RSA Expo

I went to meet my adviser on Wednesday morning and he says how about you go to San Francisco tomorrow and visit RSA Expo. RSA Expo was essentially an exhibition that was being held in San Francisco this week as a part of RSA conference. As you might have guessed, saying no wasn't really an option :D

There were about 200 computer and network security firms in the expo with their exhibits. Most people were nicely dressed in business casuals (as against my usual perception about tech firms :P). As you can see, atmo was 'rich' (again, unlike the usual perception about tech firms I have from India :D) with loads of freebies and i-pad raffles!

Here is an unsorted list of interesting things/people that I came across:

- Smart Cartridge Project

Most people buy a good quality printer from a recognized brand. However, when it comes to replacing cartridges, they tend to go for 'pirated' low quality ones. As a result, printer companies are losing money and they also 'claim' that it reduces printer life. Smart Cartridge Project is about making cartridge authenticate itself to the printer before it can be put to use.

- Differential Power Analysis

This type of attack was introduced by Cryptography Research Inc (16 year old Stanford product). It's an attempt to guess the key by analyzing the power consumption of a cryptographic device (e.g. smart card). I had heard of this before, but didn't know it actually works!

- The PhD guy

I met a guy who is joining Stanford's CS PhD program coming fall. He graduated around 1995 (!!) and worked for Cryptographic Research Inc for last 16 years. Now, given the fact that they've sold off the firm to Rambus (another Stanford product, EE HOD owns this one), he has made up his mind to go back to school! One crazy career path !! :D

- Indians

The number of Indians at the expo was astoundingly high and I found it irritating for some reason. Is tech all that Indians do in US?

All in all, silicon valley is promising. Lot of intelligent people are working on variety of interesting and challenging problems. Question is whether you want to be one of those.