Wow, something from coding horror where he isn't trying to sell us something?
Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
61–70 of 101 posts
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#62"The whole online identity situation may seem as impossible as peace in the Middle East at this point."
I hardly expect such comments from guys like Jeff.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#63Driver's License is the wrong metaphor for OpenID. If you had an Internet Driver's License, it would be your email address. You always have that with you at all times. OpenID is more like a Von's Club card. An inconvenient scrap of plastic that would just take up space in my wallet so it gets left at home. Every time I go into a Vons, I have to ask the cashier for a new one and it pisses me off that little bit, just…
Just curious: why use more than one OpenID account in the first place? I've genuinely never understood why people would do that. Am I missing something?
I only have the one that I used to sign up for StackOverflow. Thus far nothing else has required it. Or rather, nothing else that requires it has been so compelling in other ways that I'm willing to put up with OpenID in order to use them.
Now that Gmail is a provider, the barrier is lower, but back then you had your pick of a half-dozen fly by night early adopter providers. So anybody who used it back then has at least one worthless OpenID.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#64Driver's License is the wrong metaphor for OpenID. If you had an Internet Driver's License, it would be your email address. You always have that with you at all times. OpenID is more like a Von's Club card. An inconvenient scrap of plastic that would just take up space in my wallet so it gets left at home. Every time I go into a Vons, I have to ask the cashier for a new one and it pisses me off that little bit, just…
Just curious: why use more than one OpenID account in the first place? I've genuinely never understood why people would do that. Am I missing something?
With all the little icons, I generally forget which one I clicked in the first place. Then I remember that I used Google's, but forget which email address. It's not so much forgetting because I have a bunch of OpenID accounts, it's that I don't use it enough to remember the one that I do use.
Just give me the "Save username and password" option in Firefox and I'm happy.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps a more accurate metaphore would be "Internet Passport". Government's can't take it away and it has no real entitlements. However Jeff Atwood is from the USA which has a strangley low number of passport holders. Perhaps they are used to using a driving licence instead of passport as general ID.
> However Jeff Atwood is from the USA which has a strangley low number of passport holders. It's not strangely low; Americans can travel to far more than the equivalent of the EU without one. (We can go to all 50 plus Canada and Mexico.)
If memory serves, if you don't have a passport you can go to Mexico, you just can't get back into the U.S.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However Jeff Atwood is from the USA which has a strangley low number of passport holders. It's not strangely low; Americans can travel to far more than the equivalent of the EU without one. (We can go to all 50 plus Canada and Mexico.)
I am under the impression that we can no longer go to Canada without a passport. :( Edit: Since June 2009.
You can't go to Mexico without a passport either. You can't come back without one, anyway.
The US Gov does now issue passport cards which are a form of national ID card that allows citizens back in at international LAND borders. You should ask for one when you apply for your passport; they're nice to carry in your pocket when you're abroad and the full passport is safely locked away.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps a more accurate metaphore would be "Internet Passport". Government's can't take it away and it has no real entitlements. However Jeff Atwood is from the USA which has a strangley low number of passport holders. Perhaps they are used to using a driving licence instead of passport as general ID.
There's enough circumstances where you can be forced to surrender passports though, and certainly historically they weren't automatically available. I understand British passports were, in the late 19th Century, only available to people who the foreign secretary personally knew or was linked very closely to, with the net effect that many British instead obtained French passports because they didn't require you to be…
I thought I could remember reading somewhere that passports weren't used that much during Victorian times - this article seems to explain why:
http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/articles/destinations/a...
Apparently rail travel made the whole process of issuing and checking passports a bit of a pain so most countries just gave up - they didn't become common again until 1914.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#68I am not sanguine on the idea, but the marketing for the idea is beyond terrible. The IDL is a leaky abstraction because the most salient features of drivers licenses are a) you have to apply to the government to get one, b) the government can take yours away with as much ease as they can do anything else, and c) if you lose your license, you will be denied the ability to use one or more critical goods/services (driv…
Personally, the idea I have in my mind of a (US) driver's license is a universally-accepted form of ID that anyone can get. The facts that it has a test, or that it can be revoked, or that some people don't have one, don't actually register in my head until someone points it out. If it weren't in the name, I wouldn't even connect it with driving. Furthermore, it's the only abstraction I have in my head for a universal ID. Passport's aren't universal (at least in the US) because they're bigger and therefore less convenient, and international travel is somewhat rare. We don't have a universal government-issued ID that's just an ID, so the idea of a national ID card sounds scary and government-intrusive to me. A driver's license is literally the most innocuous and least threatening analogy to make. Until you point out the ways in which it doesn't work the way I think it works.
When most people think of driver's licenses, do they really think government certification, or do they think universal ID? I would be honestly interested in the answer.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#69I was hoping this article would touch on the issues raised in the "Open ID is a nightmare" article - http://blog.wekeroad.com/thoughts/open-id-is-a-party-that-ha... - rather than restating the conceptual basis for using Open ID authentication systems
Or even link to that article; it was clearly the motivation behind this post.
Re: Coding Horror: Your Internet Driver's License
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just curious: why use more than one OpenID account in the first place? I've genuinely never understood why people would do that. Am I missing something?
With all the little icons, I generally forget which one I clicked in the first place. Then I remember that I used Google's, but forget which email address. It's not so much forgetting because I have a bunch of OpenID accounts, it's that I don't use it enough to remember the one that I do use. Just give me the "Save username and password" option in Firefox and I'm happy.
Have your saved username and passwords sync to the cloud, and you'll be even happier. Jeff is still beating a still-born horse here -- yes, a problem exists, but OpenID is the wrong solution.