Wednesday, November 27, 2002

Device Authentication: Establishing Trust for PDAs, ATMs, EKGs and PS2 By Derek Brink Director, Product Management, Authentication Products RSA Security There's a quiet revolution going on, as manufacturers equip a growing range of every-day devices with Internet access capabilities. Whether a device is designed for business purposes (such as PDAs), financial services (ATMs), healthcare (EKG equipment) or consumer markets (Sony PlayStation 2), the promise of ubiquitous connectivity is spurring enterprises to envision how even the most familiar products and services can be re-imagined to achieve new efficiencies and deliver new functionality and value to users. The recent emergence of Web Services technology, which will make machine-to-machine communication easier to achieve, will only accelerate this trend.... 6:14:22 AM

Fraud Case: Greed Bred Sloppiness. The men accused of stealing thousands of Americans' credit reports and selling them to crooks who then looted bank accounts and racked up debt, apparently didn't know to stop when they were ahead. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] "The investigation is still in its early stages, but we have found the guys who opened the fire hydrant of fraud," said James Comey, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, on Monday. "How high will the damages go? We don't know yet. 5:22:29 AM

Stem Cell Mixing May Form a Human-Mouse Hybrid. Some biologists argue that the best way to test stem cells for their usefulness in treating diseases is to see how they work in a living animal, such as a human-mouse hybrid. By Nicholas Wade. [New York Times: NYT HomePage] 4:49:42 AM

Time for a New Pair of Genes?. Ethicists and scientists are grappling over whether it makes sense to alter the genetic makeup of embryos. It's a question for the ages, since such changes would be inherited by future generations. By Kristen Philipkoski. [Wired News] 4:46:41 AM

Books and blogs. A while back I mentioned Erik Benson's All Consuming site. It continues to intrigue me, and I've now signed up for the weekly RSS feed. Inspired by Weblog BookWatch, Erik's service makes books, as well as people, an organizing principle of  blogspace. So here's a little experiment. I'm going to cite some books I've read recently, and have been thinking about, in order to see what kind of discussion is reflected back through All Consuming. ... [Jon's Radio] 4:42:44 AM

USA Today on open spectrum: ""My gut feeling," [David] Reed said, "is that in 10 or 20 years this will be as big as the Internet."" When USA Today starts covering software-defined radio, you know something is going on. But who came up with the headline -- "New multi-function gadgets may spark deregulation"? I guess that was their effort to simplify the concepts, though it's pretty misleading. [Werblog] 4:35:00 AM

Network World, quoting Vocaltec CEO Elon Ganor: "The vast majority of experts said by 2006 50% of the world's traffic would be using VoIP. I talked to carriers, the large carriers, and I can tell you that their view is about similar." [Werblog] 4:33:57 AM

Wall St. Journal: The New Menu Option at McDonald's - Plastic. Shirley Leung and Ron Lieber report on McDonald's plans to finally accept credit cards. If all goes according to plan, with the latest systems, a McDonald's customer will be able to place an order at a counter or drive-through, swipe his or her credit card, and get an approval in under five seconds -- no signature required -- in the same way that customers pay for gas at the pump. Cash, by contrast, can take eight to 10 seconds, says Jim Sappington, McDonald's vice president of U.S. information technology. The typical credit-card transaction takes 25 to 30 seconds from swipe to signature, according to The Nilson Report, a payment-card newsletter. [Scott Loftesness] 4:25:07 AM

New Scientist: Way back when. Q&A with Brewster Kahle. The whole point of comprehensive library collections is that you can't tell in advance what will be important. The Web is the people's medium, it's not elitist. Anyone can publish there, so you've got the good, the bad, the ugly, the profane. It's just us, that's the amazing thing. [Tomalak's Realm] 4:12:50 AM