Passport to Nowhere

prostoalex writes "CNET News.com.com talks about less than glamorous acceptance of Microsoft's single sign-on technology, .NET Passport. Being launched as a single sign-on service for online businesses and competing heavily with open Liberty Alliance project, which so far has produced just a large amount of PDF files, .NET Passport is considered a failure (although not by Microsoft). Turns out, high licensing fees, lack of simple implementation, security leaks and server downtime, were not acceptable to most of potential clients out there."

Hmmm

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Turns out, high licensing fees, lack of simple implementation, security leaks and server downtime

Yet they still buy windows...

Generic description

[nother_nix_hacker]

Turns out, high licensing fees, lack of simple implementation, security leaks and server downtime

Sounds like a generic description of MS products.

2 Things

[panthro]

1. I have yet to meet someone who actually has (let alone uses) a .NET Passport.

2. If you are thinking about replying to this message with "I Do!", then I probably won't meet you, so see 1.

Jesus Christ, there were like only three posts!

[Anonymous Coward]

They said "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas"!!!! [direwolf.com]

Re:Microsoft and the FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting claim. Care to, you know, back it up with something?

Back it up? You must be new here.

.NET is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft confirms: .NET is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered .NET community when IDC confirmed that .NET market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that .NET has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. .NET is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict .NET's future. The hand writing is on the wall: .NET faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for .NET because .NET is dying. Things are looking very bad for .NET. As many of us are already aware, .NET continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Microsoft .NET is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Microsoft developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: .NET is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

.NET leader Bill states that there are 7000 users of .NET. How many users of .NET are there? Let's see. The number of .NET versus .NET posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 .NET users. .NET/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of .NET posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of .NET/OS. A recent article put .NET at about 80 percent of the .NET market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 .NET users. This is consistent with the number of .NET Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, .NET went out of business and was taken over by .NETI who sell another troubled OS. Now .NETI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that .NET has steadily declined in market share. .NET is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. .NET continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, .NET is dead.

Fact: .NET is dying

surprising it is

[spectasaurus]

"Turns out, high licensing fees, lack of simple implementation, security leaks and server downtime, were not acceptable to most of potential clients out there."

It's strange that this didn't appeal to most users who already use Windows. I would think people would tend to use things they are already familiar with.

Re:2 Things

[lpangelrob2]

1.) If you're saying that you've never met anyone that's used/uses a Hotmail account, I would find that hard to believe.

2.) If you really haven't... hi, I'm Rob! Nice to meet you. :-)

Re:Just PDF files?

[El]

You were expecting maybe .DOC files instead?

Re:Favorite quote from TFA

[TrentL]

I just use a dummy password for all those newspapers anyway. I let the browser remember it.

Oh, and I'm not a 65-year old CEO living in Ethiopia, but don't tell that to the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com].

Maybe

[bryan1945]

Haven't read the replies (or the FA), but wasn't a big concern about Passport that you would need to sign over your first 3 children just to get authenticated?

No, I'm New Here

[New Here]

No, I'm New Here

Re:Problem that doesn't exist big time...

[TykeClone]

Isn't that what Gator does too?

My "Passport"

[oldmildog]

For each web site I visit, I have a user ID and then make up a 10 character random password. That's stored in a text file on my laptop which is then encrypted with PGP. When I need to log in to a site, I unencrypt the file, copy/paste the password into the browser, and wipe the file. This is a few more steps than what MS Passport does but is infinitely more valuable to me in making me feel my passwords are relatively secure. BOTH solutions rely on one password to protect all my accounts, but at least in my solution it's a 20-character phrase stored my head instead of one stored in Redmond.

Humorless mods are gonna kill me on this one.

[Thud457]

I don't get it, I thought Gator [gator.com] already had all these features.

Re:Only used in hotmail

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on earth did you encrypt your hard drive?

1a) Are you really worried about someone stealing your hard drive? (Or your entire computer?)
OR
1b) Do you have an adversary who may have the capability to make a bit-by-bit copy of your hard drive?

2) Is this adversary who steals your computer or disk drive really not going to be able to access the encrypted partition simply by booting the operating system and retrieving the password from cache?

3) Is the password required to access the encrypted material really hard enough that such an adversary is not going to be able to brute-force it using l0phtcrack?

4) Are your drives invincible, or do you have a plan to recover your data in case a partial disk failure turns your drive into a partition of entirely indecipherable (and unrecoverable) binary data?

5) Are your purchasing habits and account numbers really worth the trouble?

I only ask because
a) I've seen encrypted hard disks reduced to useless lumps of binary data before, and
b) someone who has access to either steal your entire computer, your hard disk or make a complete image will likely also be in your house and:

1. have access to your machine while it's running, or
2. be able to open your desk drawer or file cabinet to get at your account records anyway

so why bother?

back door

[mabu]

Who needs a back door when Microsoft is guarding your front door?

Did Bill use it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to know if Bill Gates stored his personal credit info on Passport. Odds are 100 to 1 that he didn't.