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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (34675)	11/5/2000 8:12:27 PM
From: PJ Strifas	Respond to of 42771

As far as I'm concerned, you can use any backend you want for the file system - I was merely using one system as an example. I'd keep your eye on Groove and the Lotus guy. He seems to have the best handle on the P2P file sharing idea. Regards, Peter J Strifas

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (34675)	11/6/2000 8:12:40 AM
From: jwright	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Paul said >> Note the requirement for (audio) file encryption Copying the file without the key would be useless and the key would have to be designed to have a limited time stamp life and some level of engineered uncopyability. Of course the user interface is important. And the problem is that Novell needs to have a well funded project with high corporate priority in order not to miss the opportunity. I've read a dozen different companies are involved now in trying to become leaders in P2P file sharing. Even Ester Dyson has commented upon the centrality of the Napster/Gnutella developments to the future ofthe internet. The only thing that bothers me Peter is that you keep talking in terms of Netware. No one is going to use Netware to solve P2P file sharing. >> Paul I don't know why your in retirement doing the investment thing. It seems such a waste of your talents. I'm not sure if your always right but you do get people thinking "what if I ...". Being a catalyst in freeing a person's mind from biased thoughts and into thinking is a valuable asset for any company to have. Any type of distributed environment (i.e P2P) using a client based system interacting with the Internet will need to have a good local file caching subsystem. I think we talked about this before way back when talking about I-Drive, NetDrive,... etc in setting up an ASP to lease applications. Every time you run a leased application you do not want to have download the application over the Internet. You want to have the concept of being disconnected. You want it cached, encrypted, with some type of cached certificate that will expire such that at some point you have to requery (master replica over the Internet) the validity of the certificate for access to the program, MP3 file, or whatever object your trying to restrict access to. I guess you could always let the certificate expire and the client must try and generate a new certificate (over the Internet) for usage which would only be allowed if the object in question still has available licenses. This type of system really needs the Personal Directory subsystem integrated with the client OS or browser to work seamlessly. By the way Novell if you release a Personal Directory product please get rid of the word "Directory" out of the name. No pimple nosed, video game addicted, MP3 stealing kid is going to buy or use a product named Personal Directory. I'll give you one of my names which I was going to register COWASOFT which stands for "Can of Whoop Ass Software". You raise some interesting points. I know the engineers understand all of above but it seems at least from the client side that their existence was dependent on value adding a back-end running NetWare. Hopefully since I left the client guys can decide their own destiny that's not only a NetWare world, but I kind of doubt it since their was no client division formed. I love NetWare but it really is a dead platform for generating increased revenues. Novell is good at architecting plumbing but never very good at architecting user level subsystems. Most times when they attempt to do this they discover "Gee my plumbing is not very good I never foreseen anyone wanting to do that." Then they go off for a year fixing the plumbing (why because they are plumbers and plumbers like to count clock cycles, optimize a spinning hard disk, write caching subsystems, ..etc) and still never get around to the user level architecture. Hmmm kinda sounds like DigitalMe. Let's see Novell likes to bottom up architect with emphasis on performance. Microsoft likes to top down architect with emphasis on features, usability, and developer support. Is their any doubt in who is winning the war? Hey Microsoft can always promise increased performance on the next release right? What usually happens is in that time frame the hardware speed doubles, along with hardware prices lowering such that people buy hardware to solve the performance problems. The only culture problem that Novell has is their obsession in building hot rods. It's okay to build a mini-van that goes 0 to 60 in 20 seconds if it has a TV/DVD player to keep the kids entertained. After all computers are rarely used for work anymore they are used for ENTERTAINMENT by the mass majority. All the engineers I have known in my lifetime were always playing Adventurer, Snipes, Solitaire, Tetris, Commander Keen, Doom, and Quake on their (ahem) lunch breaks. Jimmy

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (34675)	11/6/2000 11:03:53 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hello Paul, > Note the requirement for (audio) file encryption > > Copying the file without the key would be useless and the > key would have to be designed to have a limited time > stamp life and some level of engineered uncopyability. But any user who had a key, could then play back the file ... and record it on another PC and put that file out on the Internet for free ... ... which is exactly what is being done today. The key and watermark technologies can't prevent what is occurring today ... they simply keep honest people honest ... which is still the bulk of people ... ;-) Scott C. Lemon