Re: [Social-discuss] Yet another idea on a free social network

[Story Henry]

On 22 Apr 2010, at 17:33, Lucas Stadler wrote:

>>> The last basic data type is also the most important. It contains
>>> the definition of the information about a particular persons. I
>>> call this an 'identity'. The minimal information that is required
>>> to be part of the idea, is a foaf:Person definition with a public
>>> key defined in it (WOT - Web of Trust). As I thought that a user
>>> should only make availlable what he/she wants, one can also decide
>>> to encrypt part of the identity and therefor restrict access to
>>> a group. (Again, more on this (the groups) later.)
>> 
>> Have you looked at foaf+ssl?
>> http://esw.w3.org/Foaf%2Bssl/FAQ
>> 
>> Henry
> Actually I did have a look at it, but I do not know if it is good to
> require all users having to have an URI, because you either need to
> own a domain or find some kind person to give a subdomain or whatever
> to you. And if one would use an URI such as http://facebook.com/~me 
> or something like this, we would end up depending on them anyway.
> Is this view correct or somehow ... wrong?

Owning your own domain name is probably the only practical thing to do long
term if you want to control your data. 

You can of course use services, and I think that will not just be tied
to Facebook or LinkedIn. Universities will certainly want to give their
students and employees WebIds, which people will be able to use as their
academic persona. Companies will want to give their employees WebIds to
communicate with their business partners. These WebIds may not necessarily
be tied to real people but could also be tied to roles in the company.

Companies themselves may want to have WebIds, so that you can allow a 
company to see some subset of your profile.

You can change WebId, link them together if you want or not, using owl:sameAs,
or some other relation.

> I know had a further look at it and it seems that one needs to have a
> web server to use it.

Those are very cheap. Long term you could have a web server on your cell phone,
which is always on anyway.

> At least that is what I guessed from [1]. But I
> think that it should be possible to retrieve such a document just by
> establishing a connection through TCP or whatever direct connection
> one could have between two nodes and encrypt that with SSL.

A Web server is a good way to do that. HTTP is really just a TCP connection.

> Personally, I do prefer this method, as the emphasis on the idea was
> that of p2p connections.

HTTP is a p2p service. Just think of what would happen if you put a web server
on your computer. Opera I think if started playing with that idea, by putting a 
web
server in the browser.... (note to self: Need to look at that in more detail)

> Nonetheless, I think that it is important to
> support both, even if the latter would require a server and a domain.

So you are ok with a domain, and a tcp connection! Welcome to HTTP :-)

> 
> [1] http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/foaf_ssl_adding_security_to