[Mac_crypto] Re: Re: Re: Addition for 'Doomed Engineers'...

[R. A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 23:19:31 -0500
From: John L Redford <jlr@world.std.com>
To: <rah@ibuc.com>
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Addition for 'Doomed Engineers'...

Hello,

I've finally gotten around to updating the page!  I also added Clara
Haber, first wife of the great chemist and inventor of chemical warfare.
Thanks again for your suggestion,

/jlr (John Redford, jlr @ world . std . com, http://world.std.com/~jlr)


On Tue, 20 Jan 2004, Distributed City .com Info wrote:

> Dear John,
>
> Happy New Year.
>
> Have you had any recent submissions other than mine back in Dec?
>
> Best,
> - Robert
>
> >Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 10:51:19 -0500
> >From: John L Redford <jlr@world.std.com>
> >To: "Distributed City .com Info" <info@distributedcity.com>
> >Subject: Re: Re: Addition for 'Doomed Engineers'...
> >Status:
> >
> >Good addition!  A real loss, and a bad way to go.  Thanks for the
> >suggestion!
> >
> >/jlr (John Redford, jlr @ world . std . com, http://world.std.com/~jlr)
>
> >Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 11:49:24 -0600
> >To: jlr@world.std.com
> >From: "Distributed City .com Info" <info@distributedcity.com>
> >Subject: Re: Re: Addition for 'Doomed Engineers'...
> >Cc:
> >
> >Dear John,
> >
> >And another tragic loss - Gary Howland, who designed the SOX
> >protocol and wrote the first version of Cryptix - passed on in 2002:
> >
> >http://www.vmeng.com/pipermail/mac_crypto/2002-December/000114.html
> >
> >[Mac_crypto] Obituary - Gary Howland - 197? - 2002
> >R. A. Hettinga mac_crypto@vmeng.com
> >Tue, 17 Dec 2002 14:40:24 -0500
> >
> >--- begin forwarded text
> >
> >
> >Status: RO
> >Sender: <dbs@philodox.com>
> >Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 12:34:47 -0500
> >From: Ian Grigg <iang@systemics.com>
> >Reply-To: iang@systemics.com
> >To: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>
> >Subject: Obituary - Gary Howland - 197? - 2002
> >
> >Obituary - Gary Howland - 197? - 2002
> >
> >
> >
> >I first met Gary in 1990.  I was the team leader for a
> >big telecoms project and he was one of the 1000 CVs that
> >crossed my desk that summer.
> >
> >Of those 1000, I interviewed about 50, and we ended up
> >with a technical team of 20.  Most were contractors from
> >the huge pool of British labour, but from my jaundiced
> >view, only 4 on our team rated as contractors.
> >
> >Gary was one of those 4.  He was only just out of college,
> >the polytechnic at Brighton.  But his CV included all that
> >splattering of Unix acronyms that made you feel that here
> >was a kindred spirit, one who learnt in spite of the academic
> >environment.
> >
> >We shared that time together, the vast tense year at ICL
> >where we all made too much money and lived like there was
> >no impending recession.  Hard coding, hard driving;  Gary
> >in his girlfriend's 924 was as fast as I was, at track day
> >with the Porsche club, in my 928.
> >
> >He was fast with the code, too, when a fire could be lighted
> >under him.  He once replaced a 3 month project in 3 days.
> >For the most part he was slow and careful, thoughtful,
> >complete and perenially late.  But when a deadline hit,
> >he could fly.  He was the only person I could trust the
> >sys admin role to, and he was the lowest paid contractor
> >in the building.
> >
> >
> >
> >Fast forward to 1995.  I'd had my Spanish adventure, Gary
> >had done his contracting stint in Germany, where he met
> >his long term girlfriend, Inka.  He'd hooked up with a
> >new outfit in Amsterdam, some crazy guys doing money on
> >the net, called DigiCash.
> >
> >Gary fed me the papers and fed me the story.  Using
> >cryptography, David Chaum had invented a way to solve
> >the privacy problem so that coins could be simulated on
> >the net.  As I sat in finance classes in London, I
> >realised that bonds were just a more broad definition
> >of money.  We agreed that there was more to this than
> >the guys at DigiCash had thought about, so we agreed to
> >try out our hand at the finance area.
> >
> >Gary was one of the first true financial cryptographers.
> >He intuitively knew that DigiCash would fail.  Not because
> >of their software, which was good, but because their business
> >was misdirected.  He also knew that the bearer idea wouldn't
> >survive.  Not because it wasn't beautiful - it was the most
> >extraordinary discovery in the last decade - but because it
> >didn't solve the bank robbery problem.  He was a superlative
> >cryptoplumber, but he understood intimately how the real
> >action was in determining the business requirements without
> >being blinded by the science.
> >
> >Our early plans, hatched over email, assumed we could
> >license DigiCash's software, but that was scotched pretty
> >quickly.  So, Gary took on the task of designing a payment
> >system for our venture.
> >
> >It wasn't easy.  We had to address the bank robbery problem,
> >and we had to retain the privacy.  Those goals were eventually
> >to coalesce as contradictions, and the way he walked the line
> >became known as SOX.
> >
> >I believe SOX is Gary's legacy to the world.  It is capabilities
> >for the Internet.  It is strong crypto, and it is private.  It
> >is extensible, it is flexible, and reliable.  I mean, reliable
> >in a deterministic way:  we can guarantee correct results over
> >SOX transactions that can only be imagined in other protocols.
> >
> >It technically dominated the bearer model, in a way that only
> >a few could grasp.  It was also a computer science solution,
> >a value that only came to be fully appreciated when we found
> >how trivial it was to add David Chaum's bearer tokens to SOX.
> >
> >Gary, Mike and I, built the SOX protocol into Ricardo, a
> >complete payment system that operated as the settlement
> >and transfer layers for financial trading.  We ran bonds,
> >trading them at night so that all our bond holders around
> >the world had a chance to access the market.  At 9.15 pm
> >every night, Gary's 100MHz desktop blared out the theme
> >song for the James Bond movies, to announce the start of
> >trading;  his workstation was also our one and only
> >Issuance server, as well as the Exchange.
> >
> >While they were at it, they wrote Cryptix.  Gary did the
> >Perl code for all our needs, and supervised Mike on the
> >first version of the Java native interfaces, all to Gary's
> >design and core library in C.  When we published Cryptix as
> >complete open source crypto for Java and Perl, it was the
> >first and only crypto available for Java, then, an emerging
> >language.
> >
> >Our decision to put out the Java cryptography libraries,
> >later rewritten by Gary to be pure Java, set the scene for
> >all Java crypto.  It was critical in forcing Sun to write
> >a crypto API that was relatively open, even though they
> >were under tremendous pressure from the US government.
> >In a silent, secret and private war, Gary fought against
> >the behemoth known to us all as "the TLAs" in their bid
> >to control the worldwide flow of information over our
> >Internet.
> >
> >When the Clinton administration capitulated in early 2000,
> >it was because of Gary Howland and other fellow spirits
> >- the authors of Crypto++, SSLeay, and all of the Cryptix
> >programmers to follow in his footsteps.  Their committment
> >to always keep the art of cryptography an accessible, open
> >tool for the people survives Gary.  We will always publish
> >free crypto as long as we remain free programmers, and a
> >free people.
> >
> >
> >Like so many of the dotcom dreams to come, our trading
> >adventure ran out of cash, and we took pause.  We split,
> >we both went back to contracting, and we paid off our debts.
> >
> >He and Inka lived for a while on the island of Anguilla.
> >There, the Financial Cryptography conference had employed
> >him in '97 and '98 to teach the art of payment systems at
> >"boot camp".
> >
> >Gary worked with Vince Cate's SAXAS for a while, and when I
> >caught up with him over a Grolsch in an Amsterdam bar, we
> >laughed as he told me how he had spent most of the time
> >trying to inject SOX ideas into SAXAS.  We had great visions
> >of Anguilla being the financial cryptography centre of the
> >universe; at one stage, there were over 10 people working
> >there on various projects, but, like many things, the dream
> >faded as the field failed to take off, and frustration with
> >the local bureaucracy scared too many people away.
> >
> >
> >
> >Gary died last week of a heroin overdose in a friend's London
> >appartment.  He'd been on it for a long time, but was well
> >used to keeping the secret.  I only learnt of his affliction
> >well after we had split up.
> >
> >I often wondered whether I'd change my mind about drugs when
> >someone close was killed.  Maybe I'd go rabid and insist on
> >all those bastards being killed or incarcerated without trial,
> >as seemed to be the response of others.  Maybe I'd sign on
> >for a term of service with the War on Drugs.  (These days,
> >it would be Homeland Defence, licensed to hack.)
> >
> >On reflection, I can only say that Gary's death underscores
> >futility of the War on Drugs.  The developments in Europe,
> >Australia, and now some states in the US, as country after
> >country seeks to decriminalise drugs, remain our only hope
> >of a civilised response to the health problem that is addiction.
> >If Gary had lived in a society that hadn't forced the dirty
> >secret on him, he might have got the support and community
> >that would have helped him.  I don't know that I could have
> >done anything there, but maybe someone else could have.
> >
> >
> >
> >Financial cryptographers don't die, they just cease to be
> >atomic.  Wherever he is, Gary would have laughed to know
> >that his work will be the subject of scrutiny by the TLAs,
> >once again.  This time, from the other side;  in the same
> >week that Gary died, we filed all forms imaginable - four
> >boxes-worth carried by hand in through the doors of the SEC
> >headquarters in Washington, D.C. - to start a new financial
> >system in the USA.  Using Gary's SOX, of course.
> >
> >--
> >iang
> >
> >--- end forwarded text
> >
> >
> >--
> >-----------------
> >R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
> >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> >44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> >"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> >[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> >experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
> >
> >>Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:04:58 -0600
> >>To: jlr@world.std.com
> >>From: "Distributed City .com Info" <info@distributedcity.com>
> >>Subject: Fwd: Re: Addition for 'Doomed Engineers'...
> >>Cc:
> >>
> >>Thanks John.
> >>
> >>Please let me know if you make any other additions so I can post a
> >>follow-up within Distributed City.
> >>
> >>Best,
> >>- R
> >>
> >>>Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 00:06:19 -0500
> >>>From: John L Redford <jlr@world.std.com>
> >>>To: "Distributed City .com Info" <info@distributedcity.com>
> >>>Subject: Re: Addition for 'Doomed Engineers'...
> >>>Status: RO
> >>>
> >>>Hello Robert,
> >>>
> >>>Good candidates!  But real losses.  I'll add them in.  Thanks,
> >>>
> >>>/jlr (John Redford, jlr @ world . std . com, http://world.std.com/~jlr)
>
>

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'