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January 24, 2007
ActiveX in Korea
ActiveX in Korea: Three Korean government boards warned yesterday that various banking and shopping sites will not work with Microsoft Vista when it is released next week. The Chosun newspaper says: "The problem is that Vista doesn't play well with a software program called Active-X that is widely used in Korean Internet sites." That didn't make sense to me... Windows is built on ActiveX, and Vista supports it. George Ou at ZDNet supplies a key fact: Korea has homegrown encryption, due to prior US munitions controls, and it appears that many websites each deliver their own ActiveX Control for secure transactions. Recent versions of Windows do impose stricter authentication controls when installing ActiveX Controls onto visitors' systems, and this may be why the different banks and stores suggest different dates for when they'll support Vista. It would also explain George's line "While there are Java and Netscape implementations of SEED, it was almost never implemented"... if the site isn't relying on a common-protocol transaction capability on their clients' machines, but instead wants to install their own code onto clients' machines, then few sites could afford creating Netscape Plugins, Mac support, or platform-neutral code, and they may just each be late in changing their old ActiveX for Vista's new security requirements. Me, I'd hate it if different stores, banks, or government bureaus each insisted on installing their own software onto my machine, but the browsers themselves didn't offer sufficient security. Still, shouldn't other countries be in a similar situation too, then? I'll try to learn more through the day and add anything I find in comments here.
Posted by JohnDowdell at January 24, 2007 07:18 PM
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I tried searching Microsoft staff blogs, but multiword terms seem to be logical OR rather than AND... they may have info there, but I couldn't readily find it.
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 25, 2007 08:16 AM
Slashdot has commentary now... I'll try to run through this once I get into the office today, see if they offer additional leads for figuring out what's actually going on, and whether other places with encryption limits are similarly affected, or whether there's something specific to Korea here.
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 25, 2007 08:54 AM
Yoonjung Yoo at ZDNet Korea has the best info yet, along with the blockbuster word that government of Korea is being sued by an advocacy group for its endorsement of "IE-only" policies.
At the Techmeme cluster I see some phrasing this as "Korea says 'No' to Vista", but I don't think that's accurate or fair... looks more like a "Problems with OS-specific websites" story instead.
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 25, 2007 09:08 AM
"The Cost of Monoculture" examines the intentional tradeoff the Korean government made to enable fast growth and universal net access. Slashdot follows up, as does Dave Storey of Opera. Korea GNU has a recent history.
Posted by: John Dowdell at January 26, 2007 01:09 PM
John- thanks for the link!
[jd sez: Thanks for the writeup! :) ]
Posted by: Gen Kanai at January 29, 2007 01:59 AM