Flutterby™! : HailStorm 2001-03-19 21:06:55+00

HailStorm

2001-03-19 21:06:55+00 by Dan Lyke 1 comments

Microsoft has released the Hailstorm whitepaper. Summary: In about a year, using a Microsoft Passport ID, there'll be centralized servers for MSExchange services. Apparently nothing interesting is available yet, so this looks like a "We needed to scare the competitors and now have 9 months to implement this" sort of thing. Sigh. The Register weighs in on HailStorm too:

But almost unnoticed in the rush to discuss the usage (or abusage) of SOAP, XML and other technology specs is the more significant story. Microsoft promises to make Hailstorm a "business center", piped through the Passport hub. In other words, it's pay-to-play.

In thinking about this a little more, it will be very interesting to see how Microsoft tackles some of the problems inherent in a centralized information archive.

One of the issues that they're pitching is the idea of control of your data. It's one of the things I've thought about on Flutterby, certain posters have different levels of anonymity (all self-imposed, I'd actually have to work to match up the logs that have IP addresses in 'em with messages), and I know information about various people that isn't published.

It'd be great if I could have a database that had all the info from my Big Brother Database on my laptop coupled with my Palm info available from a web site. It'd be great if I could give some

of that information to someone else, and when it updates they'd have the updated information as well.

But that could quickly get out of hand. So if I pass Todd's cell phone number on to Eric, and Todd changes that number, should Eric have the updated number when Todd gives it to me?

These and similar privacy issues are fairly complex. Heck, even in program we're still fighting the "what's a value and what's a reference" wars, and that's a very restricted domain space. I've a feeling that they'll just be glossed over, but it'll be neat to see if they've any real solutions.