?? 197-198.html
字號:
<!-- Edit EirGrabber 3.01 -->
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Smart Card Developer's Kit:Card-Side Application Programming Interfaces</TITLE>
<CENTER>
<TABLE BORDER>
<TR>
<TD><A HREF="195-197.html">Previous</A></TD>
<TD><A HREF="../ewtoc.html">Table of Contents</A></TD>
<TD><A HREF="../ch09/199-201.html">Next</A></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
<P><BR></P>
<P>Smart cards are experiencing a similar transfiguration. Long regarded as simply a secure portable storage medium for a handful of counters—a kind of secure if limited capacity floppy disk—smart cards are slowly coming to be regarded as general-purpose computers and a contender to be the next low-cost computing plateau. Smart card computing is just at its Tiny Basic and Visicalc dawn, however, and the smart card killer app has yet to emerge.
</P>
<P>It is interesting to speculate on why it has taken 20 years for the potential of smart card technology to be recognized. The lack of detailed technical information about smart cards has undoubtedly been a factor, as has the difficulty in gaining access to smart card software development tools. This situation was not by chance, but was a result of the deliberate policies and pressures of the big smart card issuers. Controlling information about and access to smart cards was part and parcel of the “smart card security through obscurity” strategy. Any security breach would weaken public confidence in smart cards, so if the goals of the big issuers could be met within a framework of tightly controlled information, then these controls did no harm and possibly precluded an unknown number of security incidents.</P>
<P>This situation was stable as long as smart cards didn’t have to make a business case (that is, as long as their use was dictated by a central government in spite of the business case). As soon as smart cards tried to penetrate the U.S. market, where their use was not to be dictated and where they had to compete with much cheaper magnetic stripe cards, it was recognized that only multiapplication cards could make a business case. This meant that as many applications of smart cards as possible had to be brought into being. The only way to do this was to open up smart card application programming to everybody.</P>
<P>Think about a traffic light running Tiny Basic and then think about a Pentium II running Windows NT. There is no reason why this isn’t the same distance that we will travel with smart cards—only we’ll do it in less than half the time it took microcomputers. Smart card chip manufacturers are planning to produce much more capable smart card chips. Smart card readers are becoming standard equipment on desktop, personal, and network computers. Smart card application builders are starting to get the scent.</P>
<P>At this point, the only thing that is clear is that more and more functionality will be migrating to the card and it will become more and more of a general-purpose computer. Throughout it all, it will hang on to its defining characteristics of being a tamper-resistant, portable personal computer.</P><P><BR></P>
<CENTER>
<TABLE BORDER>
<TR>
<TD><A HREF="195-197.html">Previous</A></TD>
<TD><A HREF="../ewtoc.html">Table of Contents</A></TD>
<TD><A HREF="../ch09/199-201.html">Next</A></TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
</BODY></HTML>
?? 快捷鍵說明
復制代碼
Ctrl + C
搜索代碼
Ctrl + F
全屏模式
F11
切換主題
Ctrl + Shift + D
顯示快捷鍵
?
增大字號
Ctrl + =
減小字號
Ctrl + -