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The Vanishing HailStorm
ElitusPrime writes ".NET My Services, Microsoft Corp's high-profile set of XML web services postponed eight months ago, seems to have dropped off the company's 2003 roadmap. .NET My Services, once codenamed Hailstorm, was to comprise 14 services including an electronic online address book and voice mail inbox and was once trumpeted as the vanguard of a .NET web services revolution by the company."
Microsoft did this a few years ago with .NET itself. Lo and behold it suddenly appeared. When asked why it didn't come sooner, Microsoft said that it was up on the whiteboard but had to go due to timing, departmental and budget issues.
Moral: Microsoft never kills off the technology, they just delay it until they think the time is right.
"And then I visited Wikipedia
There was never really a killer app involved. Companies with a dedicated IT department understand the utility in newer technology, but to the average person, saying something like "This is a revolutionary new technology. It will let you check your email and voicemail! And let you keep an address book!" is hardly compelling. People can already do all of those things with regular HTTP and/or other technology.
In addition, I wonder how many people actually want to have a single online identity for everything? It might be safer then using the same username/password over and over again, but I don't really know if people want to have their every move tracked and databased... although it does seem like a lot of people don't care.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Decentralization of critical data is key to security, robustness, scalability, ..., etc.
Translation: Putting all of one's eggs into one basket is not a smart thing to do.
I can't believe that people are even using Microsoft's Passport. I guess by making it a necessity in order to use certain MSN Web services like Hotmail, this was the only way they figured they could attract customers.
Why would I want to store all vital information of mine (SS#, credit card #, name, address, phone, email, etc.) on one sketchy server up in Redmond, WA?
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What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
How? Do you really think that many people use a different username and password for every login they have? The current situation is that your details are spread across a number of hosts, most of which have unknown security. Crack one, and it opens up access to the rest.
Here, for the average user, security is as strong as the weakest link - the most insecure website. Using the same username/password combination for your accounts, and giving that information out wherever you get a new account means that you are implicitly trusting each account granter with all your details. afaik, passport gives you the ability to authenticate somebody without people having to trust you with their password. Yes, you're still trusting microsoft, but it's better to trust a single organisation than many.
Don't be silly. Why should they have multiple authentication mechanisms across a number of sites, rather than a single authentication mechanism shared across them all? They are eating their own dog-food, that's all.
Remember: MS's MO when a product starts running horribly behind schedule (see: every version of Windows) to start dropping promised features left and right. I wouldn't read much more into it than that, unless somebody has some inside information that's provably not just more spin.
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.NET "My Bob" any day now.
KFG
Actually, I think it will.
A centralized payment system is what we need most, my understanding is that this would be a feature among others.
The trouble and uncertainty of putting credit-card info inline is the biggest problem for companies trying to sell stuff online and the number one reason why it's not possible to charge for online content.
The optimal would be if there would be some kind of standard and the banks would have the service but a company would be a needed second best.
I remember in 1995, when the Internet was just starting to bud in the commercial world, MS wanted to kill it.
I went to some Microsoft roadshow in Indianapolis, and they were touting the capabilities of the Microsoft Network, and how everything that was possible on the Internet, was possible on MSN, only better.
It was amusing to some guy in an MS golf shirt demonstrate things such as web browsing, IRC, and FTP and how they would better be served in an MS-only environment.
A year or so later, they abandoned the kill the Internet strategy, and started up their "embrace and extend" policy.
In short, MS got it's ass kicked. They quickly swept that defeat under the rug, and you rarely ever hear about it, which is I'm sure what will happen with this defeat.
I spoke with some of the top guys at Passport who were obviously heavily involved with Hailstorm at Digital ID World 2002 in Denver. They assured me Hailstorm was very much alive, but it had turned into a far bigger project than they had thought. In particular, I remember one guy saying something to the effect of "Well, my conscious is clean, I told Bill 2 years was unreasonable, but did he listen? Of course not". Words pretty close to that.
It may have been a red herring, but I seriously doubt it. I for one don't think Hailstorm has gone - just forgotten, at least for now.
Do you really think that many people use a different username and password for every login they have?
No, but at least now, if I find one username/password combination, i don't necessarily know where else i can try that combination. But if I find out your hotmail password, then I immediately know that I can also jack your ebay account, your MSN account, etc.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
It died because _retailers_ realised that MS would be acting as agent between the customers and themselves. This worried a lot of people, not because of security or anything, just because it locked the business model into whatever MS was prepared to provide.
Microsoft announced that they were scrapping / postponing this due to a lack of interest from customers. Basically, people thought (correctly) that it was a stupid idea. A few years back, Microsoft tried selling Office as an online ASP Service over the web. It was a stupid idea and no one used it. Clearly they saw this was going to be the same thing.
None of this is exactly a Red Herring -- Microsoft follows a pattern of announcing some far reaching plan, then seeing who responds / complains and then adjusting / cancelling before they actually make any concrete plans (or most likely write a line of code).
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