Commentary by Mark Wahl, CISA
Organizing principles for identity systems:
OpenID and 20 years of distributed systems (20070724)
The computer scientist Leslie Lamport is attributed as author of the definition of distributed system, in an email from May 1987:
"A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable."
In the same email he wrote
"The current electrical problem in the machine room [at SRC] is not the culprit--it just highlights a situation that has been getting progressively worse. It seems that each new version of the nub makes my FF more dependent upon programs that run elsewhere."
Artur Bergman wrote today on a blog post "365 Main datacenter power outage - Six Apart Technorati Craigslist" regarding
the electrical power outage(s) affecting a popular hosting datacenter that anyone using a LiveJournal OpenID will be unable to use their credentials anywhere else until service is restored
.