Kenyon_F_Karl@cup.portal.com (08/03/89)
Kenyon F. Karl
P.O. Box 451
N. Andover, MA 01845
Telephone: (508) 689-3147
Telex: 650-177-1813
MCI Mail: 177-1813
UUCP: Kenyon_F_Karl@cup.portal.com
July 28,1989
Alethic Software Inc:
Dear Sirs:
Following are a new batch of ideas for the further develop-
ment of the Backmail system (continued from my letter of July
15th):
13. It is imperative that Backmail systems be written for
as many different kinds of personal computers as possible. Thus
your objective should be to have a version of Backmail for every
kind of personal computer in common use.
14. Note however that background operation may not be
possible for Apple II, Commodore and (other) CP/M based systems
due to limited memory as well as the typical absence of a hard
disk. However this limitation should not be a major problem if
owners of these machines simply ran Backmail as a foreground
application whenever the machine was not otherwise in use.
15. Minor modifications should allow Backmail to co-exist
with various Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). This effort is impor-
tant as the BBS is a prime means of distributing Backmail to your
potential customers. Cooperating BBS systems would also be able
to help with providing the 'second system' that potential custom-
ers need for testing purposes before adopting this system. The
modification should be to return a simple ASCII message to the
caller (please wait, etc.) when a caller is identified as a data
call that does not follow the Backmail protocol. Backmail would
then kill itself and then transfer control to a BAT file which
would load the BBS software needed to service the call. Tesing
should start with BBS software systems that do not already have
BBS to BBS E-mail capabilities (like FidoNet). Of course, the
final test would be to demonstrate compatability with FidoNet.
16. Backmail should also be adapted to minicomputer and
mainframe operation to serve as a 'home-office' connection to
various office automation systems and commercial E-mail services.
The DEC 'All-in-1' system is a prime example of an 'OA' system.
MCI Mail and Easylink are commercial E-mail services while Usenet
(UUCP) and Arpanet are non-commercial systems. Note that address
translation and message reformat services will be necessary to
interface Backmail with the internal format of the mainframe
system. At this point, it might be useful to consider the various
modifications needed to meet the X.400 standards for electronic
mail services.
17. More thought should be given to the overall security of
the Backmail system. Although we can trust the phone system to
ring the designated telephone on an outgoing call. However, until
ISDN services are available, the telephone system can not identi-
fy the source of a telephone call that is being received. Cur-
rently, the user of any Backmail system can very easily change
the phone number assigned to the system and thus cause the system
to mis-represent itself as being another system for various
fraudulent purposes.
18. A small improvement to improve security would be an
option to send a given message only on an outgoing call (as well
as several variations on this theme). This would insure that a
given message couldn't be diverted by a fraudulent inbound call.
19. A major improvement would be to change the 'registra-
tion scheme' so that a 'registered system' gets a customized copy
of the software by mail, with a new 'system identification' field
that shows the serial number, date and mail address to which this
particular customized copy was sent by mail. Unregistered systems
would have a 'system identification' that simply identified
itself as an 'unregistered system'. In any event, this 'system
identification' would be part of every message sent by the sys-
tem! Of course, there would still be a 'letterhead' could be
changed by the user as desired.
20. I appreciate the effort that the developers of Backmail
have made to allow Backmail to share a telephone with human
users. However, the compromise that they suggest is 'uneasy' at
best. Thus for best results, users should be strongly urged to
install an unlisted telephone line for Backmail's exclusive use.
21. An effort should be made to find particular combina-
tions of modems and answering machines such that when an incoming
call is identified as being a voice call, then control can be
transferred to an answering machine to handle the call. This way,
Backmail could share a phone line with an 'ordinary' answering
machine and thus both voice and data messages could be received
on a 24-hour basis.
22. An expensive solution to this problem would be to use
the 'Watson' system for telephone answering purposes. Backmail
would then need to pass control to Watson when voice calls are
received.