Public-key infrastructure (PKI) and digital signatures are all the rage these days, with cover stories in a number of trade magazines and even a front page story in the Boston Globe the other day. But despite all the hype, it is far from clear what I can do with your digital signature if you send it to me.
It has been an interesting few weeks for anyone who is a fan of freedom.
"There is no such thing as a secure computer network."
A few months ago, I put a new 10Gbyte disk drive in my Macintosh 2400 laptop.
They fight technology each time something new shows up. When they lose, as they have so far, it turns out they actually win. But they still fight the next time.
Just about a year ago, I wrote about some of the problems Road Warriors experience. Some of the problems I mentioned then seem to be getting better, but not all of them.
It is not a question of if you will pay taxes on the things you purchase over the Internet, it's only a question of when.
A bank sold the account records of its depositors? It even included the depositors' social security numbers?
According to a University of Texas study sponsored by Cisco Systems, the Internet industry is now almost as big as the US auto industry.
It doesn't look like many of the charges on my current phone bill would survive a transition to Internet-based telephony.
There were some significant changes at the NetWorld+ Interop 99 show in Las Vegas this year, and I'm not even talking about the changes to the show, which have already been discussed in Network World.
AT&T is my long-distance phone company. MediaOne Group provides my cable TV and Internet services. Now it seems that I'll be getting all three services from AT&T as a result of the company buying MediaOne.
The US government still seems to think we know how to do encryption better than the rest of the world and limits the quality of the encryption technology that can be exported.
If the press reports are to be believed, and they are all too believable, the Clinton administration is about to codify its opinion that US citizens are second class when it comes to the Internet.
IBM has long been the object of vague disdain by many Internet geeks.