As the owner (and author) of an on-line store, I have a few comments:
On Jun 18, 2013, at 11:26 AM, Owen Densmore <o...@backspaces.net> wrote: > Why do I need a login to buy stuff for example? Yeah, I'd have to retype my > address .. which the browsers seem willing to do for me. They also remember > the logins .. but we could make that illegal, or at least much less easy to > opt-in for. The credit card is LESS exposed during an atomic transaction > than in laying around in a server. For a software download, there is no need for any information beyond the credit card (number, billing address, etc.) For a shipment, we can use an email name to give the customer a heads-up when it ships, and can send a tracking number. Sometimes a user wants to check on the status of his order via the web; in that case we need a password or some authentication. If something goes wrong -- address was invalid, out of stock, etc. -- we need an email or at least a snail mail address, or the user is screwed. We are redoing our store, and most sales will be downloads. We will take email addresses (optional but strongly recommended) and credit cards (not saved). The user can optionally sign up for our newsletters. 2-factor authentication is good, but I'm leery of single sign ons, especially with Google. I see it as another way they can track wherever I go. Also, the backup is a long (15 characters? I don't recall exactly) password, which is probably shorter than the passwords I use with 1Password -- which makes my single password more secure as long it is never sent as plain text. If I don't have to remember a password, why not make it 20 or 25 characters long. Having said that, I agree that passwords are a pain. I thought Git *is* a source control system. Perhaps programming is getting easier because computers are getting more powerful and so can handle the yucky parts like reference counting, garbage collection, and I/O. But remember how dominant the following languages were in their day: C, C++ -- 1990 Java -- 1995 Perl -- 1995 VB and C# in the MS world -- 2000 Now JavaScript, which dates back to 1995 but was rescued by newer interpreters. Outside the browser world, you could argue that Python and Ruby outrank JavaScript. JavaScript will probably last as long as there are browsers. --Barry > > So just like internet tax moving us to saner tax reform, internet licensing > would move us toward saner hygiene. > > Another simple move would be to simply better security. A 2-factor standard > would help, as well as OpenID or o-auth protocols. I don't mind getting a > silly pin from Google when I need to login, it works just fine. Mozilla and > others are slowly working on a login-less world. > > So I think the education remains pretty basic: The basic computer: libraries, > accounts (root/usr), file system, along with tools for rootkit/malware. The > basic network stack, simplified. DNS. Internet protocols for web > (http/https), mail (IMAP/POP) and so on. The core is pretty solid and > teachable. > On a tangential note, I'm trying to come out of retirement (sabbatical :-) > after about five years, and whoa, it's incredible how much has changed, even > though I've tried to stay more or less current the whole time. Forget > SourceForge, it's all on GitHub now! Does anyone even consider the > possibility that a user might have JavaScript disabled in their browser? You > wouldn't get very far these days. What's this cloud thing again? Makes me > want to give up and go back to watching X-Files reruns :-) > > I hear you! Steve G and I have been discussing this relative to SimTable and > AgentScript. Its a race to just stay in place. > > But even here there is a core that is pretty solid. Git has replaced source > control and is pretty understandable, more so than the others when you get > that it really is a file system of sorts, with all the usual create, rm/mv, > file/folder, etc components. Github does throw in a wrinkle or two. > > This is one of the reasons for wedtech. We need to know what we don't know. > And then we need help distributing the load. We've gotten so there are local > experts on git, webgl, html5/css3 and so on. > > More importantly, there is one huge simplification if you fit it: javascript. > It is now the client (browser & apps & phones/tvs), the server (nodejs), and > the network (async IO with JSON). I recently experience this when I wanted > to make AgentScript.org more easily managed. I graduated from a simple > coffeescript build command and a few bash scripts, to a coffeescript based > "make" called, naturally, cake. It was completely familiar because it was > javascript/coffeescript all the way down. > > So in one area, programming, its actually getting less complex.
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