One of the nice features in XP SP2 Firewall is that when an application tries to access the network, it opens a dialog asking if the application should be granted network access and remembers the choice user makes.  This is great for normal applications.  Unfortunately, Java applications all fall under the hosting application name (java.exe and javaw.exe) so network access can not be given to some Java applications and not others.

Unless Java applications start running with Security Manager enabled and the Security Manager is better integrated with the host platform firewall such as XP SP2 Firewall, I fear IT Administrators will start cracking down on Java applications.  Until that happens, I think popular Java applications will have to be cocooned inside a thin native application wrapper to give each application a unique process signature.

Note that .NET applications don't have this problem.

I have been thinking about new authentication methods and some of the ideas I came up with are quite interesting.  One of them is the Mouse Pad Key.

Mouse Pad Key uses the optical mouse to read keys on a sheet of paper by moving the mouse around on top of the paper.  The idea is still theoretical because I haven't looked into whether optical mouses can reliably read patterns on a piece of paper.  If the key pattern can be printed on regular papers, then keys can be sent electronically.  If not, then a special printing process may enhance security.

A special mouse driver will be necessary, of course, and unubiquitous availability of optical mouse makes deployment impractical but I thought the idea was interesting enough to share.