[117044] in Cypherpunks
Re: Petro's Mom (was Re: Black Bag Jobs VS Shopping Bag Jobs)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sunder)
Wed Aug 25 16:55:32 1999
Message-ID: <37C4554A.F878789@brainlink.com>
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 16:42:50 -0400
From: Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
CC: Petro <petro@suba.com>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
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Reply-To: Sunder <sunder@brainlink.com>
David Honig wrote:
>
> At 08:11 AM 8/24/99 -0700, Petro wrote:
> >
> > THE FUTURE IS OPEN SOURCE! Hopefully, in another 2 or 3 years, I
> >will be rid of MS and be running Linux only. Linux
>
> It *is* open source already, for the pocket protector set.
>
> The issue is getting your Mom to 1. use a sufficently slick/familiar
> GUI on top of the open OS 2. bother to use (or listen to) the
> system-verification
> (OS signature verifying) daemon that some future paranoid will write.
So if current Linux/*BSD systems (or their windowing systems and installers)
push toward Irix like ease of use (which is the closest SysV to MacOS) or
straight out MacOS X, they'll be shit easy to install and use.
> (If Mrs. Petro has installed an open source OS or is trained in INFOSEC,
> apologies
> to her.)
A friend of mine told me his GRANDFATHER got sick of Windblows 'cause it kept
crashing, and he installed a Linux distribution from a Cd included in a
magazine he saw at a stand. Worked fine for him.
> The point is: mass deployment and ease of use. TCP took off because W95
> included a stack.
Get yer timeline right: TCP/IP and the Web was available BEFORE win95. I was
using Trumpet WinSocks on Win31 surfing with Mosaic. That was fun. :)
Mickeysoft even included a TCP stack of their own for Windows 3.11 for
Workgroups.
Sure, loser95 brought more and more lusers to the Web, but back then everyone
and their uncle were like "I want to get on the web" without know what the
fuck the web was in the first place.
The only reason that TCP really took off, is that it's the only transport
protocol officially allowed on the internet. (Yeah, encapsulation and all
that will shuttle AppleTalk, DECnet, SNA and other shit, whatever.)
If that ol'e Internet supported some other protocol, you'd be using that.
IMHO, TCP isn't popular as most monkeys don't even have the slightest clue
what the fuck it is. But, because it is required by browsers, it hides itself
in that whole package. A guy with a TV top webbox doesn't give a rats ass
about TCP/IP, and this is as it should be. :)
> HTTP took off because a decerebrate monkey could browse. Ease of
> use cannot be underestimated.
A-Yup, but it wasn't HTTP that took off, no more than SMTP took off because
people send email. No one uses HTTP/SMTP directly unless they telnet/netcat
to port 80 directly, is writing browsers, clients, or servers. :) It's the
generic comodity application that did it. don't confuse the protocol with the
app.
> (Yes, there are other factors involved in these deployments...)
Yup, yup. :)
--
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