2004feb19. I am entirely sick of “logging in” to websites, especially when it’s for online media concerns that I may visit once every two weeks. Perhaps you already know you can get into a certain paper’s (rhymes with Stew Pork Times) website with the username “testtesttest” and the password “testtesttest.” This is a direct descendent from early default password schemes on mainframes, some of which had a username “test” and password “test.” I don’t know if that ever worked at SPT, but “testtest” used to, then it was killed, probably due to overuse. What the hivemind needs – and perhaps they've already come up with something and I’ve missed the bus again – is a logically extensible namespace for usernames/email addresses and passwords so all of us don’t have to continually enter “90210” when prompted for a zip code just to read a newspaper article. Those of us who are never going to enter correct demographic data should have a little communal “route around damage” path while compu-zombies around the world obligingly spend five minutes entering personal information for online concerns. It’s a win-win situation – the people who don’t want to enter information don’t foul up various corporation’s precious demographic data, and the people who think that giving “primary responsibility” information to the Washington Post is going to – I don’t know – magically shower them with gifts one day – can still do so as usual. Then again, perhaps the programmers at these various login-driven sites automatically kill IDs that are habitually swarmed by the hivemind. I cannot say at this time.
In a way, the Washington Post’s new overly-detailed sign-in page reminds me of the parable of the Monitor and The Merrimac. The Monitor was an olde-tyme BBS back in the days of youth and yore. Now, the way I understand the story, someone created a rogue dialer that they called “The Merrimac” that would dial into The Monitor late at night and create random users. So the sysop of The Monitor changed the login screen to ask the user a skill-testing question. The guy who programmed The Merrimac then futzed with his code a little bit so it would get past this and continue to add users. The battle became pitched on both sides until the login screen for The Monitor became so convoluted the regular users jumped ship, as it were, to other BBSes and/or the Monitor’s sysop became so disgusted with The Merrimac that he shut The Monitor down.