Yearly Archives: 2008

Basic vs. Digest

Posted on by

In the series of highly boring posts ;) here’s another one; in this case, a simple explanation of two different authentication protocols available in the HTTP standard.

HTTP Basic Authentication Protocol

This is the simplest HTTP Authentication protocol available:

  1. The browser sends a request to a protected resource: GET /index.html
  2. The server looks for the “Authenticated” header in the request; since it does not find it, it replies back with a response with the 401 code (“Unauthorized”). The response contains a “WWW-Authenticate” header, with the value “Basic”. This response is called a “challenge”, and it also contains a “realm” text, which describes the protected resource in clear text (the “realm” is shown in the pop-up window that usually appears for you to type your password when this protocol is used).
  3. The browser creates a new request GET /index.html that contains an HTTP_AUTHORIZATION header, whose value is the word “Basic” followed by the ‘username:password’ string encoded in base 64. This algorithm is a two-way algorithm: you can retrieve the username and password from the base 64-encoded string.
  4. The server receives this response, and since base 64 is a two-way algorithm, it compares the MD5 (or SHA1) password hash to the one stored in the database. If they are the same, the request is processed. Otherwise, the user gets a 401 again.

Continue reading →

Videla y Kissinger en el vestuario

Posted on by

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2008/06/20/sociedad/s-01697796.htm

Jorge Rafael Videla y Henry Kissinger ingresan al vestuario de los peruanos, poco antes de que se inicie el partido con los argentinos. “Con el mero ingreso al vestuario, los militares y sus amigos habían logrado su cometido. Hubo llamadas por la vecindad de los pueblos, la comunión de razas, la fraternidad de los gobiernos, la coincidencia de pensamientos bilaterales, y a la ‘solidaridad en innumerables intereses comunes…’. Los perturbó (N. de la R: a los futbolistas peruanos) la referencia final al coraje, inclinando la cabeza y torciendo el bigotazo hacia un lado de la cara, manteniendo la mirada en el horizonte”.

Pastrami Sandwich

Posted on by

I find many similarities between an event like WWDC and a similar one I’ve attended at Redmond long ago; both are big (huge!) events, with thousands of (men) engineers from around the world (and very few women), with a keynote by the founder, lots of events every morning and afternoon, and merchandasing stuff all over the way. And of course, in both cases you get food boxes for lunch.

However, there is one basic difference between both events. Apple not only has interesting technologies to show up, even bleeding edge ones, more often than not on the open and public domain (many of which I can not write about, and boy they are going to make a difference!), but even better than that, it has a vision.

And passion. Cocoa developers are among the most passionate I’ve ever met, and you just can’t find that in a Microsoft event. You can feel that in the (conditioned) air of the Moscone center, almost touch it. New projects everywhere. People discussing about their ideas. Lots of collaboration, openness and willingness to go further. Microsoft’s stuff is, well, boring at best; dull and gray. Enterprise IT is no fun, believe me, but there’s no reason to try to look at it in a different way. And faithful to its own way, Apple is precisely doing that, right now; and what’s about to come will reshape the industry forever. Continue reading →

WWDC 2008 Keynote Main Points

Posted on by

The keynote is over, and I’m on the 2nd floor of the Moscone Center sipping a coffee and thinking about all the stuff that Steve and his team just presented:

  • The new iPhone 3G with GPS will go live on July 11th in several countries, including Switzerland! And best of all, the price of the 8 GB model drops to 199 USD, and the 16 GB model (in two different colors) will cost 299 USD. And even more important, is that the price will be 199 or 299 USD no matter what country you’re in! Given the low cost of the dollar these days, for me this simply means that Apple will grab a good slice of the market within a few months. This makes the platform all the more interesting!
  • The App Store will not be the only means of distribution for native applications using the SDK; enterprises will be able to distribute them to their own devices, and even common mortals will be able to enable up to 100 devices, and apps distributed this way will be able to be activated from e-mail, websites or whatever means you need. More ways to get your code through the door!
  • The iPhone becomes a serious enterprise platform; not only will enterprises be able to use their own distribution platforms, the integration with Exchange is complete, and the support for MS Office documents is there too. As well as native support for iWork apps!
  • .mac is replaced by mobileme; with a price tag of 99 per year, users get 20 GB of storage “on the cloud”, for storing images, e-mail, calendars or contacts, together with extremely advanced Web 2.0 applications, and integration with iPhone, Mac and PCs. “Exchange for the rest of us”, as they presented it! Instant sync from any device, anytime, anywhere.
  • There will be a notification service for apps, which will allow them to show status information for users, without resorting to background threads; this will apparently work with a central server (at Apple’s own premises?) with a single IP connection. In any case, they’ve listened to the concern of many developers; this feature is (in my opinion) the last bit that the platform lacked to be considered seriously.

This is for the main bits. Of course there was a lot more shown, but you’ll be able to watch it in its entirety in a few hours, since the keynote will be available on Apple’s site.

Incredible stuff. Stay tuned for more info!

Waiting for the Keynote

Posted on by

Twitter’s down, but not my blog! I’m in the main Moscone conference room waiting for the start fo the keynote; there are thousands of people here! “Roll over Beethoven” is sounding all over the place…

The air is filled with electricity. This won’t last long. Just a few minutes more, and we’ll know what’s in the box.

Sunny WWDC

Posted on by

Comparing Lausanne to San Francisco is a straightforward experiment:

By the way, I’m in SF. On Monday I’ll attend WWDC. But tomorrow Claudia and I are biking through the Golden Gate ;)