[Tfug] Naming scheme

[Stephen Hooper]

On 12/21/06, Bexley Hall <bexley401 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi, Stephen,
>
> --- Stephen Hooper <stephen.hooper at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The problem is not really that unsolvable... just
> > keep track of things
> > marked public, and communicate them between
> > applications.  The name space becomes completely
> > incidental.
>
> The bookkeeping is the easy part -- it's a "solved
> problem".  OTOH, the naming *scheme* is the real
> problem.
>
> Context:  Imagine walking into Bentleys (etc.)
> and having every PDA, iPod, "whatever" in the
> building accessible (i.e. the "public portions"
> thereof) to *you* on *your* PDA, iPod, etc.
>
> The advantage of such a scheme is that you can
> ON YOUR OWN (without requiring the assistance of
> each "publisher") fetch whatever information you
> want from each of those devices/users.
>
> E.g., you could harvest their "contact information",
> look at their bookmarked web sites, listen to their
> "favorite tunes", etc.  WITHOUT having to ask them,
> "Hey, could you 'send' me your ________?"
>
> (I hope this concept is obvious...)
>
> Now, how do you "address" each of those discrete
> users/devices in *your* namespace?  The
> machine-friendly approach is to have each user's
> objects appear under a "unique identifier" that
> is the equivalent of the MAC assigned to each of
> these devices (which, presumably, is guaranteed by the
> manufacturer to be unique).
>

So... if I call my PDA "Foobar" then just send that along with the id
number of the device.

If there are two "Foobar's" then you can make the decision to either
give more identifying information by marking the differently (color,
sound, appending a number, etc.):

/users/Foobar (1)
/users/Foobar (2)

What are the capabilities of the device?

Ask the user to say his name into the microphone as part of the
setup... send that along with the rest of information, and when
someone hits the directory have the device speak it out.

> Unfortunately, this is not the *intuitive* way of
> doing it.  People would rather see the *names* of
> these people instead of some obscure "identifier".
> E.g., I would rather find /users/Stephen.Hooper
> than /users/12884353 (though one could always adopt
> a convention of putting the user's "name" *under*
> the identifier in terms of the hierarchy.  I.e.
> /users/12884353/identification would contain
> the string "Stephen Hooper").

I don't see you would need to present the number at all...  just
choose a different way of presenting your information.

>
> The problem is, if you do things the user friendly
> way, then you can end up with lots of conflicts in
> the name space.  I.e. all the users who decide they
> just want to identify themselves as "Bob", etc.
>

Rely on information that you can insure is unique.  If you can't
insure uniqueness of  user supplied nformation, then don't rely on the
user supplied information.


> The problem is there is no naming authority that
> ensures the uniqueness of names (other than relying
> on some hardware-specific mechanism like a MAC
> address, etc.)
>
> Hence, I don't think it *is* "solvable" by its
> very nature.  The best approach I can come up with
> is the indirect scheme -- register the device in
> the namespace using it's unique identifier (e.g., MAC)
> and then put the "user defined" identification
> *under* (subservient) this for perusal.  There,
> conflicts are avoided since this is now the user's
> own *personal* namespace...

Are you sure that the MAC address is a good way of ensuring
uniqueness?  What will these devices cost?  What happens if I want to
upgrade my device, or the network card breaks?  Will you scrap the
device?  If not, what happen's to all the people who are using it to
give me permissions to see their stuff?

That question asked, I think your problem is solvable.  I think
attempting to build a free-for-all global namespace is not solvable...
at least no one has ever solved it.

You will always end up with two John Smith's living in the same
country, same internal political division, same city, same, same
street, same curb number, same apartment number.

That is why they have to collect all this information (year of birth,
Junior, Senior), and ultimately rely on unique numbers to identify
ourselves (social security in the USA). Until you hit the number you
can't make any guarantees.

I was trying to point out solutions to your problem, and not
suggesting you could make a non-central unique namespace work for you.
 I thought that was clear by my suggestions.