And so says Peter Amstutz on 28/03/06 13:57... > I think you lost me here. Searching for site ids / key fingerprints > works because it cannot be forged. Creating a namespace of arbitrary > strings, however, seems a lot more complicated?
Yeah. But remember I said something about signing data, like secure DNS. Here's one possible way how it could work: if you dump all properties of a record that are not signatures to XOD, using a standardised whitespace convention, you get a string representation which you can check against the signatures. If at least one signature passes for at least one of the public keys in the record, then it's accepted. When a "server" receives an update, it's a bit more strict; it enforces tree rules: - any signatures that don't "pass" are dropped (not stored) - at least one signature must "pass" the set of keys in the record - at least one signature must "pass" the set of keys in the *previous* contents of the record (before the update) this easily allows you to expire a key, if you want to start using a stronger one. > Unfortunately such ideas quickly run into the harsh reality that as soon > as such a system gained any traction it would likely be spammed to hell > and back, rendering it useless. If you want to get complicated you can > then have trust networks which help filter the on data quality, or you > need a policing system like wikipedia to constantly fight against spam, > but in any event experience has shown it is an extrodanarily difficult > problem. A separate system of "VOS.licio.us" tags could be done using the same infra-structure. The pointer aliases, however, are more strict and authoritative. For any given "node" in the hierarchy (eg "community", "community/freesoftware") there is one entity in control, and a procedure for creating new entries; so it would be like DNS once was, or Usenet still is -- a new entry requires human intervention. I think this works well enough; while Usenet is pretty much institutionalised spam, there is very little spam in newsgroup *names*. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. -- personal: http://www.laranja.org/ technical: http://lalo.revisioncontrol.net/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ _______________________________________________ vos-d mailing list vos-d@interreality.org http://www.interreality.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/vos-d