----- Original Message -----
From: "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Arnold G. Reinhold" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Reese" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
"William H. Geiger III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>;
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2000 11:17 PM
Subject: RE: X.BlaBla in PGP??? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
> >I think the problem with S/MIME is that it violates a major principle
> >of software usability: make the most commonly performed tasks the
> >easiest to accomplish.
>
> You find clicking on the little icons difficult?
>
> This is just more of the same - parotting out some slogan you
> read in some book in the hope it might be applicable. The
> fact that you make the accusation tends to imply that you
> have never used S/MIME.
FYI, according to outlook express you a mail message was signed but after
clicking the security icon I am told that "You have turned off revocation
checking." with no way of turning it on. As far as I'm concerned, the
message is cryptographically sound but essentially useless because I don't
know you or have any way of verifying that the certificate is still valid.
> Going to the Thawte server to get a free 12 month cert is hardly
> a difficult process.
actually, it will be as soon as VeriSign finishes purchasing Thawte and
VeriSign makes its monopoly on certificates effectively complete. On the
other hand, I could go ahead and build my own certification authority which
makes my certificates cryptographically correct but still effectively
useless because nobody can verify the root CA certificate.
--- eric
