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I really don't think it's as big an issue as people make it. People commenting about this in lists and forums and blogs make the issue more complex than it is

I really don't think it's as big an issue as people make it. People commenting about this in lists and forums and blogs make the issue more complex than it is because they have all sorts of assumptions about how it has to work. But as Rob Pike says when you assume you put plum paste on your ass. "Discovery phase." This is nerd stuff. Put all the nerd stuff aside for a moment. When you want to telephone someone, how to you handle the "discovery phase"? You look up the telephone number and place the call. Everyone does this the world over. Second, how many people do you actually telephone in your entire lifetime? Hundreds? Thousands? (Are you a telemarketer?) Third, how many of them are people you see face-to-face at some point? People do not normally call lots of anonymous people. A telephone network. (Actually a system of regional networks.) Everyone has a number. You get their number and you make the call. But how? According to nerds on the web, this should be a complex problem with no easy solution. But millions of people, non-technical people, make telephone calls everyday. To think the web equivalent of a telephone directory is an unsolvable problem is ridiculous. And to think that every person needs a directory with billions of names is similarly silly. They will only need a small subset. Moreover, with modern storage capacities, you could store a billion names and numbers on a small device no problem. Searching billion row databases is quite fast, if you use the right software. But you will never even need to go that far. AFAIK people do not change their telephone numbers very frequently. Certainly not on a whim. If they do change it, then they have to let others know. Somehow they manage this., even if they are non-tecnical. Of course if you keep changing your number you'll be harder to contact. This ic common sense. But why would you do that? Why would you need to keep changing your number? Get a number and stick to it. If you think stuff like MobileIP is the solution to roaming then you need to keep looking at what's possible. There are simpler and more reliable ways to do it. How many people do you call in a lifetime? Think about it.

mnutt 14y ago
I meant "discovery phase" in the broader sense of locating people and content around you, making sure that they are who they say they are, and that they have the content that you want. Less about keeping track of where to reach someone and more about trust. If you're thinking 'p2p' as skype is 'p2p', then fine, a directory service is easy to build. You just set up a centralized service to handle lookup, collision disputes, spam fighting, etc. Then when the centralized registry decides it wants everyone to start using their real names, we're back to where we started. Lastly, you're right that the average person only calls a handful of people. But this is not the 1970s phone network, this is the internet. It's a different communication medium with different rules. Your HN account was created one day ago and has no contact information. The chances I could call you up on the phone are basically zero, yet somehow we're having a conversation.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  > Then when the centralized registry decides it wants everyone to start using their real names, we're back to where we started. Not really. Directory lookup should use a standardized API so that when one directory service goes rouge, clients can just switch to another they trust. I do think that it's essential for this to be standardized. Not only for this reason, but clients/hosts shouldn't be forced with the responsibility of indexing the entire social web themselves.
  - mnutt 14y ago
    If it's standardized with multiple providers then either a) you can't communicate with people who have switched to a different directory service or b) it's no longer centralized. :)
- unixnoob 14y ago
  "This is not ... this is the internet." That is exactly the type of conceptual roadblock I was alluding to in my comment. But if you look at what people, not just nerds, want to do over the internet a significant portion (perhaps even the majority) of it is the same old stuff they did in 1970's. Send person-to-person messages and make person-to-person telephone calls. The new dimension is of course person-to-person video, and we now have more ubiquitous bandwidth to make this happen that we didn't have in the 1990's. Whether you see possibilities or just impediments depends on how you define the problem. If you define the problem as achieving some sort of perfectly anonymous communication, an anonyous interchange of bits, then you are outside of the problem I'm discussing. It may be a fascinating problem, but it is not one that interests me. I'm talking about doing those same old things we were doing in the 1970's, with the same degree of privacy we had (absence of advertisements and senseless statistical analysis of every word we say for commercial purposes), using the internet. Millions of people manage to call their friends and family despite the issues of "discovery phase" and "trust". Millions of people have a connetion to a telephone network despite the potential of "spam" (cold calling? telemarketing?) Again, if you redefine the problem your own way++ you can argue endlessly against any sort of simple proposal, e.g. one that aims to make something we've all been doing since the 1970's easy, for everyone, not just nerds: connecting, directly, to people you know.+++ Facebook seems to revolve around the idea of communicating with people ("friends") you know in real life, not online acquaintences you have never met. Is that the reason it's popular? I don't know. And I don't really care. Even if there was no such thing as a "social network" (buzzword), I see a utility in being able to stay in contact with people I know in real life. I fail to see Facebook, which is roughly the real world equivalent of a megaphone, as being necessary to do that. Why do I have to route all by bits through Facebook's website? The answer is: I don't. And NAT traversal is the solution. ++ We need a way to have anonymous communication with strangers. As other commenters have said, that problem is for the cypherpunks. +++ And I'm pretty sure this is how the very early internet was, before firewall mania and NAT. People had met the others they were connecting to in real life. Or, at least, they had their real life contact information and could pick up the phone and call them, or send them a letter.

mnutt 14y ago

I meant "discovery phase" in the broader sense of locating people and content around you, making sure that they are who they say they are, and that they have the content that you want. Less about keeping track of where to reach someone and more about trust. If you're thinking 'p2p' as skype is 'p2p', then fine, a directory service is easy to build. You just set up a centralized service to handle lookup, collision disputes, spam fighting, etc. Then when the centralized registry decides it wants everyone to start using their real names, we're back to where we started. Lastly, you're right that the average person only calls a handful of people. But this is not the 1970s phone network, this is the internet. It's a different communication medium with different rules. Your HN account was created one day ago and has no contact information. The chances I could call you up on the phone are basically zero, yet somehow we're having a conversation.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
> Then when the centralized registry decides it wants everyone to start using their real names, we're back to where we started. Not really. Directory lookup should use a standardized API so that when one directory service goes rouge, clients can just switch to another they trust. I do think that it's essential for this to be standardized. Not only for this reason, but clients/hosts shouldn't be forced with the responsibility of indexing the entire social web themselves.
- mnutt 14y ago
  If it's standardized with multiple providers then either a) you can't communicate with people who have switched to a different directory service or b) it's no longer centralized. :)
unixnoob 14y ago
"This is not ... this is the internet." That is exactly the type of conceptual roadblock I was alluding to in my comment. But if you look at what people, not just nerds, want to do over the internet a significant portion (perhaps even the majority) of it is the same old stuff they did in 1970's. Send person-to-person messages and make person-to-person telephone calls. The new dimension is of course person-to-person video, and we now have more ubiquitous bandwidth to make this happen that we didn't have in the 1990's. Whether you see possibilities or just impediments depends on how you define the problem. If you define the problem as achieving some sort of perfectly anonymous communication, an anonyous interchange of bits, then you are outside of the problem I'm discussing. It may be a fascinating problem, but it is not one that interests me. I'm talking about doing those same old things we were doing in the 1970's, with the same degree of privacy we had (absence of advertisements and senseless statistical analysis of every word we say for commercial purposes), using the internet. Millions of people manage to call their friends and family despite the issues of "discovery phase" and "trust". Millions of people have a connetion to a telephone network despite the potential of "spam" (cold calling? telemarketing?) Again, if you redefine the problem your own way++ you can argue endlessly against any sort of simple proposal, e.g. one that aims to make something we've all been doing since the 1970's easy, for everyone, not just nerds: connecting, directly, to people you know.+++ Facebook seems to revolve around the idea of communicating with people ("friends") you know in real life, not online acquaintences you have never met. Is that the reason it's popular? I don't know. And I don't really care. Even if there was no such thing as a "social network" (buzzword), I see a utility in being able to stay in contact with people I know in real life. I fail to see Facebook, which is roughly the real world equivalent of a megaphone, as being necessary to do that. Why do I have to route all by bits through Facebook's website? The answer is: I don't. And NAT traversal is the solution. ++ We need a way to have anonymous communication with strangers. As other commenters have said, that problem is for the cypherpunks. +++ And I'm pretty sure this is how the very early internet was, before firewall mania and NAT. People had met the others they were connecting to in real life. Or, at least, they had their real life contact information and could pick up the phone and call them, or send them a letter.