Re: a few short notes

On Sun, Feb 01, 2004 at 08:13:42PM +0100, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> Sure. But global usage also means that people who don't know how to 
> type each of 20k+ unicode characters can administer the system.

Well, how do you think the guys in China feel about having to learn English 
before being able to adminster their own computer systems?
 
> 1. Screw things up beyond repair by allowing non-latin characters in 
> fields that are relevant to mail delivery (some headers are only for 
> human consumption, I don't care about those)

It does not screw things up beyond repair.

> 2. Use latin characters only as this is the most widely used script

In the Americas and Western Europe, it is the most widely used script. In
the Middle East it is not. In North and Eastern Europe it is not. In Asia,
it is not. In fact, the only places it is, in the Americas and Western
Europe.

> 3. Use numbers exclusively as every literate person on the planet can 
> handle those

Now you're being silly. That would make this the most complicated mail 
protocol ever devised. We should let sendmail rulesets exist in sendmail.cf, 
not mimic them in the envelopes of the mail we're sending...
 
> Simple: not all computers support non-latin scripts. If I'm going to 

And many years ago, not all computers supported ASCII. There is no reason I 
can think of why it could not be stipulated in a modern RFC why Unicode or 
Punycode support is not required on the hosting system.

> administer a mail system I must be able to set up filters and such 
> which makes it necessary to have support for the scripts that I may 
> need to filter. But I myself don't support any non-latin scripts (not 
> counting half the greek alphabet) even with a computer that does (such 
> as my Mac) this won't work well.

How many mail systems in china do you have to support? Again, how do you 
feel about those guys who currently have to learn your language and your 
script just to get e-mail?
 
> This stuff exists today in PGP and S/MIME. However, it seems most 
> people can live without it. If we can limit spam by 90% or so without 
> something like this then I don't think we need to force everyone to 
> adopt strong authentication.

The problem with PGP is that currently the tools you use to implement it are 
too complicated for average computer users. If Outlook Express had built-in 
quality support for PGP, there was a dependanble and decent PKI in place, 
ISPs encouraged their users to use these technologies, and you didn't need 
to be at the level of a computer science undergrad to use all of this, we 
would not be having this discussion.
 
> Why??? Bulk delivery has many advantages and allows some anti-spam 
> strategies that aren't applicable to one-to-one messages.

Like?
 
> So what exactly does encryption do for you if you don't even know who 
> you're talking to?

We're not talking about encryption. We're talking about signing. In other 
words, when I send you mail, you know it's from me. I don't need to know who 
you are, but you are able to identify me. If I then know who you are and 
want to send you an encrypted message, all I need is your key, which is 
probably available on the PKI anyway.

-- 
Paul Robinson