Isn't [Web app] access public enough for a mobile terminal where operators interests do matter, although perhaps not as much as operators constrain it to today?

It restricts one critical component: the iPhone cannot keep a secret. I don't mean that your data isn't safe---I'm sure Apple's put significant effort into keeping secrets in their native apps, and that the SSL/TLS code is well done. I mean that the web apps I can write for an iPhone cannot behave as principals in cryptographic protocols. I can't write an SSH client, for example, or a protocol for any instant messaging system whatsoever. The only way to do such is to run the interesting protocol client remotely, and provide a web interface to access from the iPhone. That unnecessarily involves a third party. As you say, the iPhone is a mobile network terminal---but its capabilities as a peer on that network have been crippled. I also cannot write an editor or viewer for locally stored data---that's a problem related to secret keeping and to the origin-only restrictions on JavaScript. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu GPG Key fingerprint DED2 61C9 3CBA E7A2 D20D F933 D379 A524 79E0 25F1 Want to verify that I sent this message? Use http://www.gnupg.org/ and http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ with Thunderbird ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'