Electronic books face many problems, including low contrast, low resolution, and lack of portability. Joseph Jacobson, a researcher at MIT's Media Lab, is trying to change that, however. Jacobson is working on a paper-like display that consists of "electronic ink" -- molecules of indium tin oxide that are black on one side and white on the other. Electronic charges flip these molecules, creating the print on the paper. The idea is to have one book containing a sheaf of this paper, and memory chips in the spine. Electronic texts could be loaded into the spine and displayed on the pages, again like a traditional book.
Jacobson has developed a prototype of this reusable paper. In its current form, the paper requires a special printer to create the text (a few hours of the Boston cold managed to permanently darken my sample of the paper). The contrast, while better than LCD screens, isn't great: The "white" side of the indium tin oxide molecules is actually a light gray. Finally, although this paper could potentially save trees, chemicals required in creating this paper are toxic. Despite these setbacks, Jacobson's research is highly original, and its potential impact on the publishing business and environment could be significant.
-- Eugene Eric Kim
In an effort to promote interoperability for smart card implementations, IBM, Sun, Netscape, Oracle, and NCI have agreed upon a "standard" called the "OpenCard framework," which provides a high-level interface. The OpenCard Framework dynamically downloads from the Internet all device drivers that are necessary to communicate with the smart card. The OpenCard Framework incorporates PKCS-11 and is expandable to include other public-key mechanisms. Since the Framework supports Java development, applications will supposedly run on any OpenCard-compliant computer. The OpenCard Framework is available at http://www.nc.com/opencard/.
-- Jonathan Erickson
CI Labs, the consortium established to pioneer component software for OpenDoc, has shut its doors because, said CI Labs President Teri Dahlbeck, sponsor companies "reduced [their] investment in OpenDoc." According to Dahlbeck, the component industry has experienced the proliferation of several component models over the past three years, leading to "fundamental shifts in the component industry."
Initially funded by Apple, IBM, Novell, SunSoft, Taligent, and XSoft (a division of Xerox), CI Labs' goal was to produce a level playing field for application development, so that small companies could participate in major application markets. Ironically, CI Labs membership primarily consisted of a few large firms. Key assets will transition back to the sponsor companies.
-- Jonathan Erickson
Cryptographic researchers have discovered a flaw in the privacy protection used in many of today's digital cellular phones. The problem, uncovered by DDJ contributing editor Bruce Schneier and John Kelsey (both of Counterpane Systems), and graduate student David Wagner of the University of California, Berkeley, affects numbers dialed on the key pad of a cellular handset, including any telephone, PIN, or credit card numbers dialed. The system was supposed to protect the privacy of those dialed digits, but the encryption is weak enough that those digits are accessible to eavesdroppers with a digital scanner. These protections are being deployed in digital cell phones, including CDMA, NAMPS, and TDMA.
-- Jonathan Erickson
The topic was "Crime and Technology" at a symposium sponsored by Harvard University's Journal of Law & Technology, but the issue of privacy dominated the discussions that day. The symposium was divided into two panels: "Search, Seizure, and Surveillance Technology," moderated by Stephen Heymann of the U.S. Attorney's Office; and "The Risks of Electronic Commerce & Banking," moderated by Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson.
Questions the first panel addressed included: Does search and seizure make sense in cyberspace? Does the government have the right to interfere with technology that interferes with the traditional right to search and seizure (as with encryption)? Many of the panelists were involved with past high-profile cases, such as the LaMacchia piracy case (Andrew Good of Silverglate & Good), the investigation and prosecution of Phil Zimmerman (Tony West of the U.S. Attorney's Office), and the first authorized wiretap on the Internet (Heymann). Marc Goodman of the Los Angeles Police Department provided an interesting perspective on how technology affected search and seizure in practice.
The electronic commerce panel focused on the balance between the consumer's right to privacy and the potential for fraud. While the presence of Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), undoubtedly influenced the focus of this discussion toward privacy, panelists (including Thomas Vartanian of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, & Jacobson, and Philip Bane of First Virtual) debated other topics, such as the government's role in electronic commerce.
The government was well represented in the first panel, and sentiments regarding the applicability of law in light of new technologies were, in general, conservative. The panelists did have time to poke fun at the NSA, however. Christopher Slobogin, a professor at the University of Florida College of Law, remarked, "God knows what goes on at the NSA. God doesn't know; He doesn't have security clearance." The second panel, consisting mostly of representatives of the private sector, agreed that the government's role in electronic commerce should be facilitative and not much more.
-- Eugene Eric Kim
In a trade agreement among 39 countries (representing 92.5 percent of all world trade), custom duties on computers, telecom equipment, semiconductors, software, and scientific instruments will be phased out by the year 2000. The Information Technology Agreement is expected to lower consumer cost and spur high-tech implementation in developing countries. Proposed by the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Canada, the pact was negotiated in about six months, making it among the fastest World Trade Agreements ever hammered out.
-- Jonathan Erickson