Slashdot brings you news of the world as it relates to hating Microsoft and loving Linux; now, it appears that “Salon” is turning into the site that gives you news of the world as it relates to hating the RIAA and loving Napster^H^H^H^H^H^H^HGnutella^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAudioGalaxy. Consider this article, which attempts to draw parallels between Osama bin Laden’s network of terrorists and the users of file sharing programs. Can we be any more callous here? I’m considering giving up on Salon altogether. This, plus their new full-screen click-through ads.

Sun and other also-rans announce vaporware competition for Microsoft Passport. Note that AOL has one too, allegedly slightly closer to reality.

My prediction: Passport will be inescapable in the Windows world; MSDN will require it, MSN Messenger will require it, Windows Update will require it, all MS-owned web sites will require it (including “Slate”, one of my favorite online magazines).

AOL/Time Warner will spread their own seeds to all their entertainment sites, targeting kids and students. Some brave/stupid e-commerce sites will try one or the other, but it’ll be voluntary and they’ll keep their existing login system as a backup, which will turn out to be very helpful the first time MS or AOL gets hacked or DDOS’ed or simply goes offline for days at a time without explanation (ala Hotmail outages).

Nobody will use Sun’s version.

Meanwhile, if a digital identity proves to be useful at all (which is questionable), the privacy-loving open source community will come up with a system whereby you can store your own identities in some standard, open, documented format (probably XML-based), and can control how much of it you share with other parties. Please note the plural here: the goal of every digital identity system I’ve read about is to track my singular identity across all my activities. But this is in direct conflict with my personal goal, which is to have you easily recognize the identity that I wish to portray to you. So far, all the centralized authentication schemes seem to think that I want to be the same person on eBay that I do on SourceForge that I do on alt.pictures.binaries.whatever. In the real world, people like the fact that it’s difficult to reconcile our different identities in our different activities. Any digital equivalent that fails to respect this is ultimately doomed.

Microsoft claims rivals are just as insecure as IIS. This is total crap. I should write an entire essay on why this is crap, but I don’t have time right now. Maybe tonight. But essentially, the problem with IIS is not that it’s insecure by default (although it is), but that it is virtually impossible to keep track of all the hotfixes and patches you need and those you’ve already installed. In other words, the real security problem is not any specific vulnerability, but the overall lack of manageability.

Clay Shirky: In Defense of Cities [via Tomalak's Realm] Higher-order organization will always arise out of sufficiently complex systems of independent actors. I love Clay. Every time he writes about anything, I read it, and every time I read it, I understand more about it. He did a wonderful article a few months ago explaining exactly how Hailstorm works (specifically, how it works to the advantage of Microsoft and the disadvantage of almost everyone else).

Live from Seybold. Robert Scoble is blogging the Seybold conference in real time. By the time you read to the end, hit refresh and read more!

§

Respond privately

I am no longer accepting public comments on this post, but you can use this form to contact me privately. (Your message will not be published.)



§

firehosecodeplanet

© 2001–present Mark Pilgrim