HTML Memory Confirmed OK, Instant E-commerce
This is the first follow-up posting from November 1999
I have checked with two national JAVA security experts, Emin Sirer of the University of Washington, and Edward Felten of Princeton both state categorically that this new channel between HTML pages, using JAVA, is not a security breakdown, but rather a novel use of mainstream JAVA.
It will therefore work on every browser and machine.
The stateless condition of HTML has thus been cracked.
It is very easy to do.
The simple addition of six lines of code to an ordinary HTML page can transform that page instantly, for instance, into a commercial page.
I challenged a leading JAVA web hacker to find a way to 'break' the security on this system he couldn't.
If this result stands and I have every expectation that it will - it is now possible to do e-commerce on a plain page, using a dumb server.
Check out HTML memory and instant e-commerce for yourself, and see how much easier it would be to do things this way.
Another use for HTML memory is as a database cache.
The shopping cart program includes an optional database (for temporary price alterations) which is cached on the client computer, so that accesses, from page to page, use client computing power, and client memory, and require no client-server communication other than an initial download.
HTML memory can also generate JAVA code that 'lives' within a computer, from page to page, and alters its form in real-time response to page events all of this triggered again by those same six lines of boilerplate HTML code.
The shopping cart program, for instance, instantiates only a stub of itself until a purchase is made.
If the shopping cart is cleared, it reverts again to a stub.
The JAVA shopping cart program that handles purchases, caches a database, and morphs its form, through HTML memory, is only 14K in size.
It is possible that HTML memory, and 'morphing code,' could be extended into a kind of web-based operating system.
Since JAVA is secure, and since HTML memory uses mainstream Java, the new operating system would automatically also be secure.
Since JAVA-enabled browsers operate on top of Windows, this new secure operating system would co-exist completely within Windows, and operate transparently within it.
Since HTML memory is developed within JAVA, and the first priority of JAVA is to protect execution threads within the main system, the secondary system would be dumped if it ever put too many demands on the main operating system.
Finally, since JAVA microchips are now becoming available, it would be possible to integrate main computing activity with microchips in a very intimate way, and thus to extend the capabilities of both.
If you are interested in knowing how HTML memory works, you may read the patent application, here.
The advantages of this new scheme, as far as e-commerce is concerned, include:
- You only need intelligence on one site, a central order-processing computer. Merchant sites can be dumb.
- You eliminate the server overhead on commercial sites that can slow them down to a crawl.
- There are no design limitations on a commercial site.
- A non-commercial site can be modified to a commercial site without re-design.
- You eliminate the lost connections that come from an attempt to carry information on the merchant's server.
- The shopping cart is always instantly available, as a frame on the desktop. Extra clicks, and long delays, to generate active server pages to get back an active-server-generated shopping cart are eliminated. The total cost updates automatically from page to page, and is always visible.
- The system is fast, because it uses the client's processor, and requires no client-server communication. It can even be run off-line.
- Because the central address is hard-wired into code, piracy is eliminated.
Next ->.
Lane Friesen
lanelise@dowco.com
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