4 ms·

The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look thi

The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. The internet is deeply democratic, maybe anarchic -- whatever rules I want my machine to follow it follows. If people generally disagreed with this decision, a viral hosts file would roll it back. (I don't think this so alarming a case that it will spawn a movement, but that response is available.) .onion and namecoin and various others are a wholecloth attempt at this. But it goes farther than hosts and alt roots. One of the unique properties of the internet is that if it gets overburdened with cruft people don't like, we can just build it from scratch on top of existing systems. There are infinite namespaces. You could build a copy of the Internet that's the same but with no Facebook. You could build a copy of the internet where all domains are mapped right to left. You could build a copy of the internet that only hosts MUDs. Adoption isn't guaranteed, or even likely, but maybe widespread adoption is part of the problem you're running from in the first place. Here's to the dystopia of unregulatable and unusable internet fragmentation. Some pros, some cons.

OrganicMSG 8y ago
I think that a renaming is something that will happen. The current DNS mutual hallucination has an insane network effect, but I think something else (fuck knows what, could be a toy, could be a tool, could be a protocol), with it's own naming convention will eventually become wildly popular and then make DNS obsolete.
jolmg 8y ago
> The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. Not if I take my sim card and put it in another phone, or call my service provider to cancel my service and then they reuse the number for a new client. Maybe I'm missing the point, but phone numbers, domain names, and ip addresses are all references that requiere looking up in some table (think routing tables for ip addresses and, I imagine, phone numbers).
phyzome 8y ago
Phone numbers take you to the same phone until... - that person gets a new phone - a hacker politely calls customer support and asks to have a new phone activated on that number - the area code is split and someone else ends up getting the number The phone system has a lookup table too.
- girvo 8y ago
  In Australia, your phone has zero to do with your number; the SIM card is what “holds” it (not really. And that’s an oversimplification but oh well). And there are no area codes for mobiles.
  - ajdlinux 8y ago
    And in Australia, for some reason you still get people who change their number when they buy a new phone, so...
- jsjohnst 8y ago
  You forgot a few.. One important one is “customer ports the number to a different carrier”.
st26 8y ago
Phone numbers take you to an IMEI, which is looked up in some table.
- walrus01 8y ago
  no, phone numbers "take you" to index lookup in the SS7 system, which might direct a call to a DID hosted by a voip operator, a DID connected to an ESS5 switch serving POTS/analog dialtone customers, a DID connected to a fractional DS3 and somebody's legacy PBX, or to a mobile phone network and an IMEI. by no means does a phone number mean that it must always go to a mobile phone network.
keithnz 8y ago
errrr, some phone numbers can take you to call centers and you can end up talking to random different people every time
walrus01 8y ago
> The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone Actually no, the whole point of number portability in the north american numbering plan is that they don't, allowing the end-user of a phone number to move it from one service provider to another as they please. For example from an MVNO riding on AT&T to T-Mobile, or from a Telus landline POTS number to a pure-voip SIP trunking/DID-termination provider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability this would be logically similar to transferring a domain from one registrar to another, while the ownership info remains the same. It's hard to make an exact analogy, but what carrier a number goes to in the number portability system is not extremely dissimilar from what authoritative nameservers are entered for the ns1/ns2/ns3 for a typical .com domain.
brownbat 8y ago
To several commenters: You're right, phone numbers aren't fixed. I went too far slipping that one in. My apologies. However... I generally don't remap remote phone numbers on my own equipment at home. I'm sure I could run an Asterisk PBX, but that's at least one level of complication harder than using a hosts file. The phone system is designed for companies to talk to one another, the internet is basically designed to allow distributed authority and control. Hackers have spent decades hacking into the telephone system to make it work more like the internet, before there was even an internet to resemble. And the internet is agnostic, it will absolutely let you give up control to a remote authority over some aspects of its operation, like for DNS or certificates or DDoS mitigation, and sometimes that's a good trade. But it's never obligatory. So the two converge and overlap, but I stand by my point that there's a fundamental difference stemming from original design and philosophy.

OrganicMSG 8y ago

I think that a renaming is something that will happen. The current DNS mutual hallucination has an insane network effect, but I think something else (fuck knows what, could be a toy, could be a tool, could be a protocol), with it's own naming convention will eventually become wildly popular and then make DNS obsolete.

jolmg 8y ago

> The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone, but domain names just involve me trusting some table I use to look things up. Not if I take my sim card and put it in another phone, or call my service provider to cancel my service and then they reuse the number for a new client. Maybe I'm missing the point, but phone numbers, domain names, and ip addresses are all references that requiere looking up in some table (think routing tables for ip addresses and, I imagine, phone numbers).

phyzome 8y ago

Phone numbers take you to the same phone until... - that person gets a new phone - a hacker politely calls customer support and asks to have a new phone activated on that number - the area code is split and someone else ends up getting the number The phone system has a lookup table too.

girvo 8y ago
In Australia, your phone has zero to do with your number; the SIM card is what “holds” it (not really. And that’s an oversimplification but oh well). And there are no area codes for mobiles.
- ajdlinux 8y ago
  And in Australia, for some reason you still get people who change their number when they buy a new phone, so...
jsjohnst 8y ago
You forgot a few.. One important one is “customer ports the number to a different carrier”.

st26 8y ago

Phone numbers take you to an IMEI, which is looked up in some table.

walrus01 8y ago
no, phone numbers "take you" to index lookup in the SS7 system, which might direct a call to a DID hosted by a voip operator, a DID connected to an ESS5 switch serving POTS/analog dialtone customers, a DID connected to a fractional DS3 and somebody's legacy PBX, or to a mobile phone network and an IMEI. by no means does a phone number mean that it must always go to a mobile phone network.

keithnz 8y ago

errrr, some phone numbers can take you to call centers and you can end up talking to random different people every time

walrus01 8y ago

> The weird thing about this to me is that phone numbers always take you to the same phone Actually no, the whole point of number portability in the north american numbering plan is that they don't, allowing the end-user of a phone number to move it from one service provider to another as they please. For example from an MVNO riding on AT&T to T-Mobile, or from a Telus landline POTS number to a pure-voip SIP trunking/DID-termination provider. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability this would be logically similar to transferring a domain from one registrar to another, while the ownership info remains the same. It's hard to make an exact analogy, but what carrier a number goes to in the number portability system is not extremely dissimilar from what authoritative nameservers are entered for the ns1/ns2/ns3 for a typical .com domain.

brownbat 8y ago

To several commenters: You're right, phone numbers aren't fixed. I went too far slipping that one in. My apologies. However... I generally don't remap remote phone numbers on my own equipment at home. I'm sure I could run an Asterisk PBX, but that's at least one level of complication harder than using a hosts file. The phone system is designed for companies to talk to one another, the internet is basically designed to allow distributed authority and control. Hackers have spent decades hacking into the telephone system to make it work more like the internet, before there was even an internet to resemble. And the internet is agnostic, it will absolutely let you give up control to a remote authority over some aspects of its operation, like for DNS or certificates or DDoS mitigation, and sometimes that's a good trade. But it's never obligatory. So the two converge and overlap, but I stand by my point that there's a fundamental difference stemming from original design and philosophy.