Adam Sherman

Since I will eventually be implementing OpenID in a commercial project, I thought I would go ahead and set myself up properly.

There are now a few free OpenID providers and I have setup my own account with VeriSign Labs Personal Identity Provider beta. Of course, I do not wish to expose the actual provider as my OpenID: what if I lose trust in them or they simply stop offering the service one day?

The solution to this is actually quite simple and allows you to use your own domain as your personal OpenID, exactly what I needed. The technical term is delegation and is fully documented. To implement this trick using WordPress, simply edit your themes header.php and add two meta tags. Of course you can do this with your software of choice, or even plain vanilla HTML. This is what I added to my blog:

<link rel="openid.server" href="https://pip.verisignlabs.com/server">
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="https://adam.sherman.pip.verisignlabs.com">

The above indicates that my personal OpenID is being delegated to https://adam.sherman.pip.verisignlabs.com which is hosted by the server https://pip.verisignlabs.com/server. Since the page at http://sherman.ca/ contains the above tags, I can now go to any site supporting OpenID (look for the logo: ) and simply use sherman.ca as my identifier.

I believe that OpenID’s time has come and I look forward to implementing it for some of my clients in order to give their users the ability to consume services without a registration page.

So Rogers (and their other brand, Fido) have Unlimited Data plans. And guess what? The fine print is so bad I do not know whether to laugh or cry. The Fido page says

The Unlimited surfing on your Fido option includes unlimited mobile surfing on your handset only and is only available on selected handsets (non-Fido certified handsets, WindowsMobile devices and PC cards are not eligible). Data usage incurred on ineligible handsets and devices, incurred while tethering (using a handset or device as a wireless modem or laptop) or incurred using non-Fido (third party) applications downloaded to your handset will be subject to pay-per-use charge of 5¢ per KB. Option applies within Canada only. While roaming outside Canada, data transmission charge of 5¢ per KB apply, except in the U.S. where data transmission charges of 1¢ per KB apply.

The Rogers page has a few good ones too, have a look.

This means that I can have unlimited data, but only on devices where I would likely not use much, right?

The Torontoist has an article on this subject.

Since I have run into problems similar this fellow, I thought I would link to the original page and reproduce the instructions here:

# dscacheutil -flushcache

Very useful tip.