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Some simple examples of what you'll be able to accomplish with identity addresses (like OpenID)

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:33:00 -0400

The concept of OpenID isn’t limited to single sign-on. It is far, far more than that. OpenID is an identity address through which, you can publish anything and everything about yourself and where others can go for information about you, for example, feeds you generate, your contact information, your calendars, or any other service or information you want to publish.

Contact/address book capabilities

Automatic updates to your contacts’ information.
- For example, a friend you haven’t spoken to in a year has moved and changed phone numbers. If you have their identity URL in your address book, they simply update their contact information in their own profile and when you next access that contact, it’ll refer to their identity URL and verify that the information is current.
Presence management.
- For example, your contacts can publish their current, preferred contact preferences in their profile and, in real-time, when you want to contact them, you can be notified of exactly how they’d prefer you reach them or even whether they’d prefer not to not be disturbed.
Feed aggregation of any or all contacts.

Calendaring capabilities

Publishing calendars and events through your identity address.
Subscribe to notifications.
- For example, you take your car into the shop. They enter your identity address in your records. You can go home and subscribe to the shop’s repair status service and track the progress of the repairs to your car.
- For example, you have an appointment for a teeth cleaning tomorrow. Your dentist can request verification via your identity address by updating the event to which you subscribed.

Single Sign-on

Sign-in once, access the world.
Provides services with the ability to aggregate other services you use.
- For example, services like mint.com currently require log-in credentials for all your financial services. This is highly insecure but also a very beneficial service. A better technique is to authorize mint.com access to your account only while you are authenticated with your identity address. They never have direct log-in access to any account.

Security

Completely secure messaging
- All the capabilities above will be selective. As much or as little information can be made available to as wide or narrow an audience as the user chooses.
Password protection
- Having only one service that has to manage a password is more secure than providing password for services all over the place.
- The service that manages the identity address can focus on secure authentication services while letting other services specialize in whatever they do best.
- Not having to type passwords over and over adds to security.
- Having fewer passwords enhances security by eliminating the need to write it down.

All of this and much, much more are capable and in an open protocol so no one will be locked into any service.

Think of an identity address as a passport or driver license. It is the secure means of identifying yourself online and will be your means of identifying yourself to sites and services.

Rich get richer

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:12:00 -0400

Our current economic situation is an example of why greed is bad. Lots of rich people have and are profiting from this mess, which they mostly created, while the rest of us are going to be devastated, or worse. We’ve been hoodwinked. Greedy individuals have manipulated the economy into a situation in which everything around us can be purchased at a fraction of its value.

For one thought on who might have helped orchestrate this, read these two articles from July 2006 “Cheneys betting on bad news?” and from July 2007 “Is Dick Cheney Betting Against the Dollar?” which states:

“This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the “Bush Economic Plan” is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation’s wealth from one class to another. It’s also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn’t have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.”

While we were afraid of being attacked by terrorists we were being raped by these dirty, nasty Republicans and they’re so confident in their scam that the raping continues with this “bailout”. Are the rich that caused this fiasco giving back all their ill-gotten gains? No. They’re essentially saying we, the people being raped, have to all scrounge for change so that we can buy these disgusting individuals new homes and cars, while ours are being taken from us. From all the deregulation to being the most secretive administration of all time, you should make no bones about this being caused and planned by Republicans and Bush Inc. They began the first term by having closed-door talks on energy policy with Enron, some of the greatest con-artists in a life-time, for which the records of the meetings have still not been released. Surprise! This is Enron x1000.

The sad part, though, is that no one cares. We’ve all become so manipulated by capitalism that we accept that any profit is good profit. Besides, most of us would be the same greedy bastards. Why no calls for accountability? Because we’re sedated by lies claiming action. Just like we were lied to about the war, we’re being lied to about the economy. Bush Inc reframed the argument for war on terror as a need to liberate Iraq instead of answering why and who caused 9/11 and fighting for accountability. And they are reframing this economic disaster as “bailout” instead of answering why and who caused this devastation and fighting for accountability. They’re not calling for accountability because they’re complicit in the devastation. There is simply no other reason. Anyone uninvolved in the destruction of so much should ask why and who. Anyone in power should ask why and who and act on the answers. If they don’t, it’s likely they are involved.

Sometime around September 30th is International Vague Day

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:14:00 -0400

Prepare to vague.

I'm so incredibly sick of email as identity!

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:16:08 -0400

Email was never intended to be used for identity purposes. Please, everyone stop using it to identify accounts. Sure, use it to register for accounts but never make it the account identity. Email addresses change. In the future, hopefully, no one will even have a fixed, static email address, each address being one-time use. At the very least, provide an option for a user name, otherwise, implement OpenID. OpenID is incredibly easy to support. Or do whatever but don’t, don’t, don’t use email addresses.

What happened Jon?!

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 05:56:34 -0400

Can’t hold Tony’s feet to the flame? “No democracies have gone to war?” Bull.

The biggest problem i have with the Republican Party

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 08:51:22 -0400

Is its dependence on the religious right.

This is the group that:

keep insisting creationism is science.
abstinence is the only sex education that should be taught - against stacks of evidence proving otherwise.
want to throw out the first amendment - thinking America should be a theocracy, a Christian nation.
protect child-molesting priests.
fear their supposedly all-loving creator.
want to amend the Constitution to outlaw same-sex marriage.
ban and burn “indecent” or “obscene” books.

They have such tunnel-vision and are so arrogant and close-minded that they can not accept other possibilities. They can not accept that others believe differently than them or they simply don’t care. Regardless of the friendly face they sport to get people into positions of power, they have an agenda of hatred, ignorance immorality and prejudice as stated above. To me, these people are lunatics and incredibly dangerous to the US Constitution. We’ve seen how dangerous having a Republican Congress and President have been to our Republic. The secrets, lies, war, and corruption were all enabled in part by those ideals and have destroyed our standing in the world and have torn the Country apart along party lines.

I have to believe that many Republicans don’t believe in the points above which makes me wonder why they can still support the Republican party. These points are direct attacks on what is America, the Constitution and our freedom.

Confession: Compassion versus criticism

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:52:00 -0400

I’ve never been opposed to someone being critical of my beliefs, opinions, statements or whatever. I always try to see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. Even if i don’t know them personally or even if they’re anonymous, i’ll weigh their opinions against my own and others’. It’s an opportunity to see things from a different perspective. But if the criticism isn’t compassionate and caring, it will be less useful, even hurtful. There’s a limit to how critical someone should be and compassion must always play a role in criticism.

Criticism is essentially telling someone their wrong. But unless you’re critical of a fact, like someone claiming 2+2 =5, being right or wrong isn’t black or white. Everyone’s perception is different even though we’re all looking at the same thing.

Criticism can easily be myopic. Because it’s easy. It’s easy to spew forth an opinion. Everyone can form one quickly and claim it as the ideal. But it doesn’t require any consideration of anything beyond yourself. Compassion requires consideration of others. It requires trying to understand another’s perspective, experience, reasoning, …. Simply, compassion requires thought and empathy.

Criticism is a killer of confessions. Think about it. How often do you enjoy talking to someone that constantly tells you you’re wrong? Probably never. The real problem is that it doesn’t even need to be a constant. Simply the presence of criticism is enough to stifle open communication. If you know a person will be critical of some particular statements, you’ll filter yourself. If a person can not express themselves without the fear of any type of criticism, many will not confess at all, even anonymously. This is why compassion (compassionate criticism) is of utmost importance for allowing people to express themselves freely. We don’t confess to be criticized. Acceptance is what confession is about.

We confess to get it off our chest. To hope others can empathize. To not feel alone. To hopefully help us move beyond some issue. To learn how to cope. Everyone, even people you don’t like, deserve compassion. Maybe some day, you’ll be the person people don’t like and you’ll hope for some compassion.

It's discussions like these...

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 15:58:22 -0400

“I am disabled, I fucking hate it and I want to die … but I can’t kill myself because I’m worried about bad karma and a friend made my promise not to.”

This thread shows the importance of community and why the internets are so wonderful. There are no prejudices here. No one cares who the person is, just that it is someone that can use a helping hand. And people step up. Beautiful.

I'm never voting for fear, war and hatred

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:08:00 -0400

I’ll never vote for a candidate that believes starting a war is a solution. When human lives are involved, the best defense is not a good offense. With that mentality, we should just kill everyone and there’ll be peace. At most, the best defense is just the presence of a strong offense, which should be the UN and only the UN.

Will you stand by and let one man pummel another on the street. Probably because most people are afraid to get involved. But everyone watching will know it’s wrong and know it should be stopped. And the people that will stop the fight enter it to restrain the combatants, not to enter the fight themselves. To subdue warring parties is the only valid reason for war. A preemptive war is like looking at someone and thinking they’re going to start a fight so you have to hit first. That makes no sense at all because you are severely subject to emotions like fear which result in misperceptions and misunderstandings.

But it makes sense that many Republicans believe fear is a solution to peace. They live in fear of their supposedly all-loving god. Until the Republicans drop their pandering to religious fanaticism, they’ll never get my vote. These Republican hypocrites have usurped, manipulated and perverted their religions in exactly the same ways “Islamic” terrorists have perverted the Koran. That is, to suit their warped hatred of everything unlike themselves and different from their beliefs. That’s prejudice. Prejudice is hatred. Hatred is the opposite of love. Love is a core tenet to most religious beliefs. To act otherwise is hypocritical. Not mildly hypocritical like most of us. Hypocritical to the core of who they are, their core belefs.

Is there a single person that will be voting for McCain that doesn’t have to talk out of both sides of their mouth to explain why? If so, i have yet to come across them. And if anyone beliefs they don’t, i can prove you do with only two questions.

How do you justify starting a war but oppose abortion?
How do you justify prayer in school, ten commandments in courts, constitutional amendments against gay marriage, or any number of other impositions of religion on government but oppose Muslim theocracies?

The current Republican party is disgusting. It’s divisive and close-minded. Any such organization is destined to collapse as they push more and more people away faster than they can dumb others down to join them.

I refuse to dumb myself down simply to claim a party affiliation. I will not live in fear of a god. I live in love with humanity and the universe we share, in and around each us.

Why I'm a slightly left of center independent

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:57:27 -0400

First, if you think in terms of absolutes, black/white, either/or, or yes/no, please stop reading this and go read about complexity, fluidity, probability, balance, cooperation, negotiation, moderation and compromise.

Ok …

Why i’m independent is simple. Being unaffiliated frees me to consider all sides with less bias than i would have if i were affiliated with a team.

I’m essentially centrist but, as i often over-simplify it, i place more weight on social issues than fiscal. That’s a very simple way to say that i believe “we the people” are more beneficial to me than i can be for myself. We can thrive and prosper more by helping others than we can by just helping ourselves. Examples of this are all around. From employer-employee relationships to on-the-street helping-hands to friends and family to the internets and even to the rest of the animal kingdom¹. Having others around that will help others is mutually beneficial for all. It is important to create and provide such an environment of cooperation where everyone has the opportunity to be happy and thrive.

To put it differently and simply, everything in society involves people. All our issues are handled by us. There is no fiscal without social. There is no business, government, nor market without people. Nothing is more important to society than people, essentially by definition. So the livelihood of society must be the utmost importance for individual prosperity. Giving to the society is effectively a selfish act. Making society prosperous becomes the dilemma.

One big division is between giving a man a fish and teaching a man to fish. But these are not mutually exclusive. If someone is hungry now, they need to eat now. They can eat while learning to fish. We must be willing to provide while teaching. Both are important for society. Providing equal opportunity. Providing equal health. Providing equal security. Providing equal education.

People will take advantage in and of a society that provides. Such people hurt both themselves and the society. But to succumb to greed because others are greedy feeds into itself. Just as addiction and depression are vicious cycles for an individual, so are greed and selfishness to society. Unless the cycle is broken, the consequences are the same for society as they are for individuals: fatal.

A me-society is inherently self destructive. Taking requires others give. They give actively or passively, willingly or reluctantly but others are giving nonetheless. An ideal transaction is when all parties are willing participants and all feel they’ve received at least a fair² deal. Sure, the universe may not seem “fair” but we have the ability to be fair to each other and should exercise it. A me-society does not breed cooperation. Taking from someone reluctant to give or in which the transaction is unfair will likely result in bitterness, spite or animosity which is counter productive to promoting a flourishing society in which individual can prosper. Damaging the society affects us all.

The solution is to teach by example. Society requires relationships. Relationships require trust. Trust requires honesty. Being compassionate and empathic breeds the same, bolstering people to trust in each other and society with resilience to withstand destructive forces. Since we must share everything in this world, there is nothing more important than how we treat each other. A society of respect will thrive and easily manage fiscal concerns thus enabling individual prosperity.

But America has been about excess. Living beyond our means. Some of the rest of the world is unfortunately following in our path. We have bred an attitude of greed. We have to be greedy to sustain our lifestyle. If we can stop that cycle and learn to be happy living within our means, we can have something left over to help enable others, providing them the same opportunities those with more have been given³ or have obtained. Until we break this cycle of greed, one team’s solution has been to force the more wealthy to help, obviously resulting in a schism, further damaging society.

Which brings me to by point. It just makes sense to me that the more a person prospers from the society that feeds them, the more they should return. It isn’t a penalty. It is selfish act to benefit the world that made them wealthy. No one can become wealthy in isolation. But if the wealthy are reluctant to sacrifice more themselves, I will easily vote to sacrifice them for the poor. There are far more people that can use a helping hand than there are wealthy. Additionally, it takes relatively little to improve conditions of the poor whereas any impact on the wealthy is virtually insignificant or easily overcome. Helping bolster so many in need will benefit everyone and easily offset any negative impact to the society.

¹ For example, ants, bees, pack animals … Yes, the animal kingdom is fierce, competitive and brutal but we have much higher intelligence and reasoning on our side for which we can learn from aspects of animal behavior without having to continue exhibiting the brutality.
² The psychology of fairness is too broad and not overly important to the point. All that matters is that everyone has a general understanding of what it it means to be fair, including personally and relatively, and the understanding that most reasonable people can negotiate an equitable solution. For example, not being or feeling ripped-off or that everyone received their fair share. BTW, this is where negotiation and comprise are important.
³ Yes, given! Being born white in an American middle class or higher family has historically been a huge advantage over most others in the world. The opportunities it bestows before ever lifting your own finger are enormous. The opportunity to achieve must be provided to everyone. We just have no idea where the great minds and leaders are born.

Better comments

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:18:13 -0400

First, any good comment system should provide fully threaded comments but, unless the user chooses a threaded view, they’re displayed as a stream. Each reply simply “@” refers to comment(s) to which it is a reply. e.g.

I think threaded comments suck (by flatworld5)
Well, the world isn’t flat any more so get over it (@flatworld5) (by haterpants)
Boo (by ipostnonsense)
Exatly (@haterpants) (by alwaysagrees)
http://www.theflatearthsociety.net/ (@haterpants, @alwaysagrees) (by flatworld5)

Each comment is essentially an anchor and clicking it will initiate a comment reply. Clicking on multiple comments initiates a single reply to all the clicked comments.

Second, all comments should be given their own URL. They can be dynamically generated if needed and should always simply be based on the URL of the post.

Third, as users are typing a comment, all prior comments should be filtered based on the words of the user’s current comment. This filtering should be minimal or disabled when there are few comments and become much more robust as the number of comments grows. The idea is that it allows users to leave a comment but not duplicate content by easily finding similar, prior comments.

Impressive Illusionist

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:16:03 -0400

Astrotheological Literary Hybrid = Bible

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:31:23 -0400

A.J. Jacobs: My year of living biblically

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:07:04 -0400

Feist can teach me to count any day

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:31:55 -0400

Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible"

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:45:44 -0400

I love Act I.

From someone that won't make it happen

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:19:00 -0400

Here is what should happen:

Feeds and feed items need to be taggable privately, and organizable by friends and globally.
Feed items need to be prioritizable by interest and priorities must be fluid. Essentially, a very robust search feed.
Feed items need to be filtered for commonality so that the same item from multiple sources are properly aggregated and attributed.
Socially, the model need to be way more sophisticated than friend or not friend. I want the ability to mark comments and posts I like and the more I like someone’s comments, the more their feeds are added to my feed, preferably, based on my prioritization. This is not to exclude the ability to specifically assign someone as friend, just augment it.
No new site should not support OpenID. Every site needs it ASAP.
Comments should be threaded.
Everything has a permalink.
Everything editable is versioned.
Comment delegation. A distributed comment system where all of a user’s comments are saved at a user-specified remote site. They can be duplicated if there is a method for managing updates at any location. (not really scalable but I love the idea).

friendfeed is so close to what I’ve been wanting.

This explained the surprisingly interesting
Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:53:00 -0400

This explained the surprisingly interesting power law distribution. To me, it clarified why there are so few with so much and so many with so little and, because it’s the natural social phenomenon, why it must be up to governments to level the playing field … some.

Because Congress are a bunch of scandelous, vote-grubbing pigs.

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:12:29 -0400

Because Congress are a bunch of scandelous, vote-grubbing pigs.

The Onion. Consistently bringing the hilarity.

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:02:00 -0400

The Onion. Consistently bringing the hilarity.