Yet MORE https.

So in the wellwhadayaknow department, it appears that it IS theoretically possible to build an https demux as I had originally intended! It turns out that although an https server must (without any info from the client) identify itself with a single certificate, signed by a single trusted CA, and containing a single Distinguished Name (whis is expected to be the fully-qualified domain-name of the server), there is a workaround.

A certificate may have an optional SubjectAlternativeName extension, which may contain an arbitrary number of DNSName fields, each of which is a domain name which is valid for the server. In fact, in the PKI Class 4 recommendation, the Distinguished Name is recommended to NOT be a fqdn and any fqdn should appear in a DNSName field, even if it is singular.

So far no browser that I am aware of supports this feature for https connections, so this is only of theoretical use. On the other hand, unlike http/tls which requires a fair bit of work to implement, the DNSName system is easy to implement and already exists in a number of open source SSL libraries, so is likely to be a common feature by this time next year. The big question is: how long after that will it be safe to use? I'm still supporting HTTP 1.0 on this server (1.1 came out in 2001), but I'm told that its now extremely rare in anything but bots.

The "Smoking" Louse.

It seems that the genetics of Head-Lice has told us something about early man. It has been determined (I wish there was some evidence of HOW) that one of the two major strains of head-lice that infest humans once infested Homo Erectus (Which BTW is a great name for a band.)

This shows that about 30,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens and Homo Erectus had contact. Up until now it was assumed that they had died out before we ever came on the scene. Now it looks like, along with the Neandertals, their extinction happened after we interacted with them -- possibly quite violently.

No one knows if we also tried to mate with them, but these stalwart researchers are now working on the lineages of pubic lice to try and find out...

Motor Nerve Cell Regeneration.

We're slowly learning how to cause nerve cells to grow and regenerate. Now, someone has found that the myelin sheath cells that surround nerve cells, and which often remain when some diseases destroy the central nerve cells, can secrete a chemical that allows the nerves to regrow.

So far, this has no clinical application and would only be good against things like ALS, and not MS, but its just one more step in being able to cure serious neural diseases. Its also unclear if this has any application to repairing the kind of gross nerve trauma that Christopher Reeve suffered.

Coupled with the recent discovery that a common antibiotic may slow the onset of ALS by protecting the nerves from damage, its looking like we're finally getting a handle on treatments for Lou Gerhig's Disease (ALS).

Ecash and Digital Credentials.

Stefan Brand's book Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures and Digital Certificates: Building in Privacy is now available free from his ecash website. I'm not sure if its worth reading or not. I thought that some of his earlier ecash work made for good reading, while some seemed to be headed off in irrelevant directions. Had the released the book in a convenient form, I may well have downloaded the whole thing to read some day when I was bored. Since its in chunks though, I don't know if I'll bother. If anyone has a review of the work, let me know, so I can figure out if its worth the time.

EEEP! Baby Kitty Cuteness Overload!

Huge gallery of incredibly cute kitten pics by a very good photographer. Don't visit if you have trouble dealing with massive amounts of cuteness!

Truth in Advertising.