Dan Kaminsky

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
21

(Web != Internet) != the_point

  Most people don't type email addresses, either. They pick from from
their address book. Their address book knows the address because it
auto-learned it from a previously received email. If their email
program doesn't do that, they find an old email and hit "Reply". (You
laugh, but even in my small experience, I've seen plenty of clusers
who rarely originate an email. They reply to *everything*. You have
to email them once for them to email you. It's always neat to get a
message in my inbox that's a reply to a message from three years ago.
But I digress.)

  User IDs on Facebook, Twitter, et. al., aren't email addresses,
they're user IDs. They just happen to look just like email addresses,
because nobody's come up with a better system yet. The main reason
those services ask for the user's email address for an ID is it makes
the "I forgot my user ID" support cases easier. (Note that it doesn't
eliminate them. Some people still don't know their Facebook user ID
until you tell them it's their email address. Then they ask what
their email address is...)

  Web browsers already automatically fill-in one's email address if
you let them. One of these days Microsoft or Mozilla or whoever
will come up with a method to make the automation more seamless, and
people will probabbly stop knowing their own email address. To do the
initial exchange for a new person, they'll use Facebook. Or whatever.

  Paper advertisements: What's easier? (1) Publishing a URL in a
print ad, and expecting people to remember it and type it correctly.
(2) Saying "type our name into $SERVICE", where $SERVICE is some
popular website that most people trust (like Facebook or whatever),
and has come up with a workable system for disambiguation.

  You get the picture. Follow the trend. The systems aren't done
evolving into being yet, but the avalanche has definitely started.
It's too late for the pebbles to vote.

  As the person I was replying to said, DNS is unlikely to go away,
but I'll lay good money that some day most people won't even know
domain names exist, any more than they know IP addresses do.

-- Ben <google!gmail!mailvortex>

22

At some time in the future and when a new paradigm for the user interface is
conceived, we may not longer have the end user “typing” a URL, the DNS or
something similar will still be in the background providing name to address
mapping but there will be no more monetary value associated with it or that
value will be transferred to something else.

We're already there. It's called "Google".

Almost there. No wonder why Microsoft does not want to brand "bing" as
yet another "search engine" and are sucking Yahoo's brain power and
employees, and Google that is "waving" into something.

Talking about the subject with a friend during the past few days, most of
the conversation ended being around the User Interface.

When grandma wants to do on-line banking she does not care about
a cryptic URL, or if it has a .bank gTLD or if by the magic of IDN she
is able to write it in polish, she just wants to get to her bank account,
so a UI that is application/context/content/user aware will help her when
she just says "get me to my bank", grandma will spit on the spit pad
for DNA authentication and the UI will magically get her there.

And if Mr. Dan wonders about hacking the system, I already have
several vials of grandma spit in frozen storage :slight_smile:

But, you get the point.

Cheers

23

Talking about the subject with a friend during the past few days, most of
the conversation ended being around the User Interface.

  A popular idiom is "where the rubber meets the road". It comes from
cars, of course. The contact patch between tire and surface. If
those 100 square inches or so don't provide what's needed, nobody
cares how elegant the rest of the car is.

  In information systems, the UI is where the rubber meets the road.

When grandma wants to do on-line banking she does not care about
a cryptic URL, or if it has a .bank gTLD or if by the magic of IDN she
is able to write it in polish, she just wants to get to her bank account ...

  Exactly.

  I think it would be nice if we had some nicely designed, elegant,
centralized protocol to do all this, but I suspect that won't happen.
Instead I think we'll have a bunch of ad hoc solutions, and then ad
hoc solutions that attempt to meta the ad hoc soltions. Someone's
already suggested this in another thread.

  So someone will log into GMyLinkedBook or whatever, which then makes
use of Facebook to find a friend, which then talks to AIM to contact
them on their iPhone via some other damn thing. Yes, it'll be a mess.
So's most of the rest of the world.

  Keeps us IT guys in work, I guess.

-- Ben

24

I think it would be nice if we had some nicely designed, elegant,
centralized protocol to do all this, but I suspect that won't happen.

s/centralized/distributed/

them on their iPhone via some other damn thing. Yes, it'll be a mess.

Have you seen the iphone decoding bar code into urls ?

Keeps us IT guys in work, I guess.

and the domainers/registr*s making money.

Cheers

25

>>> ... we may not longer have the end user =93typing=94 a URL, the DNS or
>>> something similar will still be in the background providing name to add=
ress
>>> mapping ...
>>
>> =A0 In the the vast majority of cases I have seen, people don't type
>> domain names, they search the web. =A0When they do type a domain name,
>> they usually type it into the Google search box.
>
> Web !=3D Internet.

  (Web !=3D Internet) !=3D the_point

  Most people don't type email addresses, either. They pick from from
their address book. Their address book knows the address because it
auto-learned it from a previously received email. If their email
program doesn't do that, they find an old email and hit "Reply". (You
laugh, but even in my small experience, I've seen plenty of clusers
who rarely originate an email. They reply to *everything*. You have
to email them once for them to email you. It's always neat to get a
message in my inbox that's a reply to a message from three years ago.
But I digress.)

  Which requires that people type addresses in in the first
  place. It's like these anti spam proceedures which require
  that you respond to a message that says you sent the email
  to let it through. I doesn't work if everyone or even if
  most do it.

  User IDs on Facebook, Twitter, et. al., aren't email addresses,
they're user IDs. They just happen to look just like email addresses,
because nobody's come up with a better system yet. The main reason
those services ask for the user's email address for an ID is it makes
the "I forgot my user ID" support cases easier. (Note that it doesn't
eliminate them. Some people still don't know their Facebook user ID
until you tell them it's their email address. Then they ask what
their email address is...)

  No they make finding a unique id easy by leveraging a
  existing globally unique system.

  Web browsers already automatically fill-in one's email address if
you let them.

  Which you have typed into the web browser in the first place.

   One of these days Microsoft or Mozilla or whoever
will come up with a method to make the automation more seamless, and
people will probabbly stop knowing their own email address. To do the
initial exchange for a new person, they'll use Facebook. Or whatever.

  Paper advertisements: What's easier? (1) Publishing a URL in a
print ad, and expecting people to remember it and type it correctly.
(2) Saying "type our name into $SERVICE", where $SERVICE is some
popular website that most people trust (like Facebook or whatever),
and has come up with a workable system for disambiguation.

  1 if you actually want people to get to you and not your
  competitor.

  There is a reason people put phone numbers in advertisments
  rather than say "look us up in the yellow/white pages".

  You get the picture. Follow the trend. The systems aren't done
evolving into being yet, but the avalanche has definitely started.
It's too late for the pebbles to vote.

  There is a difference between looking for a service and looking
  for a specific vendor of a service.

  As the person I was replying to said, DNS is unlikely to go away,
but I'll lay good money that some day most people won't even know
domain names exist, any more than they know IP addresses do.

  People may not know what a domain name is but they will use
  them all the time even if they are not aware of it. Google
  Twitter, Facebook etc. all depend on a working DNS whether
  they make it use visible to user or not.

  Mark

26 
   Which requires that people type addresses in in the first
   place\.

  As I wrote, we're already part of the way towards people not having
to do even that.

   No they make finding a unique id easy by leveraging a
   existing globally unique system\.

  That too. But if Facebook *becomes* the globally unique system...

Web browsers already automatically fill-in one's email address if
you let them.

   Which you have typed into the web browser in the first place\.

  Web browsers can get the user's email address from the OS/email
program in many cases. The cases where that isn't working yet (e.g.,
Yahoo) are problems easily solved by technology. Sites and browsers
already have a protocol for changing one's home page.

  "Would you like your email to be at 'Google'? [Yes] [No]"

   1 if you actually want people to get to you and not your
   competitor\.

  And when people can't remember or mis-type the URL, you think they
get the "right" site all the time?

There is a reason people put phone numbers in advertisments
rather than say "look us up in the yellow/white pages".

  If there was a better system, would they still print their phone
numbers in advertisements?

  Of your associates, how many of their phone numbers do you know?
How many does your phone dial for you? How often do you find yourself
glad someone called you first, saving you the trouble from entering
their phone number into your contacts manually?

  Now get the phone talking to PhoneFaceBook or whatever, so the
"first call" problem is solved.

  Do you get to Google by typing "google.com" or "64.233.161.104"? If
only the later mechanism existed, would you be adverse to adopting a
better one?

There is a difference between looking for a service and looking
for a specific vendor of a service.

  Sure. There's a difference between looking for me and looking for
all the other people named "Ben Scott", too. Yet Facebook has
resulted in people I haven't talked to in 15 years finding me.
Facebook solved the personal-name ambiguity problem for them. It
seems reasonable to suppose that other ambiguity problems are solvable
as well.

  People used to copy HOSTS.TXT around until someone came up with a
better scheme. /etc/hosts still exists and still comes in handy for
some things.

  People used to put great effort into maintaining giant bookmark
files in web browsers. Sharing bookmark entries was a great way to
improve one's web experience. These days, bookmark files are still
used and still useful, but their necessity is very much diminished by
improved web search engines and browser history.

  Look for the trend in all the things I'm writing about. It's not
about getting *rid* of domain names, or URLs, or email addresses, or
IP addresses, or phone numbers. It's about people finding ways of
*using* all those things without *knowing* them.

  Extrapolate from that trend.

As the person I was replying to said, DNS is unlikely to go away,
but I'll lay good money that some day most people won't even know
domain names exist, any more than they know IP addresses do.

People may not know what a domain name is but they will use
them all the time even if they are not aware of it.

  Isn't that what I *just* *wrote*? :slight_smile:

  Please try to understand my point, rather than setting out to defend
the usefulness of DNS. I still run ISC BIND on all my servers if that
makes you feel less defensive. :wink:

-- Ben @ 209.85.221.52

27

-- Ben @ 209.85.221.52

Really?

farside.isc.org:marka {2} % telnet 209.85.221.52 25
Trying 209.85.221.52...
Connected to mail-qy0-f52.google.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx.google.com ESMTP 26si8920387qyk.119
helo farside.isc.org
250 mx.google.com at your service
mail from: <marka@isc.org>
250 2.1.0 OK 26si8920387qyk.119
rcpt to: <Ben@[209.85.221.52]>
550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try
550-5.1.1 double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or
550-5.1.1 unnecessary spaces. Learn more at
550 5.1.1 Fix bounced or rejected emails - Gmail Help 26si8920387qyk.119
quit
221 2.0.0 closing connection 26si8920387qyk.119
Connection closed by foreign host.
farside.isc.org:marka {3} %

28

Have you seen the iphone decoding bar code into urls ?

doesn't the iphone has an app to decode qr-codes similar to the one
built into almost all keitai here in japan.

    QR code - Wikipedia

randy

29

doesn't the iphone has an app to decode qr-codes similar to the one
built into almost all keitai here in japan.

    QR code - Wikipedia

Yep. Called iMatrix. (There are probably others too)

30

There are multiple (5+ at last count) iPhone apps for QR codes,
incl. NTT and KDDI/au variants. There are also similar apps for Android,
and Symbian ships with one (though not field aware like NTT and KDDI/au
variants)

cheers,
--dr

31

Have you seen the iphone decoding bar code into urls ?

doesn't the iphone has an app to decode qr-codes similar to the one
built into almost all keitai here in japan.

Yes, is not really new but it can decode QR, DataMatrix (same as used
for postage),
ShotCode and bar code. With the new camera some applications got much better.

Regards
Jorge

32

doesn't the iphone has an app to decode qr-codes similar to the one
built into almost all keitai here in japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

Yep. Called iMatrix. (There are probably others too)

Yes, that's one of the apps.

Anyway, as you can see this is just one example that a URL may not
look prima facie like
a construct based on a FQDN. One issue on the UI side is that even
with all the progress
in graphics and visual representation for many things, to enter a URL
we are still using
a TTY interface.

There are folks (MSFT is investing a bunch of money on it) doing R&D
for touch sensitive
data entry devices/UI that are context aware.

You have now a little taste of that technology with the iphone and all
the new smartphones
and other gadgets that implemented the same idea. How many URLs you
type to get to
YouTube on the iphone/itouch ? ... none.

The DNS (or whatever name we call it in the future) is not going away,
it will go back to
be what it was intented, and not just a giant global billboard where
folks are fighting
for space on it and where some other folks -even if they don't need
it- buy space hoping
that someday somebody will want their space at any cost making her/him rich.

Cheers
Jorge