From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Dave Eckhardt <davide+p9@cs.cmu.edu>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
In-Reply-To: <20101113083143.GA1101@polynum.com>
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Content-ID: <32008.1289691760.1@lunacy.ugrad.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:42:40 -0500
Message-ID: <32009.1289691760@lunacy.ugrad.cs.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] p9p factotum available for plan 9
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> The problem with strings is that they are human oriented and human
> dependent, on mood and/or trend. Numbers are agnostic.
>
> Isn't a solution a la IP network numbers possible?  I mean, a user,
> whatever string is locally associated to it (and this may change),
> is uniquely identified by a number that could encode a domain (with
> some numbers being absolutely local) [...]

I think the Inferno guys have relevant art.  Principals are identified
by public keys (which are indeed numbers).  But I am not an expert on
how this plays out in practice, and I also have a sense that the current
Inferno implementation is an approximation of the design goals.

Dave Eckhardt