Re: The Remailer Crisis

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Rhys Kyraden wrote:

> Okay. Here's my 2-bits.
> I run on the MacOS, but how hard could it be to port this code? If anyone
> is willing to do this (I assume it's not written in Pascal, which is my
> only language of any consequence), I will run it. It will be available from
> now until I graduate in '98 during the school months. If anyone wants to
> try this from scratch, we could try it in Pascal. I would be very willing
> to do the developing as well as host a discussion list for anyone who jumps
> in.

But is your Mac on the Internet on a more or less continuous basis? A
remailer that only works when the owner happens to log on to collect
his mail is not terribly useful (though not useless, as others have
also noted....just a "very unpredictable lag time" remailer, sort of
the "surface mail" of e-amil).

It happens that the Net is mainly built up of Unix boxes, hence the
focus here on Unix. OS/2, Windows, and Mac boxes will be used
increasinly for constant connection applications, so the idea has
merit, long term.

(Another nit: the Mac, which is what I also use, currently lacks
preemptive multitasking. Thus, if one's Mac is playing a multimedia
CD-ROM when new mail comes in, it likely won't get remailed until the
first app quits or is manually switched out. (Yeah, a few things like
print drivers can run in background, and maybe the new TIA emulators
can trick the OS into processing SLIP or PPP mail in the background,
but who knows?) The consensus is that the Mac is powerful, but it
ain't cut out yet to be a Unix box.)

The language is a lesser deal. Remember that Eric Hughes knocked out
the first remailer in Perl in a few days, and MacPerl exists for the
Mac. Going to Pascal would probably be more trouble than it's worth.

But the most important feature to have is a solid, reliable connection
to the Net. A computer that gets taken to classes, is not connected to
the Net, etc., is not very useful as a remailer.

(The key is not that a remailer can sometimes remail, but that it can
be counted on to be part of chain without the mail getting "dropped on
the floor.")

--Tim May


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