<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On 24 Jan '06, at 8:11 AM, Christopher Schmidt wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Verdana">I can't modify my Yahoo profile page to respond to them -- but</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Verdana">yahoo can set up OpenID headers that have information about the servers,</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Verdana">and send those dynamic requests to someplace that *does* allow for</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Verdana" size="3" style="font: 11.0px Verdana">changing the contents based on query args.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">But you're still dependent on Yahoo to change their software to add the <link> tag or the HTTP header. My hunch is that talking them into doing that would be harder than talking them into being an OpenID server in their own right. (Yahoo would <I>not</I> be happy with letting some random ID server be in charge of vouching for someone's identity as a Yahoo member.)</SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The trade-off seems to be between who gets to use the same URL for identity and "home page":</DIV><DIV>(a) With LID, those who have dynamic pages can have the same URL. Those limited to static pages can't.</DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">(b) With OpenID, those who have static pages can have the same URL. Those who have dynamic pages <I>could</I> have the same URL, but security issues make this an unwise idea in almost all cases, so they are safer making a new static URL.</SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>It seems a little backwards to me to give precedence to people with fewer capabilities. I don't think such people tend to be early adopters of anything (other than Comic Sans and fluorescent page backgrounds). The early adopters of distributed-identity will be (a) the geeks and pundits who eagerly adopt new Internet technologies; and (b) bloggers and journalers. The first group will have no problem with installing a script or plug-in as an identity server, the second group will get it for free when their blog software or host site adds it as a feature.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>--Jens</DIV></BODY></HTML>