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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Strong Authentication: Smart Networking

AlwaysOn: "Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's executive vice president for software, calls for uniformity in security, diversity in solutions." Kind of a fascinating interview with a guy that pulls no punches. I don't agree with much of what he says, but it's definitely worth reading. A few interesting moments:

"Now when you do things of which you are not proud, you do them on a PC. Why on a PC? Because you're not authenticated. And I think this notion that Ballmer is going to take seriously the issues of cyber-terrorism is a bit of a joke when the solution is right in front of our noses: it's called strongly authenticating network identity."

"I'm very partial to Macs. I have a hard time suggesting that consumers buy anything other than a Mac. I run a Mac at home. They're beautiful machines. Apple understands artistry and consumer appeal. But that's not our target demographic. Our target demographic is large-scale enterprise."

"You can roam on a cell phone. Why? Because the industry wanted to let you roam. You can't take your Starbucks card and use it at Pottery Barn. Why? Because Starbucks and Pottery Barn don't get along. They're competitors, and they haven't figured out that an open network is better than a closed network. Same thing is true inside the home. I was just with a Microsoft employee who was grousing to me about the fact that he couldn't get any of his home audio equipment to talk to one another. I said, well if you buy all Sony you'll be fine. And his response was, I don't want to buy from just one vendor. And I said that's kind of ironic coming from Microsoft." Except, of course, that it isn't ironic at all. Only Apple locks you into a one-vendor strategy on the PC desktop.

[ Posted at 8:40 AM | Permalink ]