On Thu, 2002-04-11 at 08:37, destr0 wrote: > gives up on what hailstorm? There's a New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/11/technology/11NET.html Since that site requires registration, I'll give a bit of a summary (hopefully I'm not too far off). Hailstorm appears to have been renamed several times (the Times article says calls it "My Services", while Slashdot calls it "Persona"), but it was meant to be the core of Microsoft's big .NET strategy. Basically, Microsoft would store personal information on consumers (addresses, credit card numbers, etc.) and act as a "trusted" third party handling logins and transactions for any sites using the service. Basically, Passport on steroids, allowing you to log in once and visit many sites without having to re-enter information over and over. It's not a terrible idea, but people got really skittish about having Microsoft be the ones controlling all that info. Also, companies didn't want there to be anyone between them and their customers. -- _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ Gnome, a.k.a. The `CORBA / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ Might' Maneuver \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __) [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20020411/48dd630a/attachment.pgp