Comment by ucee054 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ucee054 | Hacker News Reader

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Look, I have actually studied p2p. I'm sure you have not. I doubt, for example, that you could quote off-the-top-of-your-head the research papers relevant to p2p.

If you had done your homework, you'd realize that p2p has been around since the nineties, and its only successes have been some weird military-type applications, file sharing, file distribution and Skype.

So p2p is not a new, superior paradigm about to burst into the mainstream, only being held back because of Moaning Minnies like me not pushing it hard enough.

It is actually an old, tired, second-hand, inferior technology that has been failing to go mainstream for twenty years.

"Please don't argue about a tech that appears too complex it can't suit old people"

You actually have to read what I wrote.

Part 1: I explained to you how technology is deployed to suit people who can't deal with complexity: an engineer builds it into a product/service for them - making the service simple enough to use.

Part 2: I explained to you why said engineer would never use p2p for said service: because all the bandwidth is available in the centre.

You know, to make a p2p system that can even approach the ballpark performance of a centralized system, you have to deal with connection asymmetry, connection heterogeneity, overlay construction and churn tolerance. You'll have a devil of a time just deploying and testing the fucking thing, forget about development. And you still get a less performant system overall.

The tech doesn't "appear" complex, it IS complex. For Grandma to be able to use it, the poor sods in Engineering have to make it "appear" simple, which makes the complexity THEIR problem.

This is NOT something any sane engineer would want if he could avoid it by getting Grandma what she wants by using a simpler alternative. Like a central server, for example.

> ballpark performance of a centralized system

Performance in this case is overrated. You forget people want to have independent system which can't be shut down or controlled, that's the point of a network.

> You'll have a devil of a time just deploying and testing the fucking thing, forget about development.

Who cares about that ? Engineering is about results, not ease of work. Once you get results in engineering, you have them for life. Business wants easy solution, that's understandable, but the engineer's job is also to bring new products not done before. Consumers and businessmen rarely or never know about what can be done.

> This is NOT something any sane engineer would want if he could avoid it by getting Grandma what she wants by using a simpler alternative.

If the "simpler alternative" is now the majority, I can't understand how you can call this an alternative. At the beginning, networking was designed as in anybody can send to anybody. Most of the time engineers deliver solution to problems people are complaining about, but sometimes there are inherent problems only the engineers are aware of, in which the solution can actually create true value.

that's the point of a network.

Wrong. The point of the network is to transmit data.

Who cares about that ?

Who cares about most efficiently getting to systems that work? Grandma, Aunt Tillie, the engineer, his boss that pays his salary, his boss's boss, his boss's boss's investor, and everyone else who matters.

Who cares about p2p? You and a couple of other people who don't matter, don't pay anyone's salary and don't get to decide anything.

You sound like a teenager. Maybe you should try to learn how technology decisions are taken in real life. You could start by getting a job in a technology company, but first here is a reading list for you:

http://soloway.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/46715502/Crossing-Th...

http://archive.org/details/TheInnovatorDilemma

http://it-ebooks.info/book/166/

http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html

http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/PatternsOfSoftware.pdf

> Wrong. The point of the network is to transmit data.

Data is mostly transmitted one way with those access network you're talking about. It makes me think of a tv or radio or cable network. That's the reason p2p does not attract anyone, because the current network is designed for people to focus on download instead, because that's the simplest software model. It only consists of supplying data to the consumer, like watching a tv channel. Internet is a mesh network first. That's how data flows.

> Who cares about most efficiently getting to systems that work? Grandma, Aunt Tillie, the engineer, his boss that pays his salary, his boss's boss, his boss's boss's investor, and everyone else who matters.

I was talking about product research. Technology does not invent itself. The boss you're talking about had no clue he could sell those things, and he did. I'm talking about lab rats, the people you fuel and inspire to make new stuff, not just use technologies in a way that has been done and done again. Facebook is already using the mesh paradigm for friend, but it requires a very high amount of computing power, and only facebook can access the data the way they want. That's a waste of good data. Other than that, facebook has brought zero new things to the internet. And it should not stop there.

> Who cares about p2p? You and a couple of other people who don't matter, don't pay anyone's salary and don't get to decide anything.

>You sound like a teenager. Maybe you should try to learn how technology decisions are taken in real life. You could start by getting a job in a technology company, but first here is a reading list for you:

Yes, I don't have a phd, I don't have a well paid job at a silicon valley company, so that's the #1 reason I'm wrong. I mean everything's its right place, why are there websites to talk about stuff, right. Let's just watch what nerds are cooking, and when it's sellable and usable, buy it and never modify it again, and lock it.

No surprise there was a net bubble.

I was talking about product research.

No you weren't! You were talking about the later stage: "going mainstream", which means efficiency, testing and deployment. But when I mentioned testing and deployment, you said Who cares about that?

that's the #1 reason I'm wrong

The reasons why you are wrong are contained in the damn links I went to the trouble of assembling for you. Why don't you go read them and learn something, instead of hitting me with a comeback? Sheesh.

> You'll have a devil of a time just deploying and testing the fucking thing, forget about development.

That's what you said.

When I said "Who cares about that ? Engineering is about results, not ease of work.", I was answering about "devil of a time".

> The reasons why you are wrong are contained in the damn links I went to the trouble of assembling for you.

The links you talk about might have to do with the IT business and how things go down between engineers, investors and managers. This is such an ugly topic, I don't even want to even try to talk about it. It's just not interesting. You don't go forward innovation by asking marketers and consumers. Marketing is about how you sell stuff, not what you actually sell.

That's what I hate about business in general. Business wants to do stuff, but it has no idea what to do. That's the reason the soviets were the first to send sputnik and a man on the moon. The US just followed. That's how innovation is broken. But that's just another topic.

I could not let you tell me that "things are good the way they are, because if they're like that, it's because we explored the business of it, and that's what we found out."

I didn't tell you things are good the way they are, I told you that the internet will always be centralized and p2p will never go mainstream.

You don't go forward innovation

Innovation is irrelevant to p2p because p2p has already been invented. Nobody wants it, and nobody has wanted it for 20 years, that's its problem.

This is such an ugly topic, I don't even want to even try to talk about it. It's just not interesting.

That uninteresting ugliness decides which technologies go mainstream and which ones fail. If you want to stick your head in the sand, this conversation is over.

> I told you that the internet will always be centralized and p2p will never go mainstream.

You seem confident about the future. I already read stats that p2p is actually quite a big chunk of the internet traffic. I never said "bring the internet full p2p", I just meant that p2p can play a role in what facebook, forums, and mail techs are already doing. p2p is not just for file sharing, file sharing is the easiest part of p2p.

> Innovation is irrelevant to p2p because p2p has already been invented.

p2p only work with protocols, and there aren't many protocols around people can actually use. There's a difference between invention and having a working standard.

And what does 'invented' really means here ? You don't just invent technologies, p2p is a very broad concept, you need to precisely define how users can make use of a protocol, what is the purpose of a particular protocol, what are the security and abuse issues, what sort of resource can be saved by using it, etc.

> if you want to stick your head in the sand, this conversation is over.

I don't want to stick my head in the sand, I'm just quite disappointed about how investors play ball with lab rats. That's how I feel IT and research business is done. Look at tesla motors, I'm sure Musk is one of the few investors who is not saying "fuck you with your nerd fantasies", and who is actually trying to change the industry.

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