From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@nsb.fv.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 07:38:01 PDT
To: cman@communities.com (Douglas Barnes)
Subject: Re: NYT on Internet Flaws
In-Reply-To: <v02120d04aca21d2bcd71@[199.2.22.120]>
Message-ID: <wkTGSPCMc50eA1MGoJ@nsb.fv.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Excerpts from mail: 11-Oct-95 Re: NYT on Internet Flaws Douglas
Barnes@communiti (1042*)

> It is profoundly irritating to find this splashed on the
> front page of the NYT, contributing to the FUD that
> largely benefits luddites like First Virtual and
> those, like MS$, pushing for a return to proprietary networks.

???Luddites???  Excuse me, have I missed something?  Let's look at FV's
founders:

-- Einar Stefferud is one of the grand old men of the Internet, a major
contributor to Internet standards efforts for over 20 years, and a
behind the scenes player in almost every major email-related development
in the last 20 years.

-- Marshall Rose is the author of SNMP, lots of widely used software,
and six books on Internet-related technology.  He's been a major factor
for progress in IETF and Interop for many years.

-- I'm one of the authors of MIME and lots of widely used software.  I
am most commonly criticized for being technology-crazy, as in the
multimedia excesses of the CMU Andrew system, rather than for being a
Luddite.

Collectively, I'd venture to say that FV's people have pushed the
Internet envelope more than any other similarly-sized group of people
you could find anywhere on the planet.  And in our current incarnation,
we deployed the first Internet-wide open payment system, and have run it
through a year (this coming Sunday) of exponential growth with only a
few days of downtime.

As I understand it, a "Luddite" is someone who is unreasonably opposed
to technological innovation.  The only thing I can assume is that, in
your lexicon, "Luddite" is synonymous with "sees problems with the
deployment of public key encryption technology to the masses".  If
believing that cryptography isn't magic and isn't a perfect solution to
all problems makes us Luddites, then we're Luddites.  

In point of fact, we're very heavy users of cryptography internally, we
have just chosen not to make all our users master its subtleties.  Watch
for the first visible use of cryptography in our system, coming soon --
we're going to push the envelope in the safe deployment of cryptography,
too.  -- Nathaniel
--------
Nathaniel S. Borenstein <nsb@fv.com>    |           When privacy is outlawed,
Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings |     only outlaws will have privacy!
FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq@nsb.fv.com       | SUPPORT THE ZIMMERMANN DEFENSE FUND!

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