Encryption wars, Intel bugs, and Bill Gates, oh my.

I Find Karma (adam@cs.caltech.edu)
Sun, 11 May 97 13:15:41 PDT


fwdd from Educom...
> RSA, PGP IN LEGAL FLAP OVER ENCRYPTION TECHNOLOGY
> RSA Data Security has filed a lawsuit against Pretty Good Privacy
> (PGP), alleging that PGP failed to comply with the terms of a
> licensing agreement that RSA had signed with Lemcom, the company with
> which PGP merged last year. RSA says Lemcom had "no ability to
> transfer rights to the source code for the Licensed Product to an OEM
> Customer or anyone else."

Huh? Am I missing something??? Isn't the source code for RSA
trivial???

> When informed that its license agreement to RSA technology was
> canceled, "PGP demanded we sue them in order to exercise audit rights
> clearly laid out in the agreement," says RSA President Jim Bidzos.
> "Their behavior makes us wonder what they have to hide." Meanwhile,
> PGP says the products it's developing don't rely on the RSA encryption
> scheme.

Good for PGP.

> "Those new products will be encryption-algorithm independent," says
> PGP VP Robert Kohn, which will "break RSA monopoly on this
> technology." (InfoWorld Electric 9 May 97)

When does the RSA monopoly expire?

> INTEL BUG UPDATE
> Intel has confirmed that its Pentium Pro and Pentium II chips contain
> a very minor bug but says that the major companies using the chips
> (including Microsoft, IBM and Computer Associates) have not
> encountered any problems caused by the bug. (Atlanta
> Journal-Constitution 10 May 97)

Intel spin control working in full force.

> GATES TELLS EXECS TO "FULFILL YOUR WILDEST DREAMS"
> Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates told the more than 100 attendees
> of a "CEO Summit" convened in Seattle

Isn't it dangerous putting so many powerful rich old white guys in one
place? Doesn't it make it easier to get them all at once?

> that they should plan to fulfill their "wildest dreams" because
> computing power will continue to increase rapidly in the years ahead."

\me loses my lunch, breakfast, and whatever it is that flew in my mouth
while I was sleeping...

> Urging them to focus their thoughts less on how technology will change
> in two years and concentrate more on how it will change in 10, Gates
> encouraged them to build company information systems that would be as
> fast and responsive as "digital nervous systems." (New York Times 10
> May 97)

In other words, USE WINTEL AND BE DIGITALLY NERVOUS from here to
eternity?

Nothing short of a revolution at this point is going to stop this from
proceeding as planned, eh? Because even if me and all my friends buy
Macs or Alphas, every business in the company is going to buy into the
"integrated, complete information system" approach, aren't they?

----
adam@cs.caltech.edu

Michael Dertouzos, director of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science,
says software companies still have a long way to go in developing a
truly "user-friendly" computer interface: "Calling these interfaces
friendly is tantamount to dressing a chimpanzee in a surgical gown and
parading him around earnestly as a surgeon." (Information Week 28 Apr 97)