Changelog

Slashdot has another winner. Now we’re talking open CMS interoperability. The question put forth in the Advogato article is whether or not interoperability and the standards required for it is really neccesary in the CMS world.

The answer is (in my mind) a qualified yes. I like to mess around with different CMS systems; in the past I’ve used Blosxom, Blogger, and now Movable Type. I’ve also done my site by hand using emacs, notepad, and whatever else was at hand. I’ve settled into a confortable mode wherein I write posts locally in emacs or TextPad, then paste them into my CMS of the week. Blosxom was nice because all I had to do was stick the text file in my site directory and I was done. However, Blosxom didn’t deliver all the features I wanted, so now I have to cut and paste my posts into MT. Fortunately, MT supports the BloggerAPI via XML-RPC and I can use on of many blogging apps to do my posts (though I’m lazy and don’t). My hope is that eventually internet publishing via a CMS will be transparent: I write my piece, save it, and it gets whisked away via some (secure) path to my site, which is rebuilt to reflect the change. Interoperability makes this happen, and more importantly, it means that when I find the next cool toy to play with, I can port my posts with no trouble.

Now for the qualification: why not start by supporting those standards that exist? WebDAV, BloggerAPI, RSS/RDF, and XML-RPC make a lot of interoperability easy. Take a good look at where interop whould go, and in the mean time, let us post away.

Slashdot has a story up about an article at LinuxWorld about single sign-on services. The author contends (I think) that neither Microsoft’s passport (which he contends is to insecure) and the Liberty Alliance will succeed, but will rather be beaten to the punch by a technology taken from Plan 9. It seems the newest version of Plan 9 incorporates a new security model that incorporates and improves upon elements of Kerberos, SSH, and PAM. In essence, a service called Factotum provides a single sign-on service for all parts of the Plan 9 OS. A user logs into the machine, at which point the Factotum is started, afterwards, systems requiring user authentication can query Factotum to verify the user’s identity. In essence, Factotum acts as a keeper of the keys, maintaining your passwords and such in a secure location on the local computer. You prove your identity to Factotum by successfully logging-on to the system. If you encounter a system for which Factotum does not have a key, you will be prompted to provide one.

While Factotum does indeed sound like a very nice system, I’m not entirely sure I see how it would work as a single sign-on system across the network. I imagine what would happen is that a system requiring authentication would query the user’s local Factotum for identity verification. However, this lacks the “access anywhere, anytime” abilities of other systems. I also think that my understanding of this issue is far from complete at this point.

I see this as a very important issue though… I would very much like a system that allows me to access sites using only a single sign-in. I have too many passwords and such already. From a security stand-point consider which is less secure: A user who must maintain 20 username/password pairs, and does so by reusing those pairs, or a system in which they only have a single username/password pair?

The most annoying thing about alternating between two operating systems is maintaining two identities. Settings, bookmarks, files, email, etc. must all be kept in duplicate, triplicate, or worse. The ideal solution to this information multiplication would be sharing this information (call it your profile) across all operating systems and devices. As mentioned on Slashdot, this really isn’t anything new. However, I think the idea has been left to gather dust for too long. Microsoft has resurrected it as part of .NET, but who the hell would trust MS to do this right? I think the old Netscape 4 version was a better start. In my mind, one could setup a server, possibly as an Apache mod, or as a standalone server, to which clients of all kinds (browsers, email, etc.) could connect and synchronize information. Certain systems do this already (yahoo, hotsync, intellisync) but the chain is usually pretty limited. Apple seems to be moving in this direction with OS X, iCal, iSync, and the iPod but that’s just one platform. This kind of thing should be pretty easy to implement on any platform using existing technology (LDAP, Kerberos, SSL, WebDAV, etc.) but simply hasn’t been.

Still can’t come up with a new page design that I like. I’ve been browsing around, looking for inspiration. I made up a page inspired by Francois Jordaan’s page and I like the logo I made, but I’m not overly pleased with the rest. Back to the drawing board.

I must admit that Movable Type is considerably more polished than Blogger or Blosxom. It doesn’t have the simplicity of Blosxom, nor the egalitarian feel, but it isn’t difficult to install nor to use and has a far more powerful tagset. It remains to be seen if I will continue to use it as I rather prefer the Blosxom philosophy.

Ok, pictures are finally up. I’ve uploaded images from North Carolina, Calirfornia, Steamboat, and Europe. Go here if you’re interested. One thing, I’m going to start uploading pictures scaled to 800×600 since the original 1600×1200 images are a might bit difficult to upload on my connection (stupid 128k upload). Next though: why don’t DSL providers have decent upload anymore?

So I’m obsessed with making my pc quiet. I’ve upgraded cases, replaced all fans with panaflo l1a’s, got a quiet pc power supply… Not quiet enough! I’m also interested in small case formats. My own machine needs a large case, but it has a few more drives than most. Mostly I’m interested in building a low profile server for myself. Well, lo and behold, kuro5hin now has an article on building a quiet, low-profile pc!

• And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out by Yo La Tengo
• I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One by Yo La Tengo

Let me just say for anyone at the University of Colorado at Boulder who thinks that Computer Science Senior Projects isn’t a pain in the ass: You are wrong. Things I need to do this week:

• Finish proof-reading 85 page design spec
• Finish 1.5 hour 60 slide design presentation
• Review for linguistics final (on friday)
• Review for chinese final (on friday)
• Finish and memorise chinese dialog (to be given thursday)
• Sleep

Ack… Please let break come… Soon.

I thought this should go up someday

Congratulations!

• To Jeff Lee who is gonna graduate his ass next week (december 20)
• To Dave and Lindsay for getting engaged
• To Erica for finishing both the GRE and the subject GRE
• To Mitch for making it through semester one at Georgetown

Nice going guys!

• The Hour of the Bewilderbeast by Badly Drawn Boy
• Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven by Godspeed You Black Emperor!
• Bricolage by Amon Tobin

5 Interviews down… One site interview… Gonna keep looking.

In the meantime I’ve started thinking about graduate school. I’m really interested in education, communications and technology. I’m a TA for second semester programming at CU and I love it. I really like having a real impact on the way people learn, epecially with regards to technology. I’m also interested in User Interfaces, particularaly collaborative interfaces, spacial and zooming interfaces… And psychology…

Anyawys, I’m clueless right now what to do with my life. I hate the thought of being a programmer as I hate the stuff really. I much prefer dealing with user interaction and educational sides of technnology…

Ack… I feel like I have less of a clue now about my life then when I graduated from high school!

Ok, so I have to find a job now. I will take the GRE in October, but I doubt I can get into Grad School with my grades as they are. Therefor. I am seeking employment. That means I need to brush up my resume, attend the career fair and find a job. This scares me. A lot. Oh, and I have to graduate. Which means getting through Senior Projects. All 9 months of it.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a list of movies I’ve seen recently that I consider to be worth viewing: The Others, Jay and Silent Bob Strike back, American Pie 2.

Thank you. I think I’ll go panic now.

I hate Adbusters. They’re depressing. They make me feel like shit. So I try to avoid them like the plague. But dammit. They’ve usually got a point. So this time they’re talking about how our modern society has become toxic to the mental health of its inhabitants. Scary thought. Simply put, the rise in mental health problems (depression, schizophrenia, adiction, etc) is the direct result of our moern cultural environment. Cheery thought. Basically it points to a conclusion I keep trying to avoid — somthing is BIG TIME wrong with the world. Sometimes it seems the real danger isn’t nuking our specias into oblivion but progressing it into oblivion. However, I cannot accept the idea that progress is anathema to the well being of the human condition. Are people so self-destructive that we can createa culture in whichc we are effectively destroying our minds? Must we regress to some luddite utpoia for happiness to infuse itself throughout our begin? I hope not. So how do we create progress without melting our brains? Should we slow down? This brings me back to that favorite cliche of cyberpunks — progress (of all flavors) outstripping our own ability to control it and comprehend it. Are we destined to end up like in a world like Blade Runner? Is it inevitable? I think not. So what do we do? I don’t know. But it seems like it’s about time for some good ole grassroots evolution to happen. I don’t think revolution is the way to go, seems to me that we have a lot of cruft to dislodge that sticks around after revolutions. Unless we’re talking industrial revolution type revolution, which was more of a really fast evolution if you ask me. Either way, it’s time to start doing something, changing the precepts by which we understand the world and our place in it.