News reports out of Geneva this week tell of Microsoft “helping” the Wi-Fi industry with a new spec called Wireless Provisioning Services [WPS]. On the face of it, WPS will standardize the way in which users at a hot spot location and the hot spot provider talk to each other. Thus making getting on line less of a chore. Sounds good. However, in my interview with Jawad Khaki, corporate vice president for Windows Network and Communications Technologies, I picked up a few of those ominous signals that tell you WPS is a Trojan Horse left at the doorstep of users and hot spot providers.Here’s why I say this. The hot spot purveyor must be running Windows 2003 Server edition on the back end in order to talk to WPA installed by the client on the front end. In typical Microsoft fashion, when I asked Khaki if WPA was being submitted to any standards body he replied by telling me Microsoft is using industry-standard components. That may well be, but WPA is a Microsoft standard. So, what happens if the provider wants to run Linux, or a flavor of Unix from Sun, IBM, etc?Do we really want a Microsoft standard for accessing IEEE 802.11x in public networks? I wonder how secure can Microsoft make this? Their track record on security and stopping hackers is abysmal. Also, look for the hype behind the news. Microsoft says Boingo, Cometa, Gric, iPass, Pronto Networks, and Wayport support this. But does support mean they are deploying it? It ain’t necessarily so. Technology Industry