Re: AltaVista Tunnel

Rick Osborne wrote:
> 
> He triumphantly exclaimed that the encryption was 128-bit, but when
> I said "128-bit what?" he cowered and muttered that he didn't know and went
> on with his little speech.  The rest of my crypto-specific questions met
> with equal dark stares.  And these are the people setting industry standards...

I should be happy that you are bashing a competitor and all, but give
them a break, OK? The marketing dweeb who has to do product pitches
on roadshows is not the same as the design engineer who designs the
system and sets technical standards. There can be a big difference in
technical knowledge about the product, and even basic competency,
between the two.

-- 
Anil Das

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An entity claiming to be Anil Das wrote:
: 
: Rick Osborne wrote:
: > 
: > He triumphantly exclaimed that the encryption was 128-bit, but when
: > I said "128-bit what?" he cowered and muttered that he didn't know and went
: > on with his little speech.  The rest of my crypto-specific questions met
: > with equal dark stares.  And these are the people setting industry standards...
: 
: I should be happy that you are bashing a competitor and all, but give
: them a break, OK? The marketing dweeb who has to do product pitches
: on roadshows is not the same as the design engineer who designs the
: system and sets technical standards. There can be a big difference in
: technical knowledge about the product, and even basic competency,
: between the two.
: 

If the marketing-droid didn't have the ability to answer such a basic
question, DEC should have just sent out videotape promos.  I don't
understand why they went through the expense of sending warm bodies
out on a roadshow without giving them enough specification about
the product to give an effective presentation to a predominantly
tech-oriented audience.  From whom did they expect the questions to
come?  A competent marketing professional would AT LEAST know what
standards/protocols the product supported, does a car company send
its sales force out without knowing if the cars use gas or diesel?

Another example of how the Macro$loth mindset of tossing out random
buzzwords to a chorus of ooooh's and ahhhh's has polluted the 
industry.  

In Rick's case, DEC's image was deflated.  OK, so how many other
people present got the same impression.  And it's very likely that
one of those people is a decision maker, or the anecdote got back
to one of the decision makers.  So, due to DEC's failure to ensure
that their sales force new the product, they can probably scratch 
Grumman off of their potential client list.

Mark


- -- 
[]  Mark Rogaski                    || "Computers save time like kudzu    [] 
[]  wendigo@pobox.com               ||  prevents soil erosion."           [] 
[]  http://www.pobox.com/~wendigo/  ||           - afcasta@texas.net      []
[]  >> finger for PGP pubkey <<     ||                                    []

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At 03:48 AM 2/5/97 -0800, Anil Das wrote:
>I should be happy that you are bashing a competitor and all, but give
>them a break, OK? The marketing dweeb who has to do product pitches
>on roadshows is not the same as the design engineer who designs the
>system and sets technical standards. There can be a big difference in
>technical knowledge about the product, and even basic competency,
>between the two.

Oh, I understand that.  But I do expect at least a *tiny* bit of knowledge
on the product by said marketers.  I mean,  the entire base of PPTP is
crypto.  It's like trying to explain a word processor without knowing what
a paragraph is.  When I went to the networks guys, they answered every one
of my questions about the routers, packet sniffing, etc. without
hesitation.  The nice lady with the .5TB RAID array was just as competent.
The only person in that entire truck that couldn't answer my questions was
this one guy.  It just goes back to the old thread of "why don't people
know about crypto?"
_________ o s b o r n e @ g a t e w a y . g r u m m a n . c o m _________
If it's broke, send it back.  If it works, take it apart and find out
why.