Re: [dane] Call for Adoption: "Using Secure DNS to Associate Certificates with Domain Names For S/MIME"

On 9/26/12 5:03 AM, Henry Story wrote:
>>> Links:
>>> >>
>>> >>1.http://bit.ly/O4LNKf  -- A simple guide to Web-scale verifiable identity
>>> >>that leverages WebID based ACLs .
>> >
>> >A great example of something I could not possibly ask the average end
>> >user to do.
> I absolutely agree with you there, and was expecting this reaction:-)

But the reaction will inevitably illuminate what I mean by premature 
optimization and the historic assumptions that programmers 
(inaccurately) make about end-users. FWIW, I made the same fundamental 
mistake (years ago) of assuming that user end-users wouldn't write 
Turtle by hand.

Yourself and Ben aren't really in positions to draw inaccurate 
conclusions about end-users, in such generalized form. Of course, you 
might be dealing with end-user profiles that somehow are incapable of 
creating and publishing documents to mounted folders etc.. That is the 
profile of end-user I deal with, and I have both the user base and years 
of experience behind my claims. I am not speculating, and I have a lot 
of experience with bootstrapping technology with end-users in mind where 
UI isn't the key bootstrap factor. As stated earlier, ODBC, JDBC, 
OLE-DB, ADO.NET, Linked Data etc.. are examples of standards based data 
access by reference that leverage Data Source Names, none of these hit 
escape velocity based on UI fixation. It was all about loose coupling of 
compliant client and servers.


Today, we have SaaS services that enable Linked Data deployment without 
the inertia introduced by:

1. domain ownership
2. dns server admin privileges and access
3. web server admin privileges and access
4. entity name disambiguation and HTTP URI style patterns selection.

End-users can fill in a Turtle template and publish the end product via 
drag and drop to public folders.

And guess what, there are many doing this as I type. Thus, as I said, I 
am thoroughly confident about the capabilities of end-users once all the 
distractions are out of the way re. Linked Data and the WebID 
authentication protocol which is basically driven by  Linked Data.

Users can copy and paste public keys to there profile documents or the 
can simply do the same using the certificate's fingerprint.

What you seem to be overlooking is the power of fundamentally 
understanding key concepts with regards to end-user engagement etc..

>
> The problem with getting WebID understood is not that there is much that is technically new here.

Depends on the level you speak of.

End-users understand the concept of replicating claims across two realms 
(local and public) and then using a hyperlink (HTTP URI) in the 
certificate to connect said realms en route to testing for "claims 
mirrors". It's dead simple for them to understand once you don't 
conclude its over there heads. I know because I've taught many, and the 
results are always the same, they get it !!

>   It is that we need to bring people from 3 different fields of knowledge together that rarely work with one another:
>
>   - cryptography
>   - http knowledgeable people
>   - (linked)data lovers
>   - semantic web people
>   - User interface people

Overkill.

Get the fundamental concept sorted out and explained first. Pick the 
right anecdotes for your target audience. Present the magic and then 
deconstruct the illusion.

>
> So since the beginning we have often had solutions that address one of the problems (linked data and security, but not UI for example). And UI can easily seem like the least important. And yet it is the most important to getting the message out.

It isn't so when the power boils down to hyperlinks, in the form of http 
uris that serve as a powerful denotation (naming) mechanism.

>
>> >
> Social Web Architect
> http://bblfish.net/
>
>
>


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
Company Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
Personal Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
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