To: Jordan Green 
cc: Online-news Mail 
In-Reply-To: 
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: OR
X-Status:   



On Sat, 24 Sep 1994, Jordan Green wrote:

> >>>>>Jeremy Hylton once spewed forth<<<<<
> > The problem with this argument is that it is far easier to send a
> > forged piece of email than it is to initiate a conversation with a
> > report under an assumed name or produce a fake ID.
There are measures, such as PGP or DES encryption that can make it very
difficult to manage an assumed name.  You can put an encrypted string in
a pseudo field, encode the entire message body, or provide an electronic
signature.  The practice is quite common in EDI circles.  You can safely
issue stock transactions with the right "magic card".  These schemes
change passwords every 60 seconds.

> Half true, in my opinon -- as the Internet is generally not available to
> everyone.  We would like to think that everyone can easily come online,
> and join our electronic global village, but this is flat out false.  Most
> people pay out large sums of money to online services such as CompuServe,
> GEnie, America Online, and so on to use the net.  A small minority get
> free accounts through work, school, or a Freenet.  

The prices are becoming very realistic very quickly.  With more POPs going
up every day, it is not difficult to get provider for a reasonable rate. 
I currently pay $35/month for up to 6 hours of SLIP or Shell access per day.
Even in New Jersey, where it seems like every block is it's own LATA, the
phone rates are reasonable.
 
> Whether a person is paying for access or not, I believe the current
> population of the net is compossed of highly educated people.  For the
> most part, computer communications are very textually based.  This means

Mosaic is rapidly changing this.  At several recent shows, internet
providers and vendors put out "Point and Shoot" displays to net homepages.
In somecases, the mosaic display was easier than dealing with the rep.


> people online have to be literate, and interested in reading a lot.  Yes,
> graphical hypertext based systems will ease the literary demands, but only
> to a point -- you still have to be able to read to participate in net
> culture.  
Where it is important to have plain text is in the sorting and sifting of
the gigabytes of text data being produced every week.  Sifting, profiling,
and relevence ranking are useful tools for addressing specific interests
quickly.  Hierarchal navication is also useful, but often is not refined
enough in sources that produce over 100 postings/day.

> I also believe that most people are honest, and good natured.  Not
> everyone encounters the axe murders, child molesters, and criminally ill
> minded in society (which is one of the reasons why these people make
> headlines).  Yes, we all will run across indivuals who screw us in
> business, and we may cause problems for others as well.  However,
> by-in-large people are usually good, unless they have need to be otherwise.
When a reporter begins a contriversial story that might cause a libel
suit, you can bet he wants to be able to verify his source.  I wouldn't
want to quote a completely anonymous source who was blowing the whistle on
a fortune 500 corporation with out being certain that I could verify my
source.  Confirm them by phone, face to face, whatever.  E-mail is one of
many tools in modern journalism.  It is a great source of leads, story
ideas, and resource information.

> Taking all these things into consideration, I believe we can generally
> trust our E-Mail (just as we can generally trust our telelphone
> conversations, face-to-face confruntations, and snail-mail
> corrospondence).  First, not everyone has access to the net.  Those that
> do are well educated.  For the most part, educated people are good in
> nature.  Thus, it is logically valid to trust E-Mail.  So to, it is also a
> safe bet one can trust E-Mail interviews as well.

I would invite you to get on the net and join in to some of the alt.*
groups to find out how interesting educated people can really be.  The
internet thrives on the ingenuity of the alt.sex.* groups.

	Rex Ballard.



From rexb Tue Oct 18 13:03:21 1994