[cap-talk] Firefox breaks the principle of identifiability

[Mark Miller]

Ben Laurie wrote:
> Mark Miller wrote:
>> Ben Laurie wrote:
>>> The use case is surely where you see www.xn--paypal-4ve.com first and 
>>> assign that the pet name "paypal"?
>>
>> How did you come to see www.xn--paypal-4ve.com ?
> 
> It arrived in an email.

Does your email reader render it as a link? If so, and if you haven't already 
assigned a Pet Name to this URL, then it would generate and render a "proposed 
Pet Name", such as "unknown-3", or perhaps one based on the site's nickname, 
such as "paypal-3". In the latter case, you know only that this is one of the 
sites that wish to be called "paypal". See 
<http://www.erights.org/elib/capability/pnml.html#nicknames>.

Reading the raw text of the URL itself is about as meaningful as looking at 
the memory address of an object; and user interfaces should show them to us 
about as often. Of course, this isn't currently practical, because we're 
starting with a legacy of DNS names, and will co-exist with this legacy for 
the foreseeable future. But any confusion caused by the text in the URL itself 
is due to the non-pet-name logic of DNS.

Many people have learned not to believe that any random piece of spam will 
make their penis bigger. Many have not learned this lesson. Once there's a 
practical alternative to reading URL strings, we should regard people who 
believe what a URL itself seems to say as we regard people who fall for spam. 
Likewise for people who take nicknames (and therefore the proposed pet names 
generated from them) too seriously.

Yes, all this is a pain, and much less pleasant than what we might wish were 
possible. But wishing won't repeal Zooko's triangle. I know of no other way to 
actually solve the problem.

-- 
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

     Cheers,
     --MarkM