Rui CarmoThere's been a bit of noise recently concering the new national ID card that is apparently being tested in the Azores. I haven't really kept track of it, but it sort of cropped up on me today, completely out of the blue.
Now, as anyone will tell you, I am usually skeptical about this sort of thing, both due to the Security issues involved and to the usual coalescence of vendor-driven solutions to solve what are (or should be) essentially open-ended problems that require open, interoperable solutions.
Anyway, I had the opportunity of taking a cursory glance at the manual (PDF link, in Portuguese) and noticing that the supported platforms are:
- Microsoft Windows XP
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003
- Microsoft Windows 2000 SP3
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- OpenSuse 10.2
- Ubuntu 6.10
- Fedora Core 6
- Caixa Mágica 11 (this is a local distro)
...but no Vista or Mac OS X, apparently. This despite there actually being a Mac OS X installation file for the software.
Not wanting to diss this before it gets rolling (it has a lot of good points, despite my expecting privacy Zealots to come crawling out of the woodwork any second now), I hope they update the manual soon, and that it includes suitable configuration instructions for both Mail.app and Safari, especially if using this is going to become any sort of requirement for legal documents, tax returns, signed e-mail, etc.
After all, I shouldn't be excluded from citizenship just because I don't use the "right" kind of computer, right? Otherwise, I might feel tempted to follow pfig's example and "upgrade countries"...
Just kidding, of course. But this should be very interesting to keep track of.