Tuesday, April 22, 2008

URI Sweatshops

The picture below was taken at a so-called 'URI factory' in an undisclosed Third World location.



Workers toil there in shocking conditions, stitching together personal URIs for the users of the wealthier nations.

Said one worker on condition of anonymity, "They work us hard, When one of the big providers puts in an order we'll work steady for days. Right now we have this big order from Yahoo! for a bunch of URIs with crazy random strings. How are we supposed to keep track of what we've already made? Tell your readers what's happening here."

Added another worker, "The only good thing about the job is the personal gratification we get when we hear back that some new RP has come on board and is accepting the URIs we make. Well, you know, I expect to get some personal gratification when that happens."

Most Web users in Europe, North America and Japan are completely unaware of this unattractive underside of the user-centric identity movement - others, having become dependent on the SSO that the URIs enable, simply choose to ignore the awkward reality.

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