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The Single Sign On

thedailywtf.com

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Re: The Single Sign On

#41

Post by orangecat »

inerte wrote: post #32
nopassrecover wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on Kolmogorov complexity and its relevance to someone who has not encountered the term before? (I have wikied it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity but sleep deprivation may be hindering my ability to spot the link)

In other words, what orangecat meant is that adding more code, even "simple" code, adds complexity to a software project. Adding 50 easy features is equal to adding one heck of complex feature made of 50 sub parts. The link with Kolmogorov is, I believe, that each piece added moves the set away from being simpler. First time I read about Kolmogorov, hopefully I got it right. Anyway my first paragraph is true!

Essentially correct. Kolmogorov complexity is the amount of information it takes to fully describe something. A million random bits have high complexity because the shortest way to describe them is to literally list them all. The first million bits of pi have low complexity because they can be generated by an algorithm that takes much less than a million bits to describe. (The algorithm may take a long time to run, but Kolmogorov complexity doesn't care about that).

From that perspective implementing a new login process for "just one client" is worse than changing it for everyone, because it increases the size of the program's description. The revised software must describe the existing login process, the new process, and the logic for deciding which clients use which process. Whereas changing it for everyone requires only describing the new process, and allows you to eliminate the description of the previous process.

Re: The Single Sign On

#42

Post by run4yourlives »

wheaties wrote: post #21
GavinB wrote: post #13

Is it just me, or did was the annoying sales guy completely right about the technology being possible, able to satisfy the client, and successful in closing a profitable deal for the company? What weird dailywtf parallel universe is this?

The WTF is the fact that a single employee would cost a company several tens of thousands of dollars plus several weeks of development time all because that employee didn't want to remember a password.

Actually, the WTF is that nobody bothered to mention (or ask) that only a single employee used the system.

Re: The Single Sign On

#43

Post by orangecat »

gjm11 wrote: post #30
nopassrecover wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on Kolmogorov complexity and its relevance to someone who has not encountered the term before? (I have wikied it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity but sleep deprivation may be hindering my ability to spot the link)

To someone who doesn't understand what's going on, it may seem simpler to make something work for one person than to make it work for lots of people; but in fact the version that works for lots of people may be no less simple. (It may even be simpler, if it's necessary to put in special-case testing to make sure that only one person can use it.) From an implementer's perspective, the right measure of the complexity o…

If you apply Ockham's razor in the form "prefer hypotheses with lower Kolmogorov complexity" together with Bayes' theorem, you get something that in a certain (rather artificial) sense is as effective a problem solver as anything mechanized can be. Unfortunately it's unimplementable in practice, because ...

Coming across AIXI was what got me interested in algorithmic information theory. It is indeed useless in it's "pure" form, but there's a variation using Monte Carlo search that apparently does pretty well: http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.0801

(This is controversial, but it's my opinion and that of at least some other contributors here.) When assessing (e.g.) scientific hypotheses for "simplicity" or "parsimony", something like Kolmogorov complexity is the Right Way to understand (un)simplicity; failure to appreciate this is, e.g., what makes some people dislike the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics on the grounds of extravagance, or think that "God did it" is a useful explanation for otherwise-surprising features of the universe.

Yes. In fact after reading the Less Wrong quantum physics sequence (http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/), I find that "the wavefunction collapsed" and "God did it" are remarkably similar statements.

Re: The Single Sign On

#44

Post by easyfrag »

blantonl wrote: post #11
patio11 wrote: post #7

This situation is virtually made for client-side certificates: 1) You won't need passwords beyond whatever it takes to log in locally. 2) You can assume the hospital computers are physically secured. (Well, I wouldn't, but apparently they do.) 3) The hospital changes machines very infrequently and probably wants a human in the loop every time a machine changes. 4) You can have certificate generation and registration…

There is one problem with this - now that you've deployed client side certs you now have to implement a software distribution product just to deploy certs to the 100's of computer that require them... or, in this article case, the single computer) :) Systems Management vendors love to sell software distribution products to help reduce the distribution requirements for client side certs, but in the end most folks will…

Wouldn't you be able to do this via Active Directory group policy?

Re: The Single Sign On

#45

Post by alain94040 »

nathanh wrote: post #27

Those of you with sales teams, what guidance do you have about sales people promising features that don't exist without getting input from the rest of your team?

No problem as long as it's before the PO. But we won't let a sales guy sign something until we have agreed internally that it can be built and made sure that it makes sense for us.

So basically the sales guy can probe the customer with ideas, but can't commit.

Re: The Single Sign On

#46

Post by ryanelkins »

cookiecaper wrote: post #34
jonknee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine as long as it's for a lot of cash. If the customer is willing to pay for it, I'm happy to jump through crazy hoops.

Really? What if the client demands that your application is in "3D holograph" and won't accept anything that doesn't pop out of the monitor without any special assistance from the user? You're OK with selling that even though, no matter how much money they produce, it would take years and years of development, and may not even be possible until some other foundational technical breakthroughs occur? Please don't take…

For enough money upfront I'll get started today. For something really out of the norm a good salesperson should have gotten the customer to agree to an amount of money that would make it well worth it, whatever the task may be. I think for any outrageous example you come up with the cost will bring the customer back to reality.

Re: The Single Sign On

#47

Post by pavel_lishin »

GavinB wrote: post #13

Is it just me, or did was the annoying sales guy completely right about the technology being possible, able to satisfy the client, and successful in closing a profitable deal for the company? What weird dailywtf parallel universe is this?

Even a broken clock is wrong twice a day, throw enough darts and you'll hit a bullseye, at least one woman in this bar has gotta be drunk enough, etc. Insert your own folksy analogy here.

Re: The Single Sign On

#48

Post by cookiecaper »

ryanelkins wrote: post #46
cookiecaper wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? What if the client demands that your application is in "3D holograph" and won't accept anything that doesn't pop out of the monitor without any special assistance from the user? You're OK with selling that even though, no matter how much money they produce, it would take years and years of development, and may not even be possible until some other foundational technical breakthroughs occur? Please don't take…

For enough money upfront I'll get started today. For something really out of the norm a good salesperson should have gotten the customer to agree to an amount of money that would make it well worth it, whatever the task may be. I think for any outrageous example you come up with the cost will bring the customer back to reality.

It's dishonest to pitch it as a product you're selling when the technology to build it doesn't even exist yet. You can't say "Sure, we can do that for xxx million dollars and ten years", because you don't know if you'll have it all figured out even after xxx million and ten years, because nobody knows what would actually be required to produce that product. There may be some theory, but if that theory is erroneous for your application and you placed bets on it, you're screwed.

You have to pitch as a research investment. If a company wants to give you money for that kind of research, that's great, but you really need to make clear that it's not something you can just go and implement even if you have an infinite supply of money.

Re: The Single Sign On

#49

Post by pavel_lishin »

illumin8 wrote: post #4

Hilarious, and yet, sadly, this must be true. I've been asked countless times by end users why they must login to applications. I think the general population of business (read: average) computer users honestly thinks that passwords should not be required for accessing any information. These are the same type of users that have post-it notes with passwords attached to their monitors and probably write their ATM PIN#…

Well, think of it from their point of view. They don't need a code to open their desk and they don't need a password to open the break-room fridge. And to them, having something go missing from there is scarier than someone logging in as them and looking at numbers.
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