Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy?

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To: ToySoldier who wrote (25162)	1/27/1999 10:26:00 AM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (1) of 42771

Digital Me is the key to Novell becoming an Internet leader Why? Because it is a better way idea to establish a personal digital identity and allow secure ecommerce transactions. To understand the current state of thinking amongst Novell's competitors about digital identity and ecommerce you have to look at the INTC pc id fiasco. Under this system every computer gets an ID. Now we can pin down ecommerce transactions to your computer. What is wrong with this system is that control over the user's digital identity is not the users. The whole philosophy is that INTC or MSFT or NSCP or some knowing entity maintains your identity by accessing your computer id without your knowledge. Most people wouldn't have a clue as to what their computer based id was in such a system But that's not how commerce works. IT is in fact the opposite of how commerce works successfully. You have to go back to the days of the Model T. You could have any color Model T you wanted as long as it was black. Henry Ford made the decisions on colors. Black. When other companies began to offer consumer choice in automobiles Ford lost its dominance. Choice and personal identity are central to the American experience. Any digital identity has to be controlled and owned by me. Digital Me. Representative Markley, who has been one of the most astute members of Congress on technology issues raised a red flag about the INTC proposal immediately. As a politician he was acutely aware that Big Brother solutions haven't worked in America since King George and the Boston Tea Party. No system that takes control over a person's digital identity and takes their identity away from them can possibly succeed. That is exactly the opposite of what everyone wants. I want to control my identity, I want to control my credit card numbers, and I want some security for my ecommerce purchasing. I do not want some company controlling my identity. I want freedom. But expect to see more old thinking out there. For example now that we have 128 bit encryption what's the problem with using credit card numbers on the internet? The problem is the information is accumulated in a data base that you have no control over. What good is encryption if the information ends up on multiple vendor databases! It will not be stolen in transmission but it will be stolen from the vendor's billing system. Unlike credit card theft, where you know your card is missing from your wallet, in ecommerce how can you even remember who you gave your credit card to? Oh yeah I gave the numbers to www.plainvanilla.com. I think they changed their web site.... The biggest problem Novell faces with Digital Me is being influenced by the poor reasoning of their competition. When Kevin Mitnik broke into Netcom's computer system via the net what did he steal? He stole 25,000 credit card numbers together with names and addresses. That was before ecommerce got off the ground. Just imagine what is going to happen to vendors when a black market in internet identities develops. How are they going to know that you are who you say you are? The second idea crippling the development of secure digital identities is the notion that somehow vendors need all of this information about you to do ecommerce. Ecommerce is about getting paid. It is about developing the simplest method of conducting secure transactions over the internet where the buyer gets the product and the vendor gets paid. Digital Me is light years ahead of dumb computer id schemes. IT is a project which should receive the highest level of executive attention at Novell.

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