>Unless you plan to support all the major IM protocols- and get
>crypto to work inside each one- writing a brand new IM application
>with a new format is a total waste of time. What I think
>escapes this group sometimes (often?) is the Fax Machine Problem.
>One fax machine is useless. 90 million fax machines are useful.
>This is why Gale is entirely useless for most people. It might be
>cool and have great crypto but no one I know uses it.
I'm not surprised no one you know uses it because I haven't finished
writing it. :) But I'm aware of the "network effects" issue. It's
certainly a possibility that people won't use the program that I
developed because it won't reach a critical mass of users.
>How hard can it be to just copy out the text, encrypt it to a
>preentered key, encrypt it and paste it back into the window
>when the user hits the send button? Christ.
If you're going to manually cut and paste, PGP can already encrypt
from the clipboard, so I don't think anybody needs this.
Thanks,
Wayne
--------
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>To: "Wayne Rad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Re: Secure Instant Messaging
>Date: Thu, 10 May 2001 17:39:12 -0800 (PDT)
>
>Well, you asked for feedback, here it is.
>
>By month 24 after the release of your application you will have exactly
>3 users, including yourself and your mother.
>
>Unless you plan to support all the major IM protocols- and get crypto to
>work inside each one- writing a brand new IM application with a new format
>is a total waste of time. What I think escapes this group sometimes
>(often?)
>is the Fax Machine Problem. One fax machine is useless. 90 million fax
>machines are useful. This is why Gale is entirely useless for most people.
> It might be cool and have great crypto but no one I know uses it.
>
>There are like 15 different IM applications out there already. The only
>ones any good for critical mass purposes are AIM, ICQ, Yahoo and MSN (in
>that order).
>
>Would someone PLEASE just write a simple strong symmetric (AES?) key crypto
>plugin for AIM and/or ICQ?
>
>How hard can it be to just copy out the text, encrypt it to a preentered
>key, encrypt it and paste it back into the window when the user hits the
>send button? Christ.
>
>At Thu, 10 May 2001 23:35:20 -0000, "Wayne Rad" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
>
> >I'm writing a secure IM application, but it's for Windows. If
> >anyone wants to volunteer to port to linux (or any other platform),
> >I'd love you for it. And would vastly prefer that to doing a new
> >effort since the port would be compatible with the Windows version,
> >(the protocol is designed to be platform and language independent).
>
>Free, encrypted, secure Web-based email at www.hushmail.com
>
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