OpenID was designed as a lightweight solution for “trivial” use cases in identity management: its primary goal is to enable Internet surfers to replace self-generated usernames and passwords by a single login credential, without needing more than their browser. Concretely, OpenID aims to enable individuals to post blog comments and log into social networking sites without having to remember multiple passwords. (Of course, local password store utilities already do that; more on this later.)

Beyond this, OpenID is pretty much useless. The reasons for this are many: OpenID is highly vulnerable to phishing and other attacks, creates insurmountable privacy problems, is not a trust system, suffers from usability problems, and makes it unappealing to become an OpenID “consumer.” Many smart people have already elaborated on these problems in various forums. In the rest of this post I will be quoting from and pointing to their critiques.

The problem(s) with OpenID

Look at your computer setup and imagine that you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust, think Lego bricks and you're in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer shown on the right - a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the component up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn't even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €400). That way it's accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. So, if you have a RepRap machine, you can make another and give it to a friend...

RepRap

TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any user-supplied text by creating what is popularly known as a tag cloud or text cloud.

What text do you want to visualize?

TagCrowd

If you haven't already read Sharon Steel's cover story on Steampunk in this week's Phoenix -- to say nothing of her Steampunk fashion piece in the current issue of SPIN -- then get thee clicking here-ish. She's got more anachronistic harpies, Victorian fashion references, PC mods, and totally insane industrial-age design throwbacks than you can shake a rivet gun and a pair of goggles at.

We also accompanied Sharon out to visit one of the Steampunk village's most recognizable faces: Massachusetts native Jake von Slatt. He was nice enough to invite us into his workshop and submit to an interview, which was conducted on board a school bus he's turned into a severely-retro RV. He's also working on modding a VW kit car so it can run on steam power. In the video above, we focused on a few of Jake's most famous projects: his Victorian all-in-one PC; a brass-etched custom Fender guitar; and a telegraph receiver that translates the internet into Morse code. Holy crap.

Jake Von Slatt's Steampunk Workshop

This qref is written for a semi-knowledgable UNIX user who has just come up against a problem and has been advised to use awk to solve it. Perhaps one of the examples can be quickly modified for immediate use.

Getting Started with awk

This research covers the discovery of a server controlled by hackers (Crimeserver) containing more than 1.4 Gigabyte of business and personal data stolen from infected PCs. The data consisted of 5,388 unique log files. Both email communications and web-related data were among them.

This analysis contains findings indicating that Crimeware has reached a new level of sophistication. We detected a Crimeserver which was used as a command and control for the Crimeware that was executed on infected PCs. This Crimeserver was also used as the “drop site” for private information being harvested by that Crimeware. The Command & Control applications on this Crimeserver enabled the hacker to manage the actions and performance of his Crimeware, giving him control over the uses of the Crimeware as well as its victims. Since the stolen data was left unprotected on the Crimeserver, without any access restrictions or encryption, the data were freely available for anyone on the web, including criminal elements.

Malicious Page of the Month

This document is intended to assist organizations in installing, configuring, and maintaining secure servers. More specifically, this document describes, in detail, the following practices to apply:

* Securing, installing, and configuring the underlying operating system
* Securing, installing, and configuring server software
* Maintaining the secure configuration through application of appropriate patches and upgrades, security testing, monitoring of logs, and backups of data and operating system files.

NIST Guide to General Server Security

Fred Salvucci ponders the role of contingency in history, and in the evolution of Boston and its transportation system. He starts from the time the glaciers pulled back from Boston, leaving a soggy near-island and a river for the first white settlers to contend with. “The reason the city is here because of an accident of history,” he says. In the 1600s, “when the English first came, they made a mistake,” Salvucci reports. Thinking that the Charles would run deep and wide for a thousand miles inland, offering vital trade routes, the English hunkered down.

Once they realized their mistake (the Charles is about a foot deep in Watertown, MA, six miles away), the settlers built on the resources at hand, which included enormous stocks of cod and good ship-building lumber. The “poverty of a place forces skills, which in turn makes the place not poor,” says Salvucci. These Protestant settlers also set about, in near record time, establishing schools like Boston Latin and Harvard.

Boston’s rapid expansion and prosperity led to innovations such as filling land, which in turn led to unexpected transportation developments. The first commercial use of rail in the New World, Salvucci tells us, was to haul in granite for the Bunker Hill monument, and to bring dirt from the suburbs for Boston builders. When people realized they could use the new technology to transport farm products, the Boston & Worcester Railroad was born. But the idea of moving people around didn’t emerge until the 1800s, when the concept of living one place and working in another led to streetcars in Boston and elsewhere. Around 1900, Boston led the nation with the first subway (“a little dinky one”) running just two blocks. In two decades, the guts of the city’s subway system emerged, making Salvucci’s own Big Dig project appear modest in comparison (adjusting for inflation).

Salvucci remarks on the numerous cases of “indirect causality” through human history, how things “built in ways that are unanticipated and probably unanticipatable.” In 1865, there were no electric street cars. By 1900, U.S. East Coast cities were covered by them. In 1900, there were 2,000 autos in the U.S., and by 1920, there were so many cars that city rail networks began dying out. Don’t be fooled into thinking you can “predict tomorrow based on yesterday plus a small delta,” warns Salvucci.

History of Boston Transportation, 1630-1990

1010data offers a revolutionary, high–performance, user–friendly, web–based service for analyzing and managing data. Our unique technology allows us to build and manage databases in a fraction of the usual time and at a fraction of the usual cost and allows customers to do analysis and research quickly and effectively.

1010data

Sir Francis Chichester, Robin Knox-Johnston, Dame Ellen McArthur and other great names from the history of sailing could be joined this year by Pinta the robot.

The unmanned boat is undergoing final preparations before setting sail in the hope of becoming the first robot to cross an ocean using the power of wind. By sailing non-stop and unassisted for an estimated three months it will prove the potential for robotic craft to undertake vital research in roles in dangerous and far-off waters.

Pinta has been designed by scientists at Aberystwyth University and will join seven other robotic craft in October in a race across the Atlantic. The race is intended to test the endurance and reliability of robots away from battery chargers and the predictable environment of a laboratory.

Pinta the robot sailing boat takes on Atlantic challenge