Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the are-you-the-Keymaster dept.
jeffwolfe writes: "In his latest column in InfoWorld, Nicholas Petreley claims that Microsoft's attack on the GPL is merely a diversionary tactic to distract the Open Source community from Microsoft's real goal: authentication services."
Re:the appeal of a single sign on
by
Jason+Earl
·
· Score: 5
It's already been done. Mozilla will happily remember your usernames and passwords for as many sites as you like. If you wish you can password protect this information store (I believe that IE does something similar as well). This is a much better solution than putting all of the information about everyone in one huge database. Sure, some people will probably lose their passwords when their hard drives crash, and some will have their master password stolen by thieves. But I can guarantee you that if everyone's information was in one net connected database eventually someone would learn to steal that information from everyone (the only trick would be to steal the information slowly enough so that Microsoft wouldn't notice).
Of course, if you put me in charge of the database that would be a different thing altogether. I would never use it for nefarious purposes, and I would be very careful to make sure it never was stolen:).
The funny thing is that this could really work, but not if Microsoft insists on charging money for it. Heck, they should be giving away Windows XP and then hold everyone's data hostage.
I think the article is close to the target, but it's not quite there. It's not that authentication by itself is the key, it's the directory services that's part of the authentication which is the key.
Any one remember archie? The difference it made in using FTP? The key part of the phrase "You can find anything on the Internet" is *find*, it's not that any thing and every thing is on the Internet, it's that you can *find* it. (In some way, this is may be what Sun's CEO meant about not having any privacy -- there have always been records kept on people in all sorts of places, just now it is possible to find the records, index them, use them to *find* what you like, or *find* people that like certain things.)
File transfers have been around for a while now. Napster was interesting because it let people, tada, find the files they were looking for that other people have. eBay lets sellers find buyers. Social communities have formed up on the Interent because people have found other people who share similiar interests.
This probably seems all terribly boring, but think about it for a moment. If Microsoft does create a single sign-on authentication system, they will (potentially) have one of (if not the) largest online directory of people (competing with AOL.)
Authentication is just part of it. If Microsoft controls the directory services, they can control who (or what -- i.e. smart tags , etc.) can be found... or not found. Heck, even forget the authentication bit -- anyone serious will have their own level of authentication and authorization, probably -- the first step in authentication of a person is *finding* their record.
Just look at the whole DNS root server mess, Network Solutions and such making money off of basically directory services. The battle over whether or not AOL will have an icon on the Windows desktop. Instant messaging -- which is basically the idea of presence (which appears to be one of the big buzzwords coming up), or rather, making it easier to be found.
Take a look at how much money is made from the sale of.com domains, etc. Now suppose Microsoft had the equivalent of the root DNS servers, but for a directory of identities rather than domain names. How much would someone pay to have an identity of "John Doe" rather than "jdoe@someplace.onthe.net"... just type "John Doe" in your MS email program... Windows Messenger... goodness, maybe even your web browser. Now, wouldn't that be something? MS could let you type in 'identities' or keywords (i.e. "John Doe" "Amy Smith" "Microsoft Corporation" "Plumber" "Sun Microsystem") into your browser/Windows Messenger (off-topic, SIP blows chunks) and pop up perhaps their web page, a phone call, an instant message, or what not. Mmm. Do away with all that messy 'domain name' bit, or rather replace it with the Microsoft authenticated identities. Hmm. Interesting idea, isn't it?
Look, if you want to change the face of the network, the killer app is directory services. Online the map is literally the terrain -- the domain name system is the map we use to find things! That is, if you replaced the current DNS system with something new, that could change web browsing, email, all the services that depend on it to find people, places, and things.
I work for the 2nd largest M$ exchange implementation worldwide, and our management along with several other fortune 50 companies told M$ to stick.net where it was safe...Ballmer's deep dark hole. Data security is PARAMOUNT and M$ would not pony up the $$$'s for insurance and bonding nor would they provide ANY sort of IRON CLAD uptime/access agreement. With VPN and broadband so prevalent these days we are going the exact opposite, to the hardware vendors' delight, and deploying PC's everywhere with VPN clients to access our data on our OWN SAFE and SECURE machines. If I were a sales business or some such heavy travel industry I MIGHT be able to see 'some' value in a.net structure but otherwise...NOT.
Can someone present an argument PRO.net beyond M$'s security and uptime smokescreen ?
-- errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
MicroSquish for authentication?
by
jcr
·
· Score: 5
Yeah, right. Like I'm going to trust an outfit that puts a Turing-complete interpreter in a MAIL CLIENT, and gives it full access to both the filesystem and the outgoing mail queue for ANYTHING related to security.
The long and short of it is, MicroSquish knows precisely *squat* about multi-user computing, data security, and crypto.
When Hugh Daniel went up to Redmond to do interoperability testing between FreeS/WAN and their half-assed IPSEC, he asked them which crypto algorithms they'd implemented, and they told him "40-bit DES". Nothing else.
Hugh just left. I would have, too.
-jcr
-- The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Likelihood of .NET and hailstorm success is low
by
Bilestoad
·
· Score: 5
They still haven't addressed the biggest problem with the model -
MY data is one SOMEONE ELSE's machine.
Even if you have a local backup that introduces issues with consistency. And just who is reading your work? Why will people suddenly trust a third party to provide their environment? It didn't work for Sun in the 90s (which although Petreley mentions MS fought, was not a failure because of MS opposition) and it won't work for MS now - in fact this could be the undoing of Microsoft. We have huge, cheap hard drives, great technology like IMAP, and software that works. I can't see the compelling advantage.
while I appreciate raising the alarm - this is an insightful piece - I couldn't help but wonder why he thinks NC would have been good under Sun's control. Clearly.NET will be a nightmare under the monopolistic control of M$ - but Sun is just as hungry for monopoly as Microsoft, and would hardly have shepherded the concept any more benevolently than M$ would. The NC *was* a failed concept and for good reason!
-- Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
I think MS has a good chance of making this happen. Its not a certainty but it is very possible. IMHO it all starts from the desktop monopoly.
The key is that when Hailstorm gets integrated into applications (instead of being "on the web") people won't feel as uncomfortable with it. They won't even notice its happening.
Imagine that some music distribution company offers a jukebox like system where you pay a small amount of money to instantly play a song. If they teamed up with MS, they could install this ability in MS Media Player to log you into Hailstorm so you could "securely" transmit finaical information neccesary to get the song. And the normal user barely even notices becasue all the info gets typed into regular windows dialog boxes that don't look anything like the "scary, unsafe" web. For the music industry its great because they don't have to worry about keeping user accounts and the security. For MS its great becasue they get money even though they have nothing to do with music. Hell, that might even make it easy for artists to directly charge for music. Easy distribution, and easy money collection. It works with anything. Like the MLB's plan to charge people for the game broadcasts.
Its all perception. People get scared only when they take out their credit card and type it into the computer. Imagine MLB get you to type in your credit card just once into Hailstorm. From then on all you'll see is a dialog box that pops up saying "Do you want to buy this? YES NO" Peopel will just hit yes and barely think about. Since all the info is already in Hailstorm, you won't need to retype your cc.
Once people are in the system and comfortable with it other companies will dive in. Make the same modification to Internet Explorer and then companies can sell you stuff over the internet using Hailstorm as the payment scheme (a la PayPal)Companies probably won't even give you any option other than paying via Hailstorm since its a lot easier for them.
And this is exactly what the article is getting to. MS suddenly becomes the doorway to a whole host of services. In other words _everyone_ is dependant on MS. MS can raise prices however they see fit since comapanies would need the MS user db to conduct transactions.
As always, Cosmo said it best...
by
gilroy
·
· Score: 5
There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information!
If you can keep the appropriate people focussing their attention on trying to justify themselves, even against rather pointless and ineffectual attacks, they don't get quite as many people thinking "what are they up to?" as they would if they were just getting on with quietly rolling out their.NET plans - they're quite obviously whinging lamely about open source, right?
By giving the more zealous and vocal open source advocates a giant red "Kick Me!" sign to fire at (and fire they will; the target's too good to pass up), then commentary on the other things they're doing might just get lost in the noise.
Welcome to the Machiavellian world of PR. It's a lot more difficult to meta-moderate out there, and Microsoft is trolling.
So, according to Petreley, NC's have withered on the vine because of a massive and insidious FUD campaign by Microsoft to spur everyone not to buy one.
I'm sure the fact that you can buy a complete PC for what a NC cost had nothing to do with their demise.
As far as.NET is concerned the issue of authentication is overblown a little. People seem to focus on the evil-looking parts of.NET like authentication services and ASP software, and forget about what.NET really is. It is a runtime, like Java, that can run code written in several different languages. That part of it will succeed. The authentication stuff however will go down the tubes just like the ASPs are doing now.
There is not a widespread need for third-party authentication. Certainly not enough for there to be widespread services that everyone uses. The ASP model has failed to a large degree as well. If the 3rd party goes down(as MS has often done) or tanks as a business you are hosed. Most people won't risk this.
The part of.NET that will succeed is the programming model, because it does solve a need for a lot of programmers.
So what we have really is 2.NET's, one which will succeed, and one which will not do so well.
--
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
.Net is tasty and palatable because it has the MS marketing machine behind it.
Pointy-heads and suits like to identify with products, and campaigns..NET is just the thing. They will be much happier purchasing a complete solution is a snazzy, glossy box, with a snazzy, glossy label like ".NET IIAS Server 2002", than cobbling together gnusnorf 0.13beta and gnufroop-2.73 into a custom built app, that performs as well on hardware they already own.
People like to shop, and companies like to drop down bucks on new hardware and shiny new CD's. Tarballs aren't sexy.
As for blind-siding Open Source, pfft. That was just a headline-grabber, nothing more. Online news has discovered that to increase revenues, they need to get posted on/. Just mention the words Microsift and Linux in the same sentence.
C'mon, a full third of this clown's article was devoted to touting his awesome prophetic powers from back in the day.
Slashdot Mirror
It's already been done. Mozilla will happily remember your usernames and passwords for as many sites as you like. If you wish you can password protect this information store (I believe that IE does something similar as well). This is a much better solution than putting all of the information about everyone in one huge database. Sure, some people will probably lose their passwords when their hard drives crash, and some will have their master password stolen by thieves. But I can guarantee you that if everyone's information was in one net connected database eventually someone would learn to steal that information from everyone (the only trick would be to steal the information slowly enough so that Microsoft wouldn't notice).
Of course, if you put me in charge of the database that would be a different thing altogether. I would never use it for nefarious purposes, and I would be very careful to make sure it never was stolen :).
The funny thing is that this could really work, but not if Microsoft insists on charging money for it. Heck, they should be giving away Windows XP and then hold everyone's data hostage.
I think the article is close to the target, but it's not quite there. It's not that authentication by itself is the key, it's the directory services that's part of the authentication which is the key.
... or not found. Heck, even forget the authentication bit -- anyone serious will have their own level of authentication and authorization, probably -- the first step in authentication of a person is *finding* their record.
.com domains, etc. Now suppose Microsoft had the equivalent of the root DNS servers, but for a directory of identities rather than domain names. How much would someone pay to have an identity of "John Doe" rather than "jdoe@someplace.onthe.net"... just type "John Doe" in your MS email program... Windows Messenger... goodness, maybe even your web browser. Now, wouldn't that be something? MS could let you type in 'identities' or keywords (i.e. "John Doe" "Amy Smith" "Microsoft Corporation" "Plumber" "Sun Microsystem") into your browser/Windows Messenger (off-topic, SIP blows chunks) and pop up perhaps their web page, a phone call, an instant message, or what not. Mmm. Do away with all that messy 'domain name' bit, or rather replace it with the Microsoft authenticated identities. Hmm. Interesting idea, isn't it?
Any one remember archie? The difference it made in using FTP? The key part of the phrase "You can find anything on the Internet" is *find*, it's not that any thing and every thing is on the Internet, it's that you can *find* it. (In some way, this is may be what Sun's CEO meant about not having any privacy -- there have always been records kept on people in all sorts of places, just now it is possible to find the records, index them, use them to *find* what you like, or *find* people that like certain things.)
File transfers have been around for a while now. Napster was interesting because it let people, tada, find the files they were looking for that other people have. eBay lets sellers find buyers. Social communities have formed up on the Interent because people have found other people who share similiar interests.
This probably seems all terribly boring, but think about it for a moment. If Microsoft does create a single sign-on authentication system, they will (potentially) have one of (if not the) largest online directory of people (competing with AOL.)
Authentication is just part of it. If Microsoft controls the directory services, they can control who (or what -- i.e. smart tags , etc.) can be found
Just look at the whole DNS root server mess, Network Solutions and such making money off of basically directory services. The battle over whether or not AOL will have an icon on the Windows desktop. Instant messaging -- which is basically the idea of presence (which appears to be one of the big buzzwords coming up), or rather, making it easier to be found.
Take a look at how much money is made from the sale of
Look, if you want to change the face of the network, the killer app is directory services. Online the map is literally the terrain -- the domain name system is the map we use to find things! That is, if you replaced the current DNS system with something new, that could change web browsing, email, all the services that depend on it to find people, places, and things.
I work for the 2nd largest M$ exchange implementation worldwide, and our management along with several other fortune 50 companies told M$ to stick .net where it was safe...Ballmer's deep dark hole. Data security is PARAMOUNT and M$ would not pony up the $$$'s for insurance and bonding nor would they provide ANY sort of IRON CLAD uptime/access agreement. With VPN and broadband so prevalent these days we are going the exact opposite, to the hardware vendors' delight, and deploying PC's everywhere with VPN clients to access our data on our OWN SAFE and SECURE machines. If I were a sales business or some such heavy travel industry I MIGHT be able to see 'some' value in a .net structure but otherwise...NOT.
.net beyond M$'s security and uptime smokescreen ?
Can someone present an argument PRO
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Yeah, right. Like I'm going to trust an outfit that puts a Turing-complete interpreter in a MAIL CLIENT, and gives it full access to both the filesystem and the outgoing mail queue for ANYTHING related to security.
The long and short of it is, MicroSquish knows precisely *squat* about multi-user computing, data security, and crypto.
When Hugh Daniel went up to Redmond to do interoperability testing between FreeS/WAN and their half-assed IPSEC, he asked them which crypto algorithms they'd implemented, and they told him "40-bit DES". Nothing else.
Hugh just left. I would have, too.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They still haven't addressed the biggest problem with the model -
MY data is one SOMEONE ELSE's machine.
Even if you have a local backup that introduces issues with consistency. And just who is reading your work? Why will people suddenly trust a third party to provide their environment? It didn't work for Sun in the 90s (which although Petreley mentions MS fought, was not a failure because of MS opposition) and it won't work for MS now - in fact this could be the undoing of Microsoft. We have huge, cheap hard drives, great technology like IMAP, and software that works. I can't see the compelling advantage.
while I appreciate raising the alarm - this is an insightful piece - I couldn't help but wonder why he thinks NC would have been good under Sun's control. Clearly .NET will be a nightmare under the monopolistic control of M$ - but Sun is just as hungry for monopoly as Microsoft, and would hardly have shepherded the concept any more benevolently than M$ would. The NC *was* a failed concept and for good reason!
Don't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
I think MS has a good chance of making this happen. Its not a certainty but it is very possible. IMHO it all starts from the desktop monopoly.
The key is that when Hailstorm gets integrated into applications (instead of being "on the web") people won't feel as uncomfortable with it. They won't even notice its happening.
Imagine that some music distribution company offers a jukebox like system where you pay a small amount of money to instantly play a song. If they teamed up with MS, they could install this ability in MS Media Player to log you into Hailstorm so you could "securely" transmit finaical information neccesary to get the song. And the normal user barely even notices becasue all the info gets typed into regular windows dialog boxes that don't look anything like the "scary, unsafe" web. For the music industry its great because they don't have to worry about keeping user accounts and the security. For MS its great becasue they get money even though they have nothing to do with music. Hell, that might even make it easy for artists to directly charge for music. Easy distribution, and easy money collection. It works with anything. Like the MLB's plan to charge people for the game broadcasts.
Its all perception. People get scared only when they take out their credit card and type it into the computer. Imagine MLB get you to type in your credit card just once into Hailstorm. From then on all you'll see is a dialog box that pops up saying "Do you want to buy this? YES NO" Peopel will just hit yes and barely think about. Since all the info is already in Hailstorm, you won't need to retype your cc.
Once people are in the system and comfortable with it other companies will dive in. Make the same modification to Internet Explorer and then companies can sell you stuff over the internet using Hailstorm as the payment scheme (a la PayPal)Companies probably won't even give you any option other than paying via Hailstorm since its a lot easier for them.
And this is exactly what the article is getting to. MS suddenly becomes the doorway to a whole host of services. In other words _everyone_ is dependant on MS. MS can raise prices however they see fit since comapanies would need the MS user db to conduct transactions.
The film was about 10 years too early, but it amazes me how much it captured.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
If you can keep the appropriate people focussing their attention on trying to justify themselves, even against rather pointless and ineffectual attacks, they don't get quite as many people thinking "what are they up to?" as they would if they were just getting on with quietly rolling out their .NET plans - they're quite obviously whinging lamely about open source, right?
By giving the more zealous and vocal open source advocates a giant red "Kick Me!" sign to fire at (and fire they will; the target's too good to pass up), then commentary on the other things they're doing might just get lost in the noise.
Welcome to the Machiavellian world of PR. It's a lot more difficult to meta-moderate out there, and Microsoft is trolling.
I'm sure the fact that you can buy a complete PC for what a NC cost had nothing to do with their demise.
As far as .NET is concerned the issue of authentication is overblown a little. People seem to focus on the evil-looking parts of .NET like authentication services and ASP software, and forget about what .NET really is. It is a runtime, like Java, that can run code written in several different languages. That part of it will succeed. The authentication stuff however will go down the tubes just like the ASPs are doing now.
There is not a widespread need for third-party authentication. Certainly not enough for there to be widespread services that everyone uses. The ASP model has failed to a large degree as well. If the 3rd party goes down(as MS has often done) or tanks as a business you are hosed. Most people won't risk this.
The part of .NET that will succeed is the programming model, because it does solve a need for a lot of programmers.
So what we have really is 2 .NET's, one which will succeed, and one which will not do so well.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
People like to shop, and companies like to drop down bucks on new hardware and shiny new CD's. Tarballs aren't sexy.
As for blind-siding Open Source, pfft. That was just a headline-grabber, nothing more. Online news has discovered that to increase revenues, they need to get posted on /. Just mention the words Microsift and Linux in the same sentence.
C'mon, a full third of this clown's article was devoted to touting his awesome prophetic powers from back in the day.