Be­cause of var­ied rea­son­s, I have spent a lit­tle time in my life look­ing at SSL cer­tifi­cates. I have spent time cre­at­ing, sign­ing, con­fig­ur­ing, buy­ing, de­ploy­ing and val­i­dat­ing them. I have hard­ly ev­er seen some­thing like Val­icert, though.

So, a us­er has a SSL er­ror, and there ap­pears a cer­tifi­cate that has noth­ing to do with the site he's sup­posed to be ac­cess­ing. It's marked as in­valid (n­ev­er­mind) and is from a CA I have nev­er heard of, called Val­icert.

It seems to be a valid CA, its cer­tifi­cates most­ly val­i­date, etc, but some­thing is fishy (be­sides the fact that there is a freak­ing Val­icert cer­tifi­cate where there should not be one and I have no idea why).

It seems Val­icert is or was owned by Go­Dad­dy, which should al­ready be a prob­lem, but it gets worse. The URL for the CA? val­icert.­com which is not con­fig­ured as a site. Then I try www.­val­icert.­com which does ex­ist but is not about a CA but about AxWay, a "Busi­ness In­ter­ac­tion Net­works com­pa­ny".

It con­tains nuggets like "What can our cloud-based com­mu­ni­ty man­age­ment so­lu­tion do for your bot­tom line?" and "Is your file trans­fer sys­tem vis­i­bil­i­ty-im­paired?" and "Our award-win­ning prod­uct­s, so­lu­tions and ser­vices en­able the busi­ness-­crit­i­cal trans­ac­tions re­quired to ac­cel­er­ate per­for­mance with­in and among en­ter­pris­es – while pro­vid­ing man­age­men­t, se­cu­ri­ty and gov­er­nance on in­ter­ac­tions through­out busi­ness net­work­s."

And then I had the (bad) idea to try http­s://www.­val­icert.­com ... a pic­ture should be enough:

These bo­zos, this com­pa­ny that dares of­fer file trans­fer what­nots and has "award win­ning prod­uct­s"... has a self­-signed cer­tifi­cate, that ex­pired in 2010, for lo­cal­host freak­ing lo­cal­do­main in their pub­lic web­serv­er.

So, I am guess­ing Val­icert does­n't ex­ist any­more, go­dad­dy kept the CA alive un­til all certs ex­pire and for some rea­son AxWay is a bunch of in­com­pe­tents who bought the do­main (but why???) and re­al­ly, trust­ing CAs is get­ting hard­er each day.

Voy a dar una char­la en el Py­Day Lu­ján el sá­ba­do 5 de ma­yo.

El tí­tu­lo es "Ha­cer una co­sa, y ha­cer­la bien­", y to­da­vía la char­la no es­tá del to­do for­ma­da en mi ca­be­za, lo que sue­le ser una bue­na se­ña­l.

Así que ven­gan y únan­se a mí y un mon­tón de gen­te que sa­be (e­llo­s, no yo) pa­ra ha­blar de pro­gra­ma­ción un día en­te­ro. ¡Va a es­tar bue­no!

Men­cio­nan­do es­te blog te ga­nás un ca­ra­me­lo. Avi­so no­má­s.

At Canon­i­cal's On­line Ser­vices we can do cool stuff on fri­days. We do cool stuff all week, ac­tu­al­ly, but on fri­days we can do cra­zier cool stuff.

So, to­day, I ripped off a great ser­vice of­fered by http://­calepin.­co and im­ple­ment­ed a pro­to­type blog-through-Ubun­tu-One web ap­pli­ca­tion. Of course, it's pow­ered by Niko­la,

The code is ab­so­lute non­sense, and it needs to be looked at by some­one who un­der­stands Djan­go, OAu­th, OpenID, and pro­gram­ming in gen­er­al bet­ter than I do, but hey, it does work (for a very loose def­i­ni­tion of "work").

It's called Shore­ham and no, you can't have it yet.

As a teaser, here's a video. With a pony.

In the near fu­ture I will do a bet­ter post about this ex­plain­ing the code, etc.

Por eso, Al­va es pa­ra ha­cer si­tios es­tá­ti­cos di­ná­mi­ca­men­te. Si que­rés te­ner Niko­la en tu ser­ver en vez de en tu com­pu, y te­ner la con­ve­nien­cia de una he­rra­mien­ta on­li­ne, ese es el ni­cho que Al­va quie­re lle­na­r.

En­ton­ce­s, uno ins­ta­la­ría Al­va, y lo usa­ría co­mo cual­quier he­rra­mien­ta pa­ra ha­cer blogs on­li­ne, pe­ro de­trás de es­ce­na es­ta­rías usan­do Niko­la, con to­dos los be­ne­fi­cios de per­for­man­ce y se­gu­ri­dad de los si­tios es­tá­ti­co­s.

Y tal vez al­gún día yo (u otro) pon­ga un Al­va mul­tiu­ser en al­gu­na par­te, y ten­gas blogs hos­tea­do­s, sa­bien­do que to­dos los da­tos son tu­yos y que te po­dés ir cuan­do quie­ra­s.

Es­to es muy in­ma­du­ro, tan­to que no fun­cioi­na. Pe­ro acá va un ade­lan­to:

No hay un es­ti­ma­do de tiem­po pa­ra es­to. De­pen­de de mu­chí­si­mas otras co­sas y tal vez nun­ca su­ce­da.