Matthew’s Weblog

I don’t trust anyone to have all of my personal details - and I know it is somewhat naive of me to think I can hide them - but the issues I keep having with ideas of Universal Authentication are that I want to control my own data.  I don’t want any specific repository, I don’t want the software deciding what information is appropriate to share, I don’t want to have conflicts with other users when we have the same information… I want to be the one deciding what to distribute.

I even - gasp - lie to some sites.  The LA Times (free login required) thinks I live in Kansas.  How will the Shibboleth system handle my lies?

OK, so it’s way too expensive and looks goofy, but a real Lithium-battery car now exists, beyond just a prototype.  If we can only get a major manufacturer to now decide to offer them…

A cool OpenMedia PVR - too bad it’s only sold in New Zealand. 

More writings on the inadequacies of passwords and the difficulty when ‘best’ practices are enshrined without thought… including the question of what we should really be monitoring for security instead of always pointing at lazy users or relying on some magic entry authentication.

Technorati Tags: passwords, best+practices

I’m desperately wanting to install solar but have so far not found it cost-effective enough to be compelling.  Here’s yet another spin on how to concentrate the sun, through using holograms to direct the light and make the solar cells more effective.

Cool!

This Dvorak rant has got to be the weirdest yet very compelling argument I’ve heard all year - that Microsoft made a mistake creating Internet Exploder.  Considering the problems I’ve always had with it, I would not be surprised if it was a net loss to Microsoft financials.  To point that out as a strategic mistake is a strange kind of insight…

Bluetooth or WiFi control from your phone - no more carrying extra doodads to do presentations and some neat home (iTunes, etc) control as well…

Very cool!

Well, I haven’t updated my recommendations since version 1.0.4 and technology marches on.  Here’s a new guide that pretty much is what I use as well, so I’m referencing it for self-preservation…

will langford dot com » Firefox Guide

Potentially useful?

How To Set Up A Load-Balanced MySQL Cluster | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

I’m thrilled to see people moving away from Flash and into tools like Ajax - and some of the tricks currently being used don’t appear to be as complex as they used to be.  I’m still trying to figure out how much of this could have been done before and just wasn’t because we didn’t see the possibilities in JavaScript.

My issue is now I have to be wary of sites using Ajax for fancy image animations, since I’ve routinely turned off gif animations and killed flash in all my browsers.  Guess I’ll have to find a kill-javascript-button Firefox extension…