God Declares War on Boy Scouts
July 29, 2005 | 3 Comments
The angry God has returned. On Tuesday, July 26th, four scout leaders were killed in an electrical accident while putting up a tent. Most thought this was a tragic accident. Proof to the contrary came today when lightning struck another group killing another leader and leaving a 13-year old boy braindead.
These strikes are either acts of war or terrorism on the part of God. Following President Bush’s stance of postponing his speech to the scouts, I believe he has aligned himself with God. Surely God must not be a terrorist if Bush has sided with Him. Therefore war is the only explanation.
Karel from Advocate.com published a similar article, here’s an excerpt:
First came the tragic death of four scout leaders, setting up a dining tent. By all accounts, it was biblical carnage at its best. Scouts watched as a metal pole at the center of the large, white tent touched power lines, electrocuting four adult leaders and injuring others. According to accounts published in the July 29 Guardian Unlimited, “Screams rang out as the tent caught fire and the men burned.�
That’s downright Old Testament.
I suggested that more strikes may be on the way, and boy scouts better be on the lookout. When asked for comment on the subject friend Jenny Sweedler said: “The weekend is a great time for God to do some killing.”
God was unavailable for comment. Updates will follow as info about further attacks comes in.
More info:
CNN: Safety review after 4 Scout leaders die at Jamboree
CNN: Scout on life support after lightning strike
Washington Post: Bush’s Visit to Scouts Postponed Again
Tags: boy scouts, Bush, death, holy war, jamboree, lightning, old testament, president Bush, scouts, terrorism, war
Emerging PKI
July 28, 2005 | 2 Comments
This week four of us attended the 2005 EDUCAUSE/Dartmouth PKI Deployment Summit. Our intention was to get a feel for the status of client-side PKI.
Before I get into that, here is a definition of PKI from the UK Department of Health: (just happened to be the clearest, most concise one I could find.)
“A public-key infrastructure (PKI) is the set of policies, people, processes, technology and services that make it possible to deploy and manage the use of public-key cryptography and digital certificates on a wide-scale.”
What about the client-side part? I can’t find a clean definition of this alone, but here’s my summary. Client-side PKI is the assignment of digital certificates to end users for the purpose of authentication without the need for usernames and passwords. An end user could then present their personal certificate as either a soft-copy or on a hardware token to gain access to systems and services they are authorized for. In general deployment of client-side PKI gives a much greater level of assurance (LOA) that the user is in fact who they claim to be.
With the vast number and variety of integrated and disparate systems in most higher education institutions, coupled with a need to be sure only appropriate users are gaining access to them, client-side PKI becomes an attractive technology.
One of the more interesting presentations was from Peter Alterman on behalf of the Federal Public Key Infrastructure Authority. He spoke at great length about LOA and what levels would allow you to map to other levels of access to federal services through the Federal Bridge. I assume there will eventually be a great number of services provided through the bride which will be of interest to higher ed, so institutions need to be aware of the hoops you may need to jump through to get certified. Keep in mind that usernames and passwords will only qualify you for minimal connectivity and services.
So why not roll out client-side PKI at your institutions as quickly as possible? Well… it is complex, the road is mostly unpaved, and it is hugely expensive. Each user needs to have a certificate assigned to them and renewed annually. The outright cost of these are usually $8-$15. Under the newly formed EDUCAUSE Identity Management Services Program (IMSP) a reduced price has been negotiated with VeriSign dropping the price to about $4 (or less depending on volume). Looking at a basic higher education institute with say 7000 users, that gives an annual price tag of $28,000. Put alumni in the same mix and that price gets worse. Then there is a cost associated with hardware tokens if you decide to use those. My understanding is that these run about $30 ($210,000 for 7000). The only way this could actually be funded would be to pass this cost along to the students in their technology fee and have departments budgets handle it for faulty and staff.
Many institutions are avoiding all of this by signing their own certificates. Of course this then prompts users about unknown signing authority which might cause calls to the help desk with confused users. This is the solution MIT, USC, and others have adopted.
There is another solution nearing availability, USHER, the US Higher Education Root. According to Neal McBurnett of Internet2, USHER will:
provide a basis for campuses to deploy signed documents, secure email, and other applications. Serving as both an infrastructure and an initiative, it will include a root (AKA trust anchor or certification authority) to identify campus roots [CA’s], and recommended applications, tools and metadata. It will coordinate with the InCommon federation.
Assuming the USHER CA finds its way into the major browsers as an accepted signing authority, it will provide higher education with an affordable solution for digital certificates. USHER is a key player in multiple Internet2 initiatives including the InCommon Federation and Shibboleth. USHER does not yet seem to have its own web site, but is being coordinated by HEPKI-TAG. I believe USHER is the lynch pin for general deployment of PKI in higher education.
Tags: authentication, certificates, digital certificates, educause, federal bridge, federated identity management, federations, HEPKI-TAG, higher education, identity management, incommon, internet2, loa, middleware, pki, public key infrastructure, SSL, USHER, verisign
Pepper Pad
July 26, 2005 | 12 Comments
On friday Casey and I went to see the Pepper Pad in Massachusetts. To me this is a hugely interesting product. It sits in the vacant space between PDAs and laptops, ignoring the existence of Tablet PCs. To tell the truth, I think tablets are entirely useless. Unless you have money to waste or a budget to spend, there is no justifiable reason to invest in these devices. They come up short on the power of a laptop, and are not actually portable. However, the Pepper Pad has found the sweet spot between laptops and PDAs, amazingly they do not pretend to be either and this is where they shine.
Do you ever find yourself watching TV and want to look something up quickly on the Internet? Do you want to be able to see recipes while cooking in the kitchen? Do you want an Internet enabled device you can walk around your house with? If you answered yes to any of these questions or similar ones, the Pepper Pad is for you. From their site:
Portable and lightweight? Definitely.
Able to instantly connect you to all your favorite activities-e-mailing, IM, Web browsing, listening to music, watching videos, sharing photos and more? Absolutely.
How about easy to use, totally low maintenance and ready to travel with you-whether to the couch, the backyard or even the local coffee shop? Check.
That device is here. Say hello to the Pepper Pad. The Pad represents an entirely new category of wireless device-bigger and more powerful than a PDA or mobile phone, but smaller, lighter and far less complex (and a lot more fun) than a laptop.
This is an existing gadget I’d like in my home. However, the Pepper Pad is not perfect. I have to point out the areas they fall slightly short in hopes they, or another generation, will resolve them. Problems:
- Spongy feeling keypad - limited tactical feedback
- Unlabeled “function” key
- Oddly placed backspace button
- Laggy response to stylus input - scrolling with the wheel is great, the stylus is troublesome
- I question the lack of a word processor, even if limited in features/functionality
Not to knock the Pepper Pad, because it is hands down the coolest thing of its kind available, but I want competitors in this space. Would we have ever gotten an MP3 player as sweet as the iPod if there Creative and others hadn’t pioneered that space first, I think not.
In a perfect world someone like Apple would step in and build something If they took the components in the Mini, added a small LCD touch screen, gave it appropriate usability testing, OSX, and a <$800 price tag, they’d make billions. I know I’d find the money somewhere…
Tags: computing platform, hardware, innovation, laptop, mobile, mobile computing, pepper, pepper pad, tablet, technology, ultra portable
The Greatest Keyboard Ever
July 25, 2005 | 1 Comment
Art Lebedev Studios is currently showing off the Optimus Keyboard which is still in the initial stages of development. This is undeniably the greatest keyboard ever created. On each key are OLEDs giving it ability to have dynamic images. Imagine the possibilities! Dynamic buttons for various games, or programs. I’d love to look down at the keyboard and see that I accidentally left the caps lock key on. I want one, I wish they were available now…
Previously I was in love with the ZBoard which has exchangeable keysets. The downfall of this is that you have to buy separate keysets for each application/use/game you want to use with it. This could become expensive quickly. Additionally it is far less versatile than the Optimus keyboard.
I found this on Alexa because the site is currently enjoying a 50,000% increase in traffic! I think that is entirely related to it being Slashdot’ed.
More Info:
Engadget
Primo Tech
Gadgetopis
Ensellitas
TechSpot
Tags: alexa, gadget, hardware, innovation, keyboard, OLED, optimus keyboard, technology, zboard
Google Confirms: Moon Made of Cheese
July 20, 2005 | 3 Comments
A long standing debate amongst the pseudo-science community has been ended! The moon is in fact made of cheese. Google today released a Google Maps version that gives satellite imagery of the moon in recognition of the first moon landing which took place on July 20th, 1969. If you use the zoom bar and get in real close it becomes obvious that the moon is in fact made of cheese.
Another source has long speculated this based on seismographic activity from the Apollo landings, he explains his hypothesis here: Is the moon made of green cheese?
Although outsider organizations like NASA have provided rudimentary evidence to the contrary, I think the satellite footage speaks for itself. Thank you Google for finally answering this age old question.
Tags: apollo, google, google maps, google moon, moon cheese, NASA, satellite
Remember faces, recover a password?
July 20, 2005 | 3 Comments
Last fall when I was in San Diego for the CAMP Identity Management and CAMP Enterprise Authentication Workshop put on by Educause and NMI-EDIT, I saw a very strange product demo. At the time I ignored it thinking it was a bit too strange. However for the last six months it has remained in my head.
The product is called Passfaces(tm) by the company Real User which works on what they call “cognometric authentication.” In short, you remember a bunch of faces and this allows you to get back your password if you have forgotten it, or can be used in place of the password altogether. Can you imagine clicking on 5 faces and getting logged in instead of entering a password? From my perspective, the best use would be as an alternate to ridiculously insecure questions like “What is you mother’s maiden name?”, “What’s you favorite pet’s name?”, etc.
According to Real User, the system works because:
The Passface(tm) system is based on the human brain’s remarkable ability to recognize individual faces*. This underlying principle is supported by extensive academic research and cognitive psychology experiments. Real User’s own long-term trial with Passfaces(tm) at our Web site has operated successfully for over 15,000 users - some of these returning after two years of non-use and being able to immediately recognize their passfaces.
For more detail on the science behind this, check some of their white papers. I find the technology combined with psychology here fascinating. The person giving the demo at the conference said they’d been running it for over a year without any difficulty.
Tags: authentication, identity, identity management, password, password initialization, password recovery, psychology, technology
SunGard SCT Summit 2005 Presentation
July 18, 2005 | 6 Comments
Earlier this year I presented at Summit in Hawaii on Plymouth State University’s implementation of LDI for eLearning. LDI stands for Luminis Data Integration. Basically we use LDI for semi-realtime data integration and SSO between Banner, WebCT and Luminis.
A few people have requested a copy of my presentation, so here it is: LDI Implementation Case Study at PSU
Tags: banner, integration, ldi, ldis, luminis, luminis data integration suite, portal, presentation, sso, sungardsct, uportal, webct