December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Broadcasts and the Rendezvous Problem
by L. Todd Masco 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Timothy C. May writes: > Isn't this what "alt.anonymous.messages" is all about? > > (It's been at my Netcom site for many months now...I don't recall who > created it, but it seems to me it was one of us.) Alas, it is not available at MIT. I'll have to scrounge for a server that carries it (volunteerings of feeds welcome!); Though netcom is our IP provider, I'd rather not get news from them. > > Folks spend a lot of time bemoaning the transience of specific instances > > of remailer nodes: why not turn this into an advantage by architecting > > a network of system that is resilient against the destruction and/or > > compromise of individual nodes? > > I'm not sure what you mean by this. More remailers are always a good > thing, and offshore sites are especially good, but I'm not sure what > you mean by your last point. (Following details of the current system might be wrong. Please correct me where necessary.) My thought is this: If we were to design and implement a system, perhaps a two-tiered system with "fortress" and "intermediary" remailers as has been suggested, it's desirable to build a system that will continue to work even if a large portion of the nodes are removed (whether by Earthquake of Sun Devil). This is the system we'll have to build if we stop resisting the notion that remailers regularly come and go with little warning. The rendezvous problem is not currently addressed in a satisfactory way: premail/remailer-ping, or its equivalent, hardwires in the location of a known set of remailers and finds the subset that corresponds to remailers having a common characteristic (usually just whether they're working reliably or not). That's not a very good approach: a human has to add a new remailer into the "net" by adding it to the systems polled. Not only is the human intervention a Bad Thing, but having a central registry of remailers is bad infrastructure. A more "web-of-trust"-like mechanism is desirable. So, a dispersed view of the remailer net, both entry points and intermediary points, is necessary. In order to build such a system, we must solve the rendezvous problem: how does "premail++" know where to send its mail and how does remailer A know where to find remailer B (and B find exit point C)? This is where my train of thought dovetails with the newsgroup question: bringing a new remailer on line could be achieved by broadcasting a message through a newsgroup specifying the location and type of the remailer. If necessary, one or more pseudonymous automatic testing agents could pick up the message and put the remailer through a barrage of tests, broadcasting a "remailer certification" with a certain duration. "Premail++" and remailers could find their next hop by examining current certifications and choosing one with desired characteristics, scoring by trusted testing agents and other criteria (including the passage of time since the last certification). If an exit-remailer is chosen early in the game, multiple paths to the exit-remailer can be used to improve reliability (exit- remailers would also probably have a shorter cycle of certification). Technically, this is feasible. I could write the code fairly easily (though I'm not offering to do so at this time: if I do, pieces will be offered as fait accompli). My question is whether this strikes anybody else as a desirable design: we would end up with a net of remailers that is fairly resilient and not dependent upon any one list of remailers. If a node goes down, the net adjusts in rather short order and service is not disrupted. This picture needs to be fleshed out a bit more, but I thought I'd bounce this around before solidifying it in any particular way. - -- Todd Masco | "'When _I_ use a word,' Humpty-Dumpty said, in a rather cactus(a)hks.net | scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - cactus(a)bb.com | neither more nor less.'" - Lewis Carroll - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLuuBmSoZzwIn1bdtAQEI9QF/fX2LPoUwzlKYJqJ1s0vb/mIX4NzT1jOo UNHdiOYNJ+vgpPQyIZ9OQynMuKfSVgU/ =vn6H -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Real-time surveillance of the police
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:04 PM 12/11/94 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >This was an idea explored in detail by David Brin in 1990 in his novel >"Earth." Video cameras are ubiquitous and have a major effect on >casual street crime. Hard to forget Brin's description of little old ladies sitting on their front porches, "armed" will full-sensoria headgear, laying in wait for extremely uneducated juvenile miscreants... Humorous. >This scenario is a likely way that "position escrow" will evolve, from >a voluntary escrowing (incl. timestamping, etc.). "Those with nothing >to hide" will agree to escrow their movements...this will exculpate >them in suspected crimes, etc. A slippery slope. In "City of Angles", Kim Stanley Robinson(?) talks about just a virtuous all-surveilling governmental "privacy" authority which is supposed "protect" your privacy from the police, who had to subpoena the information to get it. > >On the topic of how these localizers actually work, I'm not at liberty >to talk about the technology. It's novel, and uses a *lot* if digital >signal processing. It doesn't use GPS and it's not a variant of >cellular telephones. I wonder if they're using an active/transponder system. That's what O'Niell's Geostar system was designed with in the early '80's. It would have put up cheaper sattellites and smaller earth transponders. The way you saved on transponder size was with very small bursts at very high power. You could send a signal to a small net of satellites 30,000 miles up with a box initially no bigger than an HP12C, and which would shrink more with time. The feds never liked Geostar 'cause they already had the passive/receiver GPS in the works, and they wanted to "amortize" the social cost of an essentially military (hence the requirement for a passive system) system on the backs of commerce. The only thing which saved GPS for mere mortals like us was the MIC's usual severe understimate of Grove's Law and the exponential cost effectiveness of integrated circuits over time. If my hunch is correct, with lots more local antennas, the power requirements of the tranceiver, and as a result, the tranceiver size, gets pretty small. Small enough to be worn on one's ankle. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: Remailing Services Questions
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Anonymous writes: > If you can, please also let us know if there is a way for us to subscribe > via an anonymous remailer to an address we designate, like for instance > with the command > > subscribe special(a)address.here > > where the special address given is obviously different from the one in the > header of the subscription message (which would merely be a remailer). Could you explain this a bit more ? I'm not sure what you're asking. > Does anyone know more about Sameer's C2-services? > In the interest of widespread usage, please post a summary to the entire > cypherpunks-list. Also urge others to copy, forward and post elsewhere. First, here's an excerpt from http://www.c2.org:80/services/: - - --- begin included text ----------------------------------------------------- Fully blind anonymity If you want to protect your privacy and still have mail go to your normal mailbox (either at work, at school, or through any other way you get internet mail), you can sign up for the blind anonymous server. You can set up an alias with us and mail to your alias will get to you, even though we have *no* idea who you are or where mail to you ends up going. This is available for only $10 for about every five megs of traffic which goes through the system. When you sign up you will get about one meg of free traffic. Also available is a Blind Server Client to make things easier. - - --- end included text ------------------------------------------------------- I reproduce below the current contents of http://www.c2.org/services/blindserver.html: - - --- begin included text ----------------------------------------------------- The Blind Anonymous Server by Sameer Parekh <sameer(a)c2.org> Copyright 1994 Introduction I hatched up the Blind Anon Server because of Eric Hughes's comments about the safety in ignorance. I wanted to run an anon server, maybe similar to Julf's remailer, but I did *not* want to know the connection between anon-ids and real IDs. I still wanted it to be easy to use so that someone who wanted to send mail to an anonymous person need only send it to a standard mail address, instead of using Hal's remailer return address block, which is an incredible pain to use. The system I have hatched up is relatively secure. If you take the proper steps to secure your identity from me, even if I were keeping complete logs, I would still know nothing of your true identity and if my records were subpoenaed, I could freely hand over the contents of my records without any worry that the privacy of my users will be violated. The system requires all commands to be pgp signed. Thus you will create a public/private keypair for your anonymous identity, and all administrative commands to the list regarding this identity must be signed by that key. You can send list commands from any address-- an anon remailer, a friend's address, Julf's remailer, whatever.. and as long as it is signed by your identity's key, all will be well. If you don't want to deal with every detail of the server, you can just use the blind client program that's been written to make using the server much easier. Setup First you have to create your alias on the anonymous server. Creating the alias is easy, but setting it up to work right takes a bit of effort and bookkeeping on your part. (Maybe I'll write a client which can take care of all the bookkeeping.) Create a pgp keypair with a User ID of the form "Psuedonym <alias(a)omega.c2.org>". Send your public key to admin(a)omega.c2.org with the subject line, "addkey". This will create for you an anonymous id which can be accessed via "alias(a)omega.c2.org". You should only send one key to the server in any single addkey request. You have to choose an account name which hasn't been used before. In order to get the list of all account names which have been used and are not available, send a message with the subject "sendused address" to admin(a)omega.c2.org and the list of unavailable names will be sent to address, with the body of your request tacked on to the top, so you can use a remailer for the "address" and the body can be an encrypted mailing block-- you need not reveal your identity to me in any case. Starting an account gives you 1000 credits. Now if you would like to send a message to someone from your newly formed alias, you can send a signed message to the administration address (admin(a)omega.c2.org) with the "mailmessage" command. For example: ::mailmessage To: barney(a)black.net Subject: here's the plans to the stealth bomber Keywords: bomber Here's the plans... - - --END OF MESSAGE-- The message will be sent out from omega.c2.org just as if you had sent it out using a standard mail program from omega.c2.org. Then comes the more complex part. You have to tell my anonserver how mail to your alias will actually get to you. There are various levels of security which you can use. Because the remailernet is not very reliable, the idea is that you setup a number of paths which mail can get to you through, so that if one path goes down you can still use the other paths to get mail. You can either configure it so that mail to you goes through every path (for reliability with less security) or one path chosen at random (more secure but less reliable). To add a path to your list of paths, you must send a signed message to the list, with the lines ::addpath firsthop PATH INFORMATION GOES HERE - - --END OF PATH-- The firsthop is the first hop along the path between my anon server and you. It can be your address, in which case there is a good deal of reliability, but you get absolutely no good security. The "path information" is what gets tacked onto the top of the body before the message gets sent to the first hop. Suppose your firsthop was Hal's remailer, hfinney(a)shell.portal.com.. You would have something like: ::addpath hfinney(a)shell.portal.com :: Encrypted: PGP - - -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: 2.3a hEwCKlkQ745WINUBAfwPrO+z9LMBz7boyyC7gUqX/QCEZkXmJCeZYoskgtH5qqbi y4mYUL5a0ApbzrhPs8ULkPnW2c4Pfr1AfYSSgvrzpgAAAEvJtPOuQsW8IVQfl+iW CAr2gd5jax+t75qbux5U/RRxlbsq4cOeGrO/i/6Km6m71Vsdj0rquEQBvREnXxdj 81YsBM9QlFNxQAB8rrQ= =Ylli - - -----END PGP MESSAGE----- - - --END OF PATH-- That pgp message is encrypted for Hal's remailer. When Hal's remailer gets the message, it will have this block on the front of the body. Hal's remailer can then decrypt it.. Maybe on the inside of this block you can put: :: Anon-Send-To: So then there's only one remailer on the chain between myserver and your real address. For more security you can embed *another* hop to another remailer with another encrypted address block. This can continue for as long as you want. The longer the path, the more secure, but the less reliable. Once the path has been added, you will be sent mail (through the anon server) encrypted with your key (all mail to your alias will be sent out encrypted with your key) with the pathnumber that your command created. Store this path number in a safe place, because you will need to use it when you test all your paths for reliability. You can create multiple paths in this fashion. The remailer defaults to "spray" mode-- this means that mail to your alias will be sent through *each* of your paths. This adds reliability at the expense of security. (It makes traffic analysis easier.) If you would like to turn off spray mode, send a command to admin(a)omega.c2.org: ::randmode To turn spray mode on: ::spraymode You can actually use this spray mode for more than just an anon-server. If you'd like to create a mailing list, you can generate a keypair, distribute to everyone on the mailing list the secret key, and everyone can send into the anon server a path to themselves. Using spray mode, mail to the address will go out to every path. This of course means that anyone can subscribe or unsubscribe (Removing paths is described below) people to/from the list. The Credit Scheme When you startup an account, you get 1000 credits. When mail is sent out along one of the paths, credit is deducted from the account-- 1 credit per 512 bytes of traffic. Note that if you are in spray mode credits are deducted for every path which is active for your alias. If your account does not have enough credit, when a message comes in you will get mail detailing the size of the message that was lost and the amount of credits you have in your account. (Size is listed in 512 byte blocks) More credits will be added to your account upon receipt of payment for additional credits to your account. The one thousand credits is in general enough to take care of occasional mail using the 'nym. Only if you use the 'nym heavily should you expect to run out of credits. Removing paths If a certain path which you have active flakes out and becomes ineffective, you need some way of turning that path off so you're not paying for it in spray mode, and so you don't lose mail in random mode. That's what the disablepath command is for. To run the disablepath command you simply send the command (signed, as always) to admin(a)omega.c2.org: ::disablepath pathnumber Pathnumber, here, is the number of the path which was assigned when you created that path. Hence it is useful for you to keep good records of your active and disabled paths. It is possible to reenable a path once it has been disabled. In order to do this you need to remember the path number and the remailer that it's associated with. To recover a path you just send: ::recoverpath firsthop pathnum And the path with the number pathnum is reactivated, with the firsthop that you give it in the recover command. Path Verification You will likely want to keep tabs such that you know when a given path flakes out on you. For this reaon the "regping" option is available. This command lets you tell the system how often you want the anon-server to send a message through every path of yours, with the pathnumber in the message (encrypted, of course) so that you can keep tabs on which paths are flaking out on you. To set your ping frequency, use the regping command: ::regping frequency Where frequency can be none, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly. Remember that you are still being charged for these testpings. The system defaults to weekly. To get a list of all your active paths, use the command "showpaths". This command will send out a listing of the pathnumber and first hop of each of your active paths: ::showpaths Defeating Traffic Analysis The system works in concert with remail(a)c2.org, which does the work to defeat traffic analysis. All mail to each path is first sent through remail(a)c2.org for added difficulty in traffic analysis. remail(a)c2.org is a standard cypherpunks remailer with PGP with a few added features. All outgoing mail is not delivered immediately upon receipt. Outgoing messages are stored in a pool until five minutes after each hour, when all messages in the pool are delivered in a random order, ignoring the order in which they came in. Every minute there is also a chance that a random uuencoded message is injected into the remailernet. Each message injected into the remailer net is sent through a random path of the remailers in the remailernet, usually between five and 20 hops. - - --- end included text ------------------------------------------------------ > Last, I support the idea of a while ago that the remailer-operators mailing > list should be open for public subscription so all those interested can get > on and follow what is happened there. But how do we subscribe? > Let us know, Sameer! remailer-operators is a Majordomo-managed list. Send mail to majordomo(a)c2.org with "subscribe remailer-operators" in the body to subscribe to the list. The list address is (surprise) remailer-operators(a)c2.org. Hope this helps. I don't know anything about the Extropia message pool, sorry. - - -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines; I know that that ain't allowed" --Talking Heads - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLuuINWf7YYibNzjpAQHhywP/W7F29XQGxxQ5m6trH4XgHaocfoSVr5h2 zSgjucQ3RkvNk++n8lX4LFKnqrd6s8tXoWm/dqKtUjLEOfP3lgLua3quh2x8PSSm zzjklsrrdhCxKo5wwaacgaq1DtUP2AjTHhxjh9OFmuiI7tqw/N0Br9RyuGyKYxdt LSvzP6e9+xA= =BszC - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLuuJeioZzwIn1bdtAQEXNAF/Q5ziXcXXBxdnV7bbNqZGMV8f9kJhD+d2 nfdNgEqH1183JG5AyMokIdsCqaEeM5qd =IKyL -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Netscape competence
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Marc Andreessen writes: > In article <199412091814.NAA07757(a)hermes.bwh.harvard.edu>, adam(a)bwh.harvard.edu (Adam Shostack) wrote: > > > It my personal feeling that Netscape doesn't have the right > > talent mix to develop secure software. For example, they may well get > > the RSA parts right, and then store the passphrase in a text file, > > 'for ease of use.' > > My goodness, that's a bit malicious and unsubstantiated, isn't it? Excuse me, but Adam Shostack didn't write that paragraph you quoted. Amanda Walker <amanda(a)intercon.com> did, as I recall. BTW, welcome to the list.... - - -L. Futplex McCarthy - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLuuJZ2f7YYibNzjpAQERXQP/SJnxzt7tckazsBBtfQrKA3c08RLjYUs9 1xK3b/WqqFvmCDyMpwQg5yLzEk7uq7SFp725FMP/jZ8ZUnvpQGBxPdEaFOxpjlHU cPZOb1R1OzLQ2m0023H6LyBM3WMlCd7Nah+zOqaoTbQ1kofE9hZ2gXEfljurUy+8 7scWCfdrZfw= =sIUK - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLuuKryoZzwIn1bdtAQF/jgF/SPy47fk1vvZgyXl8UBBDuASGJn+COQC5 84E+ICfuxxvxR4GauaaLLwCPdzH4l1DL =KuB4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: BofA+Netscape
by marca＠neon.mcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:08 PM 12/11/94, James A. Donald wrote: >Amanda complained that Netscape pisses all over the >standardization committees. > >Well guys, the victor has room to move. It must come as a big >shock to Apple, Microsoft, and IBM, but reality is that Netscape >can set WWW standards and they cannot. > >If they indulge the standardization committees by listening to >them first, and then deciding to ignore them, the committee >should be thoroughly greatful. For the record, we're not trying to set standards -- we're trying to build products with functionality that our customers want and need. We'll succeed or fail on the basis of whether we do that, not whether or because we set standards. We fully realize that being proprietary or isolated from existing or future standards only locks us out of our market, which does us no good at all. That doesn't mean that we're not going to innovate when we need to, but it means we're not going to be anything other than totally open and standards-compliant. To that end, we aggressively support all current standards (HTML, HTTP, URLs, NNTP, Gopher, SOCKS, FTP, you name it), are a charter member of W3O (with a concomitant $150K commitment), and from day 1 have made SSL available to the broader community and have given it to the W3O security working group (of which we are a full participant) exactly in parallel with SHTTP and the three or four other proposals that have been submitted for consideration by other companies and third parties. I fully expect we'll be supporting other security standards and approaches as they emerge, and we certainly welcome realistic suggestions on what we should do, when, and how. Cheers, Marc -- Marc Andreessen Netscape Communications Corporation Mountain View, CA marca(a)mcom.com

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Re: Netscape competence
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Adam Shostack writes: > Until you hire the experts mentioned below, I'll continue to > assume that your talent mix does not include said experts. Whoops, sorry, Marc A. had the attribution correct after all. Amanda W. made some similar comments, but apparently I'm conflating the two. Please ignore my prior message. - - -L. Futplex McCarthy - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLuuKRWf7YYibNzjpAQEU/AQA5T/HnMDdRp2xMkDO7//G0ycCZnkEUwpv bz0MG8mUDE6XD2iTMCt/+VUDk6sx5BpNrofZOx0A57/XYsAxc0WsXk0Rb0Kh6o7x sPFTL6BJq97sFYbObO2uXvN5bbEQ1CL40rfZghds+exWhNix2fiNfy3SSaihd+qR kZl7CiLt7wY= =V6JA - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLuuLhCoZzwIn1bdtAQFi3QF+KaUcUOTrly37pZkowVc313X3qq+4Jy/j O9X/cSYleflVJl1rplCHm8cKB1KE0ICF =a9ik -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Articles on RC5 and GOST in January 95 Dr Dobbs Journal
by schneier＠chinet.chinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In the Jan 95 issue of Dr Dobbs Journal, you will find the following: An editorial on the public release of RC4 (without code). An article by me on GOST (with code). An article by Ron Rivest on RC5 (without code). Remember, you can export cryptographic source code in paper form. Bruce

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Re: What Happened to Xenon ?
by fhalper＠pilot.njin.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It seems he lost his Internet access(I think he moved to work at some university which does not have an Internet node). The Macintosh Cryptography Interface Project list which he started to make some porgress in getting a mac like inter -face for PGP still exists. I can give you the necessary info if you'd like. -RH- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reuben Halper I'm not growing up, I'm just burnin' out." Montclair High - Green Day - Montclair, NJ E-mail: fhalper(a)pilot.njin.net PGP 2.6ui Public Key available upon request ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Hal Finney & Bob Rae and Ontario's Parliament
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Richard Martin writes: > The article below is what I posted to ont.general myself this evening. [...] > PGP, a fully legal encryption program which the Ontario > government could use FOR FREE, Is this true ? According to the PGP 2.6.1 User's Guide: "The freeware version of PGP is only for personal, non-commercial use -- all other users in the USA and Canada must obtain a fully licensed version of PGP from ViaCrypt. [...] If you have a need to use PGP in a commercial or Government setting, and ViaCrypt has a version of PGP for your hardware platform, you should get ViaCrypt PGP." - - -L. Futplex McCarthy - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLuv85mf7YYibNzjpAQErsgQA4h1OvxrfiPemA6CqN1gkVpdmoTIxOnEg pOZ2Oa4rCCqNTMqmhEXw98H46c+sQDFv+WXSQEj9Q94X3nTtKBpBIRMQ7L0Etu4U hd9OyadA0Z45I+igeq2UpOeQw+UP97dFtCabZZhrRgcGFZQMUi8eVLqRESxKtU2V 88tOztqzcZY= =FYp4 - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLuv+DioZzwIn1bdtAQFDhgF/VA6FDH1i05pB20ofLQA+sihJTukUI/6m Mb1taTvGIqDmgPW1YP9nQbWGgjQ3OvAj =HMza -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: BofA+Netscape
by amanda＠intercon.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Amanda complained that Netscape pisses all over the > standardization committees. > > Well guys, the victor has room to move. It must come as a big > shock to Apple, Microsoft, and IBM, but reality is that Netscape > can set WWW standards and they cannot. I disagree. The WWW is no longer a research project, and if it is to survive it will have to do so by consensus, either formal or informal. That's what standards committees, and groups like the IETF, exist to facilitate. The alternative is fragmentation, which we're already starting to see (in part because of Netscape's unilateral changes to HTML). Let me re-iterate something here: I'm biased. I'm a commercial vendor. I'm perfectly happy to live by the sword and die by the sword if that's how the market ends up--I just think it would be better for the Internet as a whole if the actual on-the-wire protocols and formats become standards, so that people don't have to worry about what clients or servers they are talking to. UI, performance, service, and such are fair game. Infastructure has to be consensus-based or it fails. But hey, if Netscape can innovate by fiat, so can anyone else. Right now, I'm betting that Netscape will decide it's worth cooperating with the standards process. If they don't, they'll just fragment their own market. I can live with that, but I think it would be a shame. Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation

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