[clug] Yubikeys - group purchase?

[Miles Goodhew]

Arjen,

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 8:19 PM, Arjen Lentz <arjen at lentz.com.au> wrote:
<Bob said>
>>> - a bluetooth Yubikey that looks like a bluetooth keyboard and
>>>        (hopefully) allows multiplexing with whatever other keyboard
>>>        widget or device the PDA is currently using
>
> It'd need a battery, and bluetooth eats a lot of battery. Not a fan of this
> idea.
> I like the simplicity of the Yubikey as it is, it's quite brilliant.

  Yeah, to work like Bob envisages (A HID keyboard comms over
bluetooth instead of USB), it'd either need to be connected _all_ the
time (a bit of an ask considering how infrequent authentications are)
or only connected when required, which involves a bit of
waiting-around.
  To top it off, the usual way of performing a keyboard pairing over
bluetooth is the OS saying "Here's some random digits - please type
them on your keyboard and press enter" - if the "Blubikey" has one
button, this could be tricky.

>>        Some Scandinavian countries are experimenting using mobile phones
>> as small payment enablers a bit like those micro-chipped credit-cards like
>> Chipknip (http://www.chipknip.nl/Pages/default.aspx).
>
> I hope you weren't talking about Scandinavian countries like The
> Netherlands, because NL is not a member of that set ;-)

  No, sorry, I mumble even when I type. What I meant was:
* Some Scandinavian countries (who skip my mind) I recall were
experimenting with mobile phones as authentication tokens for
small-value transactions
* These transactions is similar to the financial model used by smart
credit-card experiments a few years ago in Australia
* A famous, successful example of that is Chipknip
* Chipknip is Dutch
* Holland has no Tasmanian princesses.
* I've lost my train of thought, where was I again?

> There's also a train service in the North of NL which allows you to pay for
> your train ticket over the phone by sending an SMS to a premium number. You
> then back a confirmation, which is what you show to the conductor. Quite
> nifty.

  There's that train! Yes, I have a rudimentary derivation of that
with a couple of financial institutions that involves them sending me
some digits through SMS and me typing them into a web page to
authorise a payment.
  You may well be taking about what I thought happened further North.

> Regarding chipknip-style stuff (knip is a Dutch colloquial word for wallet)
> is apparently fast taking over markets and small retailers in The
> Netherlands at least, as it's very cheap to manage and they don't have to
> carry money. If that trend continues, physical money could disappear from at
> least sectors of the economy quite rapidly.

  Yeah, well money only exists because we believe it does anyway. I
always try to do financial transactions as cashlessly as possible,
preferrably through an invoice/pay model rather than the credit cards'
"Here's my wallet, take what you need!" model.
  Hm, looks like the train's been derailed - I'd better hang-up now.

Ta!

M0les.

-- 
Miles Goodhew,
Computer Scientist