader.html
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 23:04:49 -0000, go***********@burditt.org (Gordon
Burditt) wrote or quoted :

I think one necessary function of email and USENET is that it should
allow you to SAFELY communicate with strangers or, worse, people
you know but do not trust at all,

Yes, but with spam ANY communication with an unwanted stranger is a
nuisance.

There are two kinds of stranger:

1. ones you want to talk to
2. ones you don't.

How can you sort people?

1. ones that appear to be trying to sell something

2. ones that others have said were pests.

3. ones you have given temporary/special permission to contact you ---
a code word in a personal ad or newsgroup post.

4. Ones who can convince you of their case in a single sentence.

5. Ones who have a reputation as non-spammers (by some sort of
consumer reports bureau that issues digital ids.)

6. Ones you have rejected in past (aided by digital ids expensive
enough people won't change them like underwear).
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:19:46 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

Likewise I avoid emails that are broken. If it looks like it will contain
web-bugs, javascript exploits, or badly formatted unreadable text, then I
avoid any mail client that can't display it in plain text.

And by "looks like", I mean "contains any HTML".

That is overreacting. All you need is a something that refuses to run
code. There is no need to ignore the formatting.

I have well meaning friends who send me rather syrupy emails,
formatted. I don't run any enclosures, but I look at the pictures and
the message. They are not spam.

If people like sending such messages to each other it is not our
business to interfere. On the contrary. Our job it help people send
arbitrary messages to each other as easily as possible. Censoring
content and style is none of our business. Our job is to help get
messages through reliably, safely and efficiently.


--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2005 09:35:58 -0700, Alan Balmer <al******@att.net>
wrote or quoted :

And they don't know about attachments?

Attachments are geeky kludge.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 06:28:04 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

What makes you think I don't have a copy of Opera? Just so happens
I've got a registred copy on my newest computer.

Then try out the feature. Click View | style | user

My copy of Opera doesn't have that menu entry. I suspect you're making
platform-specific suggestions.

Because you did not seem to be aware of the Opera features. I don't
know what version you have or what platform you are using. The only
one I can help you with is Opera 8.5 for Windows.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 06:32:07 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

Formatted spam can include pictures of words. That's a common spam
tactic - send a multipart/alternative with a text part that look like
a letter from aunt jane - and mention that you're sending a
picture. The picture part is basically a jpeg of a flyer for the spam
companies product.

Such a jpg would have a lot more sharp edges than a usual photo. Also
you tend to have areas of just two colours. Some edge detecting
software might have a go at it.

However, my rule of thumb is I would not accept photos from the
general public, only from a subset of my correspondendents. That
makes a photo a strong spam indicator. Then there are small corporate
logos, which are innocuous. Spamnix does not have such a filtering
rule.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:46:12 +0000, Tim Tyler wrote:

Viruses can mail out change of address messages to everyone in the
compromised machine's address book today.

Of course, viruses don't bother doing that - since it's stupid and
pointless.

If you've compromised someone's machine there are typically lots more
rewarding things to do with it than spoof change-of-address notices.

Yes. But erasing hard drives is stupid and pointless, and viruses written
by digital vandals do exactly that.

Viruses *these days* are mostly written by criminals looking to make
money, not criminals looking to do the equivalent of smashing your windows
and running away.

Suppose I wanted to gather industrial espionage about, oh, say Roedy
Green. If my virus could impersonate him, I could tell everyone in sight
that his email has changed to rg****@mydomain.ru (or wherever). I would
harvest his email, forward it on to him so he doesn't even notice, and
sell the data to the highest bidder. Or use it for blackmail. Or sell it
to companies who want to buy demographic and purchasing information ("I
see he has bought seven books from Amazon this month...").

If you think this is too ridiculous for words, think of this: how valuable
to Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates do you think Google's internal emails
would be?

Information is power, and power makes money.
--
Steven.

[Gordon Burditt]

>However, formatted text is not code.

HTML is much more than formatted text.

Pictures are not code. It is
unfair to tar them with the brush of JavaScript or the goofy things
Outlook does with enclosures.

If you take all the dangerous stuff out of HTML, like:
Links
Javascript
Forms
References to other files

you'd have very little left. I suggest that for formatted text,
TROFF would be a better start.

Gordon L. Burditt

[Flash Gordon]

Roedy Green wrote:

<snip stuff off topic for comp.lang.c>

Can all of you please take comp.lang.c out of this thread (and all its
sub-threads, since it is totaly off topic and NONE of the people on this
thread are posting to anything else on comp.lang.c so I doubt any of you
are reading it here.
--
Flash Gordon
Living in interesting times.
Although my email address says spam, it is real and I read it.

[Roedy Green]

I think e-mail should be text only.

What if, instead of that crap Outlook produces, which is a mishmash of
malformed html, Javascript viruses, self-installing enclosures etc.

It were replaced by a rich text that were something like a CSS-style
HTML, validated, and preparsed, and compacted for rapid rendering.

It would have no hooks in it for viruses or code launching, though it
would have clearly marked hypertext links.

The question I am getting at is what is bugging you the most?

1. spam which is often associated with formatted mail

2. Trojans that exploit MS email.

3. cutsie pie dancing bears

4. sloppy implementation

5. slow email downloads

6. Puritanical objection to any variation in colour and font. It is
unmanly.

7. want it impossible to embed images, not just for you but for
everyone. No one has a legitimate interest to embed images.

Let us say your answer is all 7. My response is the solution is not
to revert to plain text for email. It won't happen. The solution is
to move forward and fix the implementations.

It is one thing to demand all mail sent to you have no formatting, but
quite another to demand all mail sent by anyone to anyone have no
formatting or embedded images.

I think a modern email system should let your correspondents
automatically know of your eccentricity so that mail will
automatically be stripped to the bone before sending it to you.
My ISP has this quirk and gets irate if I ever slip and send him a
formatted mail. I would love it if Eudora remembered that for me and
automatically prevented me from doing that.

Formatted email has quite legit functions. For example the Health
Action Network Society has an optional mailing list that will let you
know of any upcoming events relevant to alternative health. The mail
looks like a little poster for the event.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Mike Meyer]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:06:34 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

Nah, I've just know people who spend a lot of time - and money -
dealing with spam, and we've discussed these issues at great
length. You haven't proposed anything that hasn't been proposed
before, and rejected for various reasons. As if what we are living with now were preferable to what I propose.

Nope. Any of the rejected proposals would be better than what we have
now.
It is inertia. It is herd mentality that dare not leap out of the
current rut. It is not a particularly difficult technical problem. It
is figuring out how to get people to switch over.

Yup, you solved an easy problem - designing a spam-proof email
system. That's been done any number of times. The hard part is a
deployment strategy that will actually get the world to transition to
such a system. That's why earlier nearly identical proposals got
rejected - nobody could come up with a workable transition plan.
Without a transition plan, a better email system is only of academic
interest - and not even much of that at this late date.

And yes, it's just inertia. Sort of like why the world stays in it's
orbit is just inertia. If you could get enough people to agree on a
solution and switch to it at the same time, you'd be done. But
"enough" is everyone who uses email, so realistically you need a plan
- and a system - that lets things interoperate during the transition.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Mike Meyer]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 06:32:07 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

Formatted spam can include pictures of words. That's a common spam
tactic - send a multipart/alternative with a text part that look like
a letter from aunt jane - and mention that you're sending a
picture. The picture part is basically a jpeg of a flyer for the spam
companies product. Such a jpg would have a lot more sharp edges than a usual photo. Also
you tend to have areas of just two colours. Some edge detecting
software might have a go at it.

It's probably possible. No one has done it yet.
However, my rule of thumb is I would not accept photos from the
general public, only from a subset of my correspondendents. That
makes a photo a strong spam indicator.
But you also said (in <3g********************************@4ax.com>):
Censoring content and style is none of our business.

Spam is all about censoring content. But you're proposing censoring
style to deal with pictures of words.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Mike Meyer]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:25:46 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

The downside is that I have no idea how many people try to contact me
out of the blue, or from an address other than the one I sent mail to,
but don't bother to answer the response.

This is why I wanted a protocol where that was automated.

Um - I don't recall seeing anything in you plan that would provide
information I'm missing. I'm sure you could tweak the software to
collect it once it were in place. But I could do the same.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Mike Meyer]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 19:25:46 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :
You don't need 100% spam blocking to effectively solve the spam
problem. You just have to make spam uneconomic.
There are good reasons to doubt this. Most notably, there's no proof
that spam is economic now. There's also evidence that non-trivial
percentages of spam are more a form of ddos attack than any real
attempt to send mail.
There was an analogous problem with telephone spam. It was even
easier for the telepest to get addresses, just add one. That was
solved by legal means. It could come back as long distance rates drop
and some country harbours them.

Just making it illegal won't do anything. Most spam today is the
result of illegal activity, and is part of an illegal or semi-legal
activity even if you ignore that.

You've got to convince the spammers that large men with guns will show
up on their doorstep if they keep it up.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Roedy Green]

uOn Wed, 12 Oct 2005 22:02:23 GMT, id**@hotmail.com (Dave Hansen)
wrote or quoted :

Summary: a buffer overflow problem in Microsoft's JPEG redering
library, used my almost all Windoze email and web clients, would allow
an attacker to execute any arbitrary code he wished on your computer
simply by tricking you into viewing a doctored JPEG image. Since
solved (this problem is _so_ last year, dahling), but it belies your
assertion that "pictures are not code."

By your definition all socket communications contains code because of
the existence of buffer overrun "bugs" -- probably deliberately put
there by unscrupulous employees.

The pictureness is not at fault. MS was at fault.

No wonder the community has failed to solve spam with attitudes like
that -- extreme naysaying, misplacing the source of the problem, and
calling each other "dahling" is bound to get everyone out of a
problem-solving mode.

You probably were all told the story of the three sillies as a child
about people who wept themselves to inaction worrying imagined futures
rather than dealing with the realities of the present. I think
fretting about minutiae, and the desire for a perfect ant-spam
solution has blocked getting on with a reasonable solution.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 23:07:15 -0000, go***********@burditt.org (Gordon
Burditt) wrote or quoted :

Links
Javascript
Forms
References to other files

the only piece of that particularly dangerous is JavaScript. So long
as you have a scheme to unmask where links are really going links are
no more dangerous than they are in browser.

Even a form is not dangerous. You have to fill it in and hit submit.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Ross Bamford]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 23:27:26 +0100, Roedy Green
<my******************************@munged.invalid > wrote:

On Sun, 09 Oct 2005 23:04:49 -0000, go***********@burditt.org (Gordon
Burditt) wrote or quoted :

I think one necessary function of email and USENET is that it should
allow you to SAFELY communicate with strangers or, worse, people
you know but do not trust at all,

Yes, but with spam ANY communication with an unwanted stranger is a
nuisance.

<!-- etc -->

Roedy, I would just _love_ to see the response from the industry when you
tell them they should dump their whole mail infrastructure, and switch
over to a whole new system (new protocols, new security holes, new
problems start to finish). I gather that's the gist of the suggestion, a
new protocol with built in public key (a fine, well known, accepted term,
IMHO it doesn't need changing) cryptography and signature support?

IMAP is in many ways better than POP3, but you would be surprised at the
weight of an accepted standard I think.

--
Ross Bamford - ro***@roscopeco.remove.co.uk

[Roedy Green]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:46:12 GMT, Tim Tyler <ti*@tt1lock.org> wrote
or quoted :

Viruses can mail out change of address messages to everyone in the
compromised machine's address book today.

Of course, viruses don't bother doing that - since it's stupid and
pointless.

A virus is interested in the address book mainly if there as a way it
can send itself to other machines, get at their address book in a
fission explosion and spread without human intervention.

The key that makes that possible is Microsoft's features for running
self-executing code in emails. That is the problem. It has nothing to
do with formatting or pictures.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 09:12:46 +1000, Steven D'Aprano
<st***@REMOVETHIScyber.com.au> wrote or quoted :

Suppose I wanted to gather industrial espionage about, oh, say Roedy
Green. If my virus could impersonate him, I could tell everyone in sight
that his email has changed to rg****@mydomain.ru (or wherever). I would
harvest his email

I would say by extrapolating the problem of spam and snooping that the
next level of email software needs to concentrate on the following:

1. routine and transparent encryption.

2. making spam no longer economic. Blocking all spam is, even in
theory, impossible. I sometimes read a message and am ambivalent
myself about whether I wanted to read or receive it. The key is to
provide efficient, transparent spam solutions. They can be layered to
filter higher and higher percentages of mail depending on how big your
spam problem is.

3. prevent phishing. When PayPal sends you an email, you want to know
for sure it really is from PayPal. This means corporate users at
least will all have digital ids, and all emails will be digitally
signed.

4. status tracking. Unless blocked by the receiver, the sender knows
if his message has been receiveived/read.

5. making it impossible for any incoming email to mount any sort of
attack. the only parts the email software processes are the data
parts. Any enclosed programs must be explicitly installed. The email
software would warn if any code were not digitally signed with proper
certificate to identify the author.

Especially with spam, there are no perfect solutions, but at least we
could do many times better than what we are living with and put the
spammers out of business.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[John Bokma]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > wrote:

On 12 Oct 2005 01:43:32 GMT, John Bokma <jo**@castleamber.com> wrote
or quoted :

So let's say I decide to send an email to Donald Knuth.

:-)

I did write him, snail mail, and he responded giving us permission to
rewrite any of the algorithms in his famous set of books in to Java.

Like I quoted, he does even get (some) email (printed out that is) :-). But
I think snail mail is better.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

[Keith Thompson]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:
[...]

Especially with spam, there are no perfect solutions, but at least we
could do many times better than what we are living with and put the
spammers out of business.

A partial solution to spam, or at least to pollution of Usenet
newsgroups, would be to STOP POSTING THIS STUFF TO NEWSGROUPS WHERE
IT'S NOT RELEVANT.

There are several newsgroups that deal with e-mail abuse. This
discussion isn't being posted to any of them. Please stop.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) ks***@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
San Diego Supercomputer Center <*> <http://users.sdsc.edu/~kst>
We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.

[Gordon Burditt]

>> Links

Javascript
Forms
References to other files
the only piece of that particularly dangerous is JavaScript. So long
as you have a scheme to unmask where links are really going links are
no more dangerous than they are in browser.

Browsers don't read unsolicited web sites. Email readers do, however,
read unsolicited email, and email from downright hostile correspondents.
And I consider "web bugs" and similar tracking methods to be a danger
for something that's supposed to be ONLY "formatted text".
Even a form is not dangerous. You have to fill it in and hit submit.

So where does the submitted data GO? And there's all kind of information
in there about what software I'm running.

Gordon L. Burditt

[Gordon Burditt]

>I would say by extrapolating the problem of spam and snooping that the

next level of email software needs to concentrate on the following:

1. routine and transparent encryption.
OK, but the Feds are really going to hate that.
2. making spam no longer economic. Blocking all spam is, even in
theory, impossible. I sometimes read a message and am ambivalent
myself about whether I wanted to read or receive it. The key is to
provide efficient, transparent spam solutions. They can be layered to
filter higher and higher percentages of mail depending on how big your
spam problem is.
One way of making spam non-economic would be making it difficult to
use throw-away identities. If I block by someone's identity, it
stays blocked.
3. prevent phishing. When PayPal sends you an email, you want to know
for sure it really is from PayPal. This means corporate users at
least will all have digital ids, and all emails will be digitally
signed.
I'm assuming that email is supposed to be useful and usable for
*SAFELY* conducting a conversation (or negotiations) with someone
out to kill you or steal from you. (Consider union vs. management,
any husband vs. his ex-wife, the IRS vs. everyone, whistleblower
vs. employer, etc.)
4. status tracking. Unless blocked by the receiver, the sender knows
if his message has been receiveived/read.
I consider this an unacceptable risk to the receiver, unless the
acknowledgement is manually initiated. It also risks a lot of
confusion regarding what constitutes "read", especially if the user
saved it into a file without displaying it.

I'm assuming here that there are some people (e.g. George W. Bush) who
will attempt to try to turn an IP address into a geographic location
and launch missiles at it when he finds out Osama Bin Laden read his
email. At least when Osama *sends* email, he can click the send
button and run like hell.
5. making it impossible for any incoming email to mount any sort of
attack. the only parts the email software processes are the data
parts. Any enclosed programs must be explicitly installed. The email
software would warn if any code were not digitally signed with proper
certificate to identify the author.

In HTML, that means NO links, NO Javascript, NO forms, and NO references
to other files. Reading your email should not generate hits on
anything specified by the sender.

Gordon L. Burditt

[John Bokma]

Keith Thompson <ks***@mib.org> wrote:

There are several newsgroups that deal with e-mail abuse. This
discussion isn't being posted to any of them. Please stop.

This just adds to the noise, and isn't going to work. Just kill the entire
thread.

--
John Small Perl scripts: http://johnbokma.com/perl/
Perl programmer available: http://castleamber.com/
I ploink googlegroups.com :-)

[Mike Meyer]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:46:12 GMT, Tim Tyler <ti*@tt1lock.org> wrote
or quoted :

Viruses can mail out change of address messages to everyone in the
compromised machine's address book today.

Of course, viruses don't bother doing that - since it's stupid and
pointless.

Except with Roedy's proposal, all the targets correspondents address
books would get updated automatically. It's got much the same effect
as filling a change of address at the locate post office for
someone. It's a nasty practical joke. But much nicer than some of the
things that viruses do today.
The key that makes that possible is Microsoft's features for running
self-executing code in emails. That is the problem. It has nothing to
do with formatting or pictures.

No, that's what makes email a vector for infection. What makes using
the address book - for whatever purpose - possible for viruses is
having an API that allows arbitrary code to access it. But you have to
have that API - your customers are going to insist that they be able
to use their address book from third party applications.

These days, viruses don't spread through a single vector; they use
mutliple vectors, and will try them all once they've infected a
machine. So you may cruse a web site that infects you, and the virus
will then mail copies of itself to everyone in your address book, as
well as infecting any web servers that may be running on the machine,
and probing random IP addresses close to yours, and so on.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Mike Meyer]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

3. prevent phishing. When PayPal sends you an email, you want to know
for sure it really is from PayPal. This means corporate users at
least will all have digital ids, and all emails will be digitally
signed.
That won't prevent phishing, that will just raise the threshhold a
little. The first hurdle you have to get past is that most mail agents
want to show a human name, not some random collection of symbols that
map to a unique address. Even if you do that, most readers aren't
going to pay attention to said random collection of symbols. Given
that, there are *lots* of tricks that can be used to disguise the
signed name, most of which phishers are already using. How many people
do you think will really notice that mail from "John Bath, PayPal
Customer Service Representative" (jo********@paypa1.com) isn't really
from paypal?

Unicode makes things *really* interesting.
4. status tracking. Unless blocked by the receiver, the sender knows
if his message has been receiveived/read.
Got that already.
5. making it impossible for any incoming email to mount any sort of
attack. the only parts the email software processes are the data
parts. Any enclosed programs must be explicitly installed. The email
software would warn if any code were not digitally signed with proper
certificate to identify the author.

How 20th century of you. Making it impossible to send executable code
as content is a major step backwards from what we've got now, and
you're the last person I would have expected to do that.

The solution is to run the code in a sandbox. This is an old
technology, and fairly well understood. Except maybe in Redmond.

<mike

--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Chris Head]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello? I don't think that should make any difference. I should be able
to visit absolutely any website on the Internet without any danger to my
computer or the data stored on it. Any browser which allows otherwise
has a bug. Javascript is not inherently a virus vector. Flawed
implementations might be; the language itself is not. Similarly for
anything else. In reality, with a properly-configured, good quality
operating system (probably a UNIX-type system), one ought to be able to
run full native code without any danger to one's computer or data
(think: under the NOBODY account on Linux).

Just my 1/50th of a dollar.

Chris

Gordon Burditt wrote:
[snip]

Browsers don't read unsolicited web sites. Email readers do, however,
read unsolicited email, and email from downright hostile correspondents.
And I consider "web bugs" and similar tracking methods to be a danger
for something that's supposed to be ONLY "formatted text".

[snip]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: GnuPT 2.7.2
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDTfb26ZGQ8LKA8nwRAo53AJ4gt1VeSkonnRC0f2eSdw LaJt85CACcDP5+
xVO8Y8uWFRzwY26H4EmmKDo=
=178i
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Chris Head]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Thunderbird is nice that way. You can tell it to render HTML by default,
and even images if they're included in the body of the e-mail, but tell
it to NOT render anything which requires connections to external servers
unless you click a Show Images button. I think Hotmail does a similar thing.

Chris

Paul Rubin wrote:
[snip]

That's the worst of all. I certainly don't want my mail reader
opening network connections to arbitrary places when I read my mail.
I have no willingness at all to reveal my mail reading habits or IP
address to everyone who sends me email. If someone wants a return
receipt, they can use snail mail and fill out a form at the post
office for it.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: GnuPT 2.7.2
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDTfdO6ZGQ8LKA8nwRAuSGAJ4+U6oSZrrO500FptiEGu AYrtXZlwCfYpQP
1TEMkwZwjevSwh+GfR72BlA=
=Xpel
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

[Roedy Green]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 01:32:03 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

That won't prevent phishing, that will just raise the threshhold a
little. The first hurdle you have to get past is that most mail agents
want to show a human name, not some random collection of symbols that
map to a unique address. Even if you do that, most readers aren't
going to pay attention to said random collection of symbols. Given
that, there are *lots* of tricks that can be used to disguise the
signed name, most of which phishers are already using. How many people
do you think will really notice that mail from "John Bath, PayPal
Customer Service Representative" (jo********@paypa1.com) isn't really
from paypal?

I think it better than you imagine.

First of all Mr. Phish will come in as a new communicant begging an
audience. That is your first big clue. PayPal is already allowed in.
Next if Thawte issues certs, they won't allow Phish names such as
Paypol.com just as now for other certs.

Mr. Phish is coming in on a different account.

Next Mr. Phish had to present his passport etc when he got his Thawte
ID. Now Interpol has a much better handle on putting him in jail.
He can't repudiate his phishing attempt.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 01:13:28 GMT, Keith Thompson <ks***@mib.org> wrote
or quoted :

A partial solution to spam, or at least to pollution of Usenet
newsgroups, would be to STOP POSTING THIS STUFF TO NEWSGROUPS WHERE
IT'S NOT RELEVANT.

Technically yes. But those folk in the appropriate newsgroups have had
years to solve this and all we hear is despair. They are too concerned
with the day to day alligator swamp draining to think about the big
picture.. Perhaps it is time to toss the problem in front of a less
beaten down group of potential problem solvers.

--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 01:17:45 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

No, that's what makes email a vector for infection. What makes using
the address book - for whatever purpose - possible for viruses is
having an API that allows arbitrary code to access it. But you have to
have that API - your customers are going to insist that they be able
to use their address book from third party applications.

An automated change of address is possible today. It would be LESS
easy to pull off under the scheme I proposed that requires digital
signatures.

Yes there are some downsides to a theoretical attack where phony
change of address messages are sent out. They don't propagate. They
don't corrupt. They are self healing when the original guy gets his
virus problem under control.

But you must balance that against the REAL downside of people's
address books being filled with obsolete email addresses. And of
course one of the reasons they are is people keep changing their email
addresses to hide on spam. I am just saving as lot of busy work
keeping them up to date.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Roedy Green]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005 19:43:56 -0400, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.org> wrote
or quoted :

Yup, you solved an easy problem - designing a spam-proof email
system. That's been done any number of times. The hard part is a
deployment strategy that will actually get the world to transition to
such a system. That's why earlier nearly identical proposals got
rejected - nobody could come up with a workable transition plan.
Without a transition plan, a better email system is only of academic
interest - and not even much of that at this late date.

The big problem with any new system would be it cannot communicate
with others. So presumably your clients need to talk both old and new
protocols. Just say, YES, you need the old mail system too, but you
will find yourself using it less and less.

So how do you promote it given that you can't talk to everyone with
it?

1. confidentiality. -- All is encrypted. Sell it as something for
confidential intra-corporate communications. This just happens
transparently. This means you CAN'T accidentally reveal a company
secret by bungling the software or forgetting to encrypt.

2. faster -- presume both ends are online 24-7. Do everything 8-bit
transparent, compressed prior to encryption. All decrypting and
compressing/decompressing is transparent.

3. prestige -- for people whose time is too valuable to deal with
spam. Perhaps clients are designed so someone else can deal with
giving and revoking permissions for you and prioritising your mail.
The riffraff are not on this net, only those with certificates, people
of distinction. Software in designed so a secretary can monitor and
manage several other VIP's mail.

Recall that there were intra-net emails long before the Internet.
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Again taking new Java programming contracts.

[Paul Rubin]

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

Next Mr. Phish had to present his passport etc when he got his Thawte
ID. Now Interpol has a much better handle on putting him in jail.
He can't repudiate his phishing attempt.

Any underage drinker in a college town can tell you a hundred ways to
get sufficient fake ID to get around that.

See also: http://www.ahbl.org/funny/response1.php

I'll let others here fill in the blanks.

[Ross Bamford]

On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 09:04:17 +0100, <//ph****@NOSPAM.invalid>> wrote:

Roedy Green <my******************************@munged.invalid > writes:

Next Mr. Phish had to present his passport etc when he got his Thawte
ID. Now Interpol has a much better handle on putting him in jail.
He can't repudiate his phishing attempt.

Any underage drinker in a college town can tell you a hundred ways to
get sufficient fake ID to get around that.

See also: http://www.ahbl.org/funny/response1.php

I'll let others here fill in the blanks.

:) :) :)

--
Ross Bamford - ro***@roscopeco.remove.co.uk