Linux in Government: Understanding Federated Identity Management, Tom Adelstein's latest essay in Linux Journal. In response to the question What's Federated Identity Management (FIM)?, he says,

Actually, we should be asking how important is FIM. It's the lynchpin of digital convergence and probably one of the most important technologies of the modern era. Soon, we will begin to swim in digital television, multifunctional phones, devices of all kinds, and at the core of making all these things work together with our computer networks and the Internet lies identity management. At the core of identity management lies federation.

Then he outlines what's happening OASIS, SAML, WS-I, Microsoft, IBM, Ping Identity and SourceID, and how open source fits into the picture. He concludes,

We all might find some difficulty in finalizing our thoughts on federated identity management. Perhaps the momentum behind the standards and the technology could change, and we might wind up with a totally different solution that the ones existing today. Most people in the technology field will say that once people start down a certain road, though, they seem compelled to stay on it. I tend to think that the three standards will merge or learn to co-exist.

At the moment, federated identity management is becoming the next buzz word on the street. Those who do not know about it or understand it might find themselves challenged in their careers. I hope this article gives you a start on the path toward researching it.

Other starts include (in no particular order)...

Soon as Dave leaves Florida, they arrest a guy in St. Petersburg for using somebody's open Wi-Fi hotspot.

What do they mean, "using"? All they say is,

Police say Benjamin Smith III, 41, used his Acer brand laptop to hack into Dinon's wireless Internet network. The April 20 arrest is considered the first of its kind in Tampa Bay and among only a few so far nationwide.

This was just posted by Doug Skoglund over at my personal blog:

Since I must recognize and accept your involvement with the Linux community, I must reveal that I am a Windows programmer and a Microsoft basher, a combination in rather short supply. Unfortunately, most of the Linux contacts I have made, so far, were unable to separate the value of Windows from the evil of Microsoft, a prejudice that baffles me no end.

With that in mind -- do we have a possibility of constructive conversation??

When I heard about the Grokster decision this morning (in which the Supremes decided unanimously in favor of MGM, et. al. in its suit against Grokster, et. al.), I knew many, in the blogosphere as well as the mass media, would play the story as a victory by Hollywood over Technology. That may be right, but to what does the metaphor blind us? Take away the war and sports framing, and what have you got?

Justice Souter, writing for the entirety of the Court, begins,

The Head Lemur says Microsoft is forking RSS.

Dave says,

"Attention" is getting some well-deserved attention lately. But what about its opposite? What about that class of stuff we choose, actively, to ignore? Such as: advertising.

If you use a modern browser such as Firefox or Safari, there's a good chance you're already exercizing your power to block pop-up ads. But what about selectively blocking any or all advertising? Well, Firefox has a plug-in architecture, so that's more than conceivable.

Enter the Adblock project. I hadn't heard about AdBlock until I read about the threat of it in ZDNet Australia. It begins,

Bennie Smith, the online advertising network's privacy chief, told ZDNet Australia the popularity of tools like Adblock -- an extension to the Mozilla Firefox browser -- which makes blocking online ads simple was tied to "a negative vibe against advertising in general".

Here's more:

Eric Norlin:

In the end, this "data loss" problem isn't really about data loss, data protection or data safeguarding at all. That, my friends, is a red herring. The real question to be asked is: Why do all of these corporations need to store all of this personal data in the first place? Why does my credit card company need to store my social security number? Why does Amazon need to store my credit card number? Why shouldn't every company store only what I tell them they can store? And why shouldn't the data that they store be as little as they possibly need to conduct business?

He has answers as well as questions, of course. The central one:

Johannes Ernst asks, What might an "Identity Meta-System" be? He begins,

Microsoft InfoCard is frequently described as an "Identity Meta-System" (as opposed to, say, Microsoft Passport, which is/was a plain identity system and not a meta-system). This term seems to have beek picked up widely, but like some others (e.g. Doc Searls), the longer I think about it, the more I realize that I have a number of open questions about it ...

Ashlee Vance in theregister reports on the vendor backed development of Xen hypervisor. Ashlee claims that upcoming releases will support Microsoft's Windows and Sun's Solaris. Microsoft would have to release targeted ports of its platforms for Xen because Unlike other virtualization systems, the "guest" operating systems need to be adapted to run.