[OpenID] human-memorable namespaces (was RE: Identity concepts explained by cartoon ducks)
Martin Atkins
mart at degeneration.co.uk
Sat Jan 6 11:56:56 UTC 2007
Drummond Reed wrote:
>
> With regards to English language names, for example, we talk about this as
> the "John Smith" problem. There are probably at least 100K people with the
> name "John Smith". With a single logical segment you could have only two
> i-names:
>
> =john
> =smith
>
> With up to two logical segments, you can have up to four -- the two above
> plus:
>
> =john.smith
> =smith.john
>
> But with three logical segments, you not only can expand the size of the
> semantically-meaningful namespace to include all middle names...
>
> =john.alford.smith
> =john.buford.smith
> =john.carson.smith
>
> ...etc., but when you run out of middle names (or don't have one, or don't
> want to use one), you can add any memorable word in the English language to
> create an semantically meaningful name:
>
> =john.smith.montana
> =montana.john.smith
> =john.smith.boston
> =john.smith.boston
> =boston.john.smith
> =john.smith.red
> =red.john.smith
> =john.smith.mustang
> =mustang.john.smith
>
But once a large number of these are in use, and I have some friends who
use =firstname.surname, some that use =surname.firstname and some that
use just =nickname, it's still going to be like remembering whether
cordance has a .net domain or a .com domain, or whether some-uk-company
has a .com or a .co.uk.
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