A while back I talked about why SSL and name-based virtual hosts don'tget along , and a commentator pointed me at the 'ServerName Indication' (SNI) SSL extension to deal with this. The approachSNI takes is for the client to send the server name(s) it wants to talkto as part of the initial handshake; a SNI-aware server can use this topick the right server certificate right away.

(The whole thing is described in RFC 4366 and

I just got through registering with yet another website. It was a pain,because they made me pick an account name.

There's two problems with account names. First, they matter becausethey're public identities; they say something about you to onlookers,so you care what your account name is. Second, at least for me, they'rehard to come up with.

My first and second choices are almost always taken; three letter namesusually go fast, if the system even allows them

I am not a fan of initial ramdisks (initrds in Linux jargon), but eversince I discovered Solaris 10's version of the concept I've thought itwas the most sensible approach to the whole issue. Just having all the drivers in the boot archive, rather than trying to pick out the onesthe system thinks it will need, eliminates one entire set of annoyingproblems.

(The other Linux initrd problem is where the kernel version doesn'tmatch the version of modules in the initrd;