After some extended time without any new entries, I am back. Besides being insanely busy with all kinds of work for the last couple of weeks, I am going through a somewhat stressful personal time: a close family member is going through liver cancer and it is not yet clear what is going to happen. In such times it is really reassuring to have colleagues that are quite understanding, so thanks to all of you.

On more technical side, I have been playing a lot with the (now released) Windows Communication Foundation.. congratulations to the entire Indigo team for delivering the product. Also, Windows CardSpace is occupying a lot of my time and last, but not least, there is the ASP.NET AJAX Beta 1 which came out recently, along with the production release of NetBeans 5.5, the official start of the Interop Vendor Alliance, open sourcing Java ... and so on.

I hope to be able to put down a few interesting things in the next couple of days - however, tomorrow and on Friday I will attend the Higgins face to face meeting in Cambridge, MA.

Today I sent a mail to OSIS-General on using OpenSSO for the Identity System/Selector that we are trying to build:

We at Sun would like to offer/suggest OpenSSO (
http://opensso.dev.java.net/) as a open source project within the OSIS
framework. I believe OSIS could benefit from the technologies that are
either already implemented within OpenSSO or 'very soon to be released',
including SAML 1.x, SAML 2.0, ID-* etc. For additional information on
OpenSSO, please take a look at Pat Paterson's blog at: 
http://blogs.sun.com/superpat/entry/recently_asked_questions_on_opensso
and 
http://blogs.sun.com/superpat/entry/first_multi_protocol_federated_ident
ity. 

Given the existing large code base of OpenSSO (and still growing), we should be a significant step ahead in the goal of creating a OSIS. 

My paper on persistent AJaX is to be published in the Research Disclosure Journal. Please find it here.

There are no new additions, just a formal publication.

Here is my mail to Mike Jones on the OSP:

Hello Mike - 

First of all this is most excellent news - and I am looking forward to
seeing those protocols being implemented by a large number of market
participants. 

However, I do have a few questions that you might be able to clarify: 

1. For the purposes of OSIS, there are some components in the WCS that
do no seem to be covered, in particular the InfoCard specifications,
including schema and the visual components for the card selector UI.
Will this be covered by a separate covenant?

2. Also, the language of the OSP mentions that only Necessary Claims,
i.e. those REQUIRED in the specs are covered. What about OPTIONAL, etc.
portions of the specs?

Thanks a lot, 

Gerald Beuchelt 

At this point I would like to thank Mike and also Kim for their work on getting the WS-* protocolsl into the OSP and - hopefully - all the other specifications that will follow

Here you can find the OSIS response to the OSP.

I think that this reposonse is - particularly in the context of OSIS and related efforts - quite appropriate. The obvious issues with the covenant, as also pointed out by quite a few of my colleagues (see e.g. Eve or Simon) are addressed, including the concern that Microsoft is not the only stake holder in the WS-* space.

... and what is this RALLY thing, anyways?

RALLY is an architecture and a set of specs form Microsoft that describes how to create devices that will easily configure themselves into a Microsoft centric network, with a heavy focus on home networking at this time. Here is their overview site:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/rally/default.mspx

A couple of important technologies include:

• PnP-X Plug and Play Extensions - This will allow external devices on the network to link themselves into the Windows OS and appear to the OS as Windows devices.
  
• LLTD Link Layer Topology Discovery - the name says it all ...
• Web Services Profile for Devices - I sense a candidate for another round of OSP.. or maybe not?

Now the question at hand is, how this program will possibly integrate with J2ME, Jini and JXTA. Any ideas anybody?

I just installed Windows Vista RC1 (Build 5600) and had some serious problems getting Windows Update to work from behind my proxy server. The error I got was 8024402C, along with the recommendation to try the Automatic Proxy configuration. Needless to say that this did not work ...

Here is how to get rolling with this issue:

1. Get the WinHTTP system proxy settings right

When configuring IE in Vista, you DO NOT configure the system HTTP proxy settings. In former versions of Windows you would use the proxycfg.exe command for doing this. In Vista, you will have to use the netsh.exe. (Does anybody know of a UI way to do this?) Do this:

netsh> winhttp

netsh winhttp> set proxy myproxy.company.tld:80

You have to do this in a CMD.EXE windows with administrative privileges (right click CMD.EXE in Accessories and select 'Run as Administrator').

2. Delete old setting for Windows update

- Stop the Windows Update service (e.g. through the Services MMC plug-in or through net stop wuauserv).

- Delete C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution (again, with administrator privileges)

- Start the Windows Update service

It should work now.

Just like some time earlier this year, Build 5600 (RC1) of the Windows Vista OS has difficulaties with VMWare. Fortunately, life is somewhat easier this time around: If your problem is that Vista seems to freeze during installation at the "Windows is load..." text stage, you should try to add the following lines to your .VMX file:

svga.maxWidth = "640"
svga.maxHeight = "480"

Thanks to Joel on Software for this tip.