[OpenID] human-memorable namespaces (was RE: Identityconceptsexplained by cartoon ducks)

Martin Atkins mart at degeneration.co.uk
Sat Jan 6 22:25:16 UTC 2007


Drummond Reed wrote:
> 
> The principle is the same -- you've reduced it to a set of semantic units.
> But with DNS or URI syntax, look at the number of semantic units you have
> and the number of ways to put them together:
> 
> 	john.alford.smith.domain.tld
> 	domain.tld/john/alford/smith
> 	domain.tld/john.alford.smith
> 	john.alford.smith at domain.tld
> 
> Each of these involves five semantic units, two of which (domain and tld)
> don't have anything directly to do with the subject.
> 
> By contrast a global personal i-name with equal expressive power has just
> three semantic units, all of which are directly associated with the subject.
> 
> 	=john.alford.smith
> 

You're comparing a third-level domain with a second-level XRI. That's 
hardly fair.

john.alford.smith.name and =john.alford.smith are roughly equivalent. 
The benefit here is merely that you've replaced the ".name" with an 
equals sign. Both have four "semantic units".

john.alford.smith.domain.tld would be more comparable to (for example) 
@domain*john.alford.smith. Again, both of these have *five* of your 
"semantic units", except that in this case a large number of domain 
namespaces (.com, .org, .net and national variants on these) have been 
collapsed into a single namespace identified by "@".

You can't really claim that the global context symbol is not a semantic 
unit while counting the top-level domain as one. I put it to you that 
you are attempting to mislead people.


=martin.atkins
(but not martin.atkins.name!)



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