Re: New software featuring GEM 1024 bit encryption engine.

From: Tom St Denis (tomstdenis_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/20/03 

Date: 20 Oct 2003 11:09:04 -0700

Mxsmanic <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<6fg7pvkrs30hfeon15fba84n48kbd9mh2b@4ax.com>...
> Tom St Denis writes:
>
> > See people, this is the exact bull*** I get angry about.
>
> Perhaps you should first work on controlling your anger before flaming
> people with whom you disagree.

I not only disagree with people like that, I detest them. I don't
flame people who are positive contributors [or just sincere]. So for
the rest I could care less if I hurt their feelings.

> > PGP was half-decent [bloatware if you ask me] and very
> > "secure" for most tasks and it failed to get mass attention in
> > terms of sales.
>
> Mainly because, in the final analysis, bells and whistles sell a lot
> better than security, even for security products.

That's part of it. Another part though is that people are lazy. They
will always circumvent security if it means shaving a second or two
off a task.

So no matter how good you make a product you still have to motivate
people. And it isn't like people don't want security, I just think
they really don't comprehend how open the net really is. This is why
"super happy fun" screensavers still infect people.

However, this doesn't mean that PGP [et al.] don't have merits beyond
what some half-ass tool makes. I mean look at all the recent
applications proposed so far. How many generate decently random IV's?
 Or hash the passphrase? Or use a MAC? ...

They really aren't addressing problems people really have. They're
just trying to get attention.

Tom