AuctionBytes is reporting this morning that Citibank’s C2it is shutting down.
A CitiGroup spokesperson confirmed that the c2it online payment service will cease operations next month. c2it will close all customer accounts effective November 9, 2003, and will send remaining funds by check to customers. The site will be taken down on February 22, 2004.
A banner on the C2it website confirms the news.
Writer Bruce Sterling shares his opinions on ten technologies that deserve to die. Top of the list: nuclear weapons. One with the greatest personal impact: internal combustion engines.
Charles Jones, Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, writes about the fiscal challenges ahead.
The fiscal problem of the 21st century, then, is this: Under current policies, the fraction of resources society devotes to health care appears likely to rise substantially over the next 50 years. Reasonable projections suggest that spending on Medicare and Medicaid as a percentage of GDP may well rise from 3.4% in 2000 to nearly 15% by 2075.
Aaron Scullion of the BBC reports on the Oyster card, a new smart card about to be launched by Transport for London.
Each card has a unique ID number linked to the registered owner’s name, which is recorded together with the location and time of the exchange every time the card is used. The data, retained for business purposes, could be released to law enforcement agencies under certain conditions.
Earlier today, I linked to a report by a number of computer security scientists on the risks associated with a computing monoculture. Tonight, Reuters is reporting that one of the report’s authors (and a good friend), Dan Geer, lost his job over the matter.
AtStake confirmed that technology officer Dan Geer was no longer with the company, but would not say if he resigned or was fired. An AtStake statement said Geer was “no longer associated with the company” as of Tuesday, the eve of the report’s release. It added that Geer’s “participation in and release of the report was not sanctioned by AtStake…. The values and opinions of the report are not in line with AtStake’s views.”
Very disappointing…
The June 2003 issue of the Review of Network Economics was dedicated to the economics of payments and card network schemes.
The Review is “an electronic-based refereed journal that publishes papers on the economics of network industries that have the primary purpose of reviewing, surveying, or providing a fresh perspective on the existing literature.”
Articles included:
Warren Cornwall reports in this morning’s Seattle Times about how the King County Library System is now selling used books it collects through Amazon.com.
Library officials say they will raise more money with less effort but acknowledge it will make the books more expensive and the shopping experience a little less memorable.
“Whereas we loved the book sale, it has become a difficult thing to sustain because of the sheer volume of books and the amount of time it took to hold the sales,” said library spokeswoman Marsha Iverson.
A leading group of computer security scientists (Dan Geer, Rebecca
Bace, Peter Gutmann, Perry Metzger, John S. Quarterman, Charles Pfleeger, and Bruce
Schneier) have written a paper about the risks to society from a Microsoft-dominated computing monoculture.
Most of the world‚s computers run Microsoft‚s operating systems, thus most of the
world‚s computers are vulnerable to the same viruses and worms at the same time. The
only way to stop this is to avoid monoculture in computer operating systems, and for
reasons just as reasonable and obvious as avoiding monoculture in farming. Microsoft
exacerbates this problem via a wide range of practices that lock users to its platform.
The impact on security of this lock-in is real and endangers society.
Good article by Costas Markides and Paul Geroski in the latest issue of Strategy+Business (registration required) discussing how the firms initially responsible for innovation often aren’t the ones who harvest the rewards. A similar theme to some of Brian Arthur’s work on technology revolutions and who really wins.
Last week Comptroller of the Currency John D. Hawke, Jr. addressed the American Bankers Association at its annual meeting in Hawaii. His comments addressed his views as to why banks were increasingly coming under legislative scrutiny. In particular, he focused on several areas he thinks may bring increased regulation on banks — if they don’t do something about it themselves: financial privacy and identity theft, predatory lending, and credit card account management practices.
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