There are two things that make XMPP the IM protocol of choice.  One is that users can choose which client software they use.  I prefer my messages to come through the IRC gateway provided by Bitlbee, but if I had a smartphone it would be cool if it integrated with my contacts list and SMS notifications (better yet, replaced SMS entirely).  An open protocol is always a good thing.

Second, XMPP had built-in support for federation.  Federation means that a user on one system can talk to a user on the any other system.  No only is there an open client-server protocol, but an open server-server protocol.  This is the way e-mail works.  It is also why Identi.ca is better than Twitter.  (That and the XMPP gateway.)  So, since Facebook Chat uses XMPP does that mean you can chat with Facebook users from any other XMPP service?  No, not yet.  In fact, I’m not sure they’ll ever enable it, because it doesn’t make sense.  Facebook is a closed network.  You have Facebook friends, not normal friends.  What would a non-Facebook user look like from inside Facebook?  A featureless silhouette with no friends and no profile, just an address.

Opening up like this might actually be good for Facebook.  I have a feeling they want to be your #1 portal for social interaction.  Why limit that to only friends who have accounts?  (Yes, there are people without Facebook accounts.)  Services like FriendFeed and the just announced Google Buzz are already pulling data from all your social networking sites into a common portal.  Social media users are starting to get sick of all these little island nations of services.  (See the map.)  Integration between these services is the future of the social web.

So, will I start using Facebook Chat more now?  I don’t think so.  I’m already connected to most people I know through AIM or my existing XMPP account.  If I added this one too the number of duplicate entries in my contact list would be unmanageable.  (It’s already pretty bad.)  I’ll wait this one out.  If they I find some of my friends are using it full time then I’ll reconsider, and if they start federating then I’ll definitely take advantage of it.

The funny part about all this was the different kinds of spam comments I was getting.  For those who don’t know how this works, the reason that spammers try to post comments on blogs is to affect search engine rankings.  If they can get many sites to include mentions of their product or even better, a link to their webpage, it increases their search ranking.  To this end most “link spam” you’ll see will include a long list of search terms (drugs, porn or both) and if the site allows HTML tags in comments these terms will be links.  Clicking through the over 250 bogus postings I found a breed that was much more clever.  Instead of random terms and links (which can easily be flagged by automatic filters) the comment body was one of a number of variations on, “Hi, first I want to say nice blog. I don’t always agree with your posts but it’s always a nice read. Keep up the great work.”  That’s right, my comment spam was complementing me.  Some other entertaining ones included, “Just got my new iPhone and this blog looks great on it.” and “Sory, delete plz. ”  How are these link spam?  Well, somebody figured out that Wordpress lets you specify a website and email address as the author information for the comment.  They still get their rank boosting link and all they have to come up with is a reasonable sounding comment and they’re more likely to get approved.  I must say, the tactic almost worked.  While the comments that say nothing but “VIAGRA VIAGRA VIAGRA” are easy to filter out, each of these required careful reading and a check against the posting they were replying to to tell the difference between a new loyal reader and clever spambot.

If any of you spammers are reading this: Good job, nice try, now GO AWAY!

My biggest issue with the series is the character’s talent.  Simply put, it’s completely unrealistic.  Where on Earth is a school with at least 9 (so far) Broadway class singers?  There has been absolutely no time devoted to the development of the kid’s talent.  Where are the rejects, the painful auditions?  If there’s supposed to ANY question of their ability to win at nationals, talent has nothing to do with it.  It looks like the directer wanted to create yet another show about high school, but with musical numbers, not a show about high school musicians. [Edited: The cast does do the vocals.]

Given that, it looks like all the development that’s going to take place in this show is going to be about the prima donna’s learning to shut it, the jock getting over what other people think of him and the husband realizing his marriage is doomed.  If you want a musical comedy about the music, go watch The Sister Act.

The show does have some things going for it.  Jane Lynch plays the positively evil cheerleading coach.  She’s fun to watch whether she’s winning or losing.  Also, the forbidden love between Will and Emma is much more interesting than the spiraling failure that is his marriage.  The writer’s are probably going to drag it on for at least the rest of the season, but I say he should divorce her before he really does get her pregnant.

Will I keep watching?  I’ve proven to myself time and again that I can’t stop watching a show even if it’s terrible, and Hulu makes it so easy.  I’ll give it a few more episodes before my final verdict, but it’s not looking good.

As for the believability of the series.  It looks like the writers are going for a “Grey’s Anatomy in space” rather than a series science fiction series.  Time will tell whether it works.  Science-wise my only issue is the timeline.  It’s 2052 and yet there is no sign of a human presence in space beyond an ill-fated mission to Mars some years before.  The ship was launched from Earth, not an orbiting space station or moon base; two much more practical platforms for launching extended missions.  It seems like the series will focus much more on the human element, which is fine, good even.  I just hope it doesn’t go the way of Grey’s Anatomy.  With only 8 characters there are only so many ways they can sleep with each other.

So, are you ready?  Not many ISPs provide IPv6 service yet.  Comcast is the only commercial ISP I’ve heard of planning deployments.  The US government is under a mandate to move to IPv6 over the next couple of years.  In the mean time, private networks can get a head start by using a service such as Hurricane Electric’s Tunnel Broker.  That’s what I’ve done.  As of a few weeks ago qotw.net is now fully IPv6 ready.  I also have this handy certificate to prove just how much I know about the IPv6 deployment:

Get yours today and join the next generation Internet!

Note: If you’re on a normal ISP connection the HE service is a little too heavy duty for you.  I suggest either the tunnel service from go6 or configuring 6to4 tunneling.

SSL CAs provide a base to the SSL web of trust.  In fact, it really isn’t a web at all, it’s a tree, and a shallow one at that.  It starts at the collection of well respected CA organizations (Verisign, Twarte, etc.) and people pay lots of money to get their certificates signed by one of them.  These certificates are then used on servers and verified by clients using a list of these trusted authorities.

The DNSSEC web of trust is actually a lot simpler.  Instead of a collection of authoritative (i.e. blindly trusted) organizations there is one, ICANN, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers.  They already run the root DNS servers, and by signing the root zone with DNSSEC they become the start of a hierarchical chain of trust that runs from them, to the TLD registrars, to the individual domain owners.

Why might we not need the SSL CAs anymore?  If your DNS records are secured by this global trust framework, you can just put your certificate into a DNS record.  When verifying it a client simply has to look it up, and since DNS is trusted you get the same security guarantee you had originally.  There are some downsides.  Doing things this way is putting an awful lot of eggs in one basket.  With DNSSEC and SSL CAs there are two authorities that must agree before the site is considered safe.  With only DNSSEC a compromise would send the whole system crashing down.  Also, if companies like Verisign see this coming and don’t want to lose their lucrative SSL certification business they might start charging to get your domain signed.  That might not be a good thing for the Internet as a whole, but since when do corporate interests care.

Before any of this can happen, of course, DNSSEC will need to be widely deployed and supported by DNS servers and clients.  Support for this particular application will also require modification to any system that does SSL verification.  All in all, we’re talking about at least 5, if not 10 years from now.

Update: Looks like somebody posted a draft of  a standard for doing this back in 2002.

Today we have the same problem, but it’s actually gotten more complicated.  Instant messaging was a relatively simple application and it didn’t take much for the developers of multi-IM software to figure out how to interface with multiple networks at once.  Most social networks these days are instead websites.  While a web interface makes these sites incredibly easy to access from anywhere (which also explains the rise of Gmail over IMAP/SMTP based mail services) it means that there is no common protocol for communication.  That is until Google Wave takes over.  Web APIs offered by many of these services help a little, but nothing can beat the push capabilities and vender-neutralness of XMPP.

So we come at last to my issue with Facebook and Twitter.  I am generally a very well connected person.  When people see me without my laptop I usually get some pretty snarky comments about it.  I am always reluctant, however, to make my communication tools more complicated.  I have a single email program for long form communications, and an IRC client for chat rooms and instant messaging (through Bitlbee).  I use Google Reader to check RSS feeds.  (I’ve tried the RSS reader in Thunderbird but it doesn’t work as well.)  Personally I think that pretty much covers any form of communication I need.

Why don’t I think Facebook and Twitter deserve my screen real estate?  They are both messaging services.  Granted, Facebook delivers a lot of extra functionality on top of it, but at the core it is about sending messages.  I already have something for sending messages, both to a lot of people (IRC) and to a single person (IM).  In fact, Twitter used to support receiving updates over XMPP (Jabber).  Now it doesn’t, so I stopped using it.

Enter Identi.ca.  On the surface it is exactly the same as Twitter, but with two important differences.  First, the platform is open-source.  While I personally don’t want to start my own similar service, it is good to know that the code is freely available.  Richard Stallman has been making a big fuss about this recently.  Second, it supports pushing updates over XMPP (my favorite) as well as SMS and can update your Facebook and Twitter status just so your less fortunate friends can keep up with you too.

Does this mean I’ll join the micro-blogging revolution?  Maybe.  At least now I’ll be happy about it.

So, if you’re my friend (sorry, I’m not looking for new ones) send me an email, give me a call. If you’re around town, maybe we can hang out. Get me off Facebook and into real life!

My thought processes at 1AM… Who needs drugs when you can just be tired.