Dan Kaminsky

Thu Aug 6 00:05:54 UTC 2009

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 7:30 PM, Mark Andrews <marka at isc.org> wrote:
>        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*?  :-)

  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.  ;-)

-- Ben @ 209.85.221.52