Generating unique numbers?

[Kragen Sitaker]

aahz at pythoncraft.com (Aahz) writes:
> No, if you want to trade IDs across a network, you need GUIDs (DCE
> UUIDs).  There's just no way around that.  It's not the most perfect
> system in the world, but it's better than any other generally available
> scheme.

URLs are an alternative to UUIDs that have some advantages.  They tend
to be shorter, more human-readable, more memorable, less
privacy-invasive, and there's a decentralized scheme for attaching
arbitrary data to URLs you own, specifically, the Web.

Their disadvantage is that they are reusable, i.e. that the same URL
may designate two different objects at different times.