Blackhacker

BetaNews | Yahoo to embrace OpenID standard for validating users
“All Yahoo IDs will be OpenIDs on January 30,” a Yahoo spokesperson confirmed to BetaNews late this morning, in a change-over that may elevate the whole issue of users’ online identities to a new level.Yahoo is calling its embrace of OpenID this morning a breakthrough in the field of Web user identity. Over the next few months, other Web sites that employ OpenID 2.0 validation, including all those not necessarily hosted by Yahoo, will be able to look to Yahoo as a validator of usernames.

Glad to see OpenId is really gaining traction. Its an open standard that ANY one can implement for FREE. Its a standard that is built on existing technologies, so any one who has a website already has the pieces they need to use this. And with Yahoo backing it looks like it will have the traction to be THE way authentication will be done on the Internet.

update:

I realize that I sometimes don’t explain things well, so I dug up this talk by Scott Kveton, CEO of JanRain , a player and developer of openid. He does a better job than me.

Leaked memo: Time Warner Cable to trial hard bandwidth caps
Metered Internet access is a fact of life for many broadband users around the world, but has been largely a nonfactor when it comes to wired broadband in the US. That may change, according to a memo leaked to the Broadband Reports forums. If the memo is to be believed, Time Warner Cable will be rolling out what it calls “Consumption Based Billing” on a trial basis in the Beaumont, Texas area.

I’v got no problem with as long as two condtions are met:

1. SLA are stated and honored by the ISP. If I’m going to be penalized when I go over my bandwidth usage, I think it is only fare that I get some guarantee that I can get the through put that you advertise.
2. The median & the average bill should NOT change. It just like Big Media to use changing how bills are calculated as a opportunity to for a defacto price increase without the public knowing about.

BetaNews | Sun to spend $1B to acquire MySQL, will compete with Oracle, Microsoft
One of the principal products in the LAMP open source arsenal will become a Sun Microsystems product, possibly by the end of this quarter.When discussing enterprise database installations worldwide, as of today, it will be impossible not to consider Sun Microsystems along with Microsoft and Oracle. This morning, Sun announced it has reached an agreement with MySQL — which by some accounts may have become the producer of the most widely installed database, under everyone’s noses — in a deal expected to be closed as soon as this March.

This can be either very good or very bad. Anytime a major firm like Sun, is willing to invest in an OSS project its great for the project, but now they will be able to run it as well. That could be disastrous. From reading the article, Sun has big plans to use MySQL to shake up their product line. There also seems to be a disconnect between MySQL and Sun over what changes will take place for MySQL after the acquisition. It is never good when the acquired seems to be in the dark about the nature there organization after the acquisition is done. That smells like a lot of people leaving to me. I’ve been wrong before, and I hope I am again about this.