[Gzz-commits] manuscripts/pointers article.rst

[Benja Fallenstein]

CVSROOT:        /cvsroot/gzz
Module name:    manuscripts
Branch:         
Changes by:     Benja Fallenstein <address@hidden>      03/10/27 14:37:53

Modified files:
        pointers       : article.rst 

Log message:
        purge some intro

CVSWeb URLs:
http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/gzz/manuscripts/pointers/article.rst.diff?tr1=1.26&tr2=1.27&r1=text&r2=text

Patches:
Index: manuscripts/pointers/article.rst
diff -u manuscripts/pointers/article.rst:1.26 
manuscripts/pointers/article.rst:1.27
--- manuscripts/pointers/article.rst:1.26       Mon Oct 27 14:15:37 2003
+++ manuscripts/pointers/article.rst    Mon Oct 27 14:37:52 2003
@@ -2,7 +2,9 @@
 Versioning for a location-independent Web: Stopping the shoulders of giants 
from rotting away
 
=============================================================================================
 
-(tentative title)
+.. (tentative title)
+
+
 
 .. contents::
 
@@ -35,8 +37,8 @@
 .. [#] ``http://www.seds.org/spaceviews/cassini/rtgpages.html``.
    All links dereferenced on October 27th, 2003.
 
-Of the 83 links provided by SpaceViews, 29 continue to work in 2003.
-Only six years after the launch, two thirds of the debate
+Of the 83 links provided by SpaceViews, only 29 continue to work in 2003.
+Only six years after the launch, almost two thirds of the debate
 have fallen off the Web. "If I have seen further it is by standing
 on the shoulders of giants;" but how can we do that today,
 if the shoulders keep rotting away?
@@ -63,30 +65,31 @@
 
    History of location-dependence: `TBL ref`_ (like in HT'03 paper)
 
-To accomplish this, links must be made using
-location-independent identifiers: The URI used to make
-the link must not specify the server that the page
-is to be downloaded from. The URI of a page must never change,
-even if it moves to a different server.
-
-Instead, identifiers must be *self-verifying*: after downloading
-an alleged version of a page from some server, it must be
-possible to *check* that it is really a version of that page.
-The simplest way to do this is to use a cryptographic hash
-to identify the content. After downloading the page, the client
-will check it against the cryptographic hash embedded in
-the page's identifier.
+This can be accomplished by replacing URIs that include
+a server name by location-independent, self-verifying identifiers
+like cryptographic hashes. 
+A file identified by a cryptographic hash
+can be downloaded from any server that has a copy; the client
+can then check it is the correct file by checking the hash.
+
+.. <<<Self-verifying means that given the identifier and a file,
+   a client can check that the file matches the identifier.>>>
+
+.. <<<(If the hashes do not match, the client can try a different server.)
+   This way, a page's URI never needs to change.>>>
 
 In 1996, Tim Berners-Lee [name-myth]_ argued that
 using location-independent identifiers
 is not viable on a global scale:
 "[I]f you put information in a name, it decreases its longevity; 
 if you don't you can't dereference it to a resource."
-
 However, as we have observed in [fallenstein03storm]_, 
-this assumption has become obsolete with the advent of 
+with the advent of 
 efficient peer-to-peer lookup mechanisms such as 
-distributed hashtables (DHTs). Using DHTs
+distributed hashtables (DHTs), this observation
+is no longer true.
+
+Using DHTs
 to resolve location-independent identifiers on the Web
 has been proposed by Balakrishnan et.al. 
 [balakrishnan03semanticfree-andalso-walfish03dns]_.