Please note, this is *not* a flame. I'm not getting even *slightly* warm, here... :-). At 6:20 PM -0400 on 4/14/98, Somebody, Waay Up There at Apple, wrote to me, offline:
I don't get it.
Yup. The old irony meter is pegged, alright... :-).
At 12:00 PM -0400 on 4/14/98, Mike Barnick wrote:
Apple is looking for a senior engineer to work on providing cryptographic APIs on the operating system.
:-).
I see the law of conservation of irony still holds...
Cheers, Bob Hettinga
Tell ya what, Somebody, I'll give you three hints: Hint 1: Whatsisname Sidhu, who negotiated the world's first RSA license, and who probably could have invented digital commerce on the internet all by himself if he only knew what he had, already bought and paid for, wasted in a mail and LAN protocol, buried in the bowels of the MacOS. We still haven't seen what's in that RSA license to Apple, but, given RSA's financial straits at the time the license was issued, I bet it reads more of a pornographic act than a legal agreement. :-). I for one would be interested how transferrable it *still* is. Like, if Apple builds a Mac crypto toolbox, does that mean that anyone writing code using the crypto toolbox has a license to use the algorithms therein? I bet so, but the world will never know. The technology, (RSA, anyway) has a countdown clock on it now, so it's almost moot. Don't even get me started on ECC, which is, of course, marvellous, but equally squandered. Anyway, a more clueful Sidhu, (who, to be fair, couldn't have understood what was coming) could have, with just a little of the right prompting :-), taken some of the money you guys gave to, say, Steve, for instance :-), and bought the blind signature patent at firesale prices from DigiCash ($10 million is chump change, even to Apple, even then, :-)) at last year's greater-fools exchange of ownership at "the world's greatest financial cryptography company" (my name, not theirs). Heck, if Apple had bought DigiCash outright, and just *fired* everybody, and only used the *technology* (kind of dumb to fire David Chaum, but, hey, it's my limb, and I'm not coming off of it), Apple could have put blind signatures into that Macintosh crypto tool box, and the world really *would* think differently. :-). That's because, someday sooner than most people think, all these cryptographic functions, particularly the financial crypto functions like blind signatures, and probably even something like MicroMint, will be buried deep in every operating system. Apple could have had crypto for the rest of us, same as it ever was, way ahead of schedule, same as they always do. But, no, they fired Sidhu, instead. Causing his whole staff, and every crypto-clueful person at Apple, to quit in disgust. :-). What's funny is, Apple *still* has this enormous competitive advantage if they still want it. Because, even though they're goliath, Microsoft can't do crypto very well right now. They've got this homunculus called the Justice Department's antitrust division sitting on their sholder, and they don't want to do anything to upset Dammit Janet. (I immediately have this ludicrous picture my head of Ms. Reno in wet underware, with Riff Raff [Carville, right?] leering at her.) Not to mention the Wrath of the Whole Rest of the Computer Business, voted through their pocketbooks on capital hill. ;-). Actually, Microsoft's trying to do strong crypto anyway, bless their hearts, but they're not going to do it for long, given all the flying monkeys headed in their general direction. Fortunately, compared to the antitrust division and their minions, the FBI is a mere gnat's fart, believe it or not. That's because, to torture dear Mr. Wolfe, "no Buck Rogers, no bucks": Digital Commerce *is* Financial Cryptography, and all that. So, all it really takes from Apple to have this huge advantage, crypto-wise, is for it to have more cajones than grey matter, which, unfortunately, is exactly the inverse problem at 1 Infinite Loop, the last I looked. Apple being a founding signatory to the Key Recovery Alliance Program is a marvellous example of that. Look, it's a complement, okay? You're *smart*, right? You just have no --, well, anyway, on to the next hint... Hint 2: Jon Callas, who was not only CTO for PGP, but, through being both clueful and at the right place the right time, ended up CTO for all of Network Associates. NA is now (or will be soon, after the TIS merger's done) the 900-lb cryptogorilla nobody's supposed to think about, but can't get out of their minds. Of course, this is the same Jon Callas who used to work for the aforementioned Sidhu, and who, for fun one day, thought up a really *really* spiffy, rock-solid way to extract real live entropy from the normal operation of any Macintosh. And I don't mean memory conflicts either. :-) What? What's entropy? Hmmm... Well, there's this book you can read, it's called "Applied Cryptography". It's by a former Mac maven named Bruce Schneier. You might want to look it up there. Entropy, of course, brings me to the the final hint, Hint 3: Vinnie Moscaritolo, the guy whose name is written all over Apple's new job discription for a crypto engineer. The guy who now works for Jon over at PGP-now-NA. Vinnie, who, while he was at Apple Developer Technical Support last year, asked you guys to set up a crypto engineering department, not to mention a crypto toolbox, not to mention a crypto API. Who left in disgust shortly after the aforementioned Sidhu, but not because you fired Sidhu, because, in typical Vinnie fashion, he practically venerated Sidhu's clueness about commerce, because Vinnie saw it as an opportunity (Marines are wierd that way). :-). Who is probably making waay too much money to come back now, and who would have probably taken a pay *cut*, even at *DTS* salaries, to do the job had you offered it to him even a year ago. Ironic, isn't it? In the final bit of irony, Somebody Else, in Apple Evangelism at the time, who was not even especially crypto-clueful back then, and who will also remain nameless :-), once bandied about the idea of an actual crypto *evangelist* at Apple. Maybe even a digital commerce evangelist, who, of course, would be one and the same (digital commerce being financial cryptography and all). The irony there is that said evangelist, if hired, would end up spending all his time evangelizing *Apple*, and not the developer community, who of course, are clueful and don't need evangelizing about such things. Such are things at the new Apple, I guess. Of course, Somebody Else also doesn't work at Apple anymore either. He works in, you guessed it, another financial cryptography company. I even yelled at him about his antics at Apple, even though he's not there anymore, while we were at the Hansa Bank party at Serenity during FC98 on Anguilla this year. :-). Now, what I said *then* was a flame, you better believe it, because back *then*, when Somebody Else was at Apple, it cost me actual money. This time, with you, Somebody, it's free of charge, and so I'm not nearly so worked up. Cheers, Bob Hettinga PS. To save you the cost of a white paper, Somebody, or maybe you can just pay us for it, already :-), go look at "Digital Commerce for the Rest of Us", a longish rant Vinnie and I wrote almost two years ago. For some strange reason, it's still pretty current. ;-). It's at <http://www.shipwright.com/rants/rant_15.html> Raines Cohen actually moshed it a bit and stuck it into the inaugural issue of NetProfessional magazine, god rest it's soul, so you might have seen some of it there as well. ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/