Stories by Gary Anthes

On the surface, encryption has always seemed a no-brainer. Why expose confidential information to prying eyes when you could protect it by scrambling it? But even though encryption technologies have been widely available for more than 10 years, they have been slow to catch on.

There is nothing in computer science as basic as the binary number system. In fact, the word binary is often used to refer to something that's too simple, as in, "He's a binary thinker," meaning he can't see shades of grey. (Or the digits 2 through 9.)

Technopundits have predicted the arrival of "smart spaces" for years. Your car sends a message to a robot in your kitchen, so it can have your martini ready when you arrive home in the evening. A software agent on your LAN knows not to interrupt you with a phone call -- unless it's from your boss -- because you're working on a presentation for a meeting later that day.

Discussions about super computer performance almost always center on processing speed -- how many gazillion operations per second can be performed by the giant machines. Makers and users of supercomputers also like to brag about things like the number of processors, the amount of memory and the bandwidth available for moving data about.

Another shoe dropped last week for Lucent Technologies, which said it discovered a $125 million revenue shortfall for its fourth fiscal quarter ended September 30. The company had previously reported "pro forma" revenue for the quarter of $9.4 billion.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Internet domain-name system, is in the process of electing five new at-large members of its board of directors.

Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs Innovations last week made available the third release of Plan 9, an operating system geared toward distributed computing. For the first time, Plan 9, conceived in the late 80s, will be offered without charge or licensing requirement from Bell Labs' Web site.

The US computer industry is applauding the Clinton administration's relaxation of restrictions on the export of strong encryption products but is complaining that new rules still leave in place too much red tape.

Worth all the fuss?