I wrote:
> We should just accept that a universal identifier is not practical, and
> perhaps not desireable.
Yves Dorfsman responded:
>That's a purist answer, if it can't be perfect, let's forget about it.
I said nothing about forgetting the subject. Just quit searching for a
single universal unique identifier.
>When you think about it, the id has to be unique within a specific domain,
>within a specific company. Well, most companies have a unique staff id which
>typically isn't confidential (you can't get access to anything confidential,
>with just that id). Why not use that ? s0032456 isn't as nice as Jane.Doh,
>but it works well. Nobody remembers email addresses, or try to guess them
>(is it Don, Donals, Steven, Stephen, Steve ?), we typically write them down,
>until we can type them and add them to our directory, so the non-intuitive
>nature of s0032456 shouldn't be a problem.
An employer has a similar system. But the numbers are sequential so,
were they email addresses, a spammer could hit nearly everyone without
hardly trying. And they would create the hazard of sending mail to the
wrong person inadvertently, with no reliable confirmation of just who
actually got the message.
The same company has company cell phones for much of the staff. Since
they were initially acquired at one time, the numbers are sequential.
Same hazard: sending a text message to the wrong person can hurt your
career.
If you want to hide identify, you'll need to actually be random, not
just use gibberish for identifiers.
--
Dave Close, Compata, Irvine CA +1 714 434 7359
d...@compata.com dhcl...@alumni.caltech.edu
"Words are too fragile to carry ideas." -- Dick Boyd
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