From: Jon Lasser <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 95 06:25:00 PDT
To: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: "Notes" to be Eclipsed by "Netscape"
In-Reply-To: <ac8d7d09040210041c62@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950927091535.28140B-100000@rwd.goucher.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Tue, 26 Sep 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

> At 6:52 PM 9/25/95, Jon Lasser wrote:
> 
> >Perhaps the Notes pricing scheme is sooo outrageous (by the standards of
> >a student like myself, and probably most others, if it's still anything
> >like it was at the 1.0 release) that mostpeople have had zero opportunity
> >to examine the program, let alone really have time to play with it?
> 
> I've never even _seen_ a copy of Notes running on any machine, nor do I
> know directly of _any_ of my colleagues who has. (Not saying nobody has, of
> course, just that I can't find anyone I know well who has.)

I've seen Notes running -- the Major-name discount software chain I used 
to work for (peon level) used it for communications.  It was slow and 
frustrating, but my access to it was only marginal... I certainly hadn't 
a chance to examine the code with a debugger, or even just play with it 
some.  But, knowing the software, it wouldn't surprise me if there were 
some serious bugs in the security code.

> My point? Notes is nearly invisible in the non-corporate community I now
> hang out in.
> 
> Who knows what weaknesses or bugs it has in it. Folks on our list probably
> don't have much familiarity with it.

Exactly... I think the product is guilty of security through obscurity, 
though I'm not sure it's particularly intended, just merely an artifact 
of the marketing strategy...

> My hunch is that, as the "Wall Street Journal" reported yesterday, that IBM
> overpaid for Lotus, that the notion of Notes becoming the universal
> collaboration/communication option is flawed.

Agreed.  OTOH, before the Web was known, it made a lot of sense for 
corporations...

Jon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lasser                <jlasser@rwd.goucher.edu>            (410)494-3072 
          Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/
  You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.