Josh Kopelman's post 53,651 and Brad Feld's post Web 2.0: The First 25,000 Users Are Irrelevant reminded me of the many campfires I built during family camping trips — another one coming end of this month, w00t!.

Starting a campfire can be difficult, particularly in the morning because firelogs dampen overnight, so I usually use something extra to help me start the fire. So, TechCrunch is the firestarter (usually scraps of papers) and the first 25,000 users is the starting fire. Me standing in front of the fire with a ready can of firestarter liquid is harder to place though. Definitely not a VC blogger because a VC who actively and publicly cheerleads a portfolio company is more likely to set him or herself on fire. Yikes.

Just a post to compress wordy wisdom into a picture cuz I am visual guy.

Just ordered a ThinkPad T60p, basically 15-inch T60 with workstation quality display card (ATI FireGL v5200) and faster drive (7200rpm) to take advantage of their anniversary sale which ends May 15th. At $2199, I am saving around $550 although it's actually more like $350 if you take upcoming (end of May supposedly) Core Duo price drop for 2GHz Core Duo. Actual order price was a little over $2600 due to Office, service plan, and tax. Oh, well.

It's on the heavy side (6.25lb) but I am not a mad conference hopper so it should be alright. I am looking forward to the 15-inch Flexview others have raved about. Besides, I am pretty sure this baby will be able to run Vista handily with Aero fully enabled. Why did I not get a laptop with wide display? As a developer, I need to see more lines of code (read vertical room) than more cells or movies.

Anyhow, the details:

• 2GHz Core Duo
• 15-inch Flexview (1600×1200)
• 100G drive (7200rpm)
• FireGL v5200 (256mb)

Overall, I think this is a good deal but, unfortunately, shipping date is early June. Nuts but at least I'll have plenty of time to cancel the order if something better comes along while I wait.

Just in case people who read what I write on this blog get confused, let me make it clear what I use this blog for:

1. let go of ideas I don't want clogging up my head.
2. let out frustrations accumulated over time.
3. share what I feel like sharing.

I don't blog to be recognized, get credit for being first of whatever, nor to amuse anyone. I am too much of a bastard for that. This blog is here to satisfy my own needs and no one else's. I tend to give a shit too much so I am trying hard to be selfish in the sense 'I don't give a hoot if other folks in this elevator called Earth suffocates if I fart right here and right now.'

So when I rant, you are looking down the barrel of my mental or emotional shotgun. There is no purpose, political nor economic, behind the act except my need to pull the trigger. It's just mental gas. Nothing more, nothing less. If I seem reasonable, consider it an accident. If I seem to be shooting at you, that is your problem, not mine. Get your own blog and shoot back if you feel like it. If not, leave a comment like you really mean it.

Clear?

I don't know what the hell is going on over at the RSS Advisory Board but it is starting to make my skin crawl. Who is behind all the recent activities? Whoever it is, let me say this to that person: RSS is not your milk cow.

I know many of the newly appointed members and, although I think they are wonderful people, I suspect they are being taken advantage of because I don't see why they are needed.

According to their charter, the board has three duties:

1. publishing the RSS specification

   DONE

    

2. guiding developers who create RSS application

   What more can they do beyond what's out there already including several books and countless examples?

    

3. broadening the public understanding of RSS

   The public is doing just fine with RSS, finding new uses everyday, without any official broadener. The only kind of visible activities by the board I observed was broadening of the board size.

The board has nothing to do! With so many well-known names on the board, it now looks like an Indy racing car on a desert island.

Oh, I know. Why not just rename the board to Atom Advisory Board? After all, Atom is in desperate need of advising and I think the new name will fit the current board far better than RSS Advisory Board. Great idea, huh?

Yup. Today is my 44th birthday. 44 is a terrible number because Sa-Sa could be interpreted as death twice over.

I don't look old (when I am not tired) but my body feels old and my state of mind feels so tranquil yet rigid that I must have finally reached the much heralded Old Fart club. Here is the proof: toward the end of yesterday's Internet Identity Workshop, I felt sad that everyone seemed so optimistic.

I wanted to tell them that user-centric doesn't mean looking out for the users but learning to live with little or no interests from the users. Users don't really care about identities, guys. They do care about identity theft and phishing thanks to the constant bombardment of security news over the years. For users to care about identity, it'll take more than similar kind of bombardment over the years because fear is more compelling than convenience. And what about all the websites? Why would they adopt any of the identity schemes? I don't see any compelling incentives being discussed.

Am I sounding like an Old Fart yet? Anyhoo. Happy Birthday to Me. 😉

I'll be attending Internet Identity Workshop. I hope Phil and the gang are setup to catch late registrants (I registered today).

It's pretty funny that Google is whining about MSN being the default search engine for IE when both Firefox and Safari ships with Google search box built-in and my addiction to Google is as bad as my addiction to nicotin although search result quality has gotten pretty bad lately.

It seems many people feels that authentication is pretty much a dead space. I thought I should air some of my ideas which I think are new and different.

Very Large Key

This idea was conceived while I was looking at the picture of Rai stones. A Very Large Key is a key that is too big to be stolen or copied. There is nothing keyloggers can do against passwords too long to be captured or takes too long to be sent inconspicuously.

While the idea is kinda crazy, some practical implementations are possible. For example, one can fill a CD or DVD full of random data and use it like a one-time pad to log into protected websites. Instead of typing in a password, pop in a CD or DVD and you are in.

As to key validation, server-side must somehow know what values to expect. Fractal mathematics or evolutionary key technique can be used, for example.

Note that access limitations is what is being leveraged here which means slow access speed can make smaller storage mechanisms effective enough. For example, a really slow USB Flash drive full of random data or a network storage service with access speed/event choke. Parts of the secret (random data) can be stored in pieces, of course.

I just tried IE7 Beta 2 and all I can say is: eeeks!

I don't know if it was my machine or what but when I installed it, desktop froze for about 10 minutes after rebooting. While using it, the UI was rather awkward and links that opened new windows just refused to work, forcing me to open them in tabs. When I tried to close it. The damn thing froze again for another 5 minutes. Needless to say, it was uninstalled right after that.

Where the hell did they get the nerve to release this crap as beta 2?

On the other hand, this gang of open source thugs just makes me shake my head. How ironic that they are leveraging Google, another monopoly-in-the-making, to spit on Microsoft. To me, it's just naked hate and nothing more.

Like an old dog, I knew something was coming. I sniffed the air and smelled a buyout. RSA has been in a buyout mood lately which placed them on the top of the short list of suspects.

Well, the news came Friday and announced Monday which means that, for disclaimer sake, RSA Security is a client of mine and I own RSA stock. Size of the deal was rather disappointing but liquidity is always welcome.

It's funny how Cyota keeps popping up in my professional life. Cyota was the main competitor of PassMark. While I was with Arcot Systems, guess who it's main competitor was? Cyota got bought out by RSA and here we are in the same basket. Like Bill Harris commented this afternoon, authentication business is like a small neighborhood of sort. Desperate Housewives? LOL

Anyway, I am not sure I'll be with RSA for long though because I prefer fast little companies doing interesting things. Although I now prefer mini-vans over sports cars, I guess I am still a thrill seeker.