Craig Burton

Just read the first few paragraphs here, if you have been following identity at all, you will want to read more. I have no idea who this guy is, Jamie Lewis sent me the link. Jamie is just too busy to blog anymore. (yeah yeah, lazy butt.)

Hankering For A World Without “Identity” or “Federation”

Author’s note: this is not a white paper. This is an opinion-piece, possibly a polemic. In it I expound what I believe rather than making an argument for you to believe it too; however if through it you arrive at a technical question or desire clarification, then please leave a comment using the tool provided. Also, there are footnotes annotated in square brackets. They are worth reading as you go along. Once I have had more coffee I’ll get round to making them into hyperlinks. Sorry.

Abstract

This posting began as an standalone article to describe my tussel with “Identity” in all its various forms, however it has evolved into a companion piece to Adriana’s musings on identity - not only because upon reading her posting I found us using like words and like metaphors to much the same conclusion, but also doubtless because it was she who singlehandedly provided me an alternative to a world without (or with much-reduced) “Big I” Identity.

However I wish to spell out my beliefs rather more bluntly, so here we go:

I believe that Identity is bunk.

I believe that the technologies of Identity are founded upon and perpetuate an outdated model of a passive user who lacks both the critical authority and the ability to participate in an authentication transaction, and further I submit that Identity’s commitment to this model inhibits its further evolution in the modern era.

…but before continuing I want to address a few potential misconstructions to aid later clarity - so for contrast I shall begin by listing a selection of identity-related topics which are emphatically not bunk:

dropsafe : Hankering For A World Without “Identity” or “Federation”

Ok. So a provider abstraction layer architecture isn’t exactly new. But it seems we have forgotten its significance. Almost all of the architectures coming out for the web are silos. From the Google App Engine to the Twitter. These services are only accessible from applications that write specifically to those services. Why is that? No abstraction layer.

Let me give you an example. When Novell decided to become a hardware independent operating system vendor, a driver for every network adapter had to be hand written. Finally someone inside said “enough, let’s ‘abstract’ this thing.”

Of course, only an engineer talks like that, but it takes an engineer—for the most part—to think like that. But this event was significant for all involved. It meant that Novell was able to free up significant engineering resources by pushing out the responsibility for making a NIC (Network Interface Card) work to the manufacturer of the NIC. This is as it should be.

For all of you historical buffs, the notion of the NIC abstraction was so important that Novell and Microsoft/3Com had a huge fight over whose abstraction design would win out. Microsoft/3Com  won that battle, as it should have. The abstraction is known as NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification).

Ok enough for now. There is much more to say about this. hehe. Can’t wait.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/10/CartoonCreativity

I love this kind of minimalist stuff!

There are many things that the Meaning of Time looks like. Pop-up sprinkler, shelf bracket, vibrator. It is none of these. It is in fact a minimalist clock. A mechanism cut back to its barest essentials, it exists without hands or face.

What Bomi Kim’s conceptual plastic widget does have, though, is holes. Two holes into which you can shove the hands of your choice, and two grooves that can be pushed into yet another hole, a face-hole. This is a truly stripped back design, where, as in quantum physics, the hole is as important as the electrons surrounding it.

Minimalist Clock Tells The Time, The Hole Time, And Nothing But The Time | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

I have updated the Burtonian Technology Matrix

Sorry about the tuna fish in the corner. Actually, all future sketches must have tuna fish.

Note that I have added the general flow of technologies in the matrix. I have also added two new squares, thus the matrix is no longer the obligatory 2X2 marketing matrix. The lower left hand square is the Alpha square and the upper right hand square is the Omega square. Thus the beginning and the end of technology has a place to be before it goes into the matrix.

A little Zen—I know—but you will see as we go why this is important.

You can now ad comments and let me know what you think.

cb

Doc Searls new post on Infrastructure.

See my previous post.

cb

It turns out that hard infrastructure is softer than the name suggests. This is good, since I want to make the case that both LInux and the Net are forms of infrastructure no less legitimate than water, electricity, roads, sewers and waste collection. Understanding Infrastructure was my first posting on this subject. This is my second. More will come. So far I’ve arranged my findings in the forms of photo essays. Here’s one on sidewalk signage in Cambridge. Here’s on of Boston on the day of its huge annual Boston Marathon. And here’s one on the Minuteman Bikeway that runs from Cambridge to Lexington. Here are my main provisional conclusions, so far: 1. Infrastructure is natural. That is, we try to make it as additional to nature as possible. It sometimes improves on nature, but more often serves as an adjuct to it, altering it in some way, always for practical purposes. 2. Infrastructure is patchy. In computing terms, we patch and debug it all the time. Even terminology changes. CATV becomes COMS becomes BROADBAND, all on a series of manhole covers. Sidewalks of brick are torn up and laid down again, over and over. Asphalt streets are patchworks of exposed and buried culverts, piping and conduit. 3. Credit is interesting, but secondary.Companies providing infrastructure sign their work, often in forms that last decades or centuries. At a certain point this credit-taking ceases to be promotional and begins becoming archival, historical. Steel service covers bear the signatures of Edison Electric Illuminating, the Bell System, Cambridge Electric Lighting, McClure (a dead fiber company), MetroMedia (another dead fiber company), and Simpson Brothers, and countless other names once considered, mostly by themselves, as permanent. 4. Re-usability matters. Pipes and poles made for one thing get used and re-used for other things. Poles that first carried electricity later came to carry phone, cable TV, and fiber optic cabling to carry phone, TV and internet service. 5. Ease of servicability matters. Streets are marked everywhere with red (electric), yellow (gas), green (non-potable water), orange (communications), blue (potable water) and white (planned construction) graffiti. That these are all ugly is of little concern. 6. Infrastructure is vernacular. It’s local, and the expertise behind it is local. Sound familiar? I believe it’s no coincidence that we "build" code, that we have "architects" and "designers". The similarities between infrastructural software and public infrastructure are many. I’ll keep exploring them. Expect a book eventually. Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures. And share your thoughts below. __________________________

Comparing hard and soft infrastructure | Linux Journal

I am reading The Big Switch by Nicholas Carr. Great reading.

Here is a quick quote:

"Capitalizing on advances in the power of microprocessors and the capacity data storage systems, fledgling utilities are beginning to build massive and massively efficient information processing plants, and they’re using the broadband Internet, with its millions of miles of fiber-optic cable, as the global grid for delivering their services to customers. Like the electric utilities before them, the new computing utilities are achieving economics of scale far beyond what most companies can achieve with their own systems.

Seeing the economic advantages of the utility model, corporations are rethinking the way they buy and use information technology. Rather than to devoting a lot of cash to purchasing computers and software programs go there beginning to plug into the new grid. The shift not only promises to change the nature of corporate IT departments but to shake up the entire computer industry. Big tech companies — Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, IBM, and all the rest — have made tons of money selling the same systems did thousands of companies. As computing becomes more centralized, many of those sales will dry up. Considering the businesses spend well over $1 trillion a year on hardware and software, the ripple effects will be felt throughout the world economy."

This phenomenon is not only occurring with outsourcing IT services such as file, print, directory, Web, and security, but also common programming resources.

The following are some notes taken from the announcement of the Google app engine. The two most notable quotes from the announcement were:

"Google app engine is a system to expose Google scalable infrastructure to your server side web applications."

The other was a quote by Guido when introducing the Python integration with Google app engine.

I don’t have the direct quotes right here but to paraphrase he said:

"I have been programming for 30 years, I do not like setting up programming infrastructure I just want to code software. I let the other is set up the infrastructure I don’t even know how to do it."

Here are my key comments on the whole thing:

We are not just realizing a revolution occurring with organization IT resources, but the revolution is happening across the board for users suppliers programmers resellers organizations and vendors.

The Internet Suite and the Linux Suite are at the core of this revolution. Without the utilizization of the core suites — the Internet Suite and the Linux Suite — none of this would be happening.

The Core Suites are like public electricity "Internet power" to the doorstep.

A view from Scottsdale Road of the hotel we are at. Just Kidding! Love the photo though.

SonnyRadio.com :: Redneck Mansion :: Best Quality

Wow, I never imagined I could post right from word. Put is appears that the Office 2007 suite supports blogging directly wordpress. Awesome.

Love it!

Neagringzero.net