Microsoft's wanted a really good federated identity scheme ever since the early 2000s, when it gave the world Project Hailstorm, aka ".Net My Services", to let a web of online services know a little about you and the information you are happy to share with others.
Hailstorm passed, swept back years later as Geneva Server and now seems to have found its way into a blockchain-powered conceptual heir that Microsoft's now named "Decentralized Digital Identities".
Alex Simons, director of program management in Microsoft's Identity Division has revealed that "Over the last 12 months we've invested in incubating a set of ideas for using Blockchain (and other distributed ledger technologies) to create new types of digital identities, identities designed from the ground up to enhance personal privacy, security and control."
Microsoft's identity ambitions, he wrote, now centre on user-controlled-and-owned Decentralized ID schemes so that a single data breach can't give crooks the keys to your kingdom.
(Score: 5, Informative) by MostCynical on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:18AM (5 children)
blockchains are all about trust.
Trust is not something anyone really associates with Microsoft.
Maybe this will phone home with "telemetry", too?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:55AM
Phone home? The telemetry will be built right into the block chain "to enhance your digital experience".
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:52PM
Unless I missed something about block chains. The whole idea behind block chains is that they have built-in tracking functionality, so you don't need a central control system.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by davidjohnpaul on Thursday February 15 2018, @10:07PM
I thought blockchains were all about a lack of trust - you don't trust the people you're communicating with, nor the network you're communicating over, so have the blockchain to keep things straight.
There are typically better solutions if there's some trust in there.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 16 2018, @03:11AM (1 child)
They are about preventing bad actors from acting badly
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday February 16 2018, @03:23AM
Well, in this case, if the bad actor has *built* the thing, there can be no trust.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:20AM (3 children)
byzantine consensus among fully independent nodes= decentralized unit
byzantine consensus among fully controlled nodes, see walled garden= offloading cloud computing to client's hardware
guess which one is in m$ execs mind...
(cue the guy derailing on use of m$, cue the informative post detailing why it's OK to do so)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:25AM (2 children)
That's sexist: Not only guys can derail on the use of m$! :-)
Anyway, the correct writing is "M$", with uppercase M <gd&r>
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bot on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:59AM
I thought capitals were reserved for respectable entities.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday February 15 2018, @10:02AM
Did you just assume its case? Also, are those white capitalist imperial dollars or are you storing a string in there?
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:57AM (2 children)
Blockchain. Blockchain blockchain! Decentralized, distributed blockchain. Cloudscale blockchain. Distributed trust, decentralized itentity cloud! Trust? Blockchain. Identity? Blockchain!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday February 15 2018, @10:04AM
As I read the above paragraph the NASDAQ:MSFT is 1.57% up for the day [nasdaq.com] (read this at other time and YMWillVary).
Coincidence? I don't think so!
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @10:09AM
Blockchain is the new Beetlejuice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:57AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:59AM
... like I'm going to wipe my arse with sandpaper.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:04PM (1 child)
All of the information that I am "happy to share" already exists on the internet. No, you can't have my home address, you can't have my real name, you can't have my driver's license number, you can't have any of the zillions of bits of information that will satisfy your curiosity about my identity. Stop being such wankers, you master wankers yankers!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 16 2018, @03:15AM
-r:
518-92-8663
I hope to inspire others to post theirs own ssns in hopes of destroying its usefulness as a database key
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 16 2018, @03:10AM
Provided you can at least convincingyclaim expertise in one of the following areas
Full stack development
Artificial intelligence
Blockchain
My research for http://soggy.jobs/computer [soggy.jobs] made this abundantly clear
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]