The first example of this I saw was Diamond Park in 1995, a 3d virtual world from Mitsubishi ER Labs that you navigated on a bicycle.
Then Georgia Tech published a bike race virtual environment based on the olympics in '97, that project is still going.
My gym at work has 2 Tectrix VR exercise bicycles with video monitors and left/right turn by leaning that give you the option of a winter tour, island tour, or basic games, you can do any of the above with 2 players, and you can set it to pay attention to hills or not... I find that using it instead of the regular exercise bike I will get a lot more violent, as if I were playing a real sport, a lot more cardio workout, and it's fun when you go to the gym with a friend, whereas with the other I just plot along reading my magazine or book... but they don't make them anymore, according to the gym, so when they break, we're SOL. www.bodyquest.com claims to still sell them, but I think their website is just out of date.
You're right. I was thinking about the partnership with Sun in terms of Sun One (formerly Netscape CA). I wonder at what point they're competing with each other in that partnership? If they'd get together to include that functionality in Sun One, I'd be really interested.
The term CA refers to a Certificate Authority. A trusted CA functionally means that either it was included in your browser, mail tool, or Java interpreter, or you added it and clicked "trust this cert", or your IT department included it in your desktop load. The main cost in being a public CA is in very expensive lawyers to write a CPS which says how you're liable for certification practices.
For internal use only, there is no reason you can't be your own CA, as long as you prepare a standard client load for all of your internal users. SSL is no less secure, all the cert is used for is negotiating a session key anyway.
If you're going to enroll for more than 30 or so SSL certificates a year, you have a couple of alternatives to keep costs down. You can run a RA, which means you register the certs and a trusted CA signs them (VeriSign operates under this model), or you can get a subordinate CA that is signed by a trusted CA (RSA bought Xcert so they could offer this service).
RSA writes very good docs too, but they're new to the CA business, and I believe the way their KCA product is positioned and pricing model will change. They are mostly interested in customers who use a lot of certs, for now.
The first example of this I saw was Diamond Park in 1995, a 3d virtual world from Mitsubishi ER Labs that you navigated on a bicycle. Then Georgia Tech published a bike race virtual environment based on the olympics in '97, that project is still going. My gym at work has 2 Tectrix VR exercise bicycles with video monitors and left/right turn by leaning that give you the option of a winter tour, island tour, or basic games, you can do any of the above with 2 players, and you can set it to pay attention to hills or not... I find that using it instead of the regular exercise bike I will get a lot more violent, as if I were playing a real sport, a lot more cardio workout, and it's fun when you go to the gym with a friend, whereas with the other I just plot along reading my magazine or book... but they don't make them anymore, according to the gym, so when they break, we're SOL. www.bodyquest.com claims to still sell them, but I think their website is just out of date.
You're right. I was thinking about the partnership with Sun in terms of Sun One (formerly Netscape CA). I wonder at what point they're competing with each other in that partnership? If they'd get together to include that functionality in Sun One, I'd be really interested.
They're popular in europe, too. I see they're partnering with Sun, but it doesn't look like they're offering an RA or subordinate CA, unfortunately.
For internal use only, there is no reason you can't be your own CA, as long as you prepare a standard client load for all of your internal users. SSL is no less secure, all the cert is used for is negotiating a session key anyway.
If you're going to enroll for more than 30 or so SSL certificates a year, you have a couple of alternatives to keep costs down. You can run a RA, which means you register the certs and a trusted CA signs them (VeriSign operates under this model), or you can get a subordinate CA that is signed by a trusted CA (RSA bought Xcert so they could offer this service).
The first company to offer a tool to let you manage your own CA was Netscape, which became iPlanet, and was bought by Sun. Their documentation is great, read this explanation of the benefits of a Self-Signed Root Versus Subordinate CA.
RSA writes very good docs too, but they're new to the CA business, and I believe the way their KCA product is positioned and pricing model will change. They are mostly interested in customers who use a lot of certs, for now.