Something I’ve been mulling over the weekend, and chatting about this morning is the term Public Name.
At first this seems like a good, and reasonably descriptive alternative to Domain Name.
However, given that they will be the basis of the human readable SafeID address/handle, it is perhaps a mistake to call them Public. What If I just want to create a username to communicate in private with my friends? What if the SafeID is created using unpublished/shared data, and not publicly viewable?
Asking a user to create a “Public” name when they only desire to communicate privately (which the system still allows) might be confusing and misleading.
Well… Domain names were probably called domain names because they wanted to describe the domain where this name has a meaning/is relevant/located
Since we don’t even try to make sure (how could we) that the name has anything to do with the content of the site/the creator/the language/location of the service its basically just human readable abbreviations for the longer data id that it represents… (But not limited to websites… I guess I can create a public name for my safecoin wallet address too? Latest at application layer I probably can… I would actually like to tell people my safecoin address is rids.wallet ) so the naming system might be used for all kinds of stuff
Edit/Ps: global network alias?
(in contrast to the potentially existing petname system - having been reminded of this possibility by @bzee s post )
A better word would be ‘global’. This is how Marc Stiegler refers to the property of Zooko’s triangle (originally called ‘distributed’).
The above is interesting thought material, by the way. According to the triangle, a global name can not be both memorable and secure. Though memorable one might confuse ‘Bill’, ‘bill’, ‘b1ll’, ‘biII’ (capital I); meaning they are not secure. When limiting the character set (e.g. base32) it might be secure, but not memorable. In the case of SAFE, public names are global (distributed), insecure (not securely unique) and memorable (human-readable).
SID was from the UK UFO series in the ?70’s. It was a AI satellite detecting the UFOs
OK it has to be an alternative to domain name since we do not have domains in SAFE. Its a level playing field
Yes it is a mistake. Which is why something like NRS - Name resolution system is better because it describes what is being done and that is resolving a name to an actual XOR address.
Not many people have AIDs, maybe some executives and politicians have them and some may have the condition AIDs.
But a better is Name Resolution because that is what it is doing. Global does not cover my private local system
@JimCollinson was pointing out that ‘public’ didn’t quite fit the property it is supposed to describe. I think ‘global’ is the best word for that property. This resolution system isn’t just about the local system, so I’m not sure I understand your second part.
Unless @rob, you are suggesting we just call them “Names”?
Because again, I don’t think the aim here should be to find a name for the system, but first find a name for the thing that people will type into the address bar.
I know you, and a group of other computer scientists and engineers, will find this excruciating, but I’d argue that domain name is probably the best name we have, in that it is what the vast majority of people understand to be the thing that they type in the address bar.
Yes, we don’t that network domains in the engineering sense like that of the web, but most folk will have zero understanding of that, nor give two hoots about it. They just need to know what to call the thing they type in the address bar.
But I’d argue we do still have “domains” in the safe network, just that the meaning is slightly different, but for the end user functionally the same. I.e a domain of information over which I have control, and only I can publish too… so I give it a name. I used to have to pay GoDaddy $100 a year for doing that, and they were in control, and I used to worry about getting it stolen, but now I don’t, I’m in control of it. And I can make as many sub domains as I want.
I guess I missed that direction in the topic; anyway, I find ‘global’ just as weak as ‘public’ for describing the system. There are a lot of properties that are not relevant or unexpected. Most acronyms I’ve seen make it clear it’s about some kind of global system already.
Some single words I found that have some relevancy:
Alias
Handle
Label
Identifier
Name
Nickname
Record
Referral (?)
Scope
Tag
For now, I’d still be in favour for SAFE Domain Name System (SDNS) and referring to them like on the web (domain or domain name). No need to introduce a new term while having so many similarities to DNS from a user’s perspective. Users can even act as a registrar if they happen to capture popular domains. (Anyway, how the system should be used has been discussed many times before on the regular forum, I believe (especially squatting).)
It is a naming resolution for any class of name. Local, global, singular, public or private, or anonymous or publicised
Go back to what a general definition of what a domain is. And there is your answer of why domain is not really applicable. There is no domain be it quantum, magnetic, electrical, computer networking, female spider (biological), political, poetic, or anything.
It is a equally distributed naming system, not hierarchical or community which is what domains live in
Updating (versioning) of appendable data costs money…
I could store the link to a website in hash(name) - the second person wanting that name would use hash(name+1) and when calling the website the browser just calls the 10 first possibilities +takes the one with the highest version count on first visit or the last visited if the user has bookmarked the site in his account [actually then you obviously would resolve it with the bookmark]
(having a switch option to choose a different version if it’s wanted and showing a warning if the last revision happened ‘lately’ [whatever that means])
… If at some point still many names have been taken we can include hash(name +thenChosenOffset+x)
(not too well thought through - maybe just a mind fart I had… But in this second I like the idea )
Ps: the offset number to the name could be factored into safe links and therefore always link to the same resource if wanted
While I love the idea of a pet name system this would be globally available competing names chosen by the creator of the website and ranked by how much he is willing to pay for being the most prominent owner of it - not by the visitor - so it is no petname system (except for the bookmarking part I guess)
I like NOM since it sounds like name in English, is name in French and isn’t far off in Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, German…
Or how about TAG? Means name or label, no abbreviation necessary.
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(except for the bookmarking part I guess)