At 9:42 AM -0700 7/18/97, Jim Burnes wrote:
I've always been an admirer of the HotJava concept, if not the execution. In other words, a dynamically modifiable browser that "learns" how to handle new objects on-the-fly. When I first read Gosling's white paper on Java this was the biggest "ahaa!" I had. I believe there is a version that uses Python instead of ...
For a short while after getting my first real Web access, after many years of shell accounts at Portal, Netcom, etc., I thought Netscape (OK, "Navigator") would be my Swiss Army Knife of apps. The One True Web App. As it turned out, I continued using Eudora Pro for e-mail. I'd been using it since 1992, and it had evolved along with other tools and remained better than what Netscape had included in Navigator. At least to me it was better. And I adopted Newswatcher, a Mac app, for my newsreader. So all I use Navigator for is Web browsing. Sadly, Navigator 3.0 just about tripled in footprint, from about 5 MB to about 14 MB (for a relatively crash-free setup, though it still crashes with "Type 11" memory errors a couple of times a day). As I can't see any particular advantages to Version 3 over Version 2, except for "dancing Java images," :-{, I'm seriously considering abandoning 3 and going back to 2. I'm not at all convinced that monolithic apps like this will do well. A cluster of smaller apps, provided they have relatively consistent look-and-feel, as they mostly do, will probably do better for many of us. Smaller, nimbler apps are harder for government forces to regulate, influence, and limit. What does this mean for crypto, certificates, etc.? It means that what Netscape, Microsoft, and other monolithic app suppliers don't hold all the cards. What the government forces/cajoles NS and MS to do with certificates, crypto, Web ratings, could end up helping more users decide to defect from the monolithic apps to smaller,less constraining apps. Maybe this is part of why Netscape's stock price is continuing its long downward slide.... Note to NS and MS employees reading this: If your products become associated with Big Brother, a lot of people will shun them even further. (Sidenote: I don't follow the "certificates" debate very closely. What I think, however, is that I will not be constrained at all in communicating with my offshore friends securely, regardless of what the government does with export laws and GAK. Unless they outlaw domestic unescrowed crypto, or illegalize the communications across U.S. borders with unescrowed crypto, which seems ipso facto a violation of the First Amendment.) --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."