Re: The case against redundancy and isolation

[Dave Crocker / IMC <dcrocker@xxxxxxx>]

At 08:43 AM 11/20/97 -0500, A. Padgett Peterson P.E. Information Security
wrote:
>Perhaps I am missing something but why not a MIME module type for
>AsciiArmouring ?

>However I also suspect that recognition of the type and provision for
>reduction to binary as a single pass would take so little code as to be
>negligible (easy for me to say since have not tried to do it 8*).

>However I do not understand what the controversy is about since it
>seems to be a simple matter of yet another code form.

There are two reason for the controversy, which I tried to cover in my
previous note and will try to state a bit differently:

1.  The incremental effect of more code seems to have exponential, not
linear, effects on reducing reliability while increasing deployment time
and effort.  

2.  The features that are in armouring are the same as for MIME.  I believe
that any features which armouring has which MIME does not either should be
discarded or should be added to MIME.  The botton line is that one should
not propagate multiple ways of doing the same thing.

Contrary to your assessment, I'd say that MIME can be used for exactly the
same purposes as armouring, as well as some other, possibly more general
goals.

d/
--------------------
Dave Crocker                                          dcrocker@xxxxxxx
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