Dan Geer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> reported:
>> Yesterday I saw a smartcard of a different color. In particular,
>> it is the smartcard chip but in a key-ring thing that is more or
>> less identical to the Mobil SpeedPass except that it has a USB
>> connector on one end and a keyring hole on the other. Total length
>> circa 1.25"; color purple; maker Rainbow Technologies. As my pal
>> Peter Honeyman said in showing it to me, "There are already all
>> the USB ports we'll ever need." I'd point out that without the
>> 7816 requirement for flex a whole lot more memory is a trivial
>> add-on and that USB is not a bandwidth bottleneck.
>> ref: http://www.rainbow.com/ikey/graphics/iKey_DS.pdf
Steve Bellovin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> commented:
>Folks I've talked to about products like that say that USB ports aren't
>designed for that many insertion/removal cycles. (We'll ignore, for now, all
>of the PCs that have their USB ports in the back, where you can't get at
>them easily. One could always add on a hub.)
To which I add, wistfully:
Same problem that the PCMCIA cards had (in a notable contrast to any
smartcard reader.) I presume that it would have cost more to design these
ports to withstand multitiple daily insertions, and the cost/benefits ratio
just weren't there (or this sort of use didn't seem lucrative enough to
factor into the equation.)
Suerte,
_Vin
