Month: February 2003

Eclipse 2.1 RC1 Pending

Eclipse 2.1 RC1 was built last evening and should be released soon.  Its has a few non-critical bugs but I am happy with it.  However, I suggest you wait for the Eclipse team to formally release it.  If you are impatient like me, the build is here.

[Update: RC1 was released and can be downloaded here.]

Also, Struts 1.1 RC1 is also close to being released.  Struts team is just going through last minute bug fixes and adjustments.  All the tests passed but there seems to be a lack of confidence in the test results.  I wish they would ramp up the pace.  Struts 1.1 has been in beta for damn too long.

Mobile Fetish

Almost everytime I visit Russell's blog, he has gorgeous pictures of latest mobile devices.  Just look at the picture of latest Alcatel phones.  Woooo!  Too bad I don't get enough use out of my cellphone to justify upgrading it.  At least, I wish I can drop it accidentally so I get the latest and be ecstatic until I see a better one the week after.  Life of a gadget freak is harsh.

Practical Nukes?

Because of my interests in war and history, I track military intelligence sites like GlobalSecurity.org where I found this:

"A leaked Pentagon document has confirmed that the US is considering the introduction of a new breed of smaller nuclear weapons designed for use in conventional warfare. Such a move would mean abandoning global arms treaties." [GlobalSecurity.org]

According to the article, US military officials and nuclear scientists met last August to discuss new breed of nukes.  Among them: sub 5 kiloton nukes for bunkers and enhanced radiation nukes (aka neutron bomb).  In short, Bush and Rumsfeld wants practical nukes, nukes we can use.  While at it, why not build Clean Bombs that can remove unwanted people and rust at the same time?  Sure would be handy around pipelines.

False Assertions

"Authentication is more important than encryption.  [snip] Imagine a situation where Alice and Bob are using a secure communications channel to exchange data. Consider how much damage an eavesdropper could do if she could read all the traffic. Then think about how much damage Eve could do if she could modify the data being exchanged. In most situations, modifying data is a devastating attack, and does far more damage than merely reading it." [Bruce Schneier]

To me, validity of an assertion is as important as authentication.  Authentication has little value if the database is filled with invalid information.  It doesn't take much expertise to write a script that creates a million Hotmail accounts using randomly generated registration information, filling Hotmail user database with trash.  I can be Jack Frost living in Alaska or Don Juan living in Spain.  Garbage in, garbage out.  Authentication just means restricted access to garbage.

Integrating Liberty with Passport and 3D-Secure

"The Liberty Alliance has published a White Paper (15 page PDF) about interoperability of Liberty with 3rd Party Identity Systems. Specifically, it talks about possible Liberty interactions with Passport, PingID, 3D-Secure, and Shibboleth." [Digital ID World]

Having participarted in the design and implementation of 3D-Secure and built several prototypes of Passport-enabled 3D-Secure ACS (run by card issuers), I was intrigued by this paper.  After reading the paper, I am disappointed because it is vague, trivializes critical issues, and avoids politically sensitive areas.

In its discussion of Passport, the paper describes a way to support Passport users in a Liberty domain and a way to support Liberty user within the Passport domain.  Level of discussion is, unfortnately, in the realm of possibility and not practicality.  I saw no incentives for Microsoft to integrate Passport with Liberty this way.

Its discussion of 3D-Secure was even worse, providing no answers beyond suggesting that two can co-exist by having merchants use Liberty to SSO and 3D-Secure as payment authorization.  As to other possibilities, it states:

"We believe it would be technically feasible to build a much deeper integration between the two protocols. However, the forces at play are commercial in nature, and involve the future development and adoption of both Liberty Identity Providers as well as the evolution and adoption of the 3-D Secure protocol. Therefore, we are reluctant to speculate as to whether any such deep integration will occur."

What is the point of SSO if customers have to use two different identities (one for Liberty and another for 3D-Secure) to buy something.  Isn't it more natural to have card issuers serve as Liberty Identity Providers?

At this point, I am disappointed by the lack of progress Liberty Alliance is making.  Liberty needs to move on and get real fast.

Damn this is weird.  I can't wrap my head around it except to conclude that it must be something in the water…

Gender-bending. Patrick Califia used to be a woman who liked women. Now he's a man who likes men — with a lot to say about sexual politics. [Salon.com]

Korean Subway Tragedy Suspect Talks

He isn't mentally retarted, just partially paralyzed from an eastern medicne treatment gone bad.  He tried to kill himself manytimes.  Feeling suicidal, he thought it would be unfair to die alone, so he decided to take some with him.  125 died, but he didn't.

While improvements are being made, most Koreans are not kind toward handicaps and looks down at them as if they are sub-human.  I have seen people yelling and cursing at handicaps because they were too slow to get off the bus.  While I don't condone what he did, things must have been unbearable for him.  He probably would have preferred being fully paralyzed since he wouldn't have been humiliated everyday as he tried to go about his daily business as best as he could with his half-paralyzed body.

Thoughts on war protesters marching

Some folks are saying that war protesters are doing Saddam's work.  I think not.  Both warmongers and war protesters are doing what they are supposed to be doing: balancing.  Can you imagine a society consisting entirely of people who will go to war over slightest provocation?  Likewise, can you imagine a society consisting entirely of people who believe war should be avoided at all cost, even destruction of a major city?  Both kinds of folks are helping create a balance that prevents all of us from going overboard altogether.  Here is an instant proverb:

When you start a fight, make sure you have someone around to stop it.

Even better would be to have someone around to talk you and your opponents out of the fight before it starts.  Unfortunately there is no one inside Iraq to talk Saddam out of his mad ambitions.