User @ domain.tld as ID (Once again)

Richard 'toast' Russo russor at msoe.edu
Thu Nov 3 00:33:18 PST 2005


Not necessarily to you in particular, but what is with everyone's
hangup on user at host?

1) Even with some magic mapping function, it's just never going to
work for everyone.  Period.

2) People aren't comfortable using email addresses as identifiers. 
This is why you can set a username everywhere, even if they require
an email address for registration.

3) What's a cooler identifier: russor at openid.enslaves.us or
openid.enslaves.us?  People use vanity domains for this, and
requiring a user@ in front of the domain could reduce the coolness of
the identifier.  (yes openid.enslaves.us gets cannonicallized into
http://openid.enslaves.us/, and i could have openid at enslaves.us
instead... but that's particular to this vanity domain... if i had
the domain iamtoa.st ... i sure wouldn't want to put a user@ in front
of it... and i can't just do iam at toa.st, because toa.st is taken)


--- "Matthew A. Nicholson" <matt at matt-land.com> wrote:

> Sorry to bring this up again, I am new to OpenID and I breifly read
> 
> through some of the user at domain.tld posts.  Before I go any futher,
> I 
> think a decentralized ID system is an excellent idea, the only
> problem I 
> see with it so far, is it's reliance on URL's as identifiers.
> 
> First I don't see everyone getting a URL so they can use their
> OpenID's, 
> almost everyone who uses the net already has an email address. 
> Second, 
> tons and tons of other technologies already use email address style
> 
> identifiers.  These include, but are not limited to: email, jabber,
> gpg, 
> monotone, arch, SIP, IAX (and other VOIP stuffs), the list goes on.
>  Why 
> not continue this tradition, it seems to work well.  Why not have
> one ID 
> for everything.
> 
> The argument that hotmail users can't use openid because they don't
> have 
> an openid server on hotmail.com does not hold much water.  If the 
> customers demand it, and google, and yahoo are doing it, hotmail
> will 
> have openid's.  It's that simple.  Also the argument about people 
> changing email addresses frequently is equally weak.  People change
> 
> email addresses because their ISP changed, or they found out
> hotmail 
> sucks.  A revolution is going on, and as an email address becomes
> the 
> universal identifier, they won't be quite as quick to change.
> 
> Any way, I guess what I am trying to say is, I think OpenID went
> wrong 
> on not supporting user at domain.tld as an ID and with out that
> missing 
> peice, I don't think it will become popular beyond blogging.  I was
> 
> thinking about using it (and still am), but the non email based id
> thing 
> is a show stopper.
> 
> Once again, sorry for bringing this up again...
> -- 
> Matthew A. Nicholson
> Matt-Land.com
> 
> 



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