For those who don't spend their free time reading and listening to security and open source bloggers, you might not know what OpenID is all about. At it's simplest, it's a system for a distributed identity system.

What is a distributed identity system? It's the ability to ask the proper source if this person has access to this identity. Identity doesn't proove that this is a person, group of people, my cat or a bot. All it can do is proove that some requestor should be associated with this identity.

So what's new? You already have a distributed identity. However it's not tied together at all, (unless your username is unique enough to never be taken) so nobody would ever realize that this guy on Slashdot is that guy on delicious. It's protected by 50 different passwords. And there isn't any sort of way to say if you want to know more about me then go here. OpenID has all that. One password properly protects your access to all OpenID enabled sites, and since your OpenID is tied to your own blog, there's always a reference pointing back to you. That reference is something you own or trust somebody to maintain for you, taking more control of your own identity back for yourself.

In OpenID, identities are URIs. I can be qedi.videntity.org, infornography.ca, or sad_mcemopants.livejournal.com (if I had that login, which surprisngly doesn't exist). Which makes sense from a blogger perspective. You are your URI anyway.

So once you go to some site that allows you to log in with OpenID, you can throw in your blog URI. Then, some backend magic happens and some site talks to your blog, and determines your identity provider (which could be your blogging software, something you've written youself, or some other provider you want to trust) and sends you there. You log in with your idendity provider, and determine what information you want to give or deny some site. After all, it may be useful to let some site in on one of your secrets, like your location or contact information, if you think it is useful, and this way you don't have to enter it in yet again. Your provider will then pass that on, and you'll be identified with your blog URI to some site.

It makes things a lot simpler, especially with more and more people coming on board with OpenID. AOL has made your AIM id into an OpenId for you to use if you want. Microsoft has pledged support. LiveJournal, Wordpress and a whole lot of others already provide one to use. Sites are just beginning to utilize it. Technorati, Zoomr, and Imageshack with more to follow.

As it turns out, last Friday, the CBC ended up posting an article about Ubuntu adoption. It's pretty much what I tried to post last time.

And if you want to read about some humming and hawing about the article, benefits, drawbacks and trolls about it all, the Slashdot discussion

The Pitch

With the recent press that Linux (and Ubuntu in particular) has been getting, it seems to be a good time to go back and look upon reasons for switching. HardOCP spent 30 days with Ubuntu and found installation "from the LiveCD is incredibly easy and problem free." Their bottom line was

For those who stick it out throughout the learning curve period, the rewards are great.

I'd admit, not everyone wants the same things from their computers. They're very general purpose for that very reason, so migrating to Linux may not be worthwhile for you. When I changed over seven or so years ago, it was fun. It was a huge learning experience that I never could have gotten from Windows. I had access to the code that ran everything I was doing, and it was like my first steps on the web. A wealth of knowledge.

At the time, that knowledge was a bit of a puddle of mud. I was stuck in it and needed how to learn how to breathe. Luckily I was looking forward to getting dirty. Nowadays though, installing and setting up a Linux system isn't nearly as dirty. Most of that is done for you, and for those that aren't, there are quite a few resources sitting about.

So why should you bother putting a Linux CD in your computer? First of all, it's free. Free as in "free beer" and free as in freedom. You won't have to worry about being mistakenly identified as a dirty pirate, functionality won't be forced away from you in an upgrade, and it inter-operates well with other systems. While no operating system has perfect security, you'll have less malware infecting your computer. It will also be generally easier, cheaper and have more choice when extending functionality.

Starting out is simple. You can download a copy of Ubuntu and get started without even installing anything to your machine.

The Resources

Ubuntu Documentation Team has a great desktop guide. For specific questions, The Ubuntu Guide is comprehensive, if not a little overwhelming.

The best thing you can do is to use the system and ask questions when you have them. Google may solve them for you. They were probably already solved on the Ubuntu forums, and if they weren't, you can probably ask it there.

Oh, and just asking me would generally be a good option as well

So this isn't really a linked list, but for all you gentoo users, GENTOO is Rice. Gentoo, apparently the rice rocket equivalent of the linux world. I should install a broken muffler on my Gentoo box. There's also the Mandrake Expatriate Syndrome for all those Mandrake -> Gentoo converts.

For those of you using GNOME and XMMS out there, I've made an XMMS plugin that uses gnotify to inform you of the current playing song. It has a plugin to notify you on song change, as well as a small executable to notify you whenever you wish to execute it.

You can download sources for xmmsgn 0.1 now.

finally got everything juuuust so. Happy with my new panel look as well. ran into a couple odd XF86Bugs (extra mouse buttons), but figured them out. Now i've got a responsive, full featured, customized, pretty desktop, and I'm liking Gentoo more and more.

More or less finished installing a fresh new system today. Started at 12:53 on Sunday afternoon. There was also about 32 hours of work and 40 hours sleep. And some miscellaneous mucking around (like bootsplash antics). But otherwise, the system is shiny, new and fun.
Gentoo as a method of install is great for anyone who has run a Linux system for a little while, and has fun throwing him self around in the /etc mud. Its nessecary on the install. Minimal external....configuration is given for you (right down to compiling your own kernel on install) but it allows for a high level of customizability, and nothing went wrong (that wasn't my fault at least) -- though I can reiterate that X sucks. The IMPS/2 mouse drivers don't work properly. (yet they did on Debian's same version of X...bah.) Maybe I should (now that I just finished fixing everything to my custom) rip out XFree and put in the XOrg X Server. Its basically the same code right now anyway. But XFree seems to be dying. Most distros have already switched.
Learned even more about the inner workings of Linux this way as well, aaand Gentoo's init / rc.d setup is the most logical of the distros.
All in all, I'm happy with Gentoo and will more than likely be happy using it for the remainder of the month. I'll re-evaluate it in comparison to Debian after that.

I just read a pretty good interview on Ars Technica with Robert Love of the Linux kernel and GNOME communities. Talks about the way the new preemtible kernel works, what that means to program nice values, and new file monitoring and device systems. A good article for anyone interested in linux's path.

Yesterday, Saturday the 22nd, (Sunday didn't exist this week as I slept through it) the GNOME Foundation started their Bounty Hunt.
This bounty hunt is pretty neat. They're giving little cash prizes to those who fix interoperability bugs in the GNOME Desktop. Those that do, (and get their changes accepted by the projects) can fill out a form and collect their bounty. The cash prizes total somewhere around 000 (USD). Most bounties are around -400. I feel as though I should fix some of these things to earn a couple bucks for school. I've wanted to rewrite the address book support in GNOME for a while, and thats one of the tasks.
So this may be the kick I've needed to do some development to help out some of the software I use everyday. At the worst time possible. Exams start in a week or so.