Re: Censorware Summit Take II, from The Netly News

I can't wait until the tags include information on *political* content, or
*credibility factor* (i.e. sanctioned by medai conglomerate or not) etc...

At 02:06 PM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>***********
>
>http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1173,00.html
>
>The Netly News (http://netlynews.com)
>July 16, 1997
>
>At The Censorware Summit
>by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
>
>     If you host a web page or publish online, be
>warned: soon your site might become invisible. Search
>engines won't index it and web browsers won't show it.
>Unless, that is, you agree to attach special labels to
>your web pages identifying how violent, sexually
>explicit, or inappropriate for kids your site is.
>
>     This was the thrust of today's White House
>censorware summit, where President Clinton sat down
>with high tech firms and non-profit groups in a
>private meeting to talk about pressuring the Net
>community to make cyberspace childsafe through labels.
>"We need to encourage every Internet site, whether or
>not it has material harmful to minors, to rate its
>contents," Clinton said after the meeting. Vice
>President Gore was there, too, giving a quick
>demonstration of how labeling works.
>
>     Spooked by the threat of a revised Communications
>Decency Act, high tech firms are seriously backing
>labels for the first time. Joining Clinton in coercing
>Internet users and businesses to label all their web
>pages were Yahoo, Excite, and Lycos. "I threw a
>gauntlet to other search engines in today's meeting
>saying that collectively we should require a rating
>before we index pages," Robert Davis, the president of
>Lycos, told me. Translation: if you don't play ball,
>and label your site, search engines will ignore you.
>
>     As will future users of Microsoft's Internet
>Explorer browser. The next version of IE will default
>to displaying only properly labeled web pages,
>according to Ken Wasch, the president of the Software
>Publishers Association. Since many users won't turn
>off that feature to reach unrated sites, many large
>web sites now are facing hefty pressure to self-label.
>
>     Other high tech firms rushed to join the
>presidential limelight. Netscape promised to join
>Microsoft and include label-reading software in the
>next version of its browser. America Online's Steve
>Case thanked Clinton for "backing industry's efforts
>to make cyberspace a safer place." IBM announced a
>$100,000 grant to RSACi, a PICS-based rating standard
>originally designed for video games but adapted for
>the Web. The industry giant also pledges to
>incorporate RSACi into future products.
>
>[...]
>
>
>
>
>

Read the complete text of my article. The RSACnews system would include
just that: a system that allows a board of media conglomerates to decide
what's a "news site" or not. 

In other words, what's "credible."

-Declan


On Wed, 16 Jul 1997 geeman@best.com wrote:

> I can't wait until the tags include information on *political* content, or
> *credibility factor* (i.e. sanctioned by medai conglomerate or not) etc...
> 
> At 02:06 PM 7/16/97 -0700, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> >
> >***********
> >
> >http://pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1173,00.html
> >
> >The Netly News (http://netlynews.com)
> >July 16, 1997
> >
> >At The Censorware Summit
> >by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
> >
> >     If you host a web page or publish online, be
> >warned: soon your site might become invisible. Search
> >engines won't index it and web browsers won't show it.
> >Unless, that is, you agree to attach special labels to
> >your web pages identifying how violent, sexually
> >explicit, or inappropriate for kids your site is.
> >
> >     This was the thrust of today's White House
> >censorware summit, where President Clinton sat down
> >with high tech firms and non-profit groups in a
> >private meeting to talk about pressuring the Net
> >community to make cyberspace childsafe through labels.
> >"We need to encourage every Internet site, whether or
> >not it has material harmful to minors, to rate its
> >contents," Clinton said after the meeting. Vice
> >President Gore was there, too, giving a quick
> >demonstration of how labeling works.
> >
> >     Spooked by the threat of a revised Communications
> >Decency Act, high tech firms are seriously backing
> >labels for the first time. Joining Clinton in coercing
> >Internet users and businesses to label all their web
> >pages were Yahoo, Excite, and Lycos. "I threw a
> >gauntlet to other search engines in today's meeting
> >saying that collectively we should require a rating
> >before we index pages," Robert Davis, the president of
> >Lycos, told me. Translation: if you don't play ball,
> >and label your site, search engines will ignore you.
> >
> >     As will future users of Microsoft's Internet
> >Explorer browser. The next version of IE will default
> >to displaying only properly labeled web pages,
> >according to Ken Wasch, the president of the Software
> >Publishers Association. Since many users won't turn
> >off that feature to reach unrated sites, many large
> >web sites now are facing hefty pressure to self-label.
> >
> >     Other high tech firms rushed to join the
> >presidential limelight. Netscape promised to join
> >Microsoft and include label-reading software in the
> >next version of its browser. America Online's Steve
> >Case thanked Clinton for "backing industry's efforts
> >to make cyberspace a safer place." IBM announced a
> >$100,000 grant to RSACi, a PICS-based rating standard
> >originally designed for video games but adapted for
> >the Web. The industry giant also pledges to
> >incorporate RSACi into future products.
> >
> >[...]
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
>

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In <Pine.GSO.3.95.970717182623.19394a-100000@well.com>, on 07/17/97 
   at 06:27 PM, Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> said:

>Read the complete text of my article. The RSACnews system would include
>just that: a system that allows a board of media conglomerates to decide
>what's a "news site" or not. 

>In other words, what's "credible."

Well I don't know about anyone else but the more information that comes
out on this the worse & worse it looks.

Between this & the Netscape/Microsoft/Verisign Sellout I would say that
things are looking much worse that if the CDA had been left intact.

I think that several of us need to get together with the authors of Lynx
and produce a GNU secure webbrowser and take on these SOB's.

I don't think that it would be all that much work to mimick NetScapes
plugin interface so the same plugins will work with the GNU browser.

The "Net" will not be safe as long as N$ is allowed to do whatever they
please.

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html                        
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On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:

> I think that several of us need to get together with the authors of Lynx
> and produce a GNU secure webbrowser and take on these SOB's.
> 
> I don't think that it would be all that much work to mimick NetScapes
> plugin interface so the same plugins will work with the GNU browser.

While they are still in early stages, Project Mnemonic is a team of
programmers working on an open, modular GNU browser that will have the kind
of functionality that you describe (and eventually be able to run in various
modes, such as text only, svgalib, X, etc). They need C++ programmers to
help, so spread the word. The story is at
<http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/3907.html>.


m

<http://dsl.org/m/>  Copyright (c) 1997 Michael Stutz; this information is
email stutz@dsl.org  free and may be reproduced under GNU GPL, and as long
                     as this sentence remains; it comes with absolutely NO
		     WARRANTY; for details see <http://dsl.org/copyleft/>.

At 08:40 PM 7/17/97 -0400, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>I think that several of us need to get together with the authors of Lynx
>and produce a GNU secure webbrowser and take on these SOB's.

Nothing wrong with releasing a GNU browser, but you will find it difficult
to impossible to match the features of a modern browser such as
Communicator and MSIE. Some may be happy with Lynx. Myself and most
consumers will stick with Communicator and MSIE.

[...]
>The "Net" will not be safe as long as N$ is allowed to do whatever they
>please.

The Net would be considerably safer if Netscape and others would be allowed
to do as they please. Unfortunately, export laws are a reality and Netscape
and Microsoft do what they can to bring strong crypto to as many people as
possible without ending up in jail. My posts on this topic should not be
taken as bashing these software vendors for attempting to make their
products available to a larger number of customers. I certainly do not
question the integrity of people such as Tom Weinstein who have worked hard
to make the best of a shitty situation. A situation they did not create.
[That questionable honor goes to the USG].

I merely question the wisdom to rely on a solution that can be disabled at
any time, for any reason, or no reason at all, by a party outside your
company simply by revoking a single cert. One should not make one's fate
subject to the future whim of a third party.

Thanks,



--Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
  PGP encrypted mail preferred.
  DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56.
  http://rc5.distributed.net/

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <3.0.2.32.19970717200041.0072b488@netcom10.netcom.com>, on 07/17/97 
   at 08:00 PM, Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> said:

>At 08:40 PM 7/17/97 -0400, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>>I think that several of us need to get together with the authors of Lynx
>>and produce a GNU secure webbrowser and take on these SOB's.

>Nothing wrong with releasing a GNU browser, but you will find it
>difficult to impossible to match the features of a modern browser such as
>Communicator and MSIE. Some may be happy with Lynx. Myself and most
>consumers will stick with Communicator and MSIE.


Well 90% of the "features" of these browsers are complete crap. I have yet
to see a web site that did anything constructive with frames and animated
gifs are compleetly worthless. There are some intresting plug-ins for
Netscape but as I said in my previous post I don't think mimicking the
interface should be that hard.

As far as the e-mail & news clients they are still far behind where the
industry is in these areas.

I was thinking more allong the lines of providing a strong, secure GNU
browser for doing transactions over the net and save the game playing for
NS & MS.


>[...]
>>The "Net" will not be safe as long as N$ is allowed to do whatever they
>>please.

>The Net would be considerably safer if Netscape and others would be
>allowed to do as they please. Unfortunately, export laws are a reality
>and Netscape and Microsoft do what they can to bring strong crypto to as
>many people as possible without ending up in jail. My posts on this topic
>should not be taken as bashing these software vendors for attempting to
>make their products available to a larger number of customers. I
>certainly do not question the integrity of people such as Tom Weinstein
>who have worked hard to make the best of a shitty situation. A situation
>they did not create. [That questionable honor goes to the USG].

No not really. All one has to do is look at Netscapes & Microsofts track
record. Security has never been a primary concern of theirs. While this is
expected from Microsoft (I don't think they could find a security protocol
if it bit them on the ass) one would hope the Netscape would be a little
better at it. 

As far as making their product to a large number of customers one has to
question what type of product they are getting. It seem obvious the both
Netscape & Microsoft have chosen to go down the "GAK/Policy
Token/Manditory Rating" path and have done so long before the WhiteHouse
meeting this week.

>I merely question the wisdom to rely on a solution that can be disabled
>at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all, by a party outside your
>company simply by revoking a single cert. One should not make one's fate
>subject to the future whim of a third party.

While I do not question the integrety of Tom as I don't know him that well
to form a judgment I do question the integrety of the owners & management
of the company he works for.

As their products stand right now I would not trust the "domestic"
versions for anything more than insignificant purchases of beads and
trinkets over the net let alone the hacked "export" versions. As far as
using their product for finacial transactions well you know the old saying
... "A fool and his money were lucky to have ever met in the first place".

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html                        
- ---------------------------------------------------------------

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On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:

> Well 90% of the "features" of these browsers are complete crap. I have yet
> to see a web site that did anything constructive with frames and animated
> gifs are compleetly worthless.

I aggry however there are now meany sites that are now only have frame
based interfaces.  When useing when useing lynx I have to decode the
frames manuly.

[...]

> I was thinking more allong the lines of providing a strong, secure GNU
> browser for doing transactions over the net 

So basicly a non-nonsence bussness web-broser.  It would have to be
devloped outside the cyber certion though.

Please excuse my spelling as I suffer from agraphia see the url in my header. 
Never trust a country with more peaple then sheep.  ex-net.scum and proud
You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For
Themselves? --Terry Pratchett

? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} <dformosa@st.nepean.uws.edu.au> writes:

> On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>
> > Well 90% of the "features" of these browsers are complete crap. I have yet
> > to see a web site that did anything constructive with frames and animated
> > gifs are compleetly worthless.
>
> I aggry however there are now meany sites that are now only have frame
> based interfaces.  When useing when useing lynx I have to decode the
> frames manuly.

I have the first the third editions of Ian raham's excellent
_HTML Sourcebook. The first edition has screen shots from dozens of
browsers. Where did they all go? :-)

> > I was thinking more allong the lines of providing a strong, secure GNU
> > browser for doing transactions over the net
>
> So basicly a non-nonsence bussness web-broser.  It would have to be
> devloped outside the cyber certion though.

Non-crypt stuff like frames and animated gifs could be added here.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, ? the Platypus {aka David Formosa} wrote:

> 
> On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:
> 
> > Well 90% of the "features" of these browsers are complete crap. I have yet
> > to see a web site that did anything constructive with frames and animated
> > gifs are compleetly worthless.
> 
> I aggry however there are now meany sites that are now only have frame
> based interfaces.  When useing when useing lynx I have to decode the
> frames manuly.

Get the new version of Lynx. (2.7?)  It does a better job of handling
frames.

alano@teleport.com | "Those who are without history are doomed to retype it."

On Fri, Jul 18, 1997 at 02:48:15PM -0700, Alan wrote:
> 
> Get the new version of Lynx. (2.7?)  It does a better job of handling
> frames.

You should get it anyway, because of serious security related bug:

                    Computer Incident Advisory Capability
                           ___  __ __    _     ___
                          /       |     /_\   /
                          \___  __|__  /   \  \___
             __________________________________________________________
 
                             INFORMATION BULLETIN
 
               Lynx Temporary Files & LYDownload.c Vulnerabilities
 
July 16, 1997 16:00 GMT                                            
Number H-82
______________________________________________________________________________
PROBLEM:       Two vulnerabilities exist for Lynx: 1) temporary 
files, and
               2) LYDownload.c.
PLATFORM:      All Unix or Unix-like systems running Lynx up to and including
               version 2.7.1
DAMAGE:        1) May allow local users to gain root privileges.
               2) This vulnerability may be exploited by anyone who 
can provide
                  Lynx a carefully crafted URL.
SOLUTION:      Apply patches or workarounds listed below.

[...]  

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Lucky Green wrote:

> Nothing wrong with releasing a GNU browser, but you will find it difficult
> to impossible to match the features of a modern browser such as
> Communicator and MSIE. Some may be happy with Lynx. Myself and most
> consumers will stick with Communicator and MSIE.

Is there any particular reason that NCSA's Mosaic is being ignored?  Sure,
it's not GNU (hence not free to *everyone*) but it's out there, and it
works.

---
John Adams -=- Computer Specialist & Network Guru  O-  NADEP Cherry Point
Pensacola Florida   +1.904.452.8551 DSN:922-8551  jadams@seahawk.navy.mil
PGP ID 0x84E18C41 via key server - opinions expressed are entirely my own

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, John Adams wrote:

> On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Lucky Green wrote:
> 
> > Nothing wrong with releasing a GNU browser, but you will find it difficult
> > to impossible to match the features of a modern browser such as
> > Communicator and MSIE. Some may be happy with Lynx. Myself and most
> > consumers will stick with Communicator and MSIE.
> 
> Is there any particular reason that NCSA's Mosaic is being ignored?  Sure,
> it's not GNU (hence not free to *everyone*) but it's out there, and it
> works.
> 

I've always been an admirer of the HotJava concept, if not the 
execution.  In other words, a dynamically modifiable browser that
"learns" how to handle new objects on-the-fly.  When I first read
Gosling's white paper on Java this was the biggest "ahaa!"
I had.  I believe there is a version that uses Python instead of
Java, but despite the fact that I admire Python quite a bit
Java definitely has the momentum here.

How hard would it be to implement a Java-based browser that has
most of the goodies that we need from day to day (crypto, tables,
plug-ins, etc)?

Implement this thing like Linux so that we get a core team going
and everybody starts throwing in chunks of code, objects etc.
The first cut of this beast could be minimal and with its
hot extensibility could grow to accomodate anyone's needs.

Jim Burnes

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Jim Burnes wrote:

> 
> 
> On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, John Adams wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Lucky Green wrote:
> > 
> > > Nothing wrong with releasing a GNU browser, but you will find it difficult
> > > to impossible to match the features of a modern browser such as
> > > Communicator and MSIE. Some may be happy with Lynx. Myself and most
> > > consumers will stick with Communicator and MSIE.
> > 
> > Is there any particular reason that NCSA's Mosaic is being ignored?  Sure,
> > it's not GNU (hence not free to *everyone*) but it's out there, and it
> > works.
> > 
> 
> I've always been an admirer of the HotJava concept, if not the 
> execution.  In other words, a dynamically modifiable browser that
> "learns" how to handle new objects on-the-fly.  When I first read
> Gosling's white paper on Java this was the biggest "ahaa!"
> I had.  I believe there is a version that uses Python instead of
> Java, but despite the fact that I admire Python quite a bit
> Java definitely has the momentum here.


Slight correction...there is not a version of HotJava that uses
Python.  I was talking about a different product.

jim

At 1:33 pm -0400 on 7/18/97, Tim May wrote:

<an excellent description of the industrial strength software bloat which
now afflicts the browser market>

"The Geodesic Network, OpendDoc, and CyberDog"
http://www.shipwright.com/rants/rant_03.html is the first rant I wrote on
<ducking> geodesic </d> software. It ended up in a much(!) shorter form as
a full-page opinion piece in InfoWorld two years ago this October.
Actually, it's about what happened to me at MacWorld almost exactly two
years ago.

Anyway, OpenDoc is now dead, probably because it wasn't geodesic enough, I
think. After all, it called itself a compound document archichitecture, and
people have figured out by now that software won't be about documents at
all.

OpenDoc, as implemented, layered too much onto an increasingly bloated
MacOS. It was awfully slow and required many twidgits and tweaks to make it
all go, and there wasn't enough stuff there when you were finished to want
to use it all. It became the bloatware it was trying to replace.

There will be sucessors to OpenDoc, but I also agree with Dave W(h)iner
that Java is probably more brand name than anything else. Like Chauncey
Gardner, Java is what we project onto it.

But, sooner or later, probably when we figure out how to make bits of code
handle money in somekind of micromoney ecology, with bits of cash as
software and processor 'food', we'll have geodesic software. Software which
scales and upgrades itself to the processor it's using, and which is
infinitely configurable and extremely efficient in its use of computation
resources. Software which gets smaller in order to solve smaller specific
problems instead of getting larger in never-ending cycles of feature-creep.
Software which auctions its services to the highest bidder, and which when
outcompeted by a rival, dies, just like any form of life.

As far as hardware goes, the world will not be populated with the kind of
top-down network-as-mainframe network computer of Larry Ellison's wet
dreams. Microprocessor prices will continue to collapse at least for the
next 10 years, and computers will trend toward ubiquity, moving into
practically every artifact of civilization, and all those computers will
talk to each other on a ubiquitous global internet.

The software those computers use will not be hard-wired, it will be
flexible and upgradable. It will be 'out of control'. It will be geodesic,
like the network itself.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga







-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Robert Hettinga wrote:

> At 1:33 pm -0400 on 7/18/97, Tim May wrote:
> 
> <an excellent description of the industrial strength software bloat which
> now afflicts the browser market>
> 
> "The Geodesic Network, OpendDoc, and CyberDog"
> http://www.shipwright.com/rants/rant_03.html is the first rant I wrote on
> <ducking> geodesic </d> software. It ended up in a much(!) shorter form as
> a full-page opinion piece in InfoWorld two years ago this October.
> Actually, it's about what happened to me at MacWorld almost exactly two
> years ago.
...
> The software those computers use will not be hard-wired, it will be
> flexible and upgradable. It will be 'out of control'. It will be geodesic,
> like the network itself.
> 
> Cheers,
> Bob Hettinga

I think that depends on what people start adopting.  If you want
"geodesic" software, use Linux.  Pieces are there from every continent,
and all any business needs to do to have a driver and applications written
for any hardware is to release the spec.  It is flexible and upgradable
and 'out of control', and is developed on the internet.  Interestingly
enough, the only stego-crypto "device" I know of is the linux loop device.

There are some crypto plugins for MS, but nothing I know of will bury your
info encrypted with DES or IDEA in the lsbs of a .wav file.

The other interesting thing is that the bloatware is only possible BECAUSE
of Moore's law.  Windows really needs 16Mb, a big hard drive, and a fast
pentium, and it is nice that the price point (around $2k) of the new
machines are about right for each release of a new MS product.  But even
if cpu-memory power (and price per bit sent over the internet) keeps
doubling, the complexity of code is growing exponentially too.  Or was
growing - I think it has past the point where they can add code to the
blob and have it work.

If you are right, then there should be a shift from MS to Linux or
FreeBSD.  Especially if the Wabi32 or Wine projects succeed :).

--- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---

At 12:52 am -0400 on 7/20/97, sar wrote:

Just to be clear, when I talk about geodesic software, I'm not talking
about linux, as much as I like the idea of linux personally. In fact, if
the Mac ever dies, I'll probably end up on linux someday. Certainly, once
you put any machine on the internet, its software becomes more geodesic
than it was sitting on a desktop or in a rack, and, for the sake of
argument, I'm willing to agree that because of increasing availablity of
cool free net.stuff in linux, it may more geodesic than Microsoft or Apple
operating systems.

I could be wrong, but the cycle from not having what you need to do
something new, to installing it and running it, is too slow for modern
operating systems like linux to call them geodesic software in the sense
that I was using the phrase. Java the brand-name claims to do this in
"market"space, but Java as running software ain't there yet in cyberspace,
and may never be.

I'm beginning to think that until it's possible for a given processor to
autonomously buy the software it needs for cash in an auction market, and
then download and install that software, all at run time, the
superscalibility of an environment where software is dispersed through the
network (again, "surfacted" is not a bad word to describe this), and run in
the smallest possible bits at the processor level just won't happen.

Nonetheless, I do think that the linux gang is going in the right
direction, especially since most most of the cash-settlement technology we
on this list have all come to know and love is more likely to be used in
linux than anywhere else.


Finally, there's the issue of Mhyrvold's software-as-a-gas idea. That is,
that bloatware is a direct result of Moore's Law. Or, more properly,
Parkinson's Law of bureaucracy ("an organization will expand to fit it's
available resources") come to microprocessing.

In an absolute sense, of course, more processing power is more software
waste. My Mac wastes more cycles than I can physically count in a lifetime
waiting for my next keystroke, and, after more than half a lifetime at the
keyboard, I am a pretty fast typist.

 However, at some point, I think that the added "waste" of profit-and-loss
responsibility at the processor level, effectively a cash-settled auction
market for cycle-time, will yield much more efficiency in allocating
processor time than piling on yet another feature and compiling it in with
the rest of some vertically integrated application behemouth. Waiting for
everybody else's requested features to creep by before the application can
let us have the one we need to use will be a thing of the past when that
happens.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga





-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

That will probably all go away "RSN", but it will take something like a
web based process dispatch where you are filling in a form (maybe without
knowing it) and it is submitted to be dispatched to the least busy
processor in your network.  Plan 9 was trying to do something like this,
and the current SMP stuff at least attempts to do scheduling - we still
have this technology in a very mature state from mainframes and things
like vaxclusters.

But to go back to your comparison of lines v.s. nodes, the network and
busses are getting faster and the processors are two at about the same
rate, so both lines and nodes are getting cheaper, though not uniformly.

If lines become cheaper (in bits/sec/$) than nodes, we will have 10 CPU
boxes for 40 keyboard/display boxes, or some other appropriate ratio. 
Otherwise some combination of distributionware will become available so
you can run cpu intensive apps (e.g. spice electronic modeling) like DES
keyspace searches, though on your local net.  Even something like a
"batch" program for Windows NT, but the GUI paradigm makes clicking on Go 
a little difficult :).

There is another problem with software being purchased (or rented?) in the
model you describe.  It becomes cheaper to purchase it in bulk (e.g.  one
transaction giving access to a os and a library, and have the most used
components cached locally) than to go out and buy each piece as I need it. 
I have a toolbox in case I need to fix something.  If I had to drive to
store for each tool as I needed it, the sunk costs would then exceed the
price of the tool.  It would get worse if I tried to determine the best
price or best tool from among several stores.  I purchase one tool box
which handles 99.5% of the cases I am likely to see and have only one set
of sunk costs. 

E$ transactions have a very tiny transaction cost, but it is not zero, and
because it requires crypto it is noticable in CPU time and cycles.  If you
had to purchase 100 components to run Netscape (minimally the graphics,
http parsing, and a few other things first, then every time you clicked on
a new type of object), each having to be transacted and downloaded, it
would be worse than the existing bloatware.  Much like the cost of Email
is not zero, but a large amount is included in my monthly ISP payment
since the cost of tracking exceeds the cost of transmission.  A large
amount of software may eventually become a public good.  But as I may
occasionally need a special tool which is not in my box, I may want access
to special software or capacity.

--- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---

On Sat, 19 Jul 1997, Mismatched NFS IDs wrote:

> I think that depends on what people start adopting.  If you want
> "geodesic" software, use Linux.  Pieces are there from every continent,
> and all any business needs to do to have a driver and applications written
> for any hardware is to release the spec.  It is flexible and upgradable
> and 'out of control', and is developed on the internet.  Interestingly
> enough, the only stego-crypto "device" I know of is the linux loop device.

Like a geodesic network, it naturally routes around obstructions or any
attempts to stop it.

This is a story I did for Wired News today about a possible attempt at
stopping free software in the most obvious manner -- close the hardware.
Notice the outcome.


   [1][USEMAP]
   [INLINE]
   [2][USEMAP]
   [3][USEMAP]
   
   
   
   [INLINE]
   _______________
   ______________
   
   
   
   
   [4][LINK]
   [INLINE]
   [5][LINK] _Consortium Segregates the Bus_
   
   _by [6]Michael Stutz _
   3:07pm  21.Jul.97.PDT A coming improvement to the PC architecture
   promises to dramatically enhance throughput for high-end servers,
   while at the same time only granting a select few the right to create
   software for it. Some programmers say this is a move by corporate
   giants like Microsoft to enforce a prohibition on the growing free
   software movement, and have begun to fight it.
   
   Intelligent Input/Output, or I20, is the technical specification for
   the next breed of high-end PC hardware devices invented by Intel and
   developed by the [7]I2O SIG, an industry consortium. Conforming
   hardware will help relieve I/O-intensive enterprise applications, such
   as client/server networking and videoconferencing, by taking the I/O
   load from the CPU, said consortium spokesman Michael LoBue. "It
   'tweaks' the basic architecture by offloading I/O processing from the
   CPU to a dedicated I/O processor," he said.
   
   This built-in processor is part of an intelligent I/O subsystem that
   would even allow I2O devices to communicate with each other - for
   example, a network card could make a request directly to a disk
   controller - without intervention by the CPU or operating system.
   Eventually, OEMs such as H-P and Dell may release high-end systems
   conforming with I2O, some before the calendar year's end.
   
   "We feel that the technology is promising," said Patrick Franklin,
   Microsoft's I2O SIG rep, who confirmed that its NT 5 operating system
   will begin to implement I2O compatibility while noting that "there's
   the risk that I2O performance will not justify the cost."
   
   But another issue has begun to raise a stink with programmers - the
   ability to write and share software for I2O-enabled hardware devices
   is controlled by the Microsoft-dominated SIG.
   
   "It looks as if the I2O SIG agreements are deliberately written to
   exclude free software," said Bruce Perens, chairman of [8]Software in
   the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization formed to support Debian
   GNU/Linux, a free Linux operating system package. "It's my opinion
   that this was a very deliberate decision on the part of the I2O
   consortium, and specifically on the part of their sponsors Microsoft
   and Novell."
   
   Free software - software whose source code is shared throughout the
   Net community - has taken a good portion of the high-powered server
   market that I2O targets, said Perens. "[For] [9]Web servers, file
   servers, and big-ticket systems, people have dumped high-priced
   commercial server packages in favor of free software."
   
   Because software development for I2O peripherals is forbidden for
   nonmembers, the US$5,000 yearly membership dues will put individuals
   and small organizations out of the game. Members themselves are not
   permitted to disclose their source code, and Microsoft has veto power
   to drop any organization from the SIG. This makes a grim scenario for
   independent programmers.
   
   The usual reason for keeping a hardware system closed - to prevent
   cloning of the device - does not apply in this case, as all I2O
   hardware vendors have access to the same documentation. "Five thousand
   dollars is assurance that the little guys, people like [10]Linus
   Torvalds [the original author of Linux] who might work for a college
   or program at home on hardware they purchased with their own money,
   will be locked out," Perens said.
   
   But, says LoBue, "I try to tell these people that one, this isn't a
   conspiracy and two, the founders are not stupid, ignorant people
   unaware of a free approach to licensing - so grow up, get over it.
   Either join or wait until such time as they feel that it doesn't need
   to be licensed. Boy, they're sure having a lot of fun on their soapbox
   lecturing about how ruin and damnation will happen because there are
   'proprietary specs.' I would claim that I2O is _not_ a proprietary
   spec - _anybody_ is free to join the SIG."
   
   Proprietary specs have surfaced many times throughout PC history; the
   outcomes have almost never been good. The MicroChannel Architecture
   bus was IBM's one-time attempt to keep the PC bus its own. It didn't
   work.
   
   "MCA was doomed from the start," said Microsoft's Franklin, citing the
   difficulties in getting a license from the IBM bureaucracy as a prime
   catalyst for its demise. Similarly, it may prove tough to impossible
   to keep determined hackers from programming their own hardware: Some
   have even now routed around the I2O membership requirements, informing
   Wired News that the secret document describing I2O in its current
   revision was [11]openly available from the I2O SIG's own site.
   
   _Related Wired Links:_
   [INLINE]
   
   _[12]Penguin Plaque Honors Linux Creator
   9.Jul.97_
   
   
   
   [13][LINK] [14][USEMAP]
   
   [15]Feedback: Let us know how we're doing.
   
   [16]Tips: Have a story or tip for Wired News? Send it.
   
   [17]Copyright (c) 1993-97 Wired Ventures, Inc. and affiliated companies.
   All rights reserved.
   
   [18][USEMAP]
   [INLINE] [INLINE]
   [19]PSINet. Sign up now and get $200 of free Internet faxing.
   
   [20]Consortium Segregates the Bus
   
   [INLINE]
   _TECHNOLOGY_
   _Today's Headlines_
   
   _[21]Email Spy Lurks in Corporate Future
   
   [22]Digital Maps Help You Take a High-Tech Hike
   
   __[23]Consortium Segregates the Bus
   
   [24]Net Cannot Work by Man Alone
   
   [25]Launch Entrepreneurs Bet Down Under Goes Over
   
   [26]Sun's Adventures in the Third Dimension
   
   __[27]Tools: Internet Explorer 4.0 Preview 2
   
   [28]Street Cred: The Interface Hackers
   
   [29]Geek Talk: VBScript
   
   _[30]PSINet. Sign up now and get $200 of free Internet faxing.

References

   1. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html#masthead.map
   2. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html#nav1.map
   3. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html#nav2.map
   4. http://www.wired.com/wired/
   5. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology
   6. mailto:stutz@dsl.org
   7. http://www.i2osig.org/
   8. http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html
   9. http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/Changes/ALL/
  10. http://www.forwiss.uni-passau.de/forwiss/archive/linux/personen/interview.html
  11. ftp://ftp.i2osig.org/ver1-5.pdf
  12. http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/1763.html
  13. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology
  14. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html#navstrip.map
  15. mailto:news_feedback@wired.com
  16. mailto:tips@wired.com
  17. http://www.wired.com/wired/full.copyright.html
  18. LYNXIMGMAP:http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html#nav3.map
  19. http://www.wired.com/cgi-bin/nredirect/zMN5zNoNlV+G@http://www.psi.net/bannerads3/hotwired@news@topstories@def@psinet@psinet/greenpsinet125@
  20. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html
  21. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5315.html
  22. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5313.html
  23. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html
  24. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5321.html
  25. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5304.html
  26. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5287.html
  27. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5337.html
  28. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5272.html
  29. http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5266.html
  30. http://www.wired.com/cgi-bin/nredirect/zMN5zNoNlV+G@http://www.psi.net/bannerads3/hotwired@news@topstories@def@psinet@psinet/greenpsinet125@

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In <Pine.LNX.3.95.970721183747.25439E-100000@devel.nacs.net>, on 07/21/97 
   at 06:40 PM, Michael Stutz <stutz@dsl.org> said:

>   Because software development for I2O peripherals is forbidden for
>   nonmembers, the US$5,000 yearly membership dues will put individuals
>   and small organizations out of the game. Members themselves are not
>   permitted to disclose their source code, and Microsoft has veto power
>   to drop any organization from the SIG. This makes a grim scenario for
>   independent programmers.

Sounds like a text book example for a anti-trust lawsuit angainst
Microsoft, Intell & the I20 SIG.

I wonder what Watcom, Borland and a few of the other compiler manufactures
think about this.

- -- 
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii
Geiger Consulting    Cooking With Warp 4.0

Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice
PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail.
OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html                        
- ---------------------------------------------------------------

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At 08:10 PM 7/19/97 -0400, you wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Robert Hettinga wrote:
>
>> At 1:33 pm -0400 on 7/18/97, Tim May wrote:
>> 
>> <an excellent description of the industrial strength software bloat which
>> now afflicts the browser market>
>> 
>> "The Geodesic Network, OpendDoc, and CyberDog"
>> http://www.shipwright.com/rants/rant_03.html is the first rant I wrote on
>> <ducking> geodesic </d> software. It ended up in a much(!) shorter form as
>> a full-page opinion piece in InfoWorld two years ago this October.
>> Actually, it's about what happened to me at MacWorld almost exactly two
>> years ago.
>...
>> The software those computers use will not be hard-wired, it will be
>> flexible and upgradable. It will be 'out of control'. It will be geodesic,
>> like the network itself.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Bob Hettinga
>
>I think that depends on what people start adopting.  If you want
>"geodesic" software, use Linux.  Pieces are there from every continent,
>and all any business needs to do to have a driver and applications written
>for any hardware is to release the spec.  It is flexible and upgradable
>and 'out of control', and is developed on the internet.  Interestingly
>enough, the only stego-crypto "device" I know of is the linux loop device.
>
>There are some crypto plugins for MS, but nothing I know of will bury your
>info encrypted with DES or IDEA in the lsbs of a .wav file.


take a look at  http://members.iquest.net/~mrmil/stego.html it has
steganography programs for win95,dos,mac and amiga. as well as links to
other stego pages and a paper on " covert channels in the tcp/ip suite" 

 



>
>The other interesting thing is that the bloatware is only possible BECAUSE
>of Moore's law.  Windows really needs 16Mb, a big hard drive, and a fast
>pentium, and it is nice that the price point (around $2k) of the new
>machines are about right for each release of a new MS product.  But even
>if cpu-memory power (and price per bit sent over the internet) keeps
>doubling, the complexity of code is growing exponentially too.  Or was
>growing - I think it has past the point where they can add code to the
>blob and have it work.
>
>If you are right, then there should be a shift from MS to Linux or
>FreeBSD.  Especially if the Wabi32 or Wine projects succeed :).
>
>--- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---
>

On Sun, 20 Jul 1997, sar wrote:

> >There are some crypto plugins for MS, but nothing I know of will bury your
> >info encrypted with DES or IDEA in the lsbs of a .wav file.
> 
> take a look at  http://members.iquest.net/~mrmil/stego.html it has
> steganography programs for win95,dos,mac and amiga. as well as links to
> other stego pages and a paper on " covert channels in the tcp/ip suite" 

I took a look and everything I have seen can do stego, and some
encryption, but it is one file in one file.

I was not clear because the loop device can mount a filesystem, and
encrypt and/or stego an entire directory tree in one file transparently,
so I can mount my stego-crypto image on /home/me and do everything as I
normally would on an unencrypted partition.

ftp://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/pub/linux-stego/index.html

I can do the same with CFS, but it doesn't do stego, and I don't know if
it is available for many platforms outside unix.

--- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---

At 12:20 PM 7/21/97 -0400, you wrote:
>On Sun, 20 Jul 1997, sar wrote:
>
>> >There are some crypto plugins for MS, but nothing I know of will bury your
>> >info encrypted with DES or IDEA in the lsbs of a .wav file.
>> 
>> take a look at  http://members.iquest.net/~mrmil/stego.html it has
>> steganography programs for win95,dos,mac and amiga. as well as links to
>> other stego pages and a paper on " covert channels in the tcp/ip suite" 
>
>I took a look and everything I have seen can do stego, and some
>encryption, but it is one file in one file.
>
>I was not clear because the loop device can mount a filesystem, and
>encrypt and/or stego an entire directory tree in one file transparently,
>so I can mount my stego-crypto image on /home/me and do everything as I
>normally would on an unencrypted partition.
>
>ftp://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/pub/linux-stego/index.html
>
>I can do the same with CFS, but it doesn't do stego, and I don't know if
>it is available for many platforms outside unix.
>
>--- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---
>

there are programs witch let you encrypt entire disk volumes transparently
for dos and windows such as 'Secure FileSystem' available at
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/sfs.html. I've never used any such
programs so I really cant say with any confidence how well or if they work..

At 9:42 AM -0700 7/18/97, Jim Burnes wrote:

>I've always been an admirer of the HotJava concept, if not the
>execution.  In other words, a dynamically modifiable browser that
>"learns" how to handle new objects on-the-fly.  When I first read
>Gosling's white paper on Java this was the biggest "ahaa!"
>I had.  I believe there is a version that uses Python instead of
...


For a short while after getting my first real Web access, after many years
of shell accounts at Portal, Netcom, etc., I thought Netscape (OK,
"Navigator") would be my Swiss Army Knife of apps. The One True Web App.

As it turned out, I continued using Eudora Pro for e-mail. I'd been using
it since 1992, and it had evolved along with other tools and remained
better than what Netscape had included in Navigator. At least to me it was
better.

And I adopted Newswatcher, a Mac app, for my newsreader.

So all I use Navigator for is Web browsing. Sadly, Navigator 3.0 just about
tripled in footprint, from about 5 MB to about 14 MB (for a relatively
crash-free setup, though it still crashes with "Type 11" memory errors a
couple of times a day). As I can't see any particular advantages to Version
3 over Version 2, except for "dancing Java images," :-{, I'm seriously
considering abandoning 3 and going back to 2.

I'm not at all convinced that monolithic apps like this will do well. A
cluster of smaller apps, provided they have relatively consistent
look-and-feel, as they mostly do, will probably do better for many of us.
Smaller, nimbler apps are harder for government forces to regulate,
influence, and limit.

What does this mean for crypto, certificates, etc.? It means that what
Netscape, Microsoft, and other monolithic app suppliers don't hold all the
cards. What the government forces/cajoles NS and MS to do with
certificates, crypto, Web ratings, could end up helping more users decide
to defect from the monolithic apps to smaller,less constraining apps.

Maybe this is part of why Netscape's stock price is continuing its long
downward slide....

Note to NS and MS employees reading this: If your products become
associated with Big Brother, a lot of people will shun them even further.

(Sidenote: I don't follow the "certificates" debate very closely. What I
think, however, is that I will not be constrained at all in communicating
with my offshore friends securely, regardless of what the government does
with export laws and GAK. Unless they outlaw domestic unescrowed crypto, or
illegalize the communications across U.S. borders with unescrowed crypto,
which seems ipso facto a violation of the First Amendment.)

--Tim May



There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Tim May wrote:

> I'm not at all convinced that monolithic apps like this will do well. A
> cluster of smaller apps, provided they have relatively consistent
> look-and-feel, as they mostly do, will probably do better for many of us.
> Smaller, nimbler apps are harder for government forces to regulate,
> influence, and limit.
> 
> What does this mean for crypto, certificates, etc.? It means that what
> Netscape, Microsoft, and other monolithic app suppliers don't hold all the
> cards. What the government forces/cajoles NS and MS to do with
> certificates, crypto, Web ratings, could end up helping more users decide
> to defect from the monolithic apps to smaller,less constraining apps.

It has been called bloatware and it affects everything.  Consider PGP 5.0.
As far as I know, all the technology being scanned in over this month is
available outside the US (e.g. SSLeay, and zip).  Although I would rather
have multiple implementations, SSLeay is a DLL under windows, but now I am
also going to have a PGP50 DLL, both with MPI and crypto libraries.  And
that doesn't count the same functions which are in both netscape and msie.

Both Netscape and MSIE could have taken an approach where the crypto was
put in a different app (i.e. safepassage), so the SSLproxy app would only
be available in the US, and cloned at full strength elsewhere.  You can do
something equivalent on the server side (443 -> SSL-to-plain -> 80).

Unless I am really doing something graphic based, I use Lynx.  Or "geturl
http://whatever | tablerender | less".

What is worse about MS/NS is that they can't be automated.  I can do a
croned geturl every 5 minutes, but how do I extract a given table from a
site and import it into excel automatically?  I think excel will
eventually support URLs in some fashion if it doesn't already, but there
are more things which won't parse as easily.  And what if the data is on
the other side of a form?

I think part, if not most of the problem is the GUI paradigm.  It is very
expensive to start another app, so people clamor for features to be built
in to existing apps, so every app must do things other apps do.  If you
can't click on it, you can't do it.  If there is no Download and save the
Nth GIF on this page every 5 minutes, I won't be able to do this with a
normal browser.

This is in contrast to the CLI-filter-pipe paradigm where every program
just does one thing.  That thing can be extremely flexible (e.g. awk), but
it has a limited scope, and another app does other things, but they are
designed to be chainable.  But it requires thinking to build these chains
and "average" users refuse to learn how.  geturl www.wherever | grep
"pic.gif" | awk ... >nextfile.get; geturl `cat nextfile.get` >`date ..`
as a cron job will do the function I suggested above.

The question is how to merge the two so GUI apps are small and chainable
(maybe embeddable?).

--- reply to tzeruch - at - ceddec - dot - com ---