From: Bolivar Shagnasty <tj@compassnet.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 95 12:21:12 PDT
To: Jon Lasser <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>
Subject: Re: Deployment
Message-ID: <Chameleon.4.01.2.950715141932.tj@tjunker.compassnet.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I had thought to respond similarly when I first saw this unixcentric 
statement:

>On Sat, 15 Jul 1995 an250888@anon.penet.fi wrote:
>
>> >In addition, now is the time to deploy stego, on a massive scale.  
>> >How many stego programs have been released for Unix?
>> 
>> Unix?  The masses use DOS, Windows, Mac, and OS/2.  All you Unix gurus
>> with nifty Unix crypto utilities that PC users can only wonder about
>> need to buy PC's and start porting now if you want to get anywhere.

I have to take issue with this, though:

>A legitimate point; however, the majority of PC users won't be in the 
>vanguard of /anything/ -- it's not the nature of the PC industry.  If all 
>the Unix folks do it, then the PC folks might.

The point *is* legitimate.  I disagree that PC users won't be in the vanguard 
of anything:  PC users *are* the market now (gag me with a TSR).  A nifty 
program for PC will be in use by millions in a *very* short time, while a 
similar program for unix will not even be visible to the larger market.  If 
PGP had been limited to the unix market, few people would know of it today.  
Frankly, the PC folks don't give a rat's ass what unix folks do.  Watch the 
production and sales numbers for Windows 95 and gasp.  For better or worse, 
that is the market, and that is where the bucks are to pay for connectivity, 
memory, disk, and... software.

>Besides, the first was the point I was making; the second, I was 
>personally interested, because, after all, I run unix.

I certainly don't want to bash unix, but I can't help but think that one's 
viewpoint of what's going on "out there" is strongly affected by the 
encapsulated universes we create for ourselves.  If you like to run unix but 
hooked into it from another PC running TCP/IP under Windows, you'd see what 
the vast majority of new users see -- no command line, no need to deal with a 
30 year old user interface (send flames to useless.arguments@blackhole.net). 

>In addition, many of the PC people who do Internet communications do it 
>through a unix server anyway.  So it would be beneficial.

Does that matter much?  ISPs are proliferating like mushrooms, and the users 
hooking up to them have PCs and Macs.  Users connect by PPP or SLIP and use 
mail and www clients.  The user interface therefore has nothing to do with 
the connectivity or host OS.  Most of them *never* telnet, and only some of 
them ftp to install web pages.  

Also, more and more people who connect to internet go *through* no ISP server 
at all.  A modem controller at the ISP prompts for userid and password, then 
connects them to an interface that takes them to a router.  Their packets 
flit over to the name server or out on the T1 as required, their traffic 
untouched by unix or any other OS.  An ISDN connection comes in on the same 
T1 that will carry most of its packets back out to the world, with a 
connection manager and router being the closest things to computers involved 
in the process.  At the far end of the net a server running who-cares-which-
OS handles the client's traffic and responds to it by standards that are 
thoroughly OS-independent.

I respectfully submit that improvements of user interface and tinker toy 
integration and development of new tools must be aimed at Windows / OS/2 / 
Mac System to have major impact, and at unix as a convenience to the 
important academic and other communities that work more directly with the 
unix user interfaces.  Academic and scientific users may make the bulk of 
thoughtful contribution in many areas, but that's like server push -- if 
there's no client, nothing happens.


--Bolivar