Roaming Online Identity
So I was talking to Brian on MSN about Robert's entry and about some of the new features that the new ASP.NET Forums have implemented and are working on implementing such as newsgroup access in the forums.
Brian then mentioned how he hated how long DNS takes to propigate throughout the world, especially on a new domain and totally I agreed. I then got to thinking about how DNS works and I was reminded of an idea I had, so whether Brian wanted to hear about it or not, he did and now, whether you want me to post about it or not, I'm gonna! :P
.NET My Services was a total flop. If you're not familiar with it, it was an initiative to get centralized data on people. High Scores, Contact Lists, Calendars, Credit Cards, Windows Settings, Favorites, etc and then all linked into Passport, so any machine you were on, would act as if it new who you were, as well as a million other cool things. Well, all the big companies Microsoft was hoping would jump on didn't and it went back to the drawing board. Hell, I don't even know if they're going to go through with the concept at all now. I haven't heard anything about it since PDC 2001. So the big reason it flopped was because people didn't want their data being mediated by Microsoft. Nobody seemed to feel safe about that concept, let alone Passport on top of all of that! My next thought was, OK, so Microsoft will probably rework it to work more like a hive, where each company mediates their own data and then all of them would be linked through Passport or something like that. Personally, I'd imagine companies would feel a bit better since they're in charge of it, but think about it; Who knows the software all of that is built on better? Company A, B & C or the company that created it and maintains it, Microsoft. Yah, so even still, I can't see something like that working out. Just imagine the first big company that got hacked, because they messed up something. Of course they'd blame it on Microsoft.
So this kind of different idea pops into my head. What about DRM (Digital Rights Management)? Right now, the concept may be based around who owns what files and who can view what files, etc, but what if it could also be based around data as well? Now, hold that thought and let's get back to the idea of how DNS works. When you request an address to be resolved, your computer goes out to the closes DNS server (the one your IP is setup to use) and says, do you know what IP i should be using for this address? If it doesn't know, it goes off to it's closes DNS and asks the same question. Again and again, until one returns the IP and it is then cached at each machine back up the line all the way back up to the computer that made the original request. If the request is made again, it goes to the nearest DNS server that knows the answer. Side note: This is great, but horribly slow now that the internet is huge. Anyone got a better idea? ;) So anyway, back to the idea at hand, what if your personal information worked in the same manner? Don't get clouded in the details, just think concepts. So what if when I requested for some personal data, say...all of my contacts, my computer would go out to the nearest computer (sort of P2P like) and say...do you have it? Ok, no...go to the next closest computer, etc until it either finds the data or makes it back to a central server somewhere and gets it there, caches it around all the paths it took to get there. Next request, grabs it from the cache, but with some sort of time checker to make sure it's the most recent data. Now, before you freak out about “holy crap, everyone could get at my personal data...i don't think so, bub!“, remember the first thing I mentioned...DRM.
Now step back into the shoes of a hacker and imagine if you would find it that much fun and exciting to try to hack data that was already sitting on your machine. Nothing to spoof, nothing to “break into“. True, there's still be the challenge of actually getting into the data and accessing it, but half the fun wouldn't be an issue anymore. That's a good thing! This scenario is also assuming DRM gets to be as secure as retinal scans: You'd basically have to kill someone to get access (Demolition Man comes to mind ;)). I think things like P2P are great, but what have they done so far? Allowed us to share files? What's the next step? The next big evolution! This scenario is just one thing I've been thinking a bit about lately.
Just more ideas and thoughts from yours truely. Good idea? Not ever possible? Other thoughts, good or bad? Have I lost my marbles? If anything, did it at least get you thinking a bit? ;)
For those of you cynical people out there who think I think this should have happened yesterday regardless of security and the like, again, this is just me blabbin' about ideas that pop into my head, so don't go crazy or anything! ;)