Via @radar O’Reilly, news that Netflix is going to deeply integrate Facebook into its authentication system, at least. Specifically, they’re going to use Facebook accounts to identify individuals in households. This makes sense: when Netflix was mailing DVDs, the relevant unit was mailing address or household. But since they’re fulfilling the promise of their name (they weren’t called Mailflix before), the relevant unit for streaming is, arguably, the individual.
Category Archives: identity
On the autochthony of the Basques
Via the always-worth-reading Language Log, an article entitled “A genome-wide survey does not show the genetic distinctiveness of Basques,” and a link to a more-readable discussion entitled “The Basques may not be who we think they are.” The short summary is:
Our analysis showed that, when a genome-wide perspective is applied, Basques are not particularly differentiated from other Iberian populations.
Soracle Waveset
Pamela Dingle from Ping Identity has an insightful post on the identity implications of the newly-approved Oracle acquisition of Sun.
Both companies have identity management businesses but I doubt that these were key to the acquisition. Regardless; in the identity community, everyone’s been waiting to see what Oracle’s roadmap would look like for their collection of identity management products.
Identity and Security Services from Novell
The Problem of Email
I know I’m stating the obvious, but email is very very broken.
I have two email accounts, one personal and one for work, and they are both, each in their own way, profoundly broken. Like most people, I actually have a bunch of email addresses, but they’re logically separated into work and personal. I use a combination of Gmail and Thunderbird for my personal mail, and Groupwise for my work mail.
I try to manage my personal account so that at least occasionally I get to the mythical zero inbox, but my corporate account with 3,000 messages in it is just a stream that flows by with me on the river bank with a pathetic net trying to catch the most important bits roaring by. Right at this moment I have 19 emails open on my desktop, awaiting action.