[Freedombox-discuss] assigned *names* (was Re: assigned numbers without ICANN)

[Thomas Lord]

On Thu, 2011-04-28 at 22:54 -0700, Dave Crossland wrote:
On 28 April 2011 19:12, Thomas Lord <lord at emf.net> wrote:
> > Notice that *unlike* DNS hostnames, overlay network hostnames
> >  have an ugly base 36 number tacked on the end, following a
> >  percent sign
> 
> Would the application layer of the stack hide the % sign and anything
> following from users?
> 
> If so, what if you register thomas-lord%0a9k31 and then I register
> thomas-lord%-b1hahaha ?
> 

No, the %-sign stuff is NOT hidden.  That's names.

In this system, there are no simple global names.  There is not
"google" to be claimed, for example.

There are only names like: 

	google%0a9k31

and 
        google%0b29x8


The first three charcters after the percent are always a timestamp (so
you won't see any names with "%z.." for more than three decades).

This is part of how the design blows off Zooko's triangle: the names
are human friendly and memorable, but they do have those "random
numbers" tacked on the end - so does that really count as "human
friendly" for the analysis Zooko gives?

The application layer could treat this a bit like how email addresses
auto-complete in some mail user agents.  If I type "google" perhaps
the autocomplete suggestion is the google I intend:

        google%0b29x8

and I just hit TAB.  Sort of like typing "Thom" hitting TAB and
getting "Thomas Lord <lord at emf.net>".

-t