Re: what's this "nice" unix thing? I'm a sysadmin...

Garance A Drosehn (gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu)
Tue, 27 May 97 15:55:33 -0400

> > I for one, would be extremely wary of forwarding Deschall
> > towards upper management in most of the jobs I've had. The
> > idea of having to explain that 100% utilization isn't bad, and
> > make them see that it isn't a threat to the business, or their
> > computers, or their corporate resources doesn't appeal to me
> > much. The odds are very good that I'll probably get taken
> > aside and spoken to about the appropriateness of the effort,
> > and the legal risks, and twenty other issues which they feel
> > need to be stressed.
>
> ... which easily explains why tech-savvy companies like sun.com,
> apple.com, claris.com, etc. are leading the .com domains in
> contribution ;)

Well, it is more significant that those companies have something
real to gain if one of their computers happens to be the one that
gets the "winning" DES key. If some PowerPC-based Powerbook is
the "winner", for instance, you can almost imagine the Super Bowl
commercial where Apple announces it to the world. "Big Brother
said DES was unbreakable, but you can buy a Powerbook and prove
Big Brother wrong". I'm sure they could work in a sledgehammer
going thru some massive monitor. They'd love it.

If the backroom computer at "Joe's Bar & Grill" gets the answer,
Joe is not likely to advertise that, and is not likely to sell a
single additional hamburger due to it...

---
Garance Alistair Drosehn     =     gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer        (MIME & NeXTmail capable)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;           Troy NY    USA