RE: Matter of DN and what's possible

'The thing which has made WebID novel is that it marries a certificate and a dereferenceable URI (which isn't necessarily an http: or https: URI) in order for a relying party to be able to definitively say “yes, that URI uniquely identifies the holder of the certificate”.'

 

there is nothing novel about that (unless its becuase one changed a Name/DN string syntax into a URI syntax). That was done in 1986 in ISO (which by definition is a refinement of the working art). Arguably, it was all a rip off of the Xerox GrapeVine directory, which also had strong bind... over secure XNS net layer 2 cards, over which ran.... layer 4 crypto!

 

 

The consequence of your proposition is not there, though. The DN/SAI and the Name/SAN only dereference to the object in the data space (once known as a DIB) in a global namespace (some partition of which is known as the web, these days). Yes, there is a distinguished (but not unique identifer for) the machine entry.

 

But, a machine it still is, storing a hihgly abstracted record. The person still has distinct nature, and might go from being MS williamson to MRS Williams, tomorrow. Its quite common (not that, despite being a Queen with matching crown in WebID Realm with all sorts of powers, ive done it).

Received on Monday, 9 January 2012 19:50:00 UTC