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2006-08-31

Federating Along

XMPP.net relaunched.

With much help from Drupal gurus Boris Mann and James Walker of Bryght Consulting, today we relaunched xmpp.net, the website of the XMPP Federation. Now Jabber/XMPP server admins can register their own servers rather than depending on me to update the database by hand. Enjoy!

Posted on 2006-08-31 at 20:31. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-08-28

Getting Social

More things you can do with PEP.

One of the cool things about the personal eventing spec we've defined at the Jabber Software Foundation is all the "extended presence" payloads you can publish. So far we've got formats for the following:

• geolocation
• mood
• activity
• tune
• nickname

We're also working on the following:

• avatars
• profile

This evening I wrote initial definitions of a few more:

• chatting (the multi-user chat rooms you visit)
• browsing (the web pages you visit, good for co-browsing and web swarms and the like)
• gaming (the games you play)
• viewing (the TV shows, movies, and other video material you watch)

Naturally a user needs to control who gets to subscribe to this information and a user's client needs to provide some configurable filters for publishing. But this kind of info can provide the basis for some cool social networking applications.

Posted on 2006-08-28 at 22:03. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Skype XMPP?

Tantalizing hints.

A press release issued this morning by eBay and Google says the following:

Starting in the near future, Skype will offer its users the option to download the Google Toolbar, to which Skype will add a custom button. The companies will also explore interoperability between Skype and Google Talk via open standards to enable text chat and online presence.

Hmm, open standards for text chat and online presence. Could they mean XMPP? Only time will tell...

Posted on 2006-08-28 at 11:17. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-08-23

Realignments and Revolts

Populist politics.

Over at TCS Daily, Arnold Kling speculates about the possibility of a populist revolt coming soon to American politics. It wouldn't surprise me one bit. I think real people -- that is, you and me -- are sick and tired of polarizing pundits and posturing politicians. I share Kling's concern about what populism might mean for economic policy (protectionism), immigration (closed borders), and a host of other issues. Which is why we need to educate real people about the benefits of free trade (America has nothing to fear from economic competition, and in fact benefits from it), open but smart immigration (we're a nation of immigrants after all, and the periods when immigration was closed off led to a lack of economic dynamism), etc.

As I see it, the major challenge for the West over the next few decades will be retaining our freedoms in the face of the 21st-century jihad. The best we can hope for is that some leader or party is going to get smart about populism by emphasizing things like eliminating our effective subsidies to the modern-day tribalists who want to destroy us. How about repealing the income tax (no more IRS!) and replacing it with a huge tax on foreign oil? That kind of proposal could go far, and tap into populism in a good way. (Yes, the libertarian in me dislikes all taxes but the realist in me knows that we're going to have taxes for the foreseeable future, so why not tax the damn Saudis instead of hardworking Americans?)

Posted on 2006-08-23 at 21:39. File under politics.

~ link ~

XMPP Federation

New site on the way.

As noted, I'm working with Boris Mann and some other members of the Drupal community on migrating the XMPP Federation website to Drupal. I've been updating the server database by hand using raw SQL (not very efficient) and that task will be much easier once we've got Drupal integration going (among other things, it'll probably enable us to set up a web interface and give people other than me a chance to help out). I'm hoping we'll also be able to build more of a community site for XMPP server admins. Plus I'm working to establish an intermediate CA via the XMPP Federation site. Once we get xmpp.net upgraded to Drupal, we'll work on migrating xmpp.org and jabber.org, too. Ah, progress!

Posted on 2006-08-23 at 13:17. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-08-22

XMPP-SIMPLE Redux

Further revisions.

I've just submitted draft-saintandre-xmpp-simple-08 to the IETF Secretariat. This version incorporates quite a bit of feedback received during the unofficial last call on the SIMPLE mailing list. Hopefully the following paragraph I've added to the security considerations captures the list consensus regarding the best way to forestall a certain amplification attack:

The mismatch between long-lived XMPP presence subscriptions and short-lived SIP presence subscriptions introduces the possibility of an amplification attack launched from the XMPP network against a SIP presence server. To help prevent such an attack, access to an XMPP- SIMPLE gateway that is hosted on the XMPP network SHOULD be restricted to XMPP users associated with a single domain or trust realm (e.g., a gateway hosted at simple.example.com should allow only users within the example.com domain to access the gateway, not users within example.org, example.net, or any other domain); if a SIP presence server receives communications through an XMPP-SIMPLE gateway from users who are not associated with a domain that is so related to the hostname of the gateway, it MAY (based on local service provisioning) refuse to service such users or refuse to communicate with the gateway. Furthermore, whenever an XMPP-SIMPLE gateway seeks to refresh an XMPP user's long-lived subscription to a SIP user's presence, it MUST first send an XMPP stanza of type "probe" from the address of the gateway to the "bare JID" (user@domain.tld) of the XMPP user, to which the user's XMPP server MUST respond in accordance with [XMPP-IM]; however, the administrator of an XMPP-SIMPLE gateway MAY (based on local service provisioning) exempt "known good" XMPP servers from this check (e.g., the XMPP server associated with the XMPP-SIMPLE gateway as described above).

If not, I'm sure I'll hear about it. :-)

(Thanks to Adam Roach, Dave Cridland, and Mridul Muralidharan for their suggested solutions.)

Posted on 2006-08-22 at 21:37. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-08-17

But There Is No Peace

Stereotypes and reality.

This month's issue of the Washington Park Profile (a fine local paper in Denver) contains a heartwarming letter to the editor about the imminent opening of a "peace garden" at the Cameron Church. The driving force behind the creation of this little oasis of peace is a local high school student, who says:

The message of the garden is that Muslims, Jews and Christians unite to help end to the stereotype of all Muslims being terrorists.

Warm-hearted but muddle-headed. I don't know anyone who claims that all Muslims are terrorists. However, following the demise of the Baader-Meinhof Gang and with the exception of localized groups such as the IRA, Tamil Tigers, Shining Path some Basque separatists, some Ameican anti-abortion extremists, and eco-freaks such as Earth First, it's pretty clear that the primary terrorist threats in the world today come from the Muslim world. As far as I know, there are precious few Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Shintos, Sufis, animists, agnostics, atheists, or Zoroastrians bombing buses and trains, flying airplanes into buildings, or blowing themselves up in crowded nightclubs. It is Muslims -- specifically, Jihadis -- who are using terror as their preferred means of "interacting" with the rest of the world -- specifically, the Dar al-Harb or "land of war" as opposed to the Dar al-Islam or "land of submission".

Draw what conclusions you will. My conclusions are drawn from Patrick Henry:

Gentlemen may cry Peace, Peace -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

(Update: Similar thoughts here and here.)

Posted on 2006-08-17 at 21:27. File under politics.

~ link ~

Booking It

What I'm reading.

I'm currently reading the following books:

• Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being by George Lakoff and Rafael Nuñez
• The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments by Gertrude Himmelfarb
• Why I Am Not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq
• Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries by Paul Fregosi

The last two are pretty depressing, but I'll probably post about that 25 days from now.

Posted on 2006-08-17 at 15:43. File under personal.

~ link ~

Branding

s/JEP/XEP/g.

In my continuing effort to stir things up over at the JSF, I've proposed to change our protocol branding from "Jabber" to "XMPP" by moving our protocol development efforts from jabber.org to xmpp.org, renaming Jabber Enhancement Proposals to XMPP Extension Protocols, renaming the Jabber Council to the XMPP Council, formally launching xmpp.org as the XMPP Technology Forum, etc. Reaction so far seems good -- no flame war this time it seems. But then I'm on the other side of the issue this time. :-)

Posted on 2006-08-17 at 15:19. File under jabber.

~ link ~

The Flying Jihadi Brothers

An in-flight sitcom?

The Register has published a fine (and fun) article on the purported threat of liquid explosives. Emphasis on the purported. RTWT.

Posted on 2006-08-17 at 15:13. File under society.

~ link ~

2006-08-16

Playing Catch Up

Why I haven't been blogging.

Sheesh, it's been busy (thus the lack of blogging). Part of the problem is that I've been travelling a lot lately -- in the last 6 weeks I've been to Montreal for IETF 66, Portland for the XMPP Interop Event and OSCON 2006, Chicago for ClueCon, and San Francisco for the VoIP Developers Conference and WWDC. All that travelling means I've lost some work time. Even though when I'm on the road I try to work as much as possible -- I go so far as to print documents to mark up during takeoff and landing -- inevitably I fall behind, then I need to play catch up when I get home. Thankfully I'll be in Denver for a while, so I should be able to work through my backlog (but I will note that I've gotten my .plan down to one screenful, no more scrolling!).

Here's some things I've been cranking on of late:

• Proposed changes to the XMPP RFCs, as partly captured in JEPs 191, 192, and 193.
• A few modifications to the handling of multiple content types in Jingle (yes, we are pushing to stablize that real soon now).
• Elections at the JSF -- administrivia of a sort, I suppose, but necessary in order for us to keep our organization running correctly. We just admitted some new members (and re-affirmed some old ones) and will soon hold elections for the Board of Directors and the Jabber Council.
• Starting up some initiatives and fomenting some changes within the JSF, such as an intermediate CA for the XMPP network (stay tuned for more).

But once I get dug out from under here I really will start to blog a bit more...

Posted on 2006-08-16 at 19:27. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-08-08

SFing

Yet another panel discussion...

BTW, I'm currently in the Bay Area (Santa Clara to be precise) in order to participate in a panel discussion on presence technologies tomorrow at the VoIP Developer Conference. While in the area I will also stop by WWDC and chat with an Apple developer or two.

Posted on 2006-08-08 at 23:09. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Look Ma, No Bell!

Routing around the telcos.

I notice that O'Reilly has posted the call for papers on the 2007 Emerging Telephony Conference. ETel 2006 was one of the best conferences I've ever attended, so I plan to submit a proposal soon. My tentative topic is:

Look Ma, No Bell! Routing Around the Telcos with Asterisk and Jingle

(But it's more than just Asterisk -- don't want to leave out OpenPBX, FreeSWITCH, et alia, so I may need to adjust the subtitle.)

Posted on 2006-08-08 at 20:07. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-08-03

ClueCon

VoIPing in Chicago.

Just a quick report on ClueCon while I wait for my flight home. Unfortunately I participated in only one day of the conference, but I liked the atmosphere -- a bit anarchic at times, but then again I prefer meetings that are a bit unstructured. :-) Smart, interesting, code-oriented developers, not a lot of fluff, just dedicated people working to solve important problems. Plus I got some good feedback on Jingle from Anthony Minessale of the FreeSWITCH project and several others (my slides are here). See you at ClueCon 2007!

Posted on 2006-08-03 at 17:31. File under jabber.

~ link ~

2006-08-01

PEP Twofer

More updates.

Sometimes we take "publish early, publish often" to excess by posting two versions of the same JEP in one day. Today is just such a day, because version 0.13 of JEP-0163: Personal Eventing via Pubsub was just published (the CVS diff reveals all).

(And yes, that's the editorial we.)

Posted on 2006-08-01 at 20:29. File under jabber.

~ link ~

PEP Again

Updated spec.

As promised I've completed the first round of updates to JEP-0163. The basic approach is there but some of the details may be missing, wrong, or inconsistent. I will read it over again in the next day or two and make further modifications and clarifications.

Publish early, publish often!

Posted on 2006-08-01 at 13:49. File under jabber.

~ link ~

Getting a Clue

Chicago bound.

BTW, I will be speaking on Thursday afternoon in Chicago at ClueCon. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend the entire conference (which started this morning), but at least I'll get a chance to catch Jim Van Meggelen's talk on Asterisk as well as Anthony Minessale's and Yossi Neiman's talks on FreeSWITCH.

Posted on 2006-08-01 at 10:35. File under jabber.

~ link ~

PEPpy

Updates on the way.

Last night I got about 80% done on incorporating the recently-discussed radical simplifications to JEP-0163: Personal Eventing via Pubsub. I hope to push out the next document version today.

Posted on 2006-08-01 at 06:41. File under jabber.

~ link ~

RFC 4622

XMPP URIs, officially.

The IETF has just published RFC 4622, which officially specifies the format and usage of XMPP URIs. So now you can link with confidence to your JabberID or your IM server or your favorite chatroom or any other XMPP entity. Gentlemen, start your hrefs!

Posted on 2006-08-01 at 06:33. File under jabber.

~ link ~

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