From norman@hprc.utoronto.ca  Thu Aug 29 08:10:38 1996
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From: norman@hprc.utoronto.ca (Norman Wilson)
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 96 18:09:56 -0400
To: best-of-security@suburbia.net
Subject: BoS: RE: SecurID

I am reluctant to contribute to this, because discussions don't belong
in best-of-security (and in fact annoy me greatly when they appear there;
I get enough junk mail as it is).  Is there some more appropriate place
for the discussion?

That said, a contribution to the discussion: Vin remarks on people
carrying SNKs in little plastic cases so the buttons won't get pressed
by accident.  He's out of date, as I was until a few months ago: the
current model (SNK-010, I think; the only one now carried by our local
distributer for Digital Pathways) has its own fold-down hard plastic cover
for the keyboard and display.  It works well; since I started carrying
a new-style SNK around, I have had no problems whatever with accidental
keystrokes.

As for the batteries: you have now met (at least virtually) a third
person who carries an SNK around, and yes, I have successfully changed
the batteries without resetting the calculator.

Two morals:
1.  Be sure your information is current before declaring defects in a
product; maybe your complaint isn't the first one, and maybe the vendor
has fixed the defects.
2.  A sample of two is not statistically significant.

Norman Wilson
University of Toronto