From: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 12:25:46 +0800
To: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Censorware Summit Take II, from The Netly News
In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19970717200041.0072b488@netcom10.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199707180412.XAA09723@mailhub.amaranth.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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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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