# 95-13


Contents


        Plan 9 -- Not Just a Movie
        The WWW Site has no Clothes
        Information Cold Warriors
        Can Ethical People Work for Evil Empires


1.  The summer 1995 edition of USENIX (received at my domicile
in Nov 95) contains an entertaining overview of "Plan 9 from
Bell Labs".  Rob Pike, Dave Presotto, Sean Dorward, Bob
Flandrena, Ken Thompson, Howard Trickey, and Phil Winterbottom
discuss the architecture of the project to "build a UNIX
out of a lot of little systems, not a system out of a lot of
little UNIXes".  The authors are a well-respected group,
notwithstanding their modest description of themselves as
"a bunch of guys in New Jersey".  Authentication, file
permissions, and "special users" caught my attention.

2.  The December 4, 1995 edition of "Information Week" reports
on another WWW home page vandalized.  In this case the
comedian Rodney Dangerfield's home page vanished in favor
of a picture of a naked woman.  No details provided on
the method of attack (www.rodney.com).  Mr. Dangerfield
apparently uses the server to sell videos and books.

3.  The Fall edition of the Computer Security Institute's
"Computer Security Journal" presents an article "Information
Warfare".  Although CSI has in my opinion "hyped" the
threats on more than one occasion, the article presents
opinions from both sides of the spectrum.  As a DoD employee
I thoroughly enjoyed Marcus Ranum's comments:

        "The DoD-style computer security professionals are
facing being recognized as irrelevant.  The World-Wide Web
and open source technologies are on the verge of sweeping
all this 'trusted systems' stuff out the window.  The cold
warriors are saying 'What can we do about this?'  I guess
the answer is 'Let's spread some fear, uncertainty and doubt.'
The Association of Computer Security Gray Beards says 'We've
got to spend more money and take another try at making all
this stuff secure again.' . . . .It's the same old crowd
asking for the same old money, they're promising to solve
the same old problems and they're probably going to
achieve the same old results"...

The full article, written by Richard Power, can be found
on pages 63-73, Volume XI, Number 2, 1995.

4.  The December 1995 edition of the "Communications of the
ACM" devotes several lead articles on ethics and computer use.
Admittedly some material is turgid as authors go for that
"academic effect", but overall the individual articles
present a foundation for serious discussions in light of
developments in Congress and other branches of government.
Ironically Peter Denning, the chair of the ACM Publications
Board, has an editorial on a confirmed case of multiple
copyright infringements on published ACM material by an
unidentified individual (see page 29).



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