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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (44524)	5/8/2000 4:43:00 PM
From: rudedog	Respond to of 74651

Cheryl - I hate to fuel those tabloid rumors - but great post, agree with both the premise and the conclusion. Couldn't have said it better (or even as well) myself.

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (44524)	5/9/2000 9:53:00 AM
From: Tim Hogan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

<A LOT of end-users will see a simple solution like a cell phone w/internet access easy & cheap to use & also very secure. No file system to protect, limited access to the O/S, encrypted internet xactions & most importantly, nothing to think about. Leave the security to your ISP. Let them worry about that, you have enough to worry about.> No way. This is my personal information and it's obvious that the so-called ISPs cannot secure my information. Credit card #s are stolen from servers every day. Back-end servers can pull together a composite of my spending habits and other personal information. I think people are trusting ISPs even less today. <I can see lots & lots of PC customers who will use their PC for games & video & entertainment etal. but when it comes to secure xactions over the internet, they're gonna go for thin client solutions.> Oh, so you're saying that all of those credit card #s and other various personal information that were stolen from various e-commerce sites would not have happened if users had done their transactions via some "thin client"? The security problems are on the server side, not the client side. <I remember it was Bill Joy who said (about 2 or 3 years ago) that security (that is, a lack of security) was going to really hurt Wintel & limit PC sales, especially when it comes to the internet. It looks like his prediction is coming to pass.> Really? PC sales are slowing? Unless you believe MS's (in my opinion, self-serving) forecasts, PC sales seem to be pretty healthy. Besides, WINTEL is not what it used to be: The thin/fat client argument has nothing to do with on-line transactions. The real problem is that we're using credit cards in a way they were not intended. You are supposed to verify a signature for each credit card transaction. A different technology needs to be used for secure remote transactions. This is independent of thin/fat clients.