August 31, 2004 | Comments: (0)
At a Churchill Club breakfast on Tuesday, Don Adams, chief security and
technology officer for government at Tibco spoke on RFID [Radio Frequency Identification], giving the audience some interesting nuggets of information about this relatively new technology.
Adams reminded the audience that in most cases the only information an RFID tag contains is a number which is then mapped to a server that gives the product description and any other pertinent data.
Here are some of the highlights of what Adams had to say about the ways in which RFID can be used and abused.
• RFID tags can be hacked. Adams sited a case where the RFID hacker was able to change the number on a tagged item in a clothing store and walked out with a $40 sweater that was tagged as something like $4 pair of socks.
•A charter school in Buffalo, New York tracks its students from the moment they get on the bus through every class, club and meeting they attend, library book they take out and then send a report home.
• Adams asked the audience how many would sign up their children for this type of tracking, about half raised their hands. He then asked how many would sign themselves up for the same type of tracking and nobody raised their hand.
• RFID technology is called contactless tracking. So what is the largest threat of contact tracking such as fingerprint readers? Adams supplied the answer: fungus.
• The EU [European Union] plans to tag high denomination Euros by 2007. First to be tagged is 1,000 euro bills and then over time all paper money.
• Cattle will soon be tagged from birth to consumption to track down decease such as mad cow.
• Adams notes that we already give up our privacy when we use supermarket shopper cards to get discounts and that most surveys show almost all people are willing to give up their privacy for a discount.
Unfortunately, Adams and some in the audience thought this was no big deal and scoffed at organizations like Caspian that believe that supermarket club cards are dangerous.
However, I can imagine the day when the insurance companies buy your
shopping information from the supermarket chain and then send you a letter saying they've analyzed your eating habits and decided you are in the 90th percentile of the population for a heart attack, based on the number of pounds of bacon, steak and mayonnaise you buy in one year.
Therefore, they are raising your life insurance rates.
Stay tuned.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on August 31, 2004 10:36 AM
August 23, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Biting the hands that feed you
Sun Microsystems apparently has taken a peculiar stance in its relations with Javalobby, a developer community with more than 150,000 members.
Citing business interests, Sun demanded that Javalobby remove from its new JDocs Java documentation Web site several Sun-owned APIs, including J2EE and JavaServer Faces, according to Javalobby founder Rick Ross.
Sun has declined to comment on the situation, other than to say it is working on a resolution with Javalobby. But I have to ask, how can it be in Sun's business interests to upset your own loyal users? How, exactly, would Sun lose income by letting the Javalobby people post the APIs on their own Web site?
All this is happening while Sun has found itself defending its position as steward of the Java programming language and fending off a tide of cries to make Java available through an open source format. This incident only gives credence to those who claim Sun still wants tight-fisted control over Java, and only serves to upset more people.
I say, live and let live - let Javalobby post the APIs and do not bite the hands that feed you.
Posted by Paul Krill on August 23, 2004 03:03 PM
August 16, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Applying the open source spirit to analyst reports
Analyst reports are far more akin to tightly-guarded proprietary products than they are to open source software. After all, analyst firms sell the reports, always for a pretty penny, and many analysts guard statistics, such as market share numbers found in the reports, as if they were golden heirlooms.
But perhaps the analyst community is now learning a lesson from IT's most philosophically revolutionary movement of late: open source.
Analyst firm RedMonk today released a report detailing what it calls 'Compliance Oriented Architecture' and abbreviates, naturally, as COA.
COA's, according to the report's authors, are "what happens when a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is applied to compliance challenges."
In the near future, it is easy to see how, well, almost every SOA will face compliance challenges of one sort or another. But that is hardly my point.
Unlike most other analyst reports -- and the real reason I wanted to blog it -- RedMonk is conducting an experiment here. The report is free. Now, that alone is not groundbreaking, even if more of them should be free.
But the real gem here is that RedMonk is seeking customer feedback which the analyst firm, in turn, plans to make available under the Creative Commons license, "so that anyone who's interested can share and build on it if they see fit," the firm wrote.
RedMonk went on to say that readers can post it to their website, debate it, criticize it, send it to their colleagues, even make derivative works, as long as RedMonk is given credit for its work and any derivatives are licensed equivalent similar terms.
I'll certainly be interested to watch this experiment as it grows.
RedMonk made the report available free, and you can find it here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on August 16, 2004 03:01 PM
August 12, 2004 | Comments: (0)
Everybody wants a piece of my paycheck
The latest news from Blockbuster announcing the launch of its online DVD rental service has me ecstatic.
For $19.95 per month I will be sent any three videos of my choosing on DVD, with no return date. Of course I can't rent three more till I return the other three. For $29.95 I could get five DVDs at a time.
But looking for more ways to stay tuned into my PC/DVD player rather than
going outside, I took the top of the line offer, eight DVDs for a mere $39.95.
The only trouble is that when I went online to check my bank account this week it looked rather anemic, so I ran a high end enterprise variance analytics program which measures expected paycheck against actual.
It issued a report that itemized the following monthly automatic deductions which it seems I had authorized. I vaguely remember something about getting frequent flyer miles on Alaska Airlines for allowing electronic withdrawals from my checking account, but I can't be sure .
Blockbuster - $39.95, eight DVDs
Cable TV $81 includes HBO East, West, North, South, Family, and Latin plus Starz, ShowTime, Sundance and IFC
SBC DSL - $40.00 with email!
Celluar Phone $59.00, nationwide, two phones, 900 minutes, after 7 p.m.
Verizon Data Card $99.00 unlimited data
Sprint Wifi $49.95 unlimited hot spot service, where available
OnStar, deluxe $34.95, concierge, driving directions, safety package,
including automatic air bag deployment notification
XM Satellite Radio $10.00, 68 channels of free music, 33 channels of
of news and sports and what I really wanted 21 channels of instant weather.
Grand total $413.85
I may have to rent a cheaper place but I think I got a bargain.
PS
If anyone knows of something else I can subscribe to send an email to ephraim_schwartz@infoworld.com
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on August 12, 2004 04:08 PM
August 05, 2004 | Comments: (0)
It's that InfoWorld 100 time again
We are now accepting nominations for the coveted InfoWorld 100 awards!
Here is the official description:
InfoWorld 100
Every year, InfoWorld's editorial staff names 100 companies that have made the best use of technology to enhance their business. The InfoWorld 100 Awards celebrate real-world IT projects that use technology in smart, innovative, creative ways to meet business and technical objectives. We're looking for projects (or substantial segments of projects) completed between November 2003 and September 2004. Straightforward implementations of a single vendor's software/solution won't be considered. Entries may be submitted by individuals, companies, or their representatives. Vendor submissions (if accepted) must describe customer projects, not internal undertakings or product-development efforts. Nominations close on Sept. 20, 2004; winners will be announced in November 2004. To be considered for the 2004 InfoWorld 100 Awards, fill out the nomination form. For questions, contact Eric Knorr at eric_knorr@infoworld.com.
And here is the form to complete: http://www.infoworld.com/awards/awd_iwo_sub.html
For more on InfoWorld awards, please visit this site: http://www.infoworld.com/awards/
Posted by Tom Sullivan on August 5, 2004 06:37 AM
August 04, 2004 | Comments: (0)
IDC says handheld sales are down, once again, and Cingular announces new capability for handsets to access corporate email, even for us Lotus Notes users!
Does everyone finally see the handwriting on the wall? Handhelds are dead, except for niche markets.
The killer app that will make handhelds ubiquitous in the corporate world exists but the problem is you can also access the killer app on a cell phone, i.e., email.
The Treo 600 may be the fastest selling handheld but handset sales are an order of magnitude greater than all the handheld sales combined.
While the handheld manufacturers continue to show off the mighty capabilities of an iPaq or a Tungsten, all I see are people with cell phones doing the one thing that matters to them...you guessed it, email.
Cell phones don't even need a killer app, a cell phone is killer hardware.
It's all over but the shouting.
Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on August 4, 2004 09:11 AM
August 03, 2004 | Comments: (0)
CA to offer million dollar bounty on open source toolkit
Though not in response to the challenge I offered the company in a previous blog, Computer Associates on Wednesday will present the open source community with a challenge of its own.
At the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco, CA will detail plans to offer a million dollar challenge "for developers to deliver a database migration toolkit," the company said.
So stay tuned to InfoWorld for further details.
CA's challenge, by the by, will come one day after IBM handed over its Cloudscape open source database to the Apache Software Foundation.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on August 3, 2004 01:49 PM
TOP STORIES
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Remote Access: Maintain Security and Decrease the Burden on IT
- Beyond AntiVirus: Symantec Endpoint Protection
- What Every Enterprise Needs to Know About VDI
- Disaster Recovery in Minutes
- Protecting Microsoft(R) Applications
- Reduce Recovery Times and Tape Costs
