CDR: I created the "Al Gore created the Internet" story
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39301,00.html The Mother of Gore's Invention by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 3:00 a.m. Oct. 17, 2000 PDT WASHINGTON -- If it's true that Al Gore created the Internet, then I created the "Al Gore created the Internet" story. I was the first reporter to question the vice president's improvident boast, way back when he made it in early 1999. Since then, the story's become far more than just a staple of late-night Letterman jokes: It's now as much a part of the American political firmament as the incident involving that other vice president, a schoolchild, and a very unfortunate spelling of potato. Poor Al. For a presidential wannabe who prides himself on a sober command of the brow-furrowing nuances of technology policy, being the butt of all these jokes has proven something of a setback. I mean, who can hear the veep talk up the future of the Internet nowadays without feeling an urge to stifle some disrespectful giggles? It would be like listening to Dan Quayle doing a please-take-me-seriously stump speech at an Idaho potato farm. Case in point: Mars Inc. lampoons the vice president in a hilarious new commercial for Snickers. In it, a cartoon Al brags that he, variously, invented the Internet, trousers, and when he wasn't busy elsewhere, "lots of other stuff too." When you're getting mocked by a candy company, you know your statesmanship rating has plummeted to a terrifying new low. No wonder one recent poll shows Gore to be solidly ahead of his Republican rival in only 11 states. It's simple: He's got no respect. Which brings us to an important question: Are the countless jibes at Al's expense truly justified? Did he really play a key part in the development of the Net? The short answer is that while even his supporters admit the vice president has an unfortunate tendency to exaggerate, the truth is that Gore never did claim to have "invented" the Internet. During a March 1999 CNN interview, while trying to differentiate himself from rival Bill Bradley, Gore boasted: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." That statement was enough to convince me, with the encouragement of my then-editor James Glave, to write a brief article that questioned the vice president's claim. Republicans on Capitol Hill noticed the Wired News writeup and started faxing around tongue-in-cheek press releases -- inveterate neatnik Trent Lott claimed to have invented the paper clip -- and other journalists picked up the story too. My article never used the word "invented," but it didn't take long for Gore's claim to morph into something he never intended. The terrible irony in this exchange is that while Gore certainly didn't create the Internet, he was one of the first politicians to realize that those bearded, bespectacled researchers were busy crafting something that could, just maybe, become pretty important. In January 1994, Gore gave a landmark speech at UCLA about the "information superhighway." Many portions -- discussions of universal service, wiring classrooms to the Net, and antitrust actions -- are surprisingly relevant even today. (That's an impressive enough feat that we might even forgive Gore his tortured metaphors such as "road kill on the information superhighway" and "parked at the curb" on the information superhighway.) Gore's speech reverberated around Democratic political circles in Washington. Other Clinton administration officials began citing it in their own remarks, and the combined effort helped to grab the media's attention. Their timing was impeccable: In July 1993, according to Network Wizards' survey, there were 1.8 million computers connected to the Internet. By July 1994, the figure had nearly doubled to 3.2 million, a trend that continued through January 2000, when about 72 million computers had permanent network addresses. Small wonder, then, that as the election nears, Gore's defenders have been rallying to defend him. In a recent op-ed piece in the San Jose Mercury News, John Doerr and Bill Joy claim "nobody in Washington understands" the new economy as well as Gore does. Net-pioneers Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf, a Democratic party donor, have written an essay saying "no other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time" than the veep. Scott Rosenberg, in a recent Salon article, joined the fray: "The 'Gore claims he invented the Net' trope is so full of holes that it makes you wish there were product recalls for bad information." It's also true that, as a senator, Gore in the 1980s supported universities' efforts to increase funding for NSFNet, a measure that became law in the High Performance Computing Act of 1991. Gore's guest columns in Byte magazine at the time showed an appreciation of technology that was far from usual on Capitol Hill. But it's also difficult to argue with a straight face that the Internet we know today would not exist if Gore had decided to practice the piano instead of politics. By the time Gore took notice of the Net around 1987, the basics were already in place. The key protocol, TCP/IP, was written and the culture of the Net had blossomed through Usenet and mailing lists, as chronicled in Eric Raymond's Jargon File. At best, Gore's involvement merely hastened its development. Instead of the orderly interstate highway system that Gore had repeatedly used as metaphor, the spread of the Net has resembled something closer to a self-organizing, almost anarchic sprawl. Instead of a government/corporate-controlled system that might have looked like France's wretched Minitel system -- or, more charitably, a 500-channel interactive TV network -- the Net's popularity grew because of far more mundane applications like email and downloading porn. And it's fair to say that other Gore pet projects, like the Clinton administration's abandoned Clipper chip, are hardly ways to protect privacy and security online and promote the development of this technology. Then again, it's also true the Clipper chip was first concocted under a George Bush Sr. administration, and another Bush occupying the Oval Office might well have similar inclinations. We know that George W. Bush may not be any tech-savvier than Gore -- as anyone who caught the governor's the-Net-made-them-do-it comments about the Columbine High School killers can attest. But he seems to have successfully neutralized Gore's advantage on tech issues. In the first debate, Bush jabbed at Gore during a figure-rich discussion of HMO coverage. The delivery was wooden, but it was no joke: "Not only did (Gore) invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator," Bush said. The big surprise was not that Bush used the quip. It has, after all, also shown up in his stump speeches and Republican jibes. No, the surprise was that Gore remained silent. When he had a chance to respond, Gore only talked about prescription drugs: "You can go to the (Bush) website and look. If you make more than $25,000 a year, you don't get a penny of help under the Bush prescription drug proposal." At least he mentioned a website. ###
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39301,00.html
The Mother of Gore's Invention by Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com)
[deletia uber alles]
Many portions -- discussions of universal service, wiring classrooms to the Net, and antitrust actions -- are surprisingly relevant even today. (That's an impressive enough feat that we might even forgive Gore his tortured metaphors such as "road kill on the information superhighway" and "parked at the curb" on the information superhighway.)
I'll stake my claim right here. Very shortly after Algore called the Internet the "Information Superhighway", I called FIDOnet "the Information Jeep-Trail."
But it's also difficult to argue with a straight face that the Internet we know today would not exist if Gore had decided to practice the piano instead of politics.
By the time Gore took notice of the Net around 1987, the basics were already in place. The key protocol, TCP/IP, was written and the culture of the Net had blossomed through Usenet and mailing lists, as chronicled in Eric Raymond's Jargon File. At best, Gore's involvement merely hastened its development.
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed. Compare this with the breakout of the fax machines in the 1985-86 timeframe. I wish I had the numbers, but it seemed like at the beginning of 1985 few companies had faxes, while by the end of that year "every" company did. By the end of 1986 that had spread to individuals, as well. I'm not suggesting some sort of vast conspiracy to keep the Internet small. But I think it could be found that 3-4 years were effectively wasted. I really want to know what the impediments to the Internet were in the 1986-1993 time frame. Jim Bell
I'm not suggesting some sort of vast conspiracy to keep the Internet small. But I think it could be found that 3-4 years were effectively wasted. I really want to know what the impediments to the Internet were in the 1986-1993 time frame.
NSFnet acceptable use policy.
jim bell wrote:
I'll stake my claim right here. Very shortly after Algore called the Internet the "Information Superhighway", I called FIDOnet "the Information Jeep-Trail."
I had a fidonet node for awhile. The concept really needs to be revived -- and combined with more recent developments like Publius, freenet, and gnutella. Sort of an underground internet -- the Information Subway. Just remember I coined that one and it's copylefted. And for all I know, people are already doing it. A subterranean "fidonet" partially using the net, partially (or maybe totally for some groups) the old fidonet, middle of the night phone updates and downloads, coupled with pgpfone. Add in packet radio. And what with carnivore, et al, maybe it'll become the next big thing. -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS Systems Librarian Arrowhead Library System Virginia, MN (218) 741-3840 hseaver@arrowhead.lib.mn.us http://harmon.arrowhead.lib.mn.us
On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Harmon Seaver wrote:
jim bell wrote:
I'll stake my claim right here. Very shortly after Algore called the Internet the "Information Superhighway", I called FIDOnet "the Information Jeep-Trail."
I had a fidonet node for awhile. The concept really needs to be revived -- and combined with more recent developments like Publius, freenet, and gnutella. Sort of an underground internet -- the Information Subway. Just remember I coined that one and it's copylefted.
in a way it already has - http://www.dot-god.com/ and http://www.open-rsc.org/ regards joe -- Joe Baptista http://www.dot.god/ dot.GOD Hostmaster
No, that's just alternative dns. Fidonet had most of what the internet has, other than speed and the web -- file repositories, email, newsgroups -- but it was all done privately. My node would call a higher node in the middle of the night and exchange files, mail, etc. Sometimes it was a little funky, like when someone up the line was too broke to make the long distance calls every night so the mail got stuck there, but generally it was pretty efficient. For privacy seeking groups, however, it certainly still has an application, with modifications to incorporate crypto. If packet radio were used, it could be totally anonymous, modeled after mixmaster, with key authentication, but pretty much untraceable, especially with burst broadcasting technology. "!Dr. Joe Baptista" wrote:
On Wed, 18 Oct 2000, Harmon Seaver wrote:
jim bell wrote:
I'll stake my claim right here. Very shortly after Algore called the Internet the "Information Superhighway", I called FIDOnet "the Information Jeep-Trail."
I had a fidonet node for awhile. The concept really needs to be revived -- and combined with more recent developments like Publius, freenet, and gnutella. Sort of an underground internet -- the Information Subway. Just remember I coined that one and it's copylefted.
in a way it already has - http://www.dot-god.com/ and http://www.open-rsc.org/
-- Harmon Seaver, MLIS Systems Librarian Arrowhead Library System Virginia, MN (218) 741-3840 hseaver@arrowhead.lib.mn.us http://harmon.arrowhead.lib.mn.us
Harmon Seaver wrote:
No, that's just alternative dns. Fidonet had most of what the internet has, other than speed and the web -- file repositories, email, newsgroups -- but it was all done privately.
and self-organized. instead of the gov coming in and telling us to install filters, we choose to have our newsgroups moderated or not, and if so by one of our own. note: fido moderation was far different from usenet or mailinglist moderation. there was no "approval" step, everything got posted without going by the mod. the mod just had authority to reprimand people to stay on topic and could, in extreme situations, have someone removed from the group. his powers were very limited. I remember successfully fighting moderators.
At 03:53 PM 10/18/00 -0400, Harmon wrote:
I had a fidonet node for awhile. The concept really needs to be revived -- and combined with more recent developments like Publius, freenet, and gnutella.
I _still_ have a running UUCP node (on a MickeySoft box, at that). Given that UUCP was designed to run arbitrary programs on remote hosts and route their output, it seems to me this is an ideal transport mechanism. -- Roy M. Silvernail [ ] sc4tal19@idt.net DNRC Minister Plenipotentiary of All Things Confusing, Software Division PGP Public Key fingerprint = 31 86 EC B9 DB 76 A7 54 13 0B 6A 6B CC 09 18 B6 Key available from pubkey@scytale.com I charge to process unsolicited commercial email
"Roy M. Silvernail" wrote:
I _still_ have a running UUCP node (on a MickeySoft box, at that). Given that UUCP was designed to run arbitrary programs on remote hosts and route their output, it seems to me this is an ideal transport mechanism.
I've been running a couple UUCP nodes ever since I withdrew from fido. it DOES have considerable shortcomings. like all tools, it's one answer, and whether or not it fits depends on the question. but an advanced UUCP replacement could be an interesting thing...
Harmon Seaver wrote:
I had a fidonet node for awhile. The concept really needs to be revived -- and combined with more recent developments like Publius, freenet, and gnutella. Sort of an underground internet -- the Information Subway.
yepp, old fido-times sometimes make me smile in nostalgia feelings. though the german fido burried its own grave when a couple of buerocrats took over. when switched off my node, I was ashamed of what fido had become.
And for all I know, people are already doing it. A subterranean "fidonet" partially using the net, partially (or maybe totally for some groups) the old fidonet, middle of the night phone updates and downloads, coupled with pgpfone. Add in packet radio. And what with carnivore, et al, maybe it'll become the next big thing.
all you need to do is use the internet as a transport layer. it's there, so why use the phone? cops can possibly intercept your phone calls more easily than randomly routed IP packets. the technology is there. all you'd need to do is set up a network of nodes that rsync itself at regular intervals, preferably using at least ssh.
Tom Vogt wrote:
all you need to do is use the internet as a transport layer. it's there, so why use the phone? cops can possibly intercept your phone calls more easily than randomly routed IP packets.
the technology is there. all you'd need to do is set up a network of nodes that rsync itself at regular intervals, preferably using at least ssh.
At least -- but it's still subject to traffic analysis to discover who the perps are, on both ends. And yes, phones can be tapped too, but it's more difficult, takes more effort, warrants (at least here, so far). But I've been thinking more about this and realized that packet radio is really the best transport medium, done in burst modes on shortwave or even CB frequencies with big linear amps. A pirate packet network, with some stations just running scanners and gatewaying into the internet maybe. Or just design a easily built TNC to work with standard modems and running off AM or shorwave radio receivers, widely publish the schematics, and the code, so anybody, anywhere in the world could just listen in, and, if they dared (and had a transmitter) become a broadcast node as well. Bursts, especially on random frequencies, are pretty hard to pinpoint, but computer run scanners with a "tcp/ip" to reassemble fragmented packets can listen and gather. Here's what someone else was saying to me on this, altho he's pretty much concentrating on the net as a transport medium, while I think we might want soon want (and for places like China right now) to have something which might easily be monitored, but not easily stopped. And if it's all in strong crypto, who cares who monitors it -- while strong crypto in email could easily just become verboten on the net.
Anyway - combine the notion with stego and pseudo-stego techniques. Tougher than people realize to embed stuff in mp3's - you might not know its there, but it would be pretty detectable. Mp3's use psycho acoustics to do bit allocation. So water marking can be difficult to preserve at reasonable data rates.
But now - the ability to propagate fragments universally - e.g. usenet, email, web, etc., in encrypted and stego'd forms - that's interesting. I think the issue here is universal availability - making it available everywhere. Freenet (?) is interesting because it propigates data towards the people who want it, but really - it needs to be everywhere.
So a reader is something that can pull from usenet, email, web, etc - hell its all just tcp ports etc anyway. And a server is something that can serve up all those ports. Best to hide in plain site - so email, instant messaging, web, etc. ['course some computer somewhere is reading this email because it says cypherpunks and ya gotta track yer dissidents der now donya?]
Couple other notions - one - use multicasting to propagate fragments = particularly allowing background collection of fragments in ways difficult to track.
The notion of back-channel is pretty interesting as well. Basically it is comprised of means to obscure a particular service on any particular machine. You knock at the door. You may or may not get an answer. Sometimes that machine will contact a third machine with your request, but without responding to it, or by responding for instance with 404 not found headers, etc. But some other machine might serve up a fragment - 'heard you needed this'.
I'm not providing a very succinct description at the moment, but I think you get the drift. Its about obscuring the origins of requests and answers from casual and perhaps programmatic observation. Its not downloading an encrypted web page from a single server. Its about acquiring that page from a variety of places as encrypted fragments, that might appear as casual requests. And going to a particular server does not cause a particular piece of data to be delivered - from that server, but it may be delivered later from another machine.
So back channel is really about creating this virtual back channel using the store and forward approach. The channel's packets are encrypted, and the node is non-deterministic in its behavior.
How this applies, is that you don't want someone figuring out (and there are some statistical geniuses out there) that making this requesting suddenly turns on that transmitter. Instead, data is handed around in a "someone you may know may want this". No machine itself could ever really know what end user wants even a fragment of data, because everyone is storing and fowarding this data.
Now - to go beyond this - there may be ways to create virtual networks using routable packets or packet fragments - things that may be "out of spec" to the point that they may or may not universally propagate, or that may be discarded as a general rule. That's also interesting, as firewalls etc may well filter out for general users... e.g. they may appear as undesirable or erroneous packets.
ANyway - the notion seems solid, I think governmentally unsanctioned radio requires methodologies based on indeterminancy. And you need to ensure that the storage points (e.g. usenet) can't differentiate a request from an answer. Strikes me that someone is doing this already in some form... its almost tradecraft, afterall - secret a request, post a tell tale, someone that sees the telltale retrieves the request - but so do a lot of other people, and the response is similar secret the response, post a tell tale, and then ...
SO 1st and foremost, you need to codify what you're trying to achieve design parameter-wise. And lest someone think this all evil - look at China's latest crackdown on the internet. We'd like to do a web service for China - 15 Million on the web speak Mandarin - but most are in China. This would be a great vehicle for publishing in lands without liberty. Where's the voice of liberty/voice of america on the internet? And what if, what if it were possible to obscure the recipients from the eyes of tyranny?
-- Harmon Seaver, MLIS Systems Librarian Arrowhead Library System Virginia, MN (218) 741-3840 hseaver@arrowhead.lib.mn.us http://harmon.arrowhead.lib.mn.us
Harmon Seaver wrote:
At least -- but it's still subject to traffic analysis to discover who the perps are, on both ends.
the idea would be to sync everything. that a) means lots of "innocent" traffic and b) gives you a deniability shield. "yeah, those subversive texts were on my node. but I had no control over that, since there is no way I could filter what comes in."
And yes, phones can be tapped too, but it's more difficult, takes more effort, warrants (at least here, so far). But I've been thinking more about this and realized that packet radio is really the best transport medium, done in burst modes on shortwave or even CB frequencies with big linear amps. A pirate packet network, with some stations just running scanners and gatewaying into the internet maybe.
give me the hardware for less than $1000 and I'll be the first to set up a node in germany's second-largest city.
monitored, but not easily stopped. And if it's all in strong crypto, who cares who monitors it -- while strong crypto in email could easily just become verboten on the net.
here's a cookie: run a large file-sharing network as outlined above. every file has an associated key and signature. you can replace by signing the replacement with the same key. now you have a few gigs of data distributed around the world. chaff and winnow it or use stego on some of the images. downside: end-users with 28k modems are pretty much out of the picture since they can't move enough bytes around.
At 10:33 AM -0400 10/19/00, Harmon Seaver wrote:
Tom Vogt wrote:
all you need to do is use the internet as a transport layer. it's there, so why use the phone? cops can possibly intercept your phone calls more easily than randomly routed IP packets.
the technology is there. all you'd need to do is set up a network of nodes that rsync itself at regular intervals, preferably using at least ssh.
At least -- but it's still subject to traffic analysis to discover who the perps are, on both ends. And yes, phones can be tapped too, but it's more difficult, takes more effort, warrants (at least here, so far).
First, if you're going to attempt a "FidoNet II," at least use link encryption at every stage. Since each node knows the next node it will be phoning (or linking to), it's a relatively easy matter to encrypt to the public key of that node. This makes each node a kind of remailer, as someone looking only at the internode traffic will only see encrypted bits. Second, so long as one has done the above, might as well make each node an actual remailer. With all of the usual mixing of in/out packets, packet size padding, etc. Third, the use of radio links has come up several times over the years. A couple of early Cypherpunks were involved in packet radio and addressed the issue. By the way, the FCC still has restrictions on encrption over the airwaves, as I understand things. (One can argue that a micropower transmitter, or a "Part 15" transmitter, is exempt or undetectable, but this may not be enough if the Feds really want a bust.) Fourth, given the speeds of the Net, given the move to put phone calls over the Net, given the many tools...why on earth would anyone want to revive FidoNet? Implement remailer protocols to do a virtual FidoNet, perhaps, but don't actually have machines phoning up other machines! Fifth, notwithstanding all these comments, go for it.
But I've been thinking more about this and realized that packet radio is really the best transport medium, done in burst modes on shortwave or even CB frequencies with big linear amps. A pirate packet network, with some stations just running scanners and gatewaying into the internet maybe.
Watch out for those trucks with the rotating antennas.
But now - the ability to propagate fragments universally - e.g. usenet, email, web, etc., in encrypted and stego'd forms - that's interesting.
Spread-spectrum.
I'm not providing a very succinct description at the moment, but I think you get the drift. Its about obscuring the origins of requests and answers from casual and perhaps programmatic observation. Its not downloading an encrypted web page from a single server. Its about acquiring that page from a variety of places as encrypted fragments, that might appear as casual requests. And going to a particular server does not cause a particular piece of data to be delivered - from that server, but it may be delivered later from another machine.
So back channel is really about creating this virtual back channel using the store and forward approach. The channel's packets are encrypted, and the node is non-deterministic in its behavior.
Laudable. Sounds like you're recapitulating the early years of the Cypherpunks list discussions. Look to remailer networks and I think you'll find what you're looking for. Would radio offer advantages worth the effort of going to a different transmission mechanism? Wireless, a la Bluetooth and obviously via Ricochet, etc., is already here. A ham radio system, even one based around the "big linear amps" you speculated about earlier, would have a long uphill struggle. Still, a worthy outlet for your energies. Between your thinking above and your recent search for Vinge, sounds like you're moving squarely into the crypto anarchy camp. Maybe there's hope as well for Nathan Saper and all of the other commies on the list. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Tim May:
First, if you're going to attempt a "FidoNet II," at least use link encryption at every stage. Since each node knows the next node it will be phoning (or linking to), it's a relatively easy matter to encrypt to the public key of that node. This makes each node a kind of remailer, as someone looking only at the internode traffic will only see encrypted bits.
Second, so long as one has done the above, might as well make each node an actual remailer. With all of the usual mixing of in/out packets, packet size padding, etc.
Given the following: (1) That the phone calls are made at given times of day. (2) Last a specifc length--i.e. always a multiple of 5 minutes etc. (3) All packets in/out are encrypted. Would it really matter? If traffic bound for a specific node were simply encrypted with that *nodes* public key, and every packet encrypted to with the next nodes key, would (2) Be enough? -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
Tim May wrote:
First, if you're going to attempt a "FidoNet II," at least use link encryption at every stage.
that goes without saying, doesn't it?
Second, so long as one has done the above, might as well make each node an actual remailer. With all of the usual mixing of in/out packets, packet size padding, etc.
good one. yes, should be done that way.
Third, the use of radio links has come up several times over the years. A couple of early Cypherpunks were involved in packet radio and addressed the issue. By the way, the FCC still has restrictions on encrption over the airwaves, as I understand things.
I was thinking more in the direction of wireless LAN.
Fourth, given the speeds of the Net, given the move to put phone calls over the Net, given the many tools...why on earth would anyone want to revive FidoNet? Implement remailer protocols to do a virtual FidoNet, perhaps, but don't actually have machines phoning up other machines!
course not! see my earlier mails - the internet is available as a transport layer, so let's use it.
Look to remailer networks and I think you'll find what you're looking for.
maybe the existing remailer structure could even be utilized. all one has to do is a simple "email2file" translation. say "filename@mynode.com".
Tom Vogt wrote:
Tim May wrote:
First, if you're going to attempt a "FidoNet II," at least use link encryption at every stage.
that goes without saying, doesn't it?
Second, so long as one has done the above, might as well make each node an actual remailer. With all of the usual mixing of in/out packets, packet size padding, etc.
good one. yes, should be done that way.
Third, the use of radio links has come up several times over the years. A couple of early Cypherpunks were involved in packet radio and addressed the issue. By the way, the FCC still has restrictions on encrption over the airwaves, as I understand things.
All the wireless LAN/WAN stuff uses encryption, altho only 128bit AFAIK. However, do crypto-anarchists really care what the FCC says? When/if crypto email is outlawed on the net, will packet pirates give a rat's ass whether it's legal to broadcast spread spectrum encrypted data, usurping whatever band is optimal or they can afford the hardware for?
I was thinking more in the direction of wireless LAN.
I'm working with wireless specs right now, but for WAN (although you can use the same hardware) and trying to do this with that tech is pretty limiting. If you want any distance at all (over about 800 feet) it's strictly point-to-point, true line of sight, which means no foliage in the way. You can do about 25-30 miles that way, and you can have repeaters, of course, but you have to get up over the tree tops. And you can get 11mbs over that distance with pretty cheap hardware, but the towers cost you at least $2500 each. Of course you can use existing towers. But, of course, this is all pretty obvious stuff -- easy to spot, easy to destroy, hardly a underground answer. And pretty expensive compared to say shortwave broadcast hardware. I was thinking more like converted mil surplus or cb or ham tech.
Fourth, given the speeds of the Net, given the move to put phone calls over the Net, given the many tools...why on earth would anyone want to revive FidoNet? Implement remailer protocols to do a virtual FidoNet, perhaps, but don't actually have machines phoning up other machines!
course not! see my earlier mails - the internet is available as a transport layer, so let's use it.
Especially in the early stages. Fido2 nodes all around the internet, set up and functioning with mirrors to packet radio units hidden away in the bunkers. 8-) And maybe played with occasionally.
Look to remailer networks and I think you'll find what you're looking for.
maybe the existing remailer structure could even be utilized. all one has to do is a simple "email2file" translation. say "filename@mynode.com".
I think you'd want to meld mixmaster with something like CLX ( http://www.clx.muc.de/ ) the packet node software. -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS Systems Librarian Arrowhead Library System Virginia, MN (218) 741-3840 hseaver@arrowhead.lib.mn.us http://harmon.arrowhead.lib.mn.us
At 12:28 PM -0400 10/20/00, Harmon Seaver wrote:
All the wireless LAN/WAN stuff uses encryption, altho only 128bit AFAIK. However, do crypto-anarchists really care what the FCC says? When/if crypto email is outlawed on the net, will packet pirates give a rat's ass whether it's legal to broadcast spread spectrum encrypted data, usurping whatever band is optimal or they can afford the hardware for?
They care because part of the essence of crypto anarchy is to "fly under their radar," that is, to be undetectable to them. Broadcasting radio signals which they can use to order an arrest is not smart at all, especially when so many good alternatives exist. (Yes, I know about Part 15 exemptions. And reserved bandwidth.) --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
On Thu, 19 Oct 2000, Harmon Seaver wrote:
At least -- but it's still subject to traffic analysis to discover who the perps are, on both ends. And yes, phones can be tapped too, but it's more difficult, takes more effort, warrants (at least here, so far). But I've been thinking more about this and realized that packet radio is really the best transport medium, done in burst modes on shortwave or even CB frequencies with big linear amps.
I'd rather use continuous direct sequence spread spectrum. Practically impossible to jam as well, without the spreading sequence. I've been sort of waiting to see cryptographically secure spreading in commercial products... Sampo Syreeni <decoy@iki.fi>, aka decoy, student/math/Helsinki university
At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote:
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting around 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web. Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode). Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick. -Declan
At 5:12 PM -0400 10/18/00, Declan McCullagh wrote:
At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote:
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting around 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web.
Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode). Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick.
To Bell's point, by 1986 many people _were_ on the Internet. Modems were typically 1200. 2400-baud modems were available. 9600s may have existed (Racal-Vadic, others), but they were too expensive for casual use. My first ISP was (according to him) the first ISP to offer accounts to "civilians" (non-academic, non-company-paid, non-governmental). This was Portal Communications, out of Cupertino, CA. I got my account in '88 or so. A Mac Plus with a 1200 baud modem, replaced a year later with a Mac IIci and a 2400 baud modem. And so on. BTW, my little Mac Plus had more than adequate screen resolution to handle my mail program (pine), newsreader (tin), and misc. word processors, outline processors, and suchlike. (As a side note, John Little shut down his ISP service in the early 90s, due to obvious competition from Netcom and others. He re-started the company as a billing company...and his stake in Portal Software is into the billions of dollars, modulo the recent fall in prices of stocks. PRSF is the symbol.) Usenet and mailing lists were usable by the cognoscenti from the mid-80s up to the "modern age." Using gopher and Archie and anonymous ftp was for the cognoscenti only, though. Not much fun for ordinary folks. This obviously all changed around 1994, with Mosaic/Netscape. "Point and click" cleared the way. The illusion of "going to" a site (URLs) did the trick. Faster computers weren't important, in my view. Better screens were only slightly important. Modem speeds were more important. Ironically, I was using a 28.8K modem by around 1992. A big improvement over my 9600 modem. I say "ironically" because 28.8K is what I am now connecting at! Though I have a 56K modem, I cannot reliably connect at much better than 28.8, sometimes 33.3. (I live in a rural area. Can't get a cable modem because I don't have, or want, cable. Can't get DSL because I'm too far from the CO. This may change in a year or so. Don't want to spend $700/mo for a Tachyon rig. Satellite systems may be coming (Gideon, DirecTV), but are not here yet.) Friends of mine have DSL, cable modems, even their own T1s. Is there output any higher than mine? Mostly they just get pages loading in an instant, instead of the seconds or so it takes me to load a page. For actual reading of what's on a page, they have no speed advantages. 28.8 is still faster than people can read, typically. This is where I've been, mostly happily, for several years. My output on mailing lists and to newsgroups has not been insignificant. And I happily use Google, Deja, IMDB, and a hundred other sites. I even send and receive images. About all I cannot plausibly do is download movies, or hundreds of Napster songs, or host Web pages locally. No skin off my nose. The point: I get along fine at 28.8. The modern Web *experience* is what has changed dramatically, not modem speeds and screen resolutions. The very growth of the Web is what fed it. Prior to browsers and URLs, the Net just wasn't as interesting, and it was limited to the aforementioned cognoscenti. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
<...>
Usenet and mailing lists were usable by the cognoscenti from the mid-80s up to the "modern age." Using gopher and Archie and anonymous ftp was for the cognoscenti only, though. Not much fun for ordinary folks.
This obviously all changed around 1994, with Mosaic/Netscape. "Point and click" cleared the way. The illusion of "going to" a site (URLs) did the trick.
Faster computers weren't important, in my view. Better screens were only slightly important. Modem speeds were more important.
I'd say the most important thing was content. The content that existed pre-94/95 was only interesting to those who liked their amusements with something vaguely resembling "intellectual" content, or the computer "cognoscenti". Mosaic/Nutscrape changed that. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural
----- Original Message ----- From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote:
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting around 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web.
That sounds fast to the non-computer-literate public. But I expect it was nothing compared to the (business) market penetration of fax machines in 1985 and 86. That, and the thousands (tens of thousands?) of computer bulletin-boards during that timeframe showed clearly that people wanted to communicate using computers, in whatever ways were made available.
Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode). Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick. -Declan
Well, I didn't say that it would look as beautiful as it does today, with fancy graphics and all that, but a lot of what the internet does today (email, program transfer, some buying and selling) could still have been done then, albeit a bit slower. And it was; the problem is that 99+% of the population couldn't get it, and certainly not for a reasonable price. Imagine how many cars Detroit would sell if only 1% of the population had access to the roads. Other people have answered, and it sounds to me like the NSF (Insufficient Funds?) simply kept the Internet bottled up by limiting access to it to universities and government contractors. Only when they let go of the controls did things really take off. Typical government bureaucracy. Jim Bell
Declan McCullagh wrote:
At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote:
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting around 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web.
I think the doubling started way before that but most people didn't notice. There was no sudden acceleration in the early 1990s, just a continuous exponential curve, the number of networked computers tracking the total number of computers (& slowly gaining on it - so that back in the 1970s it was about 2 or 3 years behind, but by abut 1997/8 it had caught up). I remember reading a history of computing in the early 1970s (authors named something like "Toothill and Hoillingsworth" IIRC)) that pointed out that the total numbers of computers in the world was doubling every 18 months and had been since the things were invented. IIRC they said that that obviously couldn't continue for much longer because if it did by some date they gave in the 1980s there would be over a million computers in the UK alone, & that was obviously absurd. Of course they were bang on target :-)
Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode). Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick.
Were we? Many of us were using IBM ATs or clones, which may have been clunky machines, but were perfectly capable of doing networking - remember the Netware explosion? PCs on every desk & all that? And people with both money and sense were on Macs (over here in UK they were never cheap enough to be sensible home computing option for anyone other than serious fans, I think the price point was different in the US). Xerox kept on dragging us off to presentations about Star and Parc and WIMPS and stuff. It worked, but it was too expensive. But PC clones & Netware were cheap, as modems were getting cheaper. Actually I was using 3-million-dollars a throw IBM mainframes myself & they could network as well... but not many people had terminals at home :-) Ken
At 03:29 PM 10/18/00 -0400, jim bell wrote:
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
Its quite simple. In 1995 MS released a version of Windoze which included a TCP/IP stack by default. Previously you had to acquire one and figure out how to install it. While fortunes were made on this, the collection of routers known as the Net was unavailable to Joe Sixpack until then.
At 10:45 PM -0400 10/18/00, David Honig wrote:
At 03:29 PM 10/18/00 -0400, jim bell wrote:
I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did? 9600 bps modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps units. By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
Its quite simple. In 1995 MS released a version of Windoze which included a TCP/IP stack by default. Previously you had to acquire one and figure out how to install it. While fortunes were made on this, the collection of routers known as the Net was unavailable to Joe Sixpack until then.
I don't buy this at all. Maybe there is some subtlety I am missing completely. As a Mac user, PPP and similar protocols were bundled early on. In 1993-4 the first talk of Mosaic was appearing. In 1994-5, Mosaic and its successor were readily available. Which caused which, a default TCP/IP stack in Windows 95 or Netscape 1.0? (By the way, friends of mine are happily surfing with Windows 3.1 and whatever MS- or aftermarket-based TCP/IP tools are needed. Most of them don't even know what a "TCP/IP stack" is...they simply download what the ISP tells them is needed, or they insert the CD-ROM and click to start.) As a Mac user, it was the availability of Mosaic and Netscape which altered the landscape. The TCP/IP stack junk was just behind the scenes machinery which various vendors were then racing to provide. Saying the modern Net age started when Microsoft provided a TCP/IP stack seems overly wonkish. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
At 11:05 PM 10/18/00 -0400, Tim May wrote:
At 10:45 PM -0400 10/18/00, David Honig wrote:
Its quite simple. In 1995 MS released a version of Windoze which included a TCP/IP stack by default. Previously you had to acquire one and figure out how to install it.
I don't buy this at all. Maybe there is some subtlety I am missing completely.
No subtlety, just an observation that non-techies found it much easier to use the protocol since it came 'bundled'. Imagine all the online hausfrau trying to install a packet driver, shims, debugging it...
Which caused which, a default TCP/IP stack in Windows 95 or Netscape 1.0?
My point is that MS made Netscape's life easier by having a stack already deployed. And clearly Netscape made the that stack (and the computer) more useful, at least easier to use. And clearly the NSF giving up control allowed the current mess.
As a Mac user, it was the availability of Mosaic and Netscape which altered the landscape. The TCP/IP stack junk was just behind the scenes machinery which various vendors were then racing to provide.
Saying the modern Net age started when Microsoft provided a TCP/IP stack seems overly wonkish.
I'm well aware of the dangers of saying anything positive about MS in a public forum. Maybe they'll be charged under antitrust law by all those stack-vendors who went belly-up when MS bundled extra functionality into the OS. Just like when Weitek sues Intel for bundling their FP biz into Intel's CPUs.
participants (12)
-
!Dr. Joe Baptista -
David Honig -
Declan McCullagh -
Harmon Seaver -
jim bell -
Ken Brown -
Matt Elliott -
petro -
Roy M. Silvernail -
Sampo A Syreeni -
Tim May -
Tom Vogt