The controversy 'stems' from the fact that human embryos are used to acquire (embryonic) stem cells. However, Catherine Verfaillie, a researcher at our university (www.kuleuven.be), has recently discovered that bone marrow contains stem cells with similar traits as embryonic stem cells. There's an article on that in the WP: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A553 69-2005Feb1.html.
Sounds very familiar. In the beginning of october, a large and similar project was announced in Belgium too. The Belgian Phone company (Belgacom), the postal service (De Post/La Poste), a large Belgian security company called "Ubizen", and a chip card manufacurer called "Zetes" are joining the government in setting up a big project that will replace our paper-and-plastic ID cards by certificate chip cards in three years from now, all of this based on the technology of PKI company Baltimore.Uses: filling in your tax form online, ordering forms and documents from the federal and local governement, and interacting with communal services, I guess (like our RVA, the OCMW,...), and even sending secure e-mail(for which you will probably pay a fee too De Post: they're setting up a company called PostBox which will be a joint venture between the postal services and the phone company Belgacom). There's a pilot soon, in about 10 Belgian communities. Leuven, the city where I live, is one of them. As a security engineer in a large finance and insurance group in Belgium, I find this stuff rather exciting. Still... Privacy issues? I heard that, in the beginning, they were planning to issue different certificates according to your "role": there'd be an extra certificate on the chip for doctors, one for lawyers,... to enable them to set up more localised trust networks. But this renders your ID card more and more specific - and having too much information in there is something that feels iffy. We already have a chip card in Belgium (it has been like that for a few years, now) on which all our social security information is stored: we have to present it every time we go to a pharmacy (we don't have drug stores in Belgium like Americans do: aquiring drugs is highly regulated here). Anyway - if this is the start of a process that leads to the complete aggregation of all personal and medical information under a gouvernement controlled nation wide PKI, then this also worries me somewhat. If it'd be just to fill in my tax forms online, I'd be all for. It's not as if we have anything to say in it.
This is the way we live in Belgium. First, we use our brains for good and invent a new standard for AES, then, we kill our brains for good by consuming large quantities of alcohol. Well, I know I did.
Netegrity siteminder is indeed focused on securing web resources. You can, however, write cusomised add-ons. It all depends on whether or not you have time for this - knowledge won't be a problem because their docs are great. Some more information on what applications you actually want to have SSO for (which is your goal, I understand), would be useful here.
I find this remark somewhat disgusting. The only thing the presence of a McDonalds shows, is the degree of Americanisation, not the degree of civilization. Saying that all Americans see these words as synonyms is a crude generalisation, but I do sense a ground of truth in there. Megalomania? America being the Old Rome or Greece of our era? Maybe. I must admit that the latitude of the cultural influence of America on Europe and other more or less homogenous groups provides opportunities too. But please, guys, do not forget your roots. Greetings from the Heart of Europe.
When e-buying moderately priced stuff, the assurance of actually getting payment for it, should entirely be the problem of the online store. I never buy books at Amazon, I just won't provide credit card credentials online. I also don't really like paying in advance. There's a great online book store back here in Belgium where you only have to provide your delivery/billing address and e-mail. They send you the stuff, and if you like it, you pay by ordinary money transfer, and if you don't, you send it back. I just won't have my visa number up for grabs in some big database accessible through the internet. Because as a security engineer, I know how easy it is to overlook something when securing an e-commerce platform. I just won't provide my visa data online. I'll gladly buy stuff online, in fact I do it often, but only when I can pay after the goods arrive, or when I can use 'Proton', which is a popular smart card back here acceppted by all banks and a lot of (online and offline) merchants. Personally, I feel smart cards are the way to go when it comes to providing online credentials or payment: they can store a whole bunch of certificates (for PKI based infrastructures such as logging on to W2K) and private keys, advanced versions of smart cards easily run java applications (you can build nice e-commerce app support in 32K of chip memory), and fit in your back pocket. I don't like the idea of online stores correlating my purchase behaviour or cross-referencing my data with other online e-merchants just for authorisation. It's an easy excuse for marketing and data mining, as already pointed out here.
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The controversy 'stems' from the fact that human embryos are used to acquire (embryonic) stem cells. However, Catherine Verfaillie, a researcher at our university (www.kuleuven.be), has recently discovered that bone marrow contains stem cells with similar traits as embryonic stem cells. There's an article on that in the WP: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A553 69-2005Feb1.html.
Sounds very familiar. In the beginning of october, a large and similar project was announced in Belgium too. The Belgian Phone company (Belgacom), the postal service (De Post/La Poste), a large Belgian security company called "Ubizen", and a chip card manufacurer called "Zetes" are joining the government in setting up a big project that will replace our paper-and-plastic ID cards by certificate chip cards in three years from now, all of this based on the technology of PKI company Baltimore.Uses: filling in your tax form online, ordering forms and documents from the federal and local governement, and interacting with communal services, I guess (like our RVA, the OCMW, ...), and even sending secure e-mail(for which you will probably pay a fee too De Post: they're setting up a company called PostBox which will be a joint venture between the postal services and the phone company Belgacom). There's a pilot soon, in about 10 Belgian communities. Leuven, the city where I live, is one of them. As a security engineer in a large finance and insurance group in Belgium, I find this stuff rather exciting. Still... Privacy issues? I heard that, in the beginning, they were planning to issue different certificates according to your "role": there'd be an extra certificate on the chip for doctors, one for lawyers, ... to enable them to set up more localised trust networks. But this renders your ID card more and more specific - and having too much information in there is something that feels iffy. We already have a chip card in Belgium (it has been like that for a few years, now) on which all our social security information is stored: we have to present it every time we go to a pharmacy (we don't have drug stores in Belgium like Americans do: aquiring drugs is highly regulated here). Anyway - if this is the start of a process that leads to the complete aggregation of all personal and medical information under a gouvernement controlled nation wide PKI, then this also worries me somewhat. If it'd be just to fill in my tax forms online, I'd be all for. It's not as if we have anything to say in it.
This is the way we live in Belgium. First, we use our brains for good and invent a new standard for AES, then, we kill our brains for good by consuming large quantities of alcohol. Well, I know I did.
Netegrity siteminder is indeed focused on securing web resources. You can, however, write cusomised add-ons. It all depends on whether or not you have time for this - knowledge won't be a problem because their docs are great. Some more information on what applications you actually want to have SSO for (which is your goal, I understand), would be useful here.
I find this remark somewhat disgusting. The only thing the presence of a McDonalds shows, is the degree of Americanisation, not the degree of civilization. Saying that all Americans see these words as synonyms is a crude generalisation, but I do sense a ground of truth in there. Megalomania? America being the Old Rome or Greece of our era? Maybe. I must admit that the latitude of the cultural influence of America on Europe and other more or less homogenous groups provides opportunities too. But please, guys, do not forget your roots. Greetings from the Heart of Europe.
When e-buying moderately priced stuff, the assurance of actually getting payment for it, should entirely be the problem of the online store.
I never buy books at Amazon, I just won't provide credit card credentials online. I also don't really like paying in advance. There's a great online book store back here in Belgium where you only have to provide your delivery/billing address and e-mail. They send you the stuff, and if you like it, you pay by ordinary money transfer, and if you don't, you send it back. I just won't have my visa number up for grabs in some big database accessible through the internet. Because as a security engineer, I know how easy it is to overlook something when securing an e-commerce platform. I just won't provide my visa data online. I'll gladly buy stuff online, in fact I do it often, but only when I can pay after the goods arrive, or when I can use 'Proton', which is a popular smart card back here acceppted by all banks and a lot of (online and offline) merchants.
Personally, I feel smart cards are the way to go when it comes to providing online credentials or payment: they can store a whole bunch of certificates (for PKI based infrastructures such as logging on to W2K) and private keys, advanced versions of smart cards easily run java applications (you can build nice e-commerce app support in 32K of chip memory), and fit in your back pocket.
I don't like the idea of online stores correlating my purchase behaviour or cross-referencing my data with other online e-merchants just for authorisation. It's an easy excuse for marketing and data mining, as already pointed out here.