Re: Are POSIX documents available for ftp from somewhere?

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4 total messages Started by Henry Spencer Sat, 25 Aug 1990 03:50

#461

Author: Henry Spencer
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 1990 03:50

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From:  henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)

>From:  khb@Eng.Sun.COM (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages)
>   ...The key reason is that there have actually been cases
>   where someone gets it, modifies it slightly for their own benefit, and
>   then prints it claiming it's the standard.  ...
>
>Sounds like an excuse, not a reason. It would not be hard to publish
>checksums. 

But how do you convince people to run checksums on the documents and compare?
Remember, the customers *will not* read the documentation even when it is
clearly in their interests to do so -- and you want them to run checksums?
(Setting aside the problem that there is no standard checksum program...)
The only way this will work is if it is sufficiently automatic that whenever
they display the document on their screens, a big red flashing label saying
"FRAUDULENTLY ALTERED" appears underneath.  Unfortunately, short of advanced
cryptographic techniques, there's no way to make this work.

This is not to deny that financial motives play a part.  But prevention of
fraud is a real and legitimate concern with no trivial solution.

                                         Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                          henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 59

Re: Are POSIX documents available for ftp from somewhere?

#463

Author: Charles Hedrick
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 1990 03:39

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From:  hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)

I find this a wierd argument.  If IEEE makes their standards
publically accessible, Rutgers will keep local copies FTP'd directly
from IEEE, as we do for the RFC's.  If they make it accessible only to
"selected" people, we'll end up with unofficial copies coming
indirectly from those selected people.  Which do you think is more
likely to result in accurate copies?  The simplest method of
authentication is for us to get things directly from IEEE.

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 61

Re: Are POSIX documents available for ftp from somewhere?

#470

Author: Randy Bush
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 1990 15:22

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From:  randy@m2xenix.psg.com (Randy Bush)

Hint.  IEEE makes a lot of money by selling standards documents.

To really understand this, try being a committee chair when IEEE/HQ realizes
that your particular topic won't be selling a lot of diocuments for them.
-- 
..!{uunet,qiclab,intelhf}!m2xenix!randy

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 67

Re: Are POSIX documents available for ftp from somewhere?

#479

Author: Keld J|rn Simonsen
Date: Fri, 31 Aug 1990 11:11

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From:  keld@login.dkuug.dk (Keld J|rn Simonsen)

I am active within Danish Standards (DS, the Danish equivalent to
ANSI), and we are providing an example national profile to POSIX.
Our plans are to have the tables from this profile - and maybe
others - available for anon ftp at the site dkuug.dk (129.142.96.41)
in directory isp.

The tables will consist of charmap and locale definition files.
We will of cause resolve any copyright problems with IEEE
concerned with this.

Keld Simonsen
member of
Danish Standards S142u22A11

Volume-Number: Volume 21, Number 77

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