More Windows Fun
As we predicted, security is not best evolved by a single supplier. It is the presence of lots of ideas from which the best ideas brew, and moreso software development.
A danger with a generic payment system like passport is that any successful abuse to its mechanism has a global effect. Of course, Microsoft may have forseen this and built in plug-able security layers, but how can you guarantee that every single customer, even Retired Bill, 86 and stronger for it, kept his Windows 95 up to date and insists on roaming the net with it. With 40 bit encryption, is Larry Larceny, 23, able to open up a channel to Bill's electronic wallet and withdraw $68.34 before disappearing in an anonymous IP cloud? Will Bill notice?
So, it is news whether or not Larry is intrepid enough to attempt it, because the very nature of Passport is to lock exact details such as your IP address and the time and date of the transaction into a log out of your control. Now Larry can be arrested and $68.34 returned to Bill's account without anybody needing to know.
Security scares thus may be useful ways to bring forward behavior and they spread like wildfire because the very possibility provides the Company that owns the security products you need to use Passort (ie, Windows XP) creates a vacuum of need, and enough of a hole in the dyke that the only way to avoid a flood is to stuff any hole with a finger before it gets worse.
Linux Version 9.0 from Red Hat seems to do the trick. Its easier to update everything for some reason, it just works faster, without all the memory woes. But Redmond's latest on-line service pack "for Internet Explorer" has made my ME machine just a little more stable. It seems to be running cooler. That is the other side that the shortsighted lawsuit that the US Government brought - it is not tying the OS to the browser that is unfair, it is a fear of evolving competitors and stamping them out before they make progress or buying them out before they get large. We do not want all our films made by Disney and we do not need all our software stuffed into one massively integrated platform.
There is nothing wrong with Windows that Redmond can not fix. Nothing at all. Its a great OS. But Passport is a useful valve to leverage the most of us, the real danger with ecommerce is believing the system marketing rather than understanding and working within its limitations.
Going online with older versions of Linux is potentially also dangerous. But it did not claim to be an on-line wallet. Version 9.0 seems a little more locked down.
The Open Source world has developed a much better payment system in products like PayPal - it operates like a normal credit card merchant account, costs nothing (it takes a 5% commission) and allows instant settlement with a PayPal merchant. WebCash, 2CheckOut are alternatives. Another service is Payment by EMail, available via Yahoo Pay Direct, and AnyPay.com.
These service may not suit large scale business because the fees add up and bite profit. Soon 5.5% becomes a lot of dollars.
The existence of alternatives to Microsoft's possibly risky endevour of monopolizing payment systems is the result of healthy competition. That most of us do what is easier is what ends up costing us more in lost confidence.
What is most in our interests is that computer data is more secure, that money does not become too fluid and that companies like Microsoft continue to innovate. What is not in our interests is an artificial confidence about security, either on the net, or anywhere else.
