From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] writing code
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 18:22:40 +0000
From: rog@vitanuova.com
In-Reply-To: <11ecd59550d99998dd6dc36cc4d9a8ca@proxima.alt.za>
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lucio:
> Not really.  Laptops are a poor solution to the problem of information
> ownership and, on the reverse side, information sharing.  So is the
> disked workstation; for that matter, the entire "personal computer"
> idea.  Plan 9 does not propose to solve the problem, but addresses it
> much better than all other conventional approaches.

i'm not sure i agree.  if you can always contact your authentication
and file servers, the current plan 9 model works fine, but i think the
idea of universal global interconnect isn't realistic.  firewalls are
ubiquitous.  network coverage is patchy (and probably always will be).

i think it makes sense to carry your personal information near your
person, even if you only carry a key that enables you to access your
personal data on other systems.

paul:
> Useful would be an encrypted file system on my laptop with a USB-dongle
> auth server providing the key; something like a gumstix
> (www.gumstix.org) could run an auth server pretty easily.

this would be a way forward.  if your fs is encrypted, it doesn't
matter who has hardware access to your machine, as long as only you
have the key.  the important thing is to make the boot process itself
secure, so that nobody else can step in and subvert your key entry.

russ:
> i don't know what peer-to-peer means, but if we moved to
> a public key model (which was the reason presotto created p9any)
> and had the auth server just be a repository for public keys
> (signed by bootes), then any amount of caching could happen.

i'd like to see an authentication model along SDSI/SPKI lines, where
entities can authenticate directly with one another without
necessarily needing to talk to a third party auth server.  the inferno
model does this currently, but you can only authenticate with parties
in the same domain.  charles has done some work in this area for
Inferno.  it's highly applicable to plan 9 too.

this way, me and my laptop are at the centre of my world.  i can talk
to anyone, and name chaining and SPKI tag rules mean that i can make
useful deductions about what i should do on their behalf, even if
their public key isn't known to me.

i'd like to see the distinction between cpu server and terminal
disappear.