Craig Burton - Latest Comments

Re: The Dark Side of Cloud Computing

Dave Kearns — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:00:33 -0000

Fortunately, those of us on Office 2010 weeren't affected. Sometimes it pays to be slow to change :)

Re: Remembering Alex—Computer, Activate

TooTallSid — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 17:31:33 -0000

I wish *I'd* had a Dad like you!

Re: Remembering Alex—Computer, Activate

Kathycastleton — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 01:19:43 -0000

I love this. What a treasure.

Re: The Term VRM is Immutable

drummondsreed — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 21:33:54 -0000

Brilliant and spot on.

Re: The Term VRM is Immutable

Jim Pasquale — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 08:54:10 -0000

The moment you realize you were wrong, something else happens like VRM. The driver to event networks, as the relationships go from data at rest to data in motion, thanks for reminding if of that Phil and Doc

Re: Keys to the Kingdom

William — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 03:37:58 -0000

Dear Craig.....yes. We need this, or something very much like it. And if the $uits wont get behind it, well, we'll just have to do it anyway.

Also - congratulations on the astounding weight loss. Now write me that damn paper you promised (can be ultra short) before you float away......

Love from Bath, in the West of England. William

Re: Novell is Dead—Noorda and Schmidt killed it

craigburton — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:45:56 -0000

I understand why you would make the assessments you did on the underpinnings of Novell's demise. However--in my opinion--you are inaccurate in those assessments. You almost got there.

The problem is that Novell was NEVER an operating system company. The notion of a "Network Operating System" was just something we made up to ease the learning about network services. Novell was a network services company. NetWare was merely an interim host for file and print. A necessary one at the time, but none the less, transitory.

Schmidt didn't do jack to understand Novell's roots or what needed to be done. Schmidt was largely absent the whole time. I understand what a nasty divorce can do--but sorry Schmidt was not a contributor to any element of Novell's success. His exit strategy was what setup the final nail in Novell's coffin and set it on its path to final destruction.

You missed the mark in your analysis.
cb

Re: Novell is Dead—Noorda and Schmidt killed it

pjakobs — Sat, 21 May 2011 06:29:41 -0000

I'm sorry, I disagree about the role of Eric Schmidt in the demise of Novell.
When you look at where Google is today and you look at some of the things behind the Google services, it's very clear that Eric's thoughts about Identity have shaped much of this. I recognize quite a few things from the early days of Eric at Novell (anyone remember digitalme.com? An online identity broker? Boy was that visionairy all those years ago!)
The problem with Novell was, that it wasn't to be turned around easily. Novell was NetWare and that's it. Every new endeavour that Novell would attempt would essentially be stained with the old "Isn't that the NetWare company?" argument. Customers that have replaced NetWare with something else (Windows, most often) said, that they had replaced Novell. The two terms wer synonymous. Even inside the company, NetWare was sacred for far too long and, granted, it was a cash cow that needed milking for a long time.
Anyway: Schmidt did great things to try and reinvent Novell, he was successful to a degree in positioning it as an identity management company, but he couldn't shake off the ties of NetWare.
I do agree on the fact that the Messman years were a complete disaster. No direction, no clear statements, no visibilty.
SuSE was probably the only known Novell brand in the end. Good for them.
I hope that the Identity Management guys and SuSE get a chance to prosper in the new lineup. At least they're now free from the ties that was NetWare.
NetWare was good in it's time, but it was left behind when more modern, more versatile systems like Windows and Linux made the File and Print market a narrow niche.

Re: Novell is Dead—Noorda and Schmidt killed it

Gporge — Tue, 17 May 2011 15:28:35 -0000

I remember standing next to Ray and our CFO Jim Tolenon when they made the announcement of the merger with WordPerfect. I turned to Jim and asked "whose bone-headed idea was this?" - Ray looked at me, smiled and said 'mine'... strangely enough I was not fired, but I left 6 months later in disgust.

Re: More on Microsoft Irrelevance

craigburton — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 03:32:39 -0000

Excellent response.

Just one little point. You continue to use the number of employees as your lead distinction.

There are significant people and groups of people that are part of large organizations that act just like you when it comes to new technology.

Technology adoption practices are not most affected by organization size.

Traditional "consumers" and "small businesses" as you sometimes describe them are seldom early adopters. They-- like many enterprises--are often laggards.

Here is my point: The practices of technology adoption are not limited by or even effectively defined by organization size. There are early adopters across all size-based demographics as well as laggards.

Organization size is 2nd or 3rd down the list of distinctions when it comes to technology adoption.

We do a disservice to out readers when we continue to lead with organization size as the key distinction.

You are probably right about Apple. Since Apple is one of the most relevant companies today about almost anything. It would be incorrect to say it is irrelevant when it comes to participating in a global identity architecture.

It is more like "indifferent." The fact that Apple doesn't bother to participate in a meaningful way is relevant just because of who it is in the world.

Apple just has no interest in solving the identity problem.

In fact, there are many that believe Apple is proactively involved with behaving badly when it comes to identity and especially privacy:
https://www.eff.org/deeplin...

As for comparing Facebook to Microsoft with identity information, here is the big distinction. Microsoft earned the industry's distrust by acting distrustful. Anyone doing business with Microsoft since its inception knows it is a risky venture.

Doing business with Facebook is--at least so far--only risky in the movies.

Re: More on Microsoft Irrelevance

Mary Branscombe — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:27:32 -0000

In reverse order, I care - and not only because information is my job, but because I think the difference between an identity-enabled property and an identity service matters. And I continue to be fascinated by the question of how users perceive tech companies; the vast majority of users are happy to give Facebook far more information than Hailstorm would have had about them for fewer services in return because of the value of social networking too them. The backlash against Microsoft at the time of Hailstorm was understandable, but Facebook (and it's faux-open identity) comes in for far less stick about its privacy issues. Perception, reputation and trust are going to be very interesting in the identity metasystem future.

Consumers and small businesses are often earlier technology adopters than large businesses, because they have the flexibility and fewer regulatory hoops to jump through. Ironically, though, enterprise has more tools to build parts of the identity metasystem than consumers or consumer-facing Web providers - we've had technology 'come home from the office' before, so I wonder if there's a route there.

I don't think irrelevant is the word I'd use of Apple here, when they're really more of a roadblock than a pothole... The word I'd pick might be less suitable for use in public than 'irrelevant' ;-)

Early adopter? Just a little... You can reliably say that I like, it, want it and use it straight away, it's five years plus away from mainstream ;-)

Re: More on Microsoft Irrelevance

craigburton — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 07:47:29 -0000

You are most undoubtedly a consumer. Are you an early adopter of technologies? I don't know. I am. These two distinctions are independent of each other. I am simply saying don't collapse them.

Adoption and implementation of an identity metasystem doesn't require either ADFS or AD. If it did, it wouldn't meet the requirements of the laws of identity.

How does an iPhone sale equate to digital identity relevancy?

It doesn't.

When I say Apple is irrelevant when it comes to digital identity, here is what I mean:

Apple is not even involved with trying to solve the problem of a digital identity layer for the Internet. Apple shows no sign or interest in even discussing it. Too busy raking in the dough from consumers.

There are a ton of people working on this problem of an identity layer for the Internet. All of them are unknown and on the edge.

As we circle back around and their implementations mature, things can move forward.

As for the distinction between Hailstorm and Passport--does anyone really care anymore?

Re: More on Microsoft Irrelevance

Mary Branscombe — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:17:04 -0000

well, as a consumer I'm unlikely to run ADFS or AD or any server at all, so there's a *practical* difference that I think is blindingly obvious and not particularly mythical. As an enterprise, I'm subject to government regulation. In an ideal world none of that might matter but I think an ideal world is some way off... and if Apple is irrelevant to identity, I think I might have imagined the sales of all those iPhones. How do we improve things from where we are rather than where we might like to be? I should copy in my tweets arguing abou the rather large distinction between Hailstorm and Passport - only one of those was killed by Kim, after all.

Re: More on Microsoft Irrelevance

craigburton — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:19:39 -0000

For those who don’t remember, Hailstorm was the code name for the Passport initiative. Passport failed. It was killed by Gates. This was as it should be.

Mary I continue to champion the cause of people learning the dynamics of technology adoption.

Technology adoption is NOT equated to the size of a company. The Large, Medium and Small—even worse “Enterprise” and “Consumer” are simply demographics that are not relevant to how technology gets adopted. These demographics are “mythical” and are misleading in understanding how things work.

http://www.craigburton.com/...

Hence your comments about the “enterprise” and “consumer” when it comes to CardSpace make no sense to me.

As for Azure and Geneva and U-Prove, they simply fall short of meeting the laws of identity and compound the identity dilemma. This paltry work in identity is totally lame in the shadow of the identity metasystem.

When it comes to identity, Apple is not only irrelevant but impotent.

Re: More on Microsoft Irrelevance

Mary Branscombe — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 15:47:28 -0000

Having identity live inside server and tools made sense - enterprise identity is where the demand and skills are; but it also meant the consumer side was always a day late and a dollar short. It didn't make sense for Microsoft to be a managed identity provider, but if they weren't going to do it nobody else would either. I pinned Bob Muglia in a corner at PDC for my annual question about identity: he said it was a solved problem for enterprise with the Azure announcements but that we wouldn't get it in his lifetime for consumers, and that having Hailstorm killed by Bill Gates was Muglia's biggest failure at Microsoft. (in more detail at http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blog...

On the gripping hand, with Geneva and Azure and UProve there is still identity work going on. Having Microsoft push infocards was always going to make them *less* attractive to the open Web world, and I'm not letting Apple off the hook for not even considering all this on iPhone - I think there might be plenty of blame to go round.

Re: More on Microsoft Irrelevance

Doc — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:13:13 -0000

So here is a challenge to you, Kim, what's left of the ICF, and the rest of the identity development community: separate babies from bathwater.

Microsoft threw both out. The baby — wats of doing claims-based identity — is still alive. How do we save it, help it grow and put it to use? We need specifics here.

Talking about bathwater, which now includes Microsoft itself, is unavoidable at this stage, but we have to move past it. Let's go.

Re: The Clay Feet of Giants

craigburton — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:04:56 -0000

I love this comment.

It shows the traditional confusion that we have surrounding digital identity.

For some reason, it keeps being locked in to single sign on.

Granted Facebook Connect is a more simple system. But is not a claims-based identity model. We need to go beyond sso and make client-based user-controlled assertions that are separate matters than just loggin in.

Facebook Connect isn't even in the running.

Re: The Clay Feet of Giants

Steve_Lockstep — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 11:50:45 -0000

No doubt there is some politics and vendor psychology going on behind the decisions, but there is an alternative theory behind Cardspace's woes: It's just not as great an idea as it first seems. The Metasystem is way over-engineered. It tries to solve stranger-to-stranger "trust" (as did Big Fat PKI in the 1990s) and seeks to allow parties to confirm one another's *un*anticipated identity assertions.

These are almost academic problems. By far the most economically important transactions on the Internet occur between parties that already have their local "metasystem" in place. Payments, e-health, share trading, e-government etc. all take place within overarching risk management and legal arrangements that involve registration protocols, formal credentials, terms & conditions, liability allocation etc. Parties in these different niches know precisely where they sit. They know their roles & responsibilities *before* they transact, even before they've installed whatever extra software and authentication devices are required according to the local risk analyses.

The "price" we pay for this level of crystalline certainty is that our different identities are brittle: they highly context dependent, which is exactly what the Laws of Identity teach us. On the other hand, the utopian Identity Metasystem tries to teach us to re-use a smaller number of identities across contexts, as if this will have relatively minor impact on all those local risk management arrangements, and result in a lower total cost of ownership of IDs. Well, it doesn't.

Identities have evolved to fit their respective niches in various real world business ecosystems. Federating brittle context-dependent IDs increases TCO. You can no more take for instance an identity from a phone company and use it at a bank (as the Whitehouse waxes lyrical under NSTIC ), than you can take a tropical reef fish and drop it into a cold fresh water tank. Some organisms can do well in different ecological niches, and some identities likewise can be re-used; in Scandinavia they introduced legislation so certain prescribed bank issued IDs (not all IDs by any means) can authenticate individuals for certain G2C e-business. It took a lot of effort, and it’s still a very tightly controlled in-country federation.

Occasionally you find things going gangbusters in alternate ecological niches. We call them weeds. An example is Facebook Connect.

Re: More on Intentional Innovation

MikeGrace — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:34:38 -0000

This is great! I've always known about the quote "necessity is the mother of invention" but I love that I now know about many other ways inovation can be brought about. I'll have to do some more thinking about these other areas and how they apply to what I am doing. Thanks!

Re: Selector-based Identity is Inevitable

craigburton — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:50:20 -0000

Dude, it wasn't personal. I was kidding about the SNL comment. I guess I miscalculated. You still missed the point. It isn't about authentication. You can't get to where you want to go without a selector.

The "guy" in the sketch is Dan Aykroyd. His delivery is what is funny, not what he said. One of the greatest comedians of our time.

Re: The Inverted Pyramid—Change under the radar

Nike shoes ! — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:03:45 -0000

Change we perhaps didn’t know about or anticipate. But like the world wide web, once the change occurs, we will wonder how the world lived without out it.

Re: Google is NOT a “Search” Company

Nike shoes ! — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:03:38 -0000

From that perspective, Google is an Advertising as a Service company. Because Google spiders everything, it can provide rudimentary context-based advertising as a service to its side-business–search.

Re: Windows 7

Nike shoes ! — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:02:39 -0000

I don’t plan to use it in production obviously but I am hearing good things so I thought is was time to take a look. It still has a few more hours of download time. I will let you know how it goes.

Re: Action Cards vs. Greasemonkey

Nike shoes ! — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:01:11 -0000

Greasemonkey is a hack for changing Firefox browsing and chrome. An easy fun hack. But a hack nonetheless.

Re: Updated to Disqus Comments

Nike shoes ! — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:00:42 -0000

have updated the blog to support Disqus comments. You no longer have to subscribe to leave a comment.