From: Alex Chaffee [alex@stinky.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 28, 1998 5:59 PM
Subject: Human Error

(Written Friday morning, March 27)

The hot new technology at the JavaOne conference is the Java
Ring. It's a ring you wear on your finger, class-ring size, stainless
steel, with a nice Java logo, and a fully functional computer chip
inside that runs Java. You stick it in to a little blue dot port that
plugs into a computer's serial port, and it downloads Java class files
and executes them. It's got 32K of static, auto-zeroing RAM, a unique
ID and a private key, and 1024-bit RSA encryption algorithms built
in. The idea is, you use the ring like a smart card, stick it in when
you need to identify yourself to a program, or digitally sign or
encrypt a document. One of the demos has you plugging it in to a door
handle that reads your ID and only opens if you have the right ring.

They also have models that fit into a wrist watch, a fob, a brooch, a
billfold, a bracelet: small accessories that allow function to be
fashionable (although they seem to forget that Pilots, cell phones, et
al. are fashionable accessories in their own right).

One of the main ideas behind putting it on a fashionable accessory is
that it's more physically secure than, e.g., a credit card. A ring is
something you keep on your person all the time, and there are social
conventions and habits that we've developed to protect it (and other
valuable accessories). This is vital for a new security/identity
technology: it has to be hard to lose.

Well, last night, I lost mine.

I was in a bar with some friends, showing it off. A friend asked to
see it, I took it off and passed it to her, she passed it to someone
else, and because I was on my fourth sangria, I was distracted by
another conversation and forgot to ask for it back. It was the old
"who's got the lighter" trick. I didn't notice it was gone until I
woke up this morning.

Ironically, I lost it *because* it's a fashionable accessory. 

 - Alex

P.S. Oops, I just found it. It was on the night table. Nevermind.

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(P.P.S. I've just finished a massive overhaul of my email system. If
you receive this twice, or at the wrong address, please reply and let
me know. This also means that you will soon receive some old, queued
messages I've been putting off sending.)

---
Alex Chaffee - Java Consulting and Training - alex@stinky.com