February 27, 2004

No blogging -- visiting the Mouse

No blogging until March 2nd or 3rd because me and the kid are visiting Mickey with "the Godfather" in sunny CA. On other Disney news, as we've been saying for a while, I hope Eisner's put a little something away over the years. He be gone soon.

Posted by Grayson at 11:18 AM

February 25, 2004

More Microsoft -- the spam killer

Lots of news about/from Microsoft coming out of the Moscone Center in San Francisco (RSA) today. In addition to the post below, here's another piece from the Washington Post entitled, Microsoft to Launch Plan to Control Spam. Upshot: MS is launching a means to detect spam by validating the sender. In other words, rather than deal with spam as something to be filtered out for its content or unknown qualities, they propose to "filter" the spam based on validation of the sender's authenticity. In other words, if I don't know who you are, your mail doesn't get through. And, it proposes this based on a voluntary (??) registration of the sending IP addresses; corollary: without extensive PKI or similar technology. Hotmail is going to launch this very soon.

Verrrrry interrresting. The obvious loser is the "spoofer" trying to get around filters by pretending to be a known quantity -- at least until there's a new way around the solution. I could see this eventually migrating to a credential-based system that requires authentication of the actual sender with some form of digital id token (see MS/RSA announcement immediately below). But, this seems like a relatively painless way for the market to adopt the process.

Time will tell.

Posted by Grayson at 01:36 PM

Microsoft's secure computing in action

This joint announcement by Microsoft and RSA was not entirely unexpected. The dance partners are the interesting part. But, being modestly aware of Microsoft's business position in general, I would say that this is not necessarily an endorsement of a solution as much as it is the earliest alternative out of the gate for Microsoft.

Regardless, it'll probably do good things for RSA, for Microsoft, and for the digital identity space -- inasmuch as it's a concrete step forward, by someone, that can be accepted, rejected, upgraded, or replaced. It's motion anyways.

Posted by Grayson at 11:55 AM

Spinning like a top

Here's the problem with believing your own press: Stronach says she can lead Canada to prosperity. The recipe in a nutshell: Take one 37-year old neophyte who never finished post-secondary education, married well (once or twice), and then had daddy put her into the parade marshall's car at the front of a self-running machine to wave and smile. Leave her there for a while to chair meetings and spend time with others who "lead" [What an incredibly abused word ed.] large parades, give her words to read to shareholders and other audiences -- crafted by those with facility with words -- and, finally, have an old politcal warhorse with an agenda convince her that she was responsible for all these good things. Eventually the unwarranted hubris takes on a life of its own.

Consider what she says (as dutifully reported by the modestly left-leaning Toronto Star):

"Bottom line, I understand the economy," Stronach said today in a speech prepared for the joint Canadian and Empire Clubs of Canada. "I understand what it takes to create jobs, to spend money wisely and to invest in the future." [snip] The 37-year-old daughter of auto-parts magnate Frank Stronach said the skills developed as president and CEO of Magna International, her father's firm, provide the experience she will need to take hold of Canada's finances.
Followed by this whopping mound of whipped cream -- sweet, light, and happy but not very filling:
"We are going to compete by creating world-class value-added products and services made and supplied by highly skilled Canadian workers," she said.

Col. Potter, who was the second commander at MASH 4077 might have said, "Horse Hockey!"

Posted by Grayson at 08:46 AM

I wonder if anyone's asked this question

Everywhere you turn there's more media attention, and commercial/governmental activity engaging smart cards and, more especially biometrics, into digital identity. It's all for our safety, you know. ;-). For instance: here (Canadian airports to use biometrics) (find more on you're own -- it's not that hard to do). Anyway, back to the point.

What about people with prosthetic limbs, new or old; or others with malformed or no fingers? I realize it's a small part of the population, but still: How's it to be dealt with?

Posted by Grayson at 08:32 AM

The signs are there . . .

Reading the entrails, as so many appear to have time for -- or get paid for, which is better, it's starting to look a lot like the cycle reached its low-end inflection point a little while ago and things are heating up. This is particularly so in the technology area where the new canary is still singing -- not loudly -- but singing nonetheless, as this Toronto Star [Daddy's got a brand new left-offrom-the-centre-of-the-universe source. ed.] piece about Ciena's acquisition of Catena Networks, in Ottawa, shows. Also of note, the NYTimes has a story and popup about the rapidly increasing value of M&A these days. And, that's just today.

Meanwhile, on other pages of the same papers are stories about a poor job outlook dimming the U.S. economy -- and more of the same.

Which only goes to show that it's not the entrails, it's who's looking at them.

Posted by Grayson at 07:23 AM

February 24, 2004

New essay

For those who care, I've got a new essay, Digital Identity Religion and Information Dogma, on my Website's Identity page. The religions of identity are solidifying among those who follow the "Big Brother" approach, others who prefer "federation," and yet others who want to have their own solutions damn the rest. All of these choices rest on a confused state of understanding about the (personal) information underlying them. We examine them.

Posted by Grayson at 08:51 PM

February 23, 2004

Ralph the spoiler

I'm not expert in American politics, but a left-winger's good intentions to challenge the two-party duopoly by running in the presidential popularity contest can only hurt the more left of centre part of the duopoly. The part that the spoiler would sympathize with more. Ralph Nader obviously has no love for either party and couldn't personally care less which one of the two big parties wins the White House. That would imply a pervasive cynicism toward the system and its present inhabitants. From Ralph? More from the NYTimes here.

Posted by Grayson at 07:34 AM

February 20, 2004

ZZZZZZ

I like the first two items in this column. The first is, which is the headline (Blindly following can lead to a nasty fall) resonates but stops well short of the real observation: everything is contextual, etc., etc. [Read my forthcoming book ;-) ed.] The second, subtitled The Tired Company Syndrome, is interesting -- and, if you're paying attention, where the post title comes from -- although I think it's too easy to project into this one. Try it yourself.

Posted by Grayson at 07:36 AM

February 19, 2004

Cool Security



This little gizmo is kinda cool for a personal security of digital data device. Not sure I'm a big fan of the USB flavour -- might be better as a java-based smart card (with or without proximity RF). Not sure USB is the best technical solution for broad-based deployment beyond personal computers. But then, I guess, it wouldn't have the flash storage capacity of this little guy. Anyway, read more about it in this Globetechnology item entitled, Sony Micro Vault with fingerprint scanner. [How . . . direct . . . ed.]

Posted by Grayson at 08:08 AM

Pot . . . Kettle: black



Let's see how dopey Belinda Stronach can sound a single news item:

  • You can't run from your own track record,î the Conservative leadership candidate told The Canadian Press when asked about Mr. Martin's role in the sponsorship scandal rocking his Liberal government. Right. But, of course that would imply a track record to run from.
  • Now, it's more a question of competence and leadership. And as the captain of a ship, you take responsibility for that ship. Or, you can just be the blood relative of the boss and be emplaced to walk at the front of the parade being conducted by other capable people nominally reporting to you, but doing what the real boss wants (and they actually know.
  • I am ready to be prime minister of Canada. I think in life it's important to know what you know and what you don't know and can you build a good team. I think I'm a very good team-builder. No experience; no education: why not? Since we're being honest and self-aware: never finished any post-secondary education, haven't held a real job obtained on personal merit alone, married an executive with daddy's business, and haven't actually built (or rebuilt -- or effectively changed) anything while CEO on the basis of any inherent skills. The only visible team allegedly "built" was actually there beforehand. However, apparently excellent social fund-raising circuit skills and have held the gavel at executive meetings -- and after all, that's most of the job of prime minister, isn't it? Definitely ready.
  • Ms. Stronach, meanwhile, also took a swipe at Mr. Harper for saying the person with the best organization and the most money will prove victorious next month. ìThat, I disagree with. Our membership is smart, Canadians are smart. They will judge who has the character, who can unite this party, who has a track record and the integrity and most of all who has the ideas that at the end of the day will lead to a better quality of life for Canadians." Oh, where to start? It's either spin (created by somebody else) or naivity (likely hers); it's sure not realpolitik. Oh, and about the track record (none), integrity (unknown), and ideas (uninspired): PROVE IT.

Not sure if this whole thing is farce or tragedy.

Posted by Grayson at 07:59 AM

Canada for business: 3rd world with reliable utilities

This piece in the Globe and Mail (Canada No. 1 on least costly list makes me . . . well . . . uninspired. So Canada's low-cost among industrialized nations. Snip:

According to the report's details, salary and wage costs in Canada ranked second after Italy. Britain and France followed in third and fourth, respectively.

As well, Canada offered the lowest electricity costs among all countries. The costs for statutory holidays -- as a percentage of payroll -- was the lowest in Canada.

The 2004 study measured 27 costs -- including labour, taxes and utilities -- applied to business operations in 11 counties. The research included an analysis of those costs in 98 cities around the globe.


Don't let them go to that old saw: You get what you pay for.

Posted by Grayson at 07:42 AM

February 17, 2004

Night tremors

Cingular's people used the clock to snatch AT&T Wireless from the jaws of Vodafone as this article in today's NYTimes Cingular's $41 Billion Offer Wins Bidding for AT&T Wireless describes. They literally made a take-it-or-leave-it offer in the middle of the night in North America, while the Vodafone team slept in London. [Question: What kind of M&A team doing a $35B deal doesn't have feet on the ground? ed.] Well, whatever will be . . .

As almost everyone with a passing interest has been saying for a year or more, it was overdue. Consolidation was inevitable. Here's a snip from the NYTimes piece:

The sale to Cingular is the first sign of long promised consolidation in an industry that has suffered from overcrowding. While the deal will likely help the profitability of industry -- Cingular estimates the combination will save them as much as $15 billion -- it may mean higher prices for consumers in the long term and thousands of layoffs of overlapping positions at both AT&T Wireless and Cingular.

Still, the intensity of the ultra competitive landscape has been a mixed blessing for consumers. They have gotten lower prices and rich incentives for signing up with a wireless provider. But the effort by competitors to rapidly deploy their networks to fulfill the demand has often led to poor service quality and shoddy customer care.

Well, we'll see what happens. With two monsters (Verisign at 24% and Cingular -- with AT&T -- at 30% market share) and a bunch of also-rans (Sprint 10%; T-Mobile 9%; Nextel 8%), probably less price cutting and deal offering. But let's none of us hold our breath waiting for better customer care or service quality. And, large mergers/acquisitions have historically tended to dissipated value before they create any.

Still, it's a good thing for anyone supplying the industry or needing a coherent group for delivery of one's service to the end user. ;-)

Posted by Grayson at 08:01 AM

February 12, 2004

Blurring distinctions

I've been on a kick recently, as part of a self-determined strategy review, to convince my world that a fundamental change to the environment for post offices and others in the carriage trade, the telecomm. business, and so forth is that the distinctions between previously well-defined parts of the "value chain" are blurring beyond recognition. For instance, what is "delivery" in a world where digital and physical matter collide and overlap? Enough about that though. (It's tedious, but I'd be glad to pass on my thoughts to any who ask.)

Important -- and affirming -- to me, however, is that Intel is announcing a new, faster chip (prototype) today that has significant implications to the distinction between communications and computing. Here's a snip from the NYTimes article:

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 11 -- Intel scientists will announce on Thursday that they have built a prototype of a silicon chip that can switch light on and off like electricity, blurring the line between computing and communications and bringing sweeping changes to the way digital information and entertainment are delivered.

For the first time, Intel researchers said, they have shown that ultra-high-speed fiber optic equipment can be produced at the equivalent of low-cost personal computer industry prices. Industry executives said the advance could lead to commercial products by the end of the decade.

As the costs of communicating in cyberspace falls, the researchers said, existing barriers to creating fundamentally new kinds of digital machines capable of far greater performance, and not limited by physical distance, should disappear.


To me the crucial word here -- a journalist's but still . . . -- is "blurring." The impact will be much wider than fibre optic equipment. It's going to further seriously affect communications, delivery, and the nature of the digital-physical relationship.

Posted by Grayson at 10:04 AM

Trusted third party? Not government!??

Here's an item from ComputerWorld that corroborates something this bit of the Web has been blathering about in various places such as heres: Get Ready for the U.S. National ID Card. The significant point is that while the world rails against a national ID card program, it has one in practically all effects except name. The driver's license is not meant to be a national or general ID; it is a license to drive a motor vehicle. HOWEVER, it is a culturally accepted standard of identification that, although not standardized across states and provinces nor granted national identity status, is going through an evolution to become just that.

I think it's a great idea, and that if the citizenry demands competing, alternative identity credentials as well, the "drivers' license national identity card" could be relatively innocuous re: privacy and civil rights. If it is standardized, as suggested in Cline's piece -- which points to an American Association of Motor Vehicles Administrators (AAMVA) initiative to create a framework for license standardization (in North America!) -- it will give a lie to the implicit assumption (sometimes made explicit depending on who's taking what position) that the public will never accept a government issuing a national digital identity. Counterpoint that with this post about Verisign issuing digital credentials despite being a representative of the equally unacceptable -- to consumers/citizens -- ommercial interest issuing general identity credentials.

That's the thing about so-called paradigm shifts: nothing holds for very long. Equilibrium is punctuated at best, and we just have to move along with the ground.

Posted by Grayson at 08:22 AM

February 11, 2004

It's a long-term strategy -- D'uh!

Hate Verisign! Like the evil empire (no, not Microsoft), they control the Internet and do bad things for their own welfare. [Shock! Horror! Indignation!! ed.] Sitefinder, the controversial search service, is an example of Verisign using its privileged position in a way that competitors and many other freedom fighters find offensive. I'm still unsure what I think. Now, there's more news in the digital ID space from Verisign in this CNET item: VeriSign works to ID kid surfers

In short, Verisign and a partner (i-Safe) are going to issue ID tokens to school kids to keep them safe as they surf the Internet: no charge to the school or the kid. Business model (read: way to make money) will probably involve the vendors and advertisers that want to access that market paying a fee so the tokens will permit the kids to access their wares or somesuch. Whatever. That's the small end of the stick.

More significant is that "leettle girls [and boys] get beegehr heveryday." In other words, it's a long-term strategy of conditioning the kids so that they're used to the idea and 5 - 10 years from now use a digital ID as a matter of course rather than resisting for privacy or other concerns; of using this market as the bait to bring online merchants and advertisers (with the money) to play and pay for the game; of using the kids' safety as a showcase for the parents (who really have the economic power and are the market the vendors really want) to buy into the consumer-based digital ID program for themselves; of . . . And, Verisign is willing to invest big money (maybe -- we don't know who's all investing) to make it all happen with limited reward potential in the immediate future.

Let's recall that Verisign has had as little luck with its consumer PKI programs (certificates) as anyone else; that they probably see the enormous commercial potential and value in being the consumer identity provider in a networked world that will run on identity within 5 - 10 years; that they can do it. Hat off to them.

If their foray is successful, and there's no way of telling that for at least a few years, they will put the lie to the belief that there are trusted parties (say post offices, governments, etc.) that can do this and others (e.g., Verisign) that can't. What's next: Microsoft Passport redux?

Posted by Grayson at 09:15 AM

It's all magic

Here's a little piece that's everywhere about another Microsoft op-sys security vulnerability that requires immediate attention. Frankly it's to be expected, and makes me think about cars -- at a theoretical level. Like this:

There was a time when I was young that a car: internal combustion engine and other assorted mechanical parts, was a relatively simple proposition. True, there were many parts, but each one was merely a part of the overall machine. It worked mechanically and so a mechanic or any other testosterone-filled teenager with Camero-lust could figure out how to pull the whole thing apart and put it back together -- fixed or otherwise. You could drop a bowling ball into the engine compartment of a GTO and it would hit pavement unimpeded. Today, the engine area (now smaller) is crammed full of bits and pieces, sensors and onboard computer equipment, with only a limited portion of those many, many integral parts operating mechanically. It is, in short, impossible for anybody but a trained technician to understandable and tinker in this system.

"WTF does this have to do with Microsoft?" you ask. Well . . . nothing. But, nobody understands their operating system either. Only those relatively few geeks techies that code and do other assorted software-y stuff. Upshot: we really don't know what's what, or why's why. We have to rely on these magi to keep us safe and working properly: just like we have to take our $40,000 sedan to an automotive shop -- often the dealer -- rather than pissing with it in the backyard (were one so inclined).

And that, my friend, is magic. Just like the Mayan high priests or the clerics of early and middle Christianity. Nobody can escape it. The whole thing is a complex, self-organizing and continually-mutating, adaptive system that everybody has to ride in. Be flexible.

Posted by Grayson at 08:01 AM

Fatty, fatty, two by four . . .

In my case it's vanity that finally got me to lose weight. And, although still a little displeased with my shape, concerned about what my Polar heart monitor tells me when I run, and ranking as modestly "overweight" on the BMI, I'm relatively pleased to be fitter. Others apparently need more or alternate incentive, so the medical industry is coming to our rescue as pointed out in this Globe and Mail item (Fat is the new tobacco: Heart and Stroke Foundation) and another from the London Telegraph (Doctors warn of obesity time bomb). Having all but won the war on smoking, we turn our attention to another not exactly-burning platform. [Anyone who doesn't believe that smoking and obesity are connected at least a little bit ought to go to Paris where they're born with a chimney and a croissant changes their body weight until metabolized. ed.]

This is good. Good for society; good for Dr. Phil, for the Duchess of York, for Slimfast, for Atkins, for all kinds of exercise equipment flacks . . .

But, I say while we've got the problem, we should use it to do good. "Hey," you say, "do you think there could be a symbiotic socio-economic activity that might alleviate the obesity problem and do some economic good?" Well I'm glad you asked. As it it turns out, I took a run at this a few years ago [man it's hard being that far in front of the curve all the time . . . ed.] in a little piece I wrote. Here's a snip:

Weíre too fat because we overeat and under-exercise. It could be different were there more incentive to change. But while the primary motivators are appeals to individual health consciousness and vanity there will never be enough incentive for most people to lose weight. Part of the problem is that those most able to influence society support obesity. Change that and you can change the Canadian fitness level. Enter Robert Milton.

Milton assured us he would fix Air Canada in just 180 days. Since he isnít providing much value to anyone these daysónot his investors, customers, employees, or the country at largeómaybe he could save Canada from the blubber bomb. Maybe even in 180 days.

Itís a simple plan. The thrust is to change the incentive structure for fitness, placing it on the shoulders of Corporate Canada, using Air Canada as the lever to a greater good.

Air travel is the most effective way to travel distances. It is also most heavily trafficked by business travelers, making corporate travel budgets a substantial portion of the cost of doing business. So organizations have been working hard to reign in this expense. Now imagine the possibilities, were the cost to fly based on weightólike other cargo.

This and more available on one of my content pages.


Now that's synergy!

Posted by Grayson at 07:48 AM

February 10, 2004

Those crazy kids

Let's hope that there aren't a lot of pictures taken of the (genuine) demands for change and action by the university students in this piece, entitled, Universities heed the call for genderless washrooms. A snip:

There are washrooms for men and washrooms for women. And, coming soon to a university campus near you will be washrooms for those who don't limit themselves to either category.

I'm all for youthful expression and challenge of the status quo: hell, I'm for middle-age expression and challenge of the status quo. But, either we're in for a very significant redistribution of gender dynamics in the coming decade or there are going to be a fair number of 30-somethings wishing they'd experimented differently during university.

Posted by Grayson at 07:49 AM

February 09, 2004

I Knew It!!!!

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished me to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how Imatched up against all the levels:

LevelScore
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)Low
Level 2 (Lustful)Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)Moderate
Level 7 (Violent)Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Test for yourself. See where you end up. Be honest now! ;-0

Posted by Grayson at 08:02 AM

UPDATE: Microsoft's Bill is not in the mail

As noted a few days ago, Bill Gates gets things moving. His comments while at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, about quelling spam by a "postage" system that creates economic friction got the media in a flurry for sure. First, we heard about the rising tide. Then, as this piece in the Globe and Mail's technology section illustrates, the tide went out.

The well-justified, standard counter-responses have been trotted out: (1) It's all about Microsoft wanting to make more money [D'oh! No kidding . . . uh, and? . . . ed.]; (2) It's too hard to implement [Where there's a Will . . . there's money. And where there's money, there's always a way. ed. -- again]; (3) Spammers typically are "invisible," so how would you bill them? [They gotta get online somehow -- and get their money through the responses that do come in, sometime. See response to (2), above. ed. -- still going on]

Likely best interpretation: Bill was testing the "business" water. Microsoft (as others) is working out the technology. Based on the responses as presented in the Globe's item, the business solution is neither ready for prime time nor is the environment ready for the solution. So, one could expect the whole thing to go back below surface for a while again . . . waiting . . .

Posted by Grayson at 07:50 AM

February 06, 2004

What HBR doesn't know it's missing . . .

So, I think just under two months is a respectable amount of time to wait before conceding that a response is not forthcoming. I sent an article proposal to HBR in mid-December in the form and with the content they said they required. Obviously, either the value of (a) the idea is not in keeping with their storied (vaulted?) position as guardians of business "intelligence," or (b) I'm not.

So, although I'm not sure when I'll get to writing the actual piece, now for my own edification alone apparenlty, I've chosen to put the proposal out here for review. Download it; read it; review it; comment on it; tell me how obvious it is that it's not right . . . Whatever.

Knock yourself out.

Posted by Grayson at 01:22 PM

What the hell's wrong with these people?

A little piece in the Globe and Mail says that fewer than a quarter of 1,500 people surveyed in Britain would quit work if they knew they only had 13 days to live. Although . . . twice as many said they'd stop worring about work. WTF?

A snip from the 3-grafer:

More than three quarters of British employees would rather go to work than take a dream holiday if they had only 13 days to live, according to a survey by two U.K. charities, TimeBank and Help the Hospices.

Posted by Grayson at 08:16 AM

February 05, 2004

Racin' for ricin

Yesterday, I was on the Capitol ricin scare in DC. Today there's more in the NYTimes in this article: Ricin Poses Postal Risk, but Different From Germs

The thrust of the message is that, yes, the postal system has to cope with these things but poison (ricin) is considerably less troublesome than a biological/virus (anthrax), and screening systems are being upgraded. Besides, as a terror activity it's not that effective.

True enough, potentially knocking off a senator or congressman might actually be considered a heroic measure by some parts of the American population. And, poison in the mail is not as big as planes meeting buildings. But, if these anthrax or poison laced envelopes were being distributed randomly to people often in the news (hollywood stars, music stars, athletes [notice an alarming trend toward entertainment being "important" in this list? ed.], corporate executives, state and municipal politicians, and so forth), and you would have yourself an enormously effective terrorist activity. Remember, the impact of the terrorist action is not to kill or harm a specific target for its intrinsic value, but to cause destabilization of social systems. Making the US mail a cause for life-and-death caution in general would do that. Remember what happened to air travel -- and travel in general a couple years ago. There was and would be a significant economic impact, if not a restructuring of social systems.

Just a thought.

Posted by Grayson at 07:47 AM

It's the little things that count

Here's a story about a little technology that has big potential: E-Mailing a Cellphone by the Numbers. Teleflip provides a service for people sending email to a mobile phone that eliminates the requirement for the domain name. In other words, rather than sending an email to my phone by dialing 6137979793@rogers.pcs.com (I think) you would only have to send to the 10-digits @teleflip.com. Their proprietary algorithms match the phone number to the correct domain and complete the delivery.

Now, it's not exactly rocket science as best as I can figure out: take the number, use the first three digits to locate the geographic area where the phone is tied, the second three digits to determine which carrier the phone belongs to, append the carrier's domain, and forward the message. There are problems too. First, number portability will make my little approach more difficult, so maybe there's more to their algorithm than all that. Second, some people might be off-put by sending their private email to a third party (although I think that's mostly a red herring).

The capability is kind of cool and relatively simple. So, were your ISP to license the capability, it's not entirely impossible that it could catch on. Me, I'm less thrilled about scrolling email on my phone, but there are others . . . It could also, if successful, fallow the ground for Neustar's eNUM project.

Posted by Grayson at 07:22 AM

February 04, 2004

Sure, but would it remember to forget?

I guess it's good that the Darpa Lifelog project was quietly cancelled as this Wired News article, Wired News: Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project notes.

Lifelog's intent was to gather everything a person says (emails, phone calls, etc.) and does (air tickets purchased, television watched, movies seen, meetings taken, etc.) into a single data directory. The rationale is that:

the all-encompassing diary could have turned into a near-perfect digital memory, giving its users computerized assistants with an almost flawless recall of what they had done in the past.

Can you say "Big Brother's watching"?

Posted by Grayson at 12:53 PM

If this doesn't drop the per unit cost .

High-end smart cards with all the bells and whistles, like a RF proximity loop, suitably large chips, etc., etc. are a little bit expensive for the average profit-based entity to undertake. If ONLY there were enough volume being produced to reduce the per unit cost . . . The several million-large CAC (common access card) deployment in the US military over the past several years is still pretty puny.

Well hang on there sparky because it seems that China's about to pump up the volume as this story from cardtechnology.com points out.

Because it's small, here's the item:

02/03/04 The world's largest smart card rollout is set to begin: starting in March, all Chinese over the age of 16 will be issued a smart card as ID document. The rollout of chip cards to 1.3 billion citizens is expected to be completed by the year 2008, according to the official news agency Xinhua. Officials of the Ministry of Public Security expect the new ID card to be a way of preventing the rampant forgery of old ID cards. The new card will be put into use in the cities of Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Changsha.

The ID cards will be the size of standard bank card and use contactless smart card chips. Further, they will carry only the identification application and be fixed memory cards with 4 kilobytes of memory. Only Chinese vendors supply the chips and the modules that encase them. According to Chinese officials, the technology must be supplied domestically "for security reasons".

China started to issue ID cards in 1984 in light of a fledgling market-oriented economy that required more traveling. Traveling had previously been restricted by the household registration system set up in 1958. This system specified where each Chinese should live, which normally was where they were born. If they moved, they lost rights to cheaper education and missed out on job opportunities. China now considers the 1958 system to be outdated. In the past two decades of economic reforms millions of Chinese have left their homes to find work.


Expect some outsourcing to China.

Posted by Grayson at 07:40 AM

February 03, 2004

More things telephone operators don't have to worry about

First anthrax, now ricin; like there aren't enough things for mail sorters and carriers to worry about. This story in the NYTimes, Powder Found in Senate Leader's Office Confirmed as Poison, describes the latest poison-mail incident on the US Capitol.

It's only a matter of time before this extensively open system (which, I found out last time I was at Dulles, has been closed modestly: there are no blue mail boxes, not sure whether it's because of bombs or poison -- probably bombs) is closed down for public safety reasons. Of course, there is a digital identity application here in the form of a need to slip a credential card into a mail receptical before putting the mail/parcel in. The machine would then record the depositor's identity for future tracing requirements. How the civil right to private and unimpinged communication would be addressed is another matter.

Interesting to note that, at least to my untrained, anecdotal view, the story of poisoned mail on the Capitol is receiving less media time this go round.

Posted by Grayson at 12:33 PM

February 02, 2004

It's a DRIVER'S licence, not a general ID!!

Some of us who pay attention to these things understand that digital identity is (a) important, (b) inevitable, (c) complex, (d) is an execution problem, and (e) very likely to evolve out of driver's licensing (at least in North America). Let's look at the last item, if only because there's a relevant new item today in the NYTimes. The article, Report Focuses on False ID?s Made at Motor Vehicle Offices, starts pointing out that the driver's license is not meant to be an all-around identity credential. And, using it this way has its problems inasmuch as, there are systemic design problems in how license registries issue and control the credential.

The industry group representing driver's license issuers takes a position that this blog has made clear here and in other writings (at the Website): many different special credentials are needed to make the credential and information itself less valuable to identity theives and fraud artists. Quoting the article:

Most of all, it [American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators] recommends that agencies issue different ID's for different uses, thus making the driver's license less of a prize. 'Strengthening the standards only helps us to a certain extent,' Mr. Schwartz said. 'The real answer is to stop relying so heavily on this form of ID.'
How novel ;-)

Posted by Grayson at 08:54 AM

Where's the Post Office in all this?

Second time in the same number of weeks, major media has taken note of the idea of postage on email. [Bill Gates, like a head of state, is a human starting gun! ed.] In today's NYTimes is a story entitled,
Speech by Gates Lends Visibility to E-Mail Stamp in War on Spam
. In the article is a modest look at what Microsoft and Yahoo! are doing to create friction in the email system to prevent spam. Several tech companies developing systems that levy "postage" fees on email are highlighted as well. A quotation:

Now, though, the idea of e-mail postage is getting a second look from the owners of the two largest e-mail systems in the world, Microsoft and Yahoo.
Ten days ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that spam would not be a problem in two years, in part because of systems that would require people to pay money to send e-mail. Yahoo, meanwhile, is quietly evaluating an e-mail postage plan being developed by Goodmail, a Silicon Valley start-up company.
The article is worth reading, but it begs the obvious questions:

1. Why isn't the original and valid "postage" administrator noted in the article?

2. Why isn't that "natural party" finding a voice now in this nascent discussion before it's too late?

Posted by Grayson at 08:49 AM | Comments (1)