From Sis. Lynna

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>>>>> "Corban" == Corban Internet Ministries <lynnal@cblink.com> writes:

    Corban> Greetings !  I was reading some technical e-zines today
    Corban> and came across this neat new program that I thought you
    Corban> might enjoy.  Its called IR short for Instant Rendezvous
    Corban> and it allows you to chat or send private messages with
    Corban> anyone who is surfing the same web page as you are and who
    Corban> has installed this program.  The only required information
    Corban> in your Profile is your nickname.  I have mailed out the
    Corban> link to this web site http://www.multimate.net to the
    Corban> singles group ministry I operate and I expect it to be a
    Corban> great success with them. But It could be useful and fun
    Corban> for anyone.  If you want to make it a private chat just
    Corban> have everyone meet on a page that is privately accessed.
    Corban> You only chat with the ones who are surfing the same page
    Corban> as you.

I am confused and concerned.  

First off, my .profile contains my start-up script for when I log in.
What is this thing you are calling your Profile?

Second, what is this nickname thing?  This is sounding like an AOL
proprietary thing, but your email address is not aol.  :-\

Third, I am quite familiar with HTTP and web servers (I run the
webserver that archives the higher-fire mailing list, among other
things...), and it seems to me that a stateless server, as HTTP
servers are required to be, would have no knowledge of who was
actually in the process of viewing a page that it served anyway.  For
that matter, what do you even mean by the word "surfing"?  An HTTP
server keeps a log of pages it has served, and who it has served them
to -- as an IP address, and a username if it is available, but it has
absolutely no way of knowing how long the browser continues to look at
that page.  Even if it did work, it would loose if the browser was
working thru a proxy, or even caching efficiently.  How can this thing
work?

Fourth, if it *DOES* work, then there should be a way a cracker could
monitor all the users who were viewing the page, and this without
those users knowing it.  This would constitute both a security
violation and a privacy violation.  Sounds kind of big brotherish to
me.  :-(

So, all you HF geeks out there (Tyler?), what's this really all about?

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
R. J. Brown III  rj@elilabs.com http://www.elilabs.com/~rj  voice 847 543-4060
Elijah Laboratories Inc. 457 Signal Lane, Grayslake IL 60030  fax 847 543-4061
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