On 20/7/09 09:18, Udo Puetz wrote:
<rant mode> From a usability point of view I would consider the WHOLE
thing to be a nightmare. I intended to write up a howto, gave that up
now for the time being.
And by the way: ASN1, PKCS#7, PKCS#12. Who was the (pardon my french)
braindead person to name these things? I could probably learn the
difference (I know lots of other 3-4 letter acronyms) but guess what I
hear when I try to remote-debug a call from a luser when I tell them
to give me the PKCS#12 cert...?</rant mode>
Anyway, thanks for your efforts, I consider the whole thing for the
time being as not usable and recommendable.
This is a lesson that all users find and repeat. Smart cards / tokens
are unusable in the general market.
The causes are a bit complex, but basically Mozilla champions the smart
card / token method of storing PKI keys because companies can sell it to
other companies, and companies provide the developers in this area.
Mozilla does not, and no other developers are "available".
The fact that hardware doesn't work in the retail / open / end-user
market which Mozilla is most famous for is more than annoying. It
creates a dead weight "opportunity cost". The solutions in the end-user
market do not use hardware, and won't be implemented if they clash with
the precious hardware model. So the end user is screwed again.
iang
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