Subject: Fwd: Pingsta Invitation

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 08:40:39 +0100

Does anyone know who this is or what it is about?

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Pingsta Registration <[email-masked]>
> Date: March 24, 2007 8:31:52 AM GMT+01:00
> To: Fred <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Pingsta Invitation
>
> Fred,
>
> As an Internetwork expert, we would like to invite you to join  
> Pingsta.
>
> Pingsta is a new experience in social networking that provides you  
> with a platform to share your passion for internetworking, expand  
> your industry network, and express yourself like never before.
>
> By actively contributing to Solvr - Pingsta's innovative user- 
> generated internetwork intelligence repository - members extend  
> their intellectual legacy and partake in Pingsta profit-sharing.
>
> Pingsta is exclusive to internetwork experts, membership is by  
> invitation-only, and it only takes a minute to sign up.
>
> Here's your personalized invite-key:
>
> http://www.pingsta.com/profile_account.php? 
> email=[email-masked]&invitekey=eb108e15cd12c9b500695
>
> Sincerely,
> The Pingsta team

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 01:14:31 -0700

> Fred Baker wrote
> Subject: Fwd: Pingsta Invitation

Looks to me like one of these "who-do-I-know", not "what-do-I-know"
things....

Michel.

---

From: Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:42:46 +0100

Well, http://pingsta.com/terms.php was written by a lawyer (so I  
can't claim to understand it), but the gist is that you give Pingsta  
the rights to everything you put in there but are not allowed to make  
anything in there available in the open ("derivative works").

They clearly haven't arrived in Web 2.0 yet.
(Also they program in PHP, if that tells you anything about them.)

Avoid.

Gruesse, Carsten

---

From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 11:20:28 +0100

Thanks, Carsten and others.

The general sense I arrive at is:
  - nobody that I recognize has said "it's me, and here's what I'm  
doing".
  - clearly someone wants to make a business based on my (and  
presumably many of our) expertise
  - the email says something tantalizing about profit-sharing, but  
there is no contract there.
    Someone makes money, but I have no reason to believe it is me.

Hence, for myself, I think I see no reason for me to join, and no  
reason for any of us to.

If someone from Pingsta is here and would like to make a contrary  
statement, I'm listening...

On Mar 24, 2007, at 9:42 AM, Carsten Bormann wrote:

> can't claim to understand it), but the gist is that you give  
> Pingsta the rights to everything you put in there but are not  
> allowed to make anything in there available in the open  
> ("derivative works").
>

---

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 07:50:01 -0400

On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 11:20:28 +0100
Fred Baker <[email-masked]> wrote:

> there is no contract there. Someone makes money, but I have no reason
> to believe it is me.
> 

Actually, I'd deleted the invitation I received, unopened, just based on
the subject line -- it looked like the usual nonsense phrase spam
message...

Not that I'm going to join anyway -- people who know me know where to
find me, and I don't need to help 3rd parties track me and my behavior.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

---

From: Jim Fenton <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 06:46:55 -0700

I did sign up some time back (careful to use a password distinct from 
everything else, and making sure that what little information I put 
there is already visible somewhere else) just to have a look.  It 
appears to have only about 50 members so far.

It does appear to be a legitimate attempt at a niche social networking 
site targeting networking engineers, but I'm not sure we need one.

-Jim

Fred Baker wrote:
>> As an Internetwork expert, we would like to invite you to join Pingsta.
>>
>> By actively contributing to Solvr - Pingsta's innovative 
>> user-generated internetwork intelligence repository - members extend 
>> http://www.pingsta.com/profile_account.php?email=[email-masked]&invitekey=eb108e15cd12c9b500695 
>>
>>
>> Sincerely,
>> The Pingsta team
>

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Mar 2007 15:39:35 -0000

>site targeting networking engineers, but I'm not sure we need one.

If we can't do social networking via existing communication channels
like, you know, e-mail, we're pretty lousy networking engineers.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.

---

From: Stephen Casner <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 11:09:43 -0700 (PDT)

> Does anyone know who this is or what it is about?

I don't know anything about Pingsta or its credibility.  However, I am
currently reading a boot titled "Mavericks at Work" which talks, in
part, about open-source methods being applied to areas of business
other than software development.  Three companies, Your Encore,
NineSigma, and InnoCentive, that serve as brokerages between people
who need solutions and people who have ideas.  The central notion is
that a company's own R&D team can't have anywhere near the breadth of
the worldwide community of scientists, for example.  The open question
is to what extent that community is willing to participate, but the
book implies that the three companies I mentioned are successful.  It
is likely that such an arrangement would be more appealing early in a
career when becoming recognized and finding opportunities might be
more valuable.  Or, in the case of Your Encore, for scientists and
engineers who have retired but still want an opportunity to apply
their knowledge and intelligence.

Pingsta might be an attempt to create a similar arrangement for
internetworking.  Whether is is honest, valuable, or potentially
successful remains to be determined.

                                                         -- Steve

>> Pingsta is a new experience in social networking that provides you with a 
>> platform to share your passion for internetworking, expand your industry 
>> network, and express yourself like never before.
>> 
>> By actively contributing to Solvr - Pingsta's innovative user-generated 
>> internetwork intelligence repository - members extend their intellectual 
>> legacy and partake in Pingsta profit-sharing.
>>

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:53:09 +0100

> Hence, for myself, I think I see no reason for me to join, and no  

If you read the terms there is a good reason why EVERYONE associated
with the IETF should NOT join Pingsta. I quote:

--------------
Proprietary Rights 

You agree that all content and materials delivered via the Service or
otherwise made available by Pingsta at the Site are protected by
copyrights, trademarks, service marks, patents, trade secrets or other
proprietary rights and laws. Except as expressly authorized by Pingsta
in a separate signed writing, you agree not to sell, license, rent,
modify, distribute, copy, reproduce, transmit, publicly display,
publicly perform, publish, adapt, edit or create derivative works from
such materials or content. Systematic retrieval of data or other content
from this Site to create or compile, directly or indirectly, a
collection, database or directory without separate written permission
from Pingsta is prohibited. 

Reproducing, copying or distributing any content, materials or design
elements on the Site for any other purpose is strictly prohibited
without the express prior written permission of Pingsta. Use of the
content or materials for any purpose not expressly permitted in these
Terms of Use is prohibited. Any rights not expressly granted herein are
reserved.
-------------------

Not to mention that they reserve the right to change the terms at any
time without notice.

--Michael Dillon

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:55:50 +0100

"Stephen Casner" <[email-masked]> wrote...

> currently reading a boot...

Yes, this has to be a new and innovative communication method :-)

Adrian

---

From: Joe Abley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 08:54:41 -0400

> Yes, this has to be a new and innovative communication method :-)

It's standard practice here in Canada.

---

From: George Swallow <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:26:03 -0400

> with the IETF should NOT join Pingsta. I quote:

Hmmmm.  Starting to sound like Gangsta.

...George

========================================================================
George Swallow             Cisco Systems                  (978) 936-1398
                           1414 Massachusetts Avenue
                           Boxborough, MA 01719

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:02:13 -0700

Observation: Many IETF-ers have entries in Linked-In 

Observation: So far I have spent many hours establishing my personal linked in network

Observation: Apart from a certain degree of persistence I am not sure what value I am getting from this exercise. All of my contacts are people I already have as contacts.

Suggestion: I think that it is very useful for networking engineers to take a look at the potential for such technologies and look for ways in which similar features can be added to the open, standards based, unencumbered, non-proprietary Internet.

Regret: We did not get out ahead of the curve with Instant Messaging. We should have done Jabber in 1995. 

Speculation: Social networking is looking for its killer application. Communication filtering appears to me to be the most likely such application. But we should be looking beyond email and the problem of email-spam to the filtering requirements of a multi-modal communications infrastructure.

I think that [email-masked] should be the only communications identifier I need. From a personal perspective I prefer to eliminate the vendor lock in and have an RFC822 address where I own the DNS portion of the identifier.

Perhaps we should be looking at some form of rich multimodal second generation of SIP in which social networking is a built in technology, introductions are a first class message type, etc. etc. Identity 2.0 then becomes an instance.

The key being that any such technology must be based on DNS names and RFC 822 addreses.

> From: John Levine [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2007 11:40 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Pingsta Invitation
> 
> If we can't do social networking via existing communication 
> channels like, you know, e-mail, we're pretty lousy 
> networking engineers.
> 
> Regards,
> John Levine, [email-masked], Primary Perpetrator of "The 
> Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, 
> http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "More Wiener schnitzel, 
> please", said Tom, revealingly.
>

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:05:45 -0400

--On Monday, 26 March, 2007 11:02 -0700 "Hallam-Baker, Phillip"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>...
 
> Regret: We did not get out ahead of the curve with Instant
> Messaging. We should have done Jabber in 1995. 

Depends on what you count and a whole series of questions about
timing and expectations.  SEND/ SAML/ SOML provided a
network-based "instant message" facility by 1982.  The TALK
protocol dates from very early version of U**x.  And, until
people started considering it to be a security and privacy risk,
the finger protocol provided a fairly decent indication of
presence.

Observation: Serious work on issues in social networks and
influence dates back to work done in the mid-1950s (although the
key papers were largely circulated semi-privately for many years
thereafter).  In much the same way that it can be argued that
the web has yet to catch up with some of the ideas about
hypertext expressed in the Bush paper of the 1940s, contemporary
"social network" tools haven't caught up with that work.  In
particular, none of them permit me to maintain, with a single
nominal identity, different circles of acquaintances for
different purposes and with different trust and influence
relationships between and within each, an issue that was clearly
understood in the literature by the time I started reading it in
the first half of the 60s.

> Speculation: Social networking is looking for its killer
> application. Communication filtering appears to me to be the
> most likely such application. But we should be looking beyond
> email and the problem of email-spam to the filtering
> requirements of a multi-modal communications infrastructure.

While I suspect that, if we got down to the details we would
find we are talking about different things, I agree with the
above (and have been arguing for more recipient control of
communications for a very long time.   That possible difference
in vocabulary is one of the difficulties with the "social
networking" field.

> I think that [email-masked] should be the only
> communications identifier I need. From a personal perspective
> I prefer to eliminate the vendor lock in and have an RFC822
> address where I own the DNS portion of the identifier.
>...

Of course, as soon as you tied your identity to email addresses
and domain names, you get entangled with the identifier
internationalization issues that were discussed in last
Thursday's plenary.   Perhaps using an internationalized
identifier, by itself, increases the odds that the only people
who are likely to be able to try to contact you are already part
of your social (or at least  cultural and linguistic) network,
but I doubt that is what you had in mind.

regards,
     john

---

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:15:02 -0700

> From: John C Klensin [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> > Observation: Many IETF-ers have entries in Linked-In ...
>  
> Depends on what you count and a whole series of questions 
> about timing and expectations.  SEND/ SAML/ SOML provided a 
> protocol dates from very early version of U**x.  

By 'getting ahead of' I meant in deployment. Clearly IRC was on the table and successful. But not really ready for prime time (and still is not).

> And, until 
> people started considering it to be a security and privacy 
> risk, the finger protocol provided a fairly decent indication 
> of presence.

The response to the security issues was to drop the protocol entirely, not fix it. 

> Of course, as soon as you tied your identity to email 
> addresses and domain names, you get entangled with the 
> identifier internationalization issues that were discussed in last
> identifier, by itself, increases the odds that the only 
> people who are likely to be able to try to contact you are 
> already part of your social (or at least  cultural and 
> linguistic) network, but I doubt that is what you had in mind.

I don't quite see I18N issues the same way. I think that we can have muiltiple addresses.

For practical purposes we accept a restriction in the telephone world to the numbers 0-9 with a couple of control characters (+, *, #). I suspect we end up with a practical requirement for a LATIN-1 plus alphanum address as a commonly supported minimum standard indefinitely. 

If I can also be reached via a UNICODE address so much the better.

---

From: Dave Cridland <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:22:32 +0000

> have muiltiple addresses.
I think that's reasonable, too. Aside from anything else, for many 
people, their email address is distinct from their JID in XMPP, 
and/or SIP address, etc. So such a system would need to specify full 
IRIs, or full URIs, as well as a short description of purpose 
(typically "Home", "Work", etc). That probably extends across other, 
non-contact, {I|U}RIs, too, like homepages, so you'd end up with 
something like my signature.

[I admit that relatively few people are likely to have an ACAP URI 
available, of course...]

> For practical purposes we accept a restriction in the telephone 
> world to the numbers 0-9 with a couple of control characters (+, *, 
> #). I suspect we end up with a practical requirement for a LATIN-1 
> plus alphanum address as a commonly supported minimum standard 
> indefinitely. 
> 
Not really needed. We can just list multiple addresses, some of which 
in the short term will be legacy addresses. EAI should hopefully 
result in us having reasonable unicode email addresses.

> If I can also be reached via a UNICODE address so much the better. 

You can; the gmail address you quoted is, for the purposes of XMPP, 
unicode. For the purposes of email, however, it's ASCII.

In XMPP terms, what we're saying is that I might be able to obtain 
limited access to my contacts' rosters, and obtain from my contacts, 
or rather their servers, the ability to further peek into my 
contacts' contacts.

An obvious option here is that my client sends a stanza to my 
contacts, looking for a "Phillip Hallam-Baker", and my contacts 
forward this, with some form of signature, onto their contacts, and 
so on, until a policy on the number of hops (signatures) is exceeded.

I'm personally curious to follow this on further - I'm guessing that 
both the XMPP and SIP communities might be interested, but given a 
generalized structure, one might consider other channels of 
communication.

Dave.
-- 
Dave Cridland - mailto:[email-masked] - xmpp:[email-masked]
  - acap://acap.dave.cridland.net/byowner/user/dwd/bookmarks/
  - http://dave.cridland.net/
Infotrope Polymer - ACAP, IMAP, ESMTP, and Lemonade

---

From: Tony Finch <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 23:21:12 +0100

On Mon, 26 Mar 2007, John C Klensin wrote:
>
> In particular, none of [the "social network" tools] permit me to
> maintain, with a single nominal identity, different circles of
> acquaintances for different purposes and with different trust and
> influence relationships between and within each, an issue that was
> clearly understood in the literature by the time I started reading it in

LiveJournal allows you to subset your "friends" to provide relatively
fine-grained access control to your posts, but it doesn't let you encode
the more complicated relationship topologies that you're hinting at. In
practice most people can't be bothered with complicated privacy
arrangements and stick with friends-only or public in almost all cases.
Facebook has an intermediate level of locality-based "networks" which let
you reveal more to people physically near you (at the same university)
than to the unwashed masses, but still keep things back for your friends.

http://nymag.com/news/features/27341/ is an interesting article about
young people's attitude to privacy.

Tony.
-- 
f.a.n.finch  <[email-masked]>  http://dotat.at/
NORTH UTSIRE: EAST OR SOUTHEAST 3 OR 4, OCCASIONALLY 5 IN SOUTH LATER. SLIGHT
OR MODERATE. FAIR. MODERATE OR GOOD.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:23:49 -0400

--On Monday, 26 March, 2007 23:21 +0100 Tony Finch
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> In particular, none of [the "social network" tools] permit me
>> to maintain, with a single nominal identity, different
>> circles of acquaintances for different purposes and with
>> different trust and influence relationships between and
>> within each, an issue that was clearly understood in the
>> literature by the time I started reading it in the first half
>> of the 60s.
> 
> LiveJournal allows you to subset your "friends" to provide
> relatively fine-grained access control to your posts, but it
> doesn't let you encode the more complicated relationship
> topologies that you're hinting at. In practice most people
> can't be bothered with complicated privacy arrangements and
> stick with friends-only or public in almost all cases.

I would have phrased that, at least in part, as "the human
factors/ human interface considerations associated with managing
a large number of relationship categories in an explicit way are
very hard".  The difference is that we know, from years and
years of research on contact networks, that people really do
perceive these differences.  A simple experiment in which a
questionnaire is administrated with  collection of more or less
personal questions (the ones used by the popular social network
or dating sites would do reasonably well) are asked against
categories of "would tell...  { parents, spouse, boyfriend,
girlfriend, best friend, lover, office mate, fellow employee,
boss, subordinate, person met in park, person met in
recreational activities, work-related acquaintance,
religion-related acquaintance, person met on net, ... }" will
turn their existence up in a hurry, even though it might not be
helpful in actually building category definitions and rules.

> Facebook has an intermediate level of locality-based
> "networks" which let you reveal more to people physically near
> you (at the same university) than to the unwashed masses, but
> still keep things back for your friends.
> 
> http://nymag.com/news/features/27341/ is an interesting
> article about young people's attitude to privacy.

Nice piece.  Thanks.  FWIW, in the most recent round when I was
trying to do this sort of stuff seriously, the key issue wasn't
privacy in the usual sense but interruption and
attention-getting.  So the key questions didn't pivot around
"who would you tell..." but, e.g., around "who are you willing
to have interrupt you at 3AM and who would you prefer to send to
voicemail".  And the problem arises if neither answer yields a
null set and your caller definition is such that "calling
number" is not an adequate filter.  If, e.g., the answer to the
"3AM" question is "no one", then there is an easy solution.  But
the mixture usually requires that the phone ring and you or your
agent decide whether to pick up.

best,
   john