i was reading along, generally agreeing that the challenge issued you is pretty lame (who is this person? are
famous?) and that the best source for inspiration is probably internal, and then i read george's post, which i like, and it occurred to me that if you took that and extended it to include authenticating against ads, nds, and ldap stores you'd have something very cool that would teach you a lot even if you never got it done. and
what i would call appropriate motivation.