Subject: RE: [Asrg] RE:ASGR 8a Use of certificates

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 15:39:57 -0700

> Phill, you were doing so well.  Reasonable arguments and the like. 
> Then you blow it with this.  Let's try and keep the personal stuff to 
> a minimum.  *I'd* sure as hell like to turn back the clock to the 
> 1980's in that respect as well.  (Although I do think that having 
> newsreaders that let you read Usenet on a per-group basis, instead of 
> with all the groups jumbled together, probably was a reasonable 
> improvement.)

Yeah, Tim and I had a very different perspective, completeing the 
project of Ithiel deSola Pool, disintermediation of the established
media. If anyone had found out what we were really up to they would
have put a stop to it. Instead they floated an IPO to buy the rope.

Usenet was a flawed design from the start. The lack of a moderation
system was a problem long before canter and siegel. A scalable version
of slashdot without the single point editorial control and monomaniac
topic selection would be completely do-able.

	Phill
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From: Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 16:11:58 -0700

> topic selection would be completely do-able.

I don't think USENET was ever a "design". Early on, it was a quick hack 
between a couple of interested friends, and from then on, much of the 
work on it, IMHO, was simply patching it to keep it going once it 
scaled beyond it's current capabilities. That it scaled this far is 
amazing, but where it is was never in anyone's mind when it was 
started, either. By the time things like authentication were seen as 
needed, the horse was out of the barn and in the next county. To say it 
was a flawed design does Tom, Jim Ellis, Steve Bellovin, and the other 
early folks involved in it a dishonor, because what they built was 
never intended to turn into what it was. I wish we'd been smart enough 
to just throw it out and rethink it back about 1983 or 1984, when we 
had a chance of actually pulling a stunt like that off. Even by the 
time of the great renanming, a redesign of that scale was impossible 
(just look at how much fun the conversion to IPV6 is today....), 
practically speaking.

But it does give one a sense of just how practical the "throw it out 
and start over with e-mail" designs might be, if you think about it. 
Even if one would rather not...

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From: J C Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 16:28:23 -0700

On Tue, 8 Apr 2003 16:11:58 -0700 
Chuq Von Rospach <[email-masked]> wrote:

> and start over with e-mail" designs might be, if you think about
> it. Even if one would rather not...

Aye, the cost and difficulty of an update to email systems and protocols
could very easily be more difficult and more expensive than having a
whole new protocol catch the public eye and get shoved down ISPs and
corporate throats via simple adoption mechanics.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
[email-masked]               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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