by Rik Farrow
<rik@spirit.com>

Rik Farrow provides UNIX and Internet security consulting and training. He is the author of UNIX System Security and System Administrator's Guide to System V.

I may have found the notebook of my dreams. It weighs less than two pounds, has a gigabyte of hard drive and an 800x600 color display ­ and it runs UNIX. I saw this notebook, a Sony PCG 505, during the USENIX Security Symposium in San Antonio. Although this notebook does not have the battery life I would like, the other features (including one PCI slot for a network interface card) are just fine. At the time I write this, it is available only in Japan and costs ¥250,000. At the current exchange rate, this is about $1,600US.

Nope, this is not an April fool. But it's still not exactly what I wanted either. Battery life is too short, screen is the right size for a single xterm window, which would be easily readable. And the keyboard is reduced in size to fit the smaller form factor. I have decided to set my sights on something rather different that exists only as prototypes and experimental models yet. The wearable computer.

Wearable Computers

Wearable computers have been around for a while, with the best-known hotbed of users at MIT (<http://lcs.www.media.mit.edu/projects/wearables/>). Wearers of these computers have been nicknamed the Borg, partly because the currently popular display unit, Private Eye, covers up one eye (reminiscent of the very plugged-in Borg of Next Generation). A true wearable computer is always on, so requires a very hefty battery as well. Batteries are worn in a fanny pack, along with several PC boards, power inverters, a few hardware ports for jacking in, and hard drive, and weighs (I am guessing) about ten pounds with a battery life of eight hours.

Some of the more innovative designs include GPS and cell-phone modems, so the wearers always know where they are, are always connected, and other people on the network can find them (in both real and cyber spaces). Steve Mann has added a video input device, so other people can see what he sees. He can scan a person's face and have his software supply you with his or her name. You could have the GPS not only locate you, but provide directions to your destination. (This feature might prove a big seller within the Pentagon and other mazelike buildings.)

I must confess that I am not ready yet to be wired 16-18 hours a day. I do not even carry a pager or a cell phone (yet), such is my yearning for the illusion of freedom. Yet a lot of the technology of the Borg could find itself in more conservative designs. For example, the preferred "keyboard" for a wearable is the Twiddler, a one-handed chording keyboard that includes the mouse. It was actually the Twiddler that got me started on this thread. The Twiddler can be used in the left or right hand and has three columns of four buttons for the fingers and a circle of six buttons for the thumb. With a thumb button depressed, hand movements generate mouse movement. Meanwhile, your hand never leaves the "keyboard."

But what about chording? I don't have a Twiddler yet, but did get my hand on an older chording keyboard, known as a BAT. The BAT connects to the keyboard port of a PC compatible and has only seven buttons ­ four for fingers and three for your thumb. I started through the tutorial and found that I could quickly learn the basic alphabet and start typing. But the BAT is big, and the chording sequences are clumsy. The single finger chords are for the letters "wiry," and does not include the most commonly used letters (such as "eatr").

When I mention chording, most people respond by saying, "I already know how to type. Why learn something new?" The why is that it leaves a hand free, it is more efficient (ever watched a court reporter chording?), and it may prevent carpal tunnel (no weird wrist position). When Doug Englebart demonstrated the mouse to Steve Jobs, he was using a chording keyboard with the other hand.

Okay, let's imagine that the Twiddler, or something like it, has replaced both the keyboard and the mouse. We have eliminated about half the requirement for real estate on a notebook and are left with the battery, motherboard, ports, and display. So let's get rid of the display.

The Private Eye uses a vibrating mirror to present the illusion of a 15-inch monochrome monitor with a resolutions of 720x280. The display unit blocks one eye. The next generation Private Eye, the P7, will have 640x480 resolution with 12-bit color. What I found much more interesting is a newer technology that bounces an image off the lens of a pair of glasses. Only the wire trailing from the glass frames, and a rectangular light spot on one lens, betrays the display to others or blocks your view of the world outside. You get to see three dimensionally. And the resolution is better than the old Private Eye.

So we have now eliminated the keyboard and the display as large, bulky power and space consumers. You could have a box half the size of current notebooks, a display that will never be crushed when the person in front of you reclines the seat, and a keyboard/mouse that keeps one hand free. Lower power requirements translate into longer battery life, and the smaller unit weighs less as well. I think this is getting closer to the notebook computer of my dreams. Perhaps it can include a CD-ROM drive so you can listen to music CDs as well. And forget the floppy ­ use the network, Luke.

I have written previously that I want to be living in the future now. A discreet, head-mounted display and one-handed keyboard/mouse seems like a big step closer to me. Although it was the Department of Defense that started the interest in hands-free input and head-mounted displays, I think there will be a booming consumer market for this is less than five years.

Acquisitions

Digital Equipment Corporation has agreed to be acquired by Compaq. I was stunned when I heard the news. How far the mighty have fallen. Or perhaps I should say arrogant?

DEC was once the renegade, the developer of "mini" computers, when mini meant small, instead of the mid-size connotation it has today. King of its market niche, DEC became a real power in the late seventies and on into the eighties. But DEC, and its CEO, Ken Olsen, didn't believe that the coming of lower-priced (and lower-margin) UNIX servers would eat DEC out of its home.

For many years, it had seemed that everyone I had met who worked for DEC had gone elsewhere. Many restructurings had, at long last, made DEC profitable again. DEC still has a stronghold in manufacturing with its VMS operating system running on alpha servers. And DEC has a strong position in the service sector, and something else Compaq has long craved: real presence in the high-end server market.

Together with DEC's service organization, Compaq might soon make real headway in the large server world, which means, of course, more NT and less UNIX and VMS. Then customers of DEC or Compaq can do one-stop shopping for everything from the desktop to the mainframe class machine.

Or so the reasoning goes. Just keeping DEC alive has been a monumental task. Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer looks a little like an aged Clark Kent to me, and he will surely need his Superman alter persona to pull this one off. At the very least, he will cut some product lines from DEC (storage and the money-losing PC and laptop lines). I am glad to be watching this from the outside, and worry about the people I know who still work for DEC.

Personalities

I taught NT security for the first time last week. I must admit I really sweated it, because I am not an MSCE (for sure) or even an administrator who runs a domain with 10,000 NT workstations. I have learned that NT does have some interesting and powerful security features. It also has enough complexity to require serious expertise to keep it secure and yet still permit operation by nonadministrators.

I learned something else, too. Although NT has lots of the cool stuff I discovered in UNIX, what it doesn't have is personalities. UNIX had, and has, well-known people who wrote it, added interesting utilities and features, and stayed around to keep them working. Even people who worked for AT&T, such as Thomas, Kernighan, Ritchie, Lesk, Korn, etc. appear as individuals, not invisible programmers working on a profitable project.

Our community recognizes the value of contributed software, such as Perl, Tcl, Apache, Linux, and many other projects, and it is through individual effort, often unpaid, that we have reached the point where we are today. I don't think any of us are willing to give this up. I certainly plan on doing what I personally can to contribute ­ even if it is no more than writing and teaching.