FC: Peekabooty developer replies to charge of "vaporware"

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Tue Mar 12 2002 - 21:15:18 PST

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    Previous Politech message:
    
    "Peekabooty vaporware already raises alarums at network providers"
    http://www.politechbot.com/p-03254.html
    
    ---
    
    From: mrhappy@peek-a-booty.org
    Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 15:41:36 -0500
    Subject: Re: FC: Peekabooty vaporware already raises alarums at network 
    providers
    To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private>
    
    >Well, maybe "vaporware" is a touch too strong. But wasn't it supposed to be
    >released last summer?
    >
    >-Declan
    
    Hi Declan,
    
             Well, vapourware is a _bit_ strong in that dev is still happening 
    at a ferocious rate on the project, its just that its got a number of 
    non-trivial issues still to over-come. As a brief update: rest assured that 
    at the moment there is concurrent development happening for both Windows 
    and Linux.
    
    The "will be released in x months/hours/minutes..." rumour is something 
    that keeps getting perpetuated despite our best efforts to stymie it 
    (nothing dies on the internet <sigh/> ;-) At DefCon a prototype was shown 
    and it was expected that a beta would be released within six months of that 
    date. Then reality reared its ugly head. At CodeCon another considerably 
    more advanced demo was shown but Peekabooty is as of yet still not ready 
    for public consumption.
    
    We're not releasing not because we don't want people using it but because 
    we believe that to release to the general public Peekabooty in any state 
    that isn't satisfactorily secure and tested would be irresponsible. We do 
    not want users picking up on a version that might have security holes or 
    other flaws in it and using that. In such a situation where using the 
    software could compromise the user, not using the software at all is the 
    best scenario.
    
    Cheers,
    MrHappy
    
    --
    
    "Anyone who creates his or her own cryptographic primitive is either a 
    genius or a fool. Given the genius/fool ratio for our species, the odds 
    aren't very good." - Bruce Schneier
    
    
    
    
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