Because Adobe currently don’t support Kerberos in Flex, that limits the ability to do cool Single Sign On stuff through Air and on various sites.

So, how to solve this?  Well, this is just a theory, but it seems to work ok on paper.

The basic idea is that you have something else do the authentication, and generate a One Time Key. That Key is then passed to your Flex app (eg via the Command Line for Air, or a Flashvar in the browser), which then uses this OTK to authenticate and grab a Session key like you normally would.

The point of using a One Time Key which is then discarded after use,  is so that someone malicious can’t grab (say) your process list and reuse that authentication token.

So, for Windows Air clients - you could build a quick-and-dirty preloader (.NET makes this really easy) which does your Kerberos authentication using (say) your Windows Identity against Active Directory.

For Mac Air clients - You’d also need to build a preloader (Mono? :D). Whether you can achieve SSO this way would depend on how the OSX Identity stuff works under a domain (or the equivilent analog in OSX world) model, but at the very least you could do your Kerberos authentication here.

And for Server-side components, well, that’s pretty damn obvious - you generate the OTK on the server and deliver it down (over SSL!) as part of the page.

Anyway, hope this helps someone who’s pondering the way to solve this.

Tonight someone I’d met once or twice before tried to recruit me into coming to work for their company. 
There’s a number of things that put me off about their approach, and I wanted summarise them here so that any other recruiters or managers who read this knows what not to do.

First of all, whilst it’s only something minor - it’s probably a good idea not to try and corner me whilst I’m (obviously) chatting with other people, and not you. 

When I mention that I happen to be sitting with workmates, and my manager/team-leader, that should be an indication to back off with the pitch and leave it for another opportunity.

If I’ve also said I’m enjoying the work, and that I get to work on some cool stuff (even if I can’t mention the clients/projects) - patronising the company I work for isn’t really a point in your favour.

However the killer would have to be mentioning how you’re engaging in (in my opinion) shady business practices, and isn’t-this-really-cool-that-we’re-screwing-the-system-for-our-clients. 

That’s all!

These are just paragraphs selected at random and pasted into google.

Just testing something

(PS: Hi work folks)

As almost anyone who’s watched the news in the last year or so - World Youth Day (which is actually FIVE days. Talk about not being able to count.) is in Sydney this year.

Our fine State Government has decided in all it’s wisdom to implement Extraordinary Powers to Police. These include the authority to arrest and/or fine people for “causing annoyance” to World Youth Day participants.

EXTRAORDINARY new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.

The laws, which operate until the end of July, have the potential to make a crime of wearing a T-shirt with a message on it, undertaking a Chaser-style stunt, handing out condoms at protests, riding a skateboard or even playing music, critics say.

Police and volunteers from the State Emergency Service and Rural Fire Service will be able to direct people to cease engaging in conduct that “causes annoyance or inconvenience to participants in a World Youth Day event”.

People who fail to comply will be subject to a $5500 fine.

– Source: SMH, “Thou shalt not annoy on Youth Day”, July 1 2008. Jano Gibson, Linda Morris and Joel Gibson.

Yep, a $5500 fine for doing anything which might annoy someone (read: Catholic) in various places around Sydney for the whole of July.

I thought we were supposed to have separation of Church and State in this country?

When the Dalai Lama visits, I don’t see any laws banning anything which might cause offence to Bhudists. But, hey, some old guy in long robes, with a pointy hat and a huge amount of money decides to inconvenience a City with throngs of his followers? Hey, lets arrest/fine anyone who says something that might offend them!

I wonder if this extends to also talking about Science in public? I mean, that’s deeply offensive to most religious people - the idea that many of the core concepts of their religion are based on lies.