Cатсн²² (in)sесuяitу / ChrisJohnRiley

Well the ICEi conference has come and gone. Was it all that it could have been… well yes and no, for me at least. It was fun, and learning a little more about how the gambling and gaming industry works is always a good thing I think. However the opportunities for me to learn about that things I’m really passionate about where few and far between. The highlight being a half hour chat to one of the technical designers behind one of TAB Austria’s new jukebox systems with USB support. I was keen to know about how they had secured the USB system and validated input (if any). It was good to learn that the USB is for output only, and the system is designed to ignore all USB devices other than USB pen drives (no chance of using a USB keyboard to get into the system and download the music collection. The details were a little thin on the ground on how they’re doing this, but I guess that’s one of the secrets they want to keep close to their chest. Although I have a contact who deals with TAB Austria and next time he gets one of these jukeboxes in I can have a proper dig around to see how it ticks. Ironic that I travelled all the way to London just to see the products from a company located about an hour away from me here in Austria…

Have you ever noticed however that whenever a company wants to move their product to the next level and make it fresh, they just stick a USB port on it. Hoe well are these companies thinking about the implementation and consequences I wonder. I just hope that banks don’t starting thinking a USB port on ATM machines would be nice for downloading your statements….