[cap-talk] Delegating Responsibility in Digital Systems: Horton's "Who Done It?"

[Sandro Magi]

Page 1, "the dominant access control paradigms were capbilities and
Access Control Lists"  (misspelled "capabilities")

Page 1, "A capability [...] is a communicable and unforgeable token used
both to designate some object and to provide access to that object."

Nitpick, but "designate" and "provide access" seem synonymous. I think
"designate some object and authorize access" is clearer.

Page 2, "The round objects in the figures, A, B, and C,", is better
stated as "The circles in the figures...", or "The circles A, B, C in
the figures ..."; my initial read confused me due to the other rounded
shapes in the diagram.

Page 3 links to http://erights.org/download/horton/, which says "[...]
operate in a distributed fashion, but we have not yet been tested this."
-> "we have not yet tested this".

Perhaps on Page 2, where you're beginning your descriptions of the
figures, you should explicitly state that the rectangles are just labels.

Other than that, I think it's good. This is the first time I've actually
sat down and tried to understand Horton, and I think I've got it.

Figure 2 might be confusing for someone not familiar with promises due
to the apparently concurrent invocation of foo and intro. I'm not sure
if it warrants mentioning/describing a future/promise though.

Once this round of on-list review is complete, perhaps a posting to LTU
[1] to solicit feedback from general programming language enthusiasts
might help as well.

Sandro

[1] http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/

Mark S. Miller wrote:
> Jed Donnelley, Alan Karp, and I would like your comments on our draft paper
> 
>          Delegating Responsibility in Digital Systems:
>                    Horton's "Who Done It?"
> 
> found at <http://www.erights.org/download/horton/document.pdf>
> 
> We plan to submit it to USENIX HotSec 07 (Hot Topics in Security)
> http://www.usenix.org/events/hotsec07/cfp/
> which has a five page limit. Submission deadline is 6/1/2007.
> 
> We think this paper is important. Your comments and suggestions will be 
> greatly appreciated. Thanks!
>