NLUUG: The Open Web

The article missed the most exciting (to me, anyway) solution to privacy and security
with a nice, free social network layout. FOAF+SSL. Smart certificate stuff tied to FOAF
IDs. See http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/froscon_the_free_and_open for a good
overview.

The really cool thing about privacy in such an environment, is that as each person
controls their own stuff, they can decide who can access what to an arbitrary level of
nuance. No relying on anyone else to provide a few pre-cut 'privacy levels'. An interesting
example of new applications enabled by this sort of thing is at
http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/sketch_of_a_restful_photo

As an aside I'm not convinced that 'the open web' is that sensible a name, given that
'web' generally refers to HTML/JS interfaces to resources, and this is covers a rather more
diverse and interesting set of possibilities.