From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] 9grid.us From: Lucio De Re Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 08:11:17 +0200 In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: 53459288-ead0-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > For something > like a 9grid, maybe you're willing to give that up in order to > avoid creating accounts explicitly. The accounts exist once they are used, so I think the implicit creation is not likely to be entirely transparent. One could consider ephemeral userids and arrange the dump accordingly, but I think most 9grid users would prefer to have at least some permanent resources. But maybe that's not even a requirement. Expiry certainly would be nice, specially to prevent denials of service. I guess the problem is not a new one. In general, in a promiscuous environment, I tend to think that mapping convenient handles to obscene^H^H^Hure userids is preferable to the contention involved. But one would need a proper "retirement" procedure to free a name, which I seem to recall is part of the fossil implementation. After all, if boyd maps to mxyzptlk, it would probably suffice to rename it !mxyzptlk to be sure no one acquires it once it's retired, specially if the internal name is not readily visible beyond the boundaries of the server. I guess someone had better write some code, now. It won't be me in the immediate future, Russ, but you've certainly been extremely helpful and encouraging. ++L PS: Silly me, I keep thinking about issuing 9grid X.509 certificates, but I'm loath to mention it.