On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 11:23:36AM -0800, Tim May wrote:
| I think most users, even casual ones, would accept this advice:
|
| "Look, encrypted text is just a rearrangement of text. Compose your
| message in whatever editor or word processor you want, apply the
| encryption directly to that text, then paste in or otherwise send that
| new text out. Expecting encryption to be closely tied in to to
| ever-changing mailers, word processors, news readers, and multiple
| iterations of OSes, is just too big a chore for developers to keep up
| with."
Most users think text comes in colors, and don't understand why
documents produced by MS Word are different from text. This is
inevitable as we shift towards a world of ubiquitous computing: The
average user understands less and less.
To put it another way, if most users could accept that advice, most of
my business email would be encrypted after someone sent me an NDA. The
person cares about confidentiality, but doesn't know how to achieve
it, and doesn't understand why its not in their mailer.
Adam
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume
