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Industrial-Strength P2P

hhutkin writes "Business 2.0 has an article in their latest issue on Bill Joy and Sun's peer-to-peer play, Jxta." A bit light on details but still good to know progress is being made in the field of peer to peer apps. But don't expect anything useful any time soon.

104 comments

  1. FIST POST by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    KGB can LMB!

  2. p2p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    penis 2 penis

  3. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    fp

  4. here we go again by Fucky+the+troll · · Score: -1

    Once again Taco reports on Penis-2-Penis technology. Can't he just forget about it for one day?

    --






    Roadkill is yummy.
  5. Blah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Fuck you, nigger.

  6. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    fp niggahs! suck a www.isonews.com dick penis homogay!!!

  7. Dude, so many uses for p2p by CrazyJim0 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I designed GNUTELLA before I heard about it.

    I was making a protocol to make Diablo 1 unhackable but nothing is stored on the main server.... The key is your info is on other computers so you can't lie. I then expanded it to a Gnutella base when I heard about napster.

    Another good use for P2P is IP spoofing... Someone should write SpoofTella. Basically all computers running it would share lines so they can spoof information.... depending on how you want to work it, you could spam webadresses, bomb dot coms, or just work around annoying sys admins banning you from your IP.

    I'm too lazy to write this, but other people may want to

    Check out www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~sager for some other cool ideas I have no power to develop, but I know are worth it to the world.

  8. Can a nigga get a table dance? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Check it out check it out WHOO! Shake dat body!

  9. I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by JMZero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unless a new technology:

    A: Means I can do something I currently cannot (and want to do)

    or

    B: Does something so much better as to make my old methods obsolete

    it doesn't excite me much. I think sharing illegal files was the killer app of P2P.

    --
    Let's not stir that bag of worms...
    1. Re:I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by Oily+Tuna · · Score: 1

      ... killer ...

      In both senses of the word.

      --
      Mmmmmmm ... sushi.
    2. Re:I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by ichimunki · · Score: 2

      Next up, Sun launches new ad campaign, "The Network is the Network" complete with diagrams of computer terminals and arrows and happy faces. Under their definition of "peer" which could mean anything from running shoes to supercomputers (this is from the article, people) their radical new plan connects those computers together in a mostly decentralized way to share information. This changes everything!

      --
      I do not have a signature
    3. Re:I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by sulli · · Score: 1
      I think sharing illegal files was the killer app of P2P.

      Was?

      --

      sulli
      RTFJ.
    4. Re:I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    5. Re:I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by Kingpin · · Score: 1


      Jini is a beauty. Sun's marketing engine is just not capable of boosting more than one product, which is why the J2EE suite is so much more widely accepted. Eventually the functionality offered by Jini can/will be replaced by XML/HTTP, but that does not make the ideas and design any less interesting.

      Do you know anything about Jini at all? If not, I'd like to fill you in. In short it's an infrastructure for building dynamic distributed systems and I believe that it contains all the features you'd expect in a system designed for that.

      --
      Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
      Geocrawler error message.
    6. Re:I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by jilles · · Score: 2

      Jini lacked a killer application. P2p already has one (mp3 sharing, instant messaging) so JXTA needs another one to prove it is worth bothering with. Unless it is found it will die slowly and will eventually disappear.

      I fear JXTA will go the same way. SUN is a server side company and it has never understood the client side. For example: Java's failure on the client side; the crappy GUI they ship with their OS and the fact that their most succesfull desktop products (forte and staroffice) were acquired rather than created at SUN. When they announced JXTA I was one of the dozens of puzzled folks who were left wondering what the fuss was about when you unzipped the demo.

      Crappy GUI and *gasp* a unix shell like interface to the whole thing, apparently the only thing these guys grasp. I know it is only a demo app but it is hardly an inspiring one. Unless they get some real, useful and most importantly unique apps out based on JXTA that actually require JXTA (morpheus et al. demonstrate that mp3 sharing does not require such a poweful tool) it is doomed to fail.

      When it comes to p2p, the UI is all that matters. Nobody cares about what is powering it. Long after the napster network collapsed, people were running napster: to play their mp3! Apple understands UIs so they created iPod: instant hit.

      The only thing I see on the JXTA site is stuff I already have (and hence does not require JXTA). This tells me that the JXTA developers are as much in the dark as I am when it comes to the killer app JXTA so desparately needs. They have a cool idea but no clue as to what to do with it.

      Many technologies die this way. A few years ago mobile agents were a hot thing. It never took off because people just couldn't figure out a useful application for it. There were many cool demos and prototypes and I had lots of fun playing with the aglet stuff from IBM but no useful application of all this technology. Same for 3d userinterfaces. We have the hardware to run 3d stuff, but other than games and CAD, this hardware is not used to replace the desktop metaphore. Then there's VRML: another cool idea that never took off. The message is clear, once the coolness wears off there has to be a reason to keep using a technology.

      It would be cool to have my toaster instruct the coffee machine to download britney spears. However I hate britney spears and it would spoil my breakfast having to listen to her when all I wanted was some toast and coffee (which don't require either jini or JXTA). I'm not saying that SUN should abandon JXTA, I'm just telling them that if they continue the way they are doing things now, they might as well abandon it right now.

      --

      Jilles
    7. Re:I hope it changes my life as much as Jini did! by benspionage · · Score: 1
      Jini lacked a killer application


      I'm sure the following people might disagree with you:


      - U.S. Army
      - Raytheon (U.S. Navy)
      - Cisco
      - eko systems (medical data and equipment)
      - More success stories here and here


      Jini isn't dead, it is just poorly marketed by Sun (Jini is about services not devices and what is the current trend in industry? - that's right, service based systems ala web services), probably because they've put all their eggs into the J2EE basket (which also has its place).


      I strongly encourage you to re-evaluate Jini. It can be a truly powerful paradigm even for none Java enabled machines/devices (e.g. using a surrogate architecture).


      Read the Jini FAQ, see the following excellent article on Jini and have a look at the Jini user mailing list sometime and you will be surprised by how powerful Jini can be.

  10. AIDS, White Peoples Best Friend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    AIDS, White Peoples Best Friend (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10, @01:01PM (#2682885)
    As Lancer has pointed out, AIDS in Africa amongst the Simians is 24% in S.Africa and, so I've been advised by medical personnel I know, upwards of 40% in central Africa. THIS IS GREAT !!! This good news is verified by whimpy Christian charities showing videos of hundreds of open graves soon to be filled and stacks of Simians, already dispatched by Mother Natures revenge. The only people who deserve sympathy and help are those unfortunates who received tainted blood via transfusion -- all the rest got it from violating Natures laws. Maybe nature will do what the White Folk have lost the will to do, balance the sacred Earth's resources -- the hard way if necessary. How long can what is left of the 1st World feed, support and allow breeding of the Simians? I think there is a limit and one of the most tragic aspects of allowing the Simian population to breed out of control is that all those great, beautiful and noble animals of Africa are being exterminated by these miserable ape-wretches to protect their small cattle heards and provide the Asians with animal parts for their ridiculous sex potions. GO MOTHER NATURE !! I just wish the AIDS process just worked a little faster -- but I won't second guess
    Mother Nature and her workings.

    1. Re:AIDS, White Peoples Best Friend by CmderTaco · · Score: -1

      Nah, you're just getting your hopes up. We had originally hoped it would rid the world of fags, but we were wrong there too...

      --
      - Marco
  11. "But don't expect anything useful any time soon." by mbessey · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    That pretty much describes any Java-based technology, doesn't it?

    -Mark

  12. Who pays for P2P? by Artifice_Eternity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is what I don't understand. Unless it's either a paid-subscription model (pay to join) or a truly, totally distributed and open-source system (there are NO central servers of any kind), I'm not sure how P2P can make money.

    Of course not all web sites have to make money. Once upon a time, pre-dot-com-boom, this was common knowledge. P2P networks run by dedicated enthusiasts may have the best chance of survival. Those are the kind of sites I've always liked best anyway...done for love, not money.

    1. Re:Who pays for P2P? by bourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The question isn't who pays, it is who benefits.

      Think of P2P as a way of efficiently distributing data and/or processing. The key word here is efficiently. Consider DNS, a distributed database. DNS is the system that was designed to allow the Internet to scale up from modest beginnings, and it exceeded expectations (and continues to do so) for scalability. It's the glue that keeps the Internet going, and which works better than a lot of newer, application-layer protocols (HTTP - been slashdotted lately?)

      Therefore, an efficient and easily usable P2P framework allows application builders to build things that work better and faster than is available today. This isn't the new car - it's the new road.

      Once you get the road built, then you start figuring out how to make money off of it. No one makes money off of DNS, but there's money to be made of the Internet that it enables (pr0n if nothing else!)

    2. Re:Who pays for P2P? by BenHmm · · Score: 2

      It depends on the application. P2P systems need not be on the open web, or open to all comers: Jxta is very nice for developing P2P systems that work within corporate intranets, for example.

      Take a P2P Knowledge Management system, I just made up in my fevered imagination. Small daemons on each employees PC offering different services, or search results, for queries sent scuttling around the network ala Gnutella. The query "Bob's Expenses" hitting the legal guy's machine could return one result, or service, hitting the accountants could provide another...

      Off the top of my head, sure, but I'd bet plenty of firms would pay for that kind of thing. It's cheaper than buying big servers, for a start.

    3. Re:Who pays for P2P? by lucas_gonze · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That's a way of thinking that's really about filesharing applications, which were just the launching point for P2P. In the long run P2P is a bag of techniques (like location independent naming) that are being absorbed into the web. Asking who pays for those techniques is like asking who pays for tuplespaces -- the people that pay for P2P are the employers of the programmers who use P2P techniques to solve business problems.

    4. Re:Who pays for P2P? by iabervon · · Score: 2

      Having P2P features could make a commercial product more successful. You're not going to make any money being a bottleneck in a P2P system, but providing a good front end for a particular use of a P2P system is a reasonable business model for selling software, and adding such features to a product adds value. In order to be able to sell such programs, you need there to be a network of worthwhile content for it to access, which means encouraging the enthusiasts to use a common format that you can tap into.

      Things like the CB radio range are free, but it's still possible to build a business on selling the radios, and this requires everyone agreeing on what the radios do.

    5. Re:Who pays for P2P? by hardburn · · Score: 1

      No one makes money off of DNS . . .

      These people disagree, but I think they help prove your point :)

      --
      Not a typewriter
    6. Re:Who pays for P2P? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      there is two question here.
      1/ can you pay get paid through a P2P platform
      2/ What do you sell/buy through a P2P platform

      I have no answer for the second question but IMHO, JXTA is the only P2P platform whith an (planned) anonymous payment system inside, where each peer can act as a merchant (getting paid) AND as a consumer (able to pay securely)...

      Who is able to answer to the second question ?

    7. Re:Who pays for P2P? by rfsayre · · Score: 2

      Consider DNS, a distributed database.

      OK.

  13. Clickable Link by Lilkeeney · · Score: 0, Redundant
  14. Where'd Everybuddy Go? by anewsome · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Is there a reason why no one is commenting on this story? Could it signify that no one really gives a crap about this technology? I know I don't.

    1. Re:Where'd Everybuddy Go? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Because the article says nothing.

      Typical business publication ... namedropping, buzzwords, blah blah blah; no substance.

    2. Re:Where'd Everybuddy Go? by icejai · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Nobody's replying to this because all this article is doing is talking about some guy developing a P2P protocol.

      Gee whiz.... big news...

      It's no different than making any other new protocol... the hard part is getting everyone to use it. And even though this article is titled "industrial strength", it doesn't elaborate on what makes this new protocol so "industrially strong". Does it use encryption? Respect copyrighted material? In bed with the RIAA? Who knows.... because this author certainly doesn't.

      Yeah... sure ... with this new protocol... a computer chip in my shoe can function as a "peer", but what the heck does that prove how robust this new protocol is going to be?

  15. Read this in print by WillSeattle · · Score: 1

    While I thought it was a good article - and I can't tell you how much I like the thin format they have now - remember lugging those 2 inch thick ones back in the .com heydays - one must ask oneself how viable any private non-Open Source P2P system will be.

    After people have enough judges messing in the sphere, the user base decides to just go it alone with P2P open source systems that have no centralized server - mostly as they don't like having the plug pulled on them.

    -

    --
    --- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
  16. Pat Naughton's "Pedo 2 Pedo" porno protocol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    There goes Bill Joy again, trying to rehash Pat Naughton's original "Pedo-2-Pedo" porno exchange protocol for Java, originally called "ToolTalk".

  17. Jini by geigertube · · Score: 0

    Considering what a lead zepplin that Jini was, im not going to fall over myself in excitement for this new system.

  18. ms will find a way to corrupt it by jodonn · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I remember when SOAP was going to be the protocol that was going to bridge the remote method invocation gap across platforms. The .NET version of SOAP turned out to be just different enough from the standard to still nominally conform to the standard but still make it difficult to adapt to it from Apache SOAP or another implementation.

    Wondering how (or indeed, if) JXTA will be implemented into .NET.

  19. Better Info Source... by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 3, Informative
    There's actually a set of downloads of code available at www.Jxta.org.

    They provide considerably more details, to wit:

    The Project JXTA platform initially defines the following protocols:

    • NetPeerGroup Protocol
    • Peer Discovery Protocol
    • PeerGroup Discovery Protocol
    • Peer Information and Management Protocol
    • PeerGroup Membership Protocol
    • PeerGroup Resolver Protocol
    • PeerGroup Sharing Protocol

    This kind of corresponds to some of the traditional Unix services like Bind, and such, or with CORBA services like Naming, Trading, and such, albeit with the explicit intent that the respective "registries" of hosts and host information be Rather Dynamic.

    This seems a lot more likely to "go somewhere" than Jini, seeing as how it's a lot more "platform-independent." See the Protocol Specs

    --
    If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
  20. AIDS, a white man's best friend by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    AIDS in Africa amongst the Simians(niggers) is 24% in S.Africa and, so I've been advised by medical personnel I know, upwards of 40% in central Africa. THIS IS GREAT !!! This good news is verified by whimpy Christian charities showing videos of hundreds of open graves soon to be filled and stacks of Simians, already dispatched by Mother Natures revenge. The only people who deserve sympathy and help are those unfortunates who received tainted blood via transfusion -- all the rest got it from violating Natures laws. Maybe nature will do what the White Folk have lost the will to do, balance the sacred Earth's resources -- the hard way if necessary. How long can what is left of the 1st World feed, support and allow breeding of the Simians? I think there is a limit and one of the most tragic aspects of allowing the Simian population to breed out of control is that all those great, beautiful and noble animals of Africa are being exterminated by these miserable ape-wretches to protect their small cattle heards and provide the Asians with animal parts for their ridiculous sex potions. GO MOTHER NATURE !! I just wish the AIDS process just worked a little faster -- but I won't second guess Mother Nature and her workings.

  21. industrial this , industrial that. by zoftie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sun has definately is omnious in its presence on unix market, but their contributions to unix communities, while cool for programmers - were not for sysadmin. RPC, NFS and NIS(+) were some the most exploted system blocks, running right behind bind and sendmail. Going to next point, does industrial strength means free gateways for hackers scanning cable and xDSL address ranges?
    2c

  22. Does the Future Really Need Jxta? by smittyoneeach · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have a lot of respect for Joy's technical acumen. Perhaps someone else can do something deeper than this press release.
    What is it, specifically, besides (insert file-sharing utility here) with enhanced security?
    I recall the Wired article about Jini, but a 'Doze beater it was not. Should we expect anything different from this equally-cooled-named product?
    Notwithstanding trading MP3 files and gaming, is anyone using peer-to-peer applications?

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    1. Re:Does the Future Really Need Jxta? by corky6921 · · Score: 2

      My favorite quote from the Wired article you mentioned:

      Bill Joy, 1998: "It's better to be Yahoo than Netscape."

      Now, who said this man wasn't a visionary? ;)

  23. You people are some lazy bastards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Is it REALLY that hard to freaking copy/paste a link into your preferred web browser? Yet anytime someone commits the "sin" of not making a clickable link, some karma-trolling jackass has to follow up their post with a "clickable link" post, for no other reason than to try and get that elusive +1 Informative. You people are fucking morons.

  24. openFT competetion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder how this will compare to openFT, which is made by the people who made giFT, the first and only open sourced implementation of the protocol that KaZaA and Morpheus use, and the person who made Gnapster, Jasta, which was one of the first napster clones.

  25. Sale Value != Use Value by Christopher+B.+Brown · · Score: 2
    The typical reason for "open source" software projects to be viable is not that the people involved expect to see lots of licensing and royalty fees to roll in, but rather that they expect the results to be useful.

    This stuff could become useful, in a business setting, for instance, by allowing employees to wander around with laptops with wireless network hardware, and have a self-assembling network. Within that sort of setting, the notion of "paid subscription" is ridiculous silliness. Money wouldn't be "made;" money would be saved over alternative ways of setting up networks.

    --
    If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
    1. Re:Sale Value != Use Value by cnkeller · · Score: 2
      This stuff could become useful, in a business setting, for instance, by allowing employees to wander around with laptops with wireless network hardware, and have a self-assembling network.

      Are you sure you're not thinking of JINI? Isn't JXTA just a application level framework for P2P type services, Napster, Gnutella, whatever?

      --

      there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots

    2. Re:Sale Value != Use Value by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This stuff could become useful, in a business setting, for instance, by allowing employees to wander around with laptops with wireless network hardware, and have a self-assembling network.

      Like, say, this?

  26. Nixon speaks Truth about Niggers, Spics, and Homos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    ASSOCIATED PRESS

    Blacks live like dogs, Mexicans are dishonest, and gays are among the enemies of a strong society. And the last six Roman emperors were "fags." Those are some of the more bizarre musings of President Richard M. Nixon in the 445 hours of tape recordings recently released by the National Archives.

    The 1971 tapes have been of historical interest but also embarrassing to the Nixon family, which fought to keep private a large portion of the recordings. A further analysis of the tapes by the Chicago Tribune may give an indication why.

    In an Oval Office discussion about welfare reform with top aides H. R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, Nixon is heard lamenting that the country will have "more of these little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls.. . . Work, work, throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key."

    Nixon - whose presidency included support for affirmative action and naming an African American to a cabinet post - then says he has "the greatest affection for" African Americans, but "they're not going to make it for 500 years."

    Then he turns to Mexicans.

    "The Mexicans are a different cup of tea," the president says. "They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest. They do have some concept of family life, they don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."

    The conversation then turns to gays in general.

    "I don't mind the homosexuality, I understand it," Nixon says. "Nevertheless. . .I don't think you glorify it on public television."

    Nixon goes on to say that homosexuality destroyed the Greeks. "Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that; so was Socrates," the president can be heard saying on the tape.

    "But he never had the influence television had," Ehrlichman says, apparently referring to Socrates.

    Nixon continues, saying the "last six Roman emperors were fags.. . . You know what happened to the Popes? They [had sex with] the nuns, that's been going on for years, centuries. But the Catholic church went to hell three or four centuries ago. It was homosexual, and it had to be cleaned out. That's what's happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France."

    He then says that strong societies such as Russia "root 'em out. They don't let 'em around at all."

    "Homosexuality, dope, immorality are the enemies of strong societies," Nixon says. "That's why the Communists and left-wingers are clinging to one another. They're trying to destroy us."

  27. Groove Networks' comment.. by Anonymous+Canadian · · Score: 2, Informative
    Groove Networks was quoted in the article. They gave jxta a luke-warm reception. I wonder if the following article has anything to do with their response?

    Microsoft and Groove Networks Announce Strategic Relationship

    Microsoft Invests $51 Million as Groove Networks Closes Financing Round; Companies to Pursue Shared Vision for Web and Peer Services

  28. I'm looking for diapers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Who has a diaper? Pampers 6?

    1. Re:I'm looking for diapers by CmderTaco · · Score: -1

      Katz keeps a stash of diapers for the kids he invites to his house.

      --
      - Marco
  29. How does the "web" make money? by KarmaBlackballed · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The web makes no money. Some companies/people use the internet standards to make money, but the "web" itself does not. (For example, www.slashdot.com makes some money on the web through advertising.)

    How will p2p make money? It will not. Some companies/people might figure out a way to leverage it though.

    --

    --- -- - -
    Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
    1. Re:How does the "web" make money? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For example, www.slashdot.com makes some money on the web through advertising.


      That's a funny one.

    2. Re:How does the "web" make money? by Khalid · · Score: 2

      Agree, this is what the dot bomb has shown us. The internet has not been made to make money, but to comunicate. Back to the roots !!

  30. Who cares? by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure how P2P can make money.

    Since when does everything need to make someone lots of money?

    In a true peer-to-peer system, the costs would be transparently distributed among the users in the form of their internet-connectivity bills. Since they are paying for those anyway, it wouldn't even be noticeable.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  31. It was indeed his, he said in court. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    http://www.siliconvalley.com/news/special/naughton /

    He even sent her the Web address where she could find a photo of his penis. It was indeed his, he said in court.

  32. The Invisible Backpack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1
    Check out I Love White Folks


    AS I WAS RUMMAGING AROUND in the back rooms of the Internet today, I stumbled across a reference to "Peggy McIntosh's essay 'White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack'" and it brought back the memory of reading through that absurd document a while back. I found "reasoning" in the piece to be so far adrift from reality that I could not imagine anyone finding his way to that location without the use of some very strong drugs.

    This woman assumed that she was discovering some deep and "invisible" plot to allow White folks to move, and prosper in American society more readily than members of any other race. It is just a bit like finding a deep, dark, evil, and hidden plot associated with the Jones family having special privilege within the walls of their own home. Just look at the members of the Jones family go into their own house, and nobody else is allowed access to that dwelling without the Jones' permission. Why, that is discrimination! Even the government is involved in promoting that privilege. If someone tries to force their way into the Jones' home, the government will send members of its police force to drive those invaders out. Shall we join our voices together with Peggy McIntosh in celebration of the fact that we have been able to discover and expose this terrible plot of discriminatory privilege in the Jones' household? I think not.

    When the White people who created America provided for their descendants to have privilege in this land, it was an honorable attempt to provide a heritage to be passed on from one White generation to the next. Every one of the Founding Fathers, who spoke to the subject, declared that he wanted a one race society. None of them believed the races to be equal and none of them wanted a multiracial society where the different races were living side by side as equals. When America began, White privilege was absolute. It was not some "Invisible Backpack" that was secretly reached into, to sneakily get past other races. Instead it was a fact of law. White folks were the creators of America and therefore had full control of what went on, and of course all of the important, and prestigious positions. (Compare this with the privilege held by Asians in Asia, and Africans in Africa.)

    This erroneous idea that White folks are somehow, sneaking in through the back door, into privilege that does not belong to them, is outrageous. When you own a home, you write the rules and anyone who does not like it can stay out. The fabric and structure of American society was created by White people who came from European roots. The American traditions, like Christmas, came from Europe, not Asia, Mexico, or Africa. Our work ethic, and our value system came from our European heritage. It was our White race that peopled and powered the growth of the United States, and all of the important sociological features that made her great. So, is it the least bit surprising that in this land that we built, we should have privilege over and beyond what any other people have? Of course not!

    It is high time that we realize that unless we protect our privilege by all means necessary, it will evaporate. If we do not protect our borders from non-White invasion, and our birthright of honest, and honorable privilege -- ours by right of being the rightful heirs to this great nation our forefathers built FOR US and no others -- we will find that we will no longer have either privilege or even a place to live safely into the future. Our inheritance will be forfeited to others by default, because we chose to give it away without thought, or protest.

    There was a time when Americans would not have been so free to give away what was theirs. The men who fought in the Revolutionary War, were proud White men who risked all that they had to create and preserve a nation that would carry with it the seeds of greatness. The same type of White men reached out and conquered the entire continent, laying the ground work for the country in which we Americans live into today. Our borders run from coast to coast and north and south in a proud outline of the country created by our White race.

    The Indians did not create this nation. They lived on this same land for thousands of years and never crawled out of the stone age. The Black race did not create this nation. They were brought here as property, and served the same role as machinery does today, performing tasks given them by those who planned and determined the direction taken by the this country. (The horse also did hard labor and helped feed the people by pulling plows and delivery wagons, but it did not build this nation either.)

    America was a White dream brought to reality by the drive and planning of White folks. Anyone who denies this fact has an agenda that is anti-White at its heart. Our enemies intentionally tell people that the truth is incorrect, because the truth will get in the way of their agenda. They fear the truth about the birth and maturation of the United States of America into the world power that it is today, because it is rooted in the white race. They know that if the truth is known and accepted, it will tend to generate pride in White folks for their people, and a desire to protect their country from invasion.

    The ones perpetrating the lie on the other hand, wish to crush all White pride, and all desire to maintain the great White nation of America which has accomplished so much. They wish to promote the lie that all Americans are merely immigrants, and that all immigrants are just the same as all other immigrants. They know that by altering the racial makeup of any nation, they will alter the nation itself. Instead of a strong, unified USA, filled with racially aware White folks, they wish to create a racial hodgepodge, which will continually be at war with itself, as all the different racial groups fight for their own group's piece of the pie.

    Anyone with average intelligence, or above, can easily see that by mixing many races together, a society will be set into constant infighting. How much racial infighting did we have in schools in the USA before 1960? Almost zero. Why? Because there was only one significant race in this nation. All other races combined only made up 10% of the population. That condition was a very positive one. Racial disharmony will always exist when more than one race is present in a society, but it will never exist in a racially homogeneous nation. There may be fighting for other reasons, but there will be no racial conflicts.

    Think of the Jones family, living in their home. They do not let the Smiths live with them. The Smiths have their own home. We have no trouble understanding the concept of the Jones family having their own home, and the Smiths having their own home. No one condemns the Jones family for being "family supremacists," or more properly, "family separatists," for only letting members of their own family stay in their home. The Jones are very kind to the Smiths. In fact they have often helped out when the Smiths needed a hand with their things at their house. The Smiths have helped the Jones family out to. But they maintain their own homes.

    This basic idea is so simple to grasp, that the enemies of the White race are forced to produce huge amounts of propaganda in a myriad of forms to try to counteract it. The idea of White people retaining possession of the nation which they created is fundament to fair play and common sense, just as one would expect the Jones family to retain control of the house which they have purchased. There is no hate involved in the process. It is instead an expression of justice, and of honor. The White race conquered the soil upon which America was later built. It then proceeded to build the American nation. Now it has done that, the reasonable and just thing to do, would be for the members of the White race to fight to retain this land which is theirs. Allowing it to be stolen from them without a fight, with nothing but twisted propaganda being used against them as a weapon is simply ridiculous. It cannot be allowed to happen!

    When Mr. Jones goes to his refrigerator and grabs a glass of orange juice, no one questions his right to do so. It is his refrigerator, and his orange juice. If Mr. Smith is visiting, he must rightly ask before he helps himself to some orange juice, because it does not belong to him. If Mr. Jones says no, Mr. Smith will have to do without. Mr. Jones has privilege in his house. It is right and it is just. It is not some invisible backpack that he carries around with him. It is out in the open and he wears it with pride. He is the owner of his house and he has the owner's privilege within it.

    Likewise, the White race is the owner of the United States of America, and it has the right to offer any and all privileges to its members. It even has the obligation to do so. It would be (and is!) the grossest injustice to offer greater privilege to a member of any other race. For example, the very process of Affirmative Action is a breach of honor. The premise upon which that travesty of justice is based is openly offensive to the spirit of fair play possessed by any thinking man. How dare anyone suggest that the White race does not have the right to first claim on jobs, or promotions in a land that they built?

    If Mr. Jones buys a turkey, should not his family have first claim to eating it? Of course they should! If Mr. Jones should create a business, he just as surely has the right to hire only employees that he chooses to hire. He owns the business. Members of society can patronize or not patronize that business, but it is only Mr. Jones who should have the say as to who should be hired in his business. If he wishes to hire only members of his family, or members of his own race, that should be his choice in this land where freedom is constantly being proclaimed, while being evermore crushed by the government.

    The point upon which most Americans are being deceived is this: you can racially discriminate in your business hiring practices, and you can support racial discrimination in your nation's immigration policy, and still be a good man. In fact, you only can be an intelligent, good, and honorable man if you defend your land from invasion by other races. You can only truly love your own heritage and culture if you defend it, and promote it through your daily activities, such as in hiring members of your race at work, and in who you choose to associate with. If you do not refuse to vote for a candidate who tolerates non-White immigration, you are voting to slit the collective throat of your people, and to destroy the high standard of living of your nation. If you go along with the policies which are destroying our nation, and our race, how can you consider yourself an honorable man?

    Promoting the White race in America, and establishing a permanent and safe home here for it, is an act of love. Restoring our natural ascendancy in this land is a goal worthy of the most noble among us. Once we have restored America to the great White land that it was once, think of all the wonderful things we can do for the other people on earth. I have pointed out on other occasions that the White race has done more to help other races on earth than any other race has. There are literally millions and millions of Blacks and other non-Whites alive today because of the charity of the White race. It is clear that this charity to other people can only continue as long as there are White people to provide it. It is not only love for White people, but love for all people, to wish to retain White lands for White people. The entire world has been pulled into the modern era by the White race. (One shining example: The Asians in Japan have taken the gift of the White race and done remarkable things with it.) And for our generosity we are condemned and vilified. We are attacked and told that we have no right to exist or retain what we have built.

    It is time that we call an absurdity what it is, openly and boldly. It is an absurdity to call the desire for the promotion of our traditional White America, "hate." Instead, it is a twisted, sick and heartless man who does not love his people, and who does not wish for them to retain what they have created with their own hands. Let us no longer accept quietly the absurd lies of our enemies. Let us proclaim justice and honor in this White land once more. Like the members of the Jones family who are living safely in their own home, let the White folks once again proudly live in their own land. It is time to put the lies to rest, and to run the liars "out of town" on a rail, tarred and feathered.

    It is time to restore our natural love for our people, and stop trying to suppress it, just because our enemies tell us that it is wrong. Love for your people is as healthy as a mother's love for her child is, and to bury that love is as unnatural as a mother turning her back on her young offspring. It is time to start appreciating the fact that privilege for the White race was earned by right of ownership in America. It also is time to aggressively attack the idea that White privilege, White ownership of this land, and survival of the White race are anything but right, and wonderful. It is absolutely amazing that the lying weasels who are saying otherwise have survived in positions of respect in our society this long. It is time for that to end. Immediately!
  33. Slashdot Staff: editors or janitors? by The+Turd+Report · · Score: -1
    Slashdot claims to have several editors on its staff. This is not true. Editors are people who edit. What does it mean to edit? Well, according to 'm-w.com' to edit means: to prepare for publication or public presentation. Does the Slashdot staff do this? Hardly. The readers who submit stories do this; they prepare the stories for slashdot. The staff just cuts and pastes them onto the front page. Editors also check for spelling and grammar. Editors also try to show both sides of a story; the Slashdot staff is some of the most biased people on the net. Just look at the icon for Microsoft posts to see this bias in action.
    So, if they are not editors, what are they? They are janitors. Janitors clean up and put things back in place. The Slashdot staff cleans up troll vomit and crap floods. The janitor at my old high school was a big track star 'back in the day' but now he is just an old fool that the kids made fun of. He never really got it. He thought he ran the school just because he had the keys to the front door. It is the same with the Slashdot staff, they used to be important, but now they are just old fools who can't even remember what stories they posted just a few days back. The Slashdot staff also believes that they run the site, but it is OSDN that runs the show. The Slashdot staff doesn't see or hear the kids laughing behind their backs.

    Please discuss

    1. Re:Slashdot Staff: editors or janitors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good analysis.

  34. Legit uses of P2P by waitdyahoo.com · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I am glad to hear some thing new out of the P2P industry even if it is so light on details.

    THere are so many things that P2P seems like it would work great for so many things other then file exchange.

    what uses does any one see for future use of P2P.

    One use that I though of that could be cool it paying people to be part of a large scale cache of the net.. Well used web sites could make dynamicly mirror them selves very similar to the way Kazza and MORPHEUS Network share files.

    What other uses do people see for P2P in the future?

    Lets have fun!!

  35. Like FidoNet? by JThaddeus · · Score: 1

    True, it wasn't always reliable but by and large it worked, it was free, and it was largely unencumbered by the great unwashed masses that polute the internet these days...

    --
    "Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
  36. Whither SOAP? by JMZero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    JXTA - means of identifying and communicating with objects. Uses HTTP and XML. Brought to you by Sun. P2P! P2P!

    SOAP/UDDI - means of identifying and communicating with objects. Uses HTTP and XML. Widely deployed standard. Use for anything you'd like.

    --
    Let's not stir that bag of worms...
  37. Janitors!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    this post should be a feature on slashdot. so so true..

    I think the real reason these guys don't do shit is because they are just waiting until va pulls the plug on them, and go out of business.

    They are probably on monster.com all day long looking for new jobs. as if being a slashdot editor is a real job at all.

  38. How does this differ from Novell Directory Service by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    How does JXTA, or .NET, for that matter, differ from Novell Directory Services? Novell has been doing this for almost ten years - if they'd had some halfway decent management, they'd be ubiquitous.

  39. Don't expect to find anything useful soon.. by Girf · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Ahh..


    Ever heard of samba? Windows file/print sharing?

    Yep it's P2P

    Yep it's useful


    Thank you, and good night.

    --

    Apathy -- The state of numbness of the mind. When you are apathic, you can think.

  40. In the end: tts an R&D Project Only! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I was involved in the use of JXTA immediately after its launch in April of 2001. I led a team of experienced Java developers who used JXTA to produce a Groove-like product that ran on Linux, Windows, and Sun. Here were our findings:

    1. JXTA was written by a bunch of inexperienced Java developers. They broke all the rules of Java programming and wrote spagetti code. I think they discovered Design Patterns in the middle of their project and overused and abused them, yielding worse code.

    2. They wrote demonstrations that used the pipe and filter architecture pattern to construct a unix shell essentially. One could list the peers on the network, pipe it through more, and wow your boss. But wait, it doesn't stop there - they created a chat program -- oooh.. IRC, IM anyone? When the time came to implement a real application, it was near impossible

    3. The firewall/double firewall tunneling didn't work, so LAN deployment only folks!

    4. The RVs, where peers gather and discover one another, were designed to only handle 10 socket connections, 4 of which were persistent. Nice and scalable! No failover support for the 1st release, BTW :)

    5. There were a lot of holes in the specification and thus ports to other languages will yield them potentially incompatible above the basic network protocol(which is XML, BTW, and thus slow as binary exchange of files need to be BASE64 encoded)

    6. The entire JXTA project is tagged as a research and development project only. This means that unlike Jini, which obtained a large marketing and development budget, Sun is throwing a lot of cheap developers and little marketing to this project.

    In the end, it didn't deliver what it promised, it wasn't built for production use (Jini at least was, to some degree thank you Mr. Joy), and missed a lot of concepts necessary for effective peer networking.

    Where are they now? Not sure.. We quit looking at their code around July and concentrated on other network alternatives - settling on Jabber.

    What a disappointment!

    1. Re:In the end: tts an R&D Project Only! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I AGREE 100% !!!
      I recently Dec 2001 was doing some coding with JXTA using a NON-LAN setup. JXTA just does plain NOT work!
      The idea is great, execution is crap!

    2. Re:In the end: tts an R&D Project Only! by KernelHappy · · Score: 1

      I was involved in the use of JXTA immediately after its launch in April of 2001. I led a team of experienced Java developers who used JXTA to produce a Groove-like product that ran on Linux, Windows, and Sun. Here were our findings:

      1. JXTA was written by a bunch of inexperienced Java developers. They broke all the rules of Java programming and wrote spagetti code. I think they discovered Design Patterns in the middle of their project and overused and abused them, yielding worse code.

      You seem to miss the essence of what JXTA is. From the outset JXTA has been a project to develop a set of protocols for managing P2P interaction. To confuse JXTA with its implementation is both inaccurate and unfair. If you were expecting a turn key solution for the initial release I think you need to stop and really think about how you set expectations. P2P was and still is a moving target and the initial release of JXTA blatantly shows this. Trying to be all things to all people is not easy as linux has proven. I am quite confident when I say, had JXTA's only purpose been to create a cool file sharing app, thats what would have been delivered. Instead JXTA aimed to create a frame work for P2P protocols, this goes beyond just sending a copy of some song (that should be downloadable from the publisher for a reasonable price).

      That said the initial release of the Java implementation of the JXTA protocols was pretty ugly. I can't say I can think of another open source project who's code didn't need a lot of rewriting after the first release. The source code has been cleaned up considerably and the great part about the Java implementation being open source is that you could have helped clean it up.

      2. They wrote demonstrations that used the pipe and filter architecture pattern to construct a unix shell essentially. One could list the peers on the network, pipe it through more, and wow your boss. But wait, it doesn't stop there - they created a chat program -- oooh.. IRC, IM anyone? When the time came to implement a real application, it was near impossible

      Yes JXTA was/is a R&D project, and yes the first application was a shell utility targeted at developers to get them accustomed to the concepts behind the protocols.

      As far as implementation of new applications, you're very right. Early on the Java implementation API was cryptic and unfriendly. One of the most frustrating limitations of the Java implementation was the requirement on the part of the application to poll for events. While it is still not perfect this has been addressed in newer versions along with many other API problems. API naming changes and the addition of listener interfaces for events are just a couple of the changes.

      3. The firewall/double firewall tunneling didn't work, so LAN deployment only folks!

      Now your showing how early you gave up on the project. The limitations on connection were much improved rather early and today work quite well.

      4. The RVs, where peers gather and discover one another, were designed to only handle 10 socket connections, 4 of which were persistent. Nice and scalable! No failover support for the 1st release, BTW :)

      Where in P2P land does it say that all connections must be connected all the time? Having the 4 most used connections remain open with a pool of 6 connections available for transient communication seems like a reasonable starting point and IIRC thats why the 10 sockets were split as 4 and 6. I am honestly not sure how the connection pooling is implemented today but this sounds better than Gnutella where you have a fixed number of connections to a fixed number of peers regardless of how active they are.

      5. There were a lot of holes in the specification and thus ports to other languages will yield them potentially incompatible above the basic network protocol(which is XML, BTW, and thus slow as binary exchange of files need to be BASE64 encoded)

      Wow, a early release of an ambitious project with holes in the specification. Its a collection of protocols, and last I checked newer protocols contain versioning information because nobody expects them to be 100% out of the gate. Maybe if you stuck around long enough to offer some input (it is an opensource project after all) the protocols would be more to your liking and a little more cohesive.

      6. The entire JXTA project is tagged as a research and development project only. This means that unlike Jini, which obtained a large marketing and development budget, Sun is throwing a lot of cheap developers and little marketing to this project.

      It is a R&D project because the target is not fully defined. There are many uses for P2P type interaction beyond mp3 file sharing, some of which have yet to become apparent. If all the potential uses for P2P style interaction were known, JXTA or something else would already own the scene. Instead you criticize a project that is open not only in source but open in definition.

      In the end, it didn't deliver what it promised, it wasn't built for production use (Jini at least was, to some degree thank you Mr. Joy), and missed a lot of concepts necessary for effective peer networking.

      Jini also had a longer development period for a fixed set of goals before it was released. Had Sun waited till JXTA was more robust and better defined before opening the protocols and the java implementation source code to the public, you'd probably be here bitching that XYZ feature was unsupported. Instead the project was opened rather early so that it could evolve as the developers using it needed it.

      Where are they now? Not sure.. We quit looking at their code around July and concentrated on other network alternatives - settling on Jabber.

      Last I checked they were still trying to build the holy grail of P2P interaction. don't want to call you a liar, but after responding to your 3rd point I can say that you stopped looking before July.

      What a disappointment!

      I agree 100%, posting today using arguments based on facts from months ago is kind of dissapointing. By your logic linux sucks since it doesn't support XYZ video card. Next time maybe you could supply accurate time frames so people can judge for themselves, then again I guess thats asking a bit much from an Anonymous Coward.

      I have been off and on with JXTA for quite some time now and not all your points have been totally off base. But JXTA tries to be many things and has come a long way in a rather short time. The great part about Open Source is that contributing talks and bullshit walks.

      --
      -- Button up, your ignorance is showing
    3. Re:In the end: tts an R&D Project Only! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That said the initial release of the Java implementation of the JXTA protocols was pretty ugly. I can't say I can think of another open source project who's code didn't need a lot of rewriting after the first release. The source code has been cleaned up considerably and the great part about the Java implementation being open source is that you could have helped clean it up.

      Although JXTA's implementation has been cleaned up tremendously, the code is still damn ugly. Not to mention writing code for the platform yields pretty damn ugly code. The design still has far to go...

      As far as implementation of new applications, you're very right. Early on the Java implementation API was cryptic and unfriendly. One of the most frustrating limitations of the Java implementation was the requirement on the part of the application to poll for events. While it is still not perfect this has been addressed in newer versions along with many other API problems. API naming changes and the addition of listener interfaces for events are just a couple of the changes.

      It's still unfriendly in creating applications. As far as I have seen, there still is not an easy way to bootstrap and get running a peer without the shell or similar programs. The implementation has long been overly tied to the demonstration application.

      Jini also had a longer development period for a fixed set of goals before it was released. Had Sun waited till JXTA was more robust and better defined before opening the protocols and the java implementation source code to the public, you'd probably be here bitching that XYZ feature was unsupported. Instead the project was opened rather early so that it could evolve as the developers using it needed it.

      Jini had its own kinks in the beginning, such as dealing with the RMI Registry, and so forth, but overall Jini was much better designed and thought out. It did pretty well even before the likes of jini.org was founded.

      Last I checked they were still trying to build the holy grail of P2P interaction.

      And last I checked they were using coconuts instead of horses... not to mention they still don't realize there is no real such thing as a holy grail of XYZ. Nor do you for that matter...

      I have been off and on with JXTA for quite some time now and not all your points have been totally off base. But JXTA tries to be many things and has come a long way in a rather short time. The great part about Open Source is that contributing talks and bullshit walks.

      Isn't that the disclaimer half of the wannabe-opensource projects use? Can't JXTA come up with something more original than --

      "Our project totally sucks, but given some time and lots of mucking in bullshit it'll be kick as Real Soon Now." Or, in other words...

      What you said.

    4. Re:In the end: tts an R&D Project Only! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah the JXTA API is just plain NASTY.
      The Jini one is a pleasure 2 use.

  41. Don't expect to find anything useful soon.. by Girf · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Ahh..

    Ever heard of samba? Windows file/print sharing?
    Yep it's P2P
    Yep it's useful

    Thank you, and good night.

    --

    Apathy -- The state of numbness of the mind. When you are apathic, you can think.

  42. Simple Analogies.... by corky6921 · · Score: 2

    Napster = P2P
    Napster = cool
    Napster = sued
    Napster = shut down

    Gnutella = True P2P
    Gnutella = slow
    Gnutella = bandwidth-hogging
    Gnutella = unsure future

    JXTA = P2P Protocols
    JXTA = has some developers
    JXTA = coming from a company with a shaky past in "revolutionary new technologies"
    JXTA = something that not many people understand
    JXTA = not being marketed heavily by Sun.

    The general public and some geeks equate "P2P" with "illegal music sharing". To make matters worse, Bill Joy has failed to put this invention into terms that non-computer-literates can understand.

    I'm keeping an ear to the ground for cool new projects involving JXTA. However, I fear that like JINI before it, it will be relegated to obscurity because of a failure of marketing and a lack on understanding of how it will benefit consumers.

    The #1 sales trick is "Explain benefits, not features." Consumers don't care if it provides "ground rules for P2P applications." They want to know what benefits it provides to them. So far, I've seen much discussion on JXTA's technical merits, but absolute zero discussion on what kind of cool applications are going to use it. Where is the "JXTA-enabled" widget that will "change your life"?

    1. Re:Simple Analogies.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Freenet = True P2P
      Freenet = Reasonable speed.
      Freenet = Bandwidth Efficient,
      Freenet = open source - future semi-assured (non-US-based, not-for-profit)
      Freenet = Designed by people who know what they're doing, unlike gnutella.

  43. Industrial-strength by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Wrong title, but good technology
    One of the things it's got going for it are the basics, if you read the material on it, you will see it has taken the spirit of UNIX pipes and shells and extended it to P2P. This is a very powerfull Philosophy being applied to a modern concept, and I think it hols a little water. Having spent a lot of time disseminating various P2P technologies, I think this and jabber have a good basic ideas, a fusion of both would be even better

  44. A wierd idea I had by MrResistor · · Score: 2
    A distributed mainframe.

    Basically, a mainframe/thin client implemented virtually on a peer network. The advantages as I see them would be keeping the centralized aspect of a mainframe (at least as far as software goes) and easy scalability of a peer network (just add workstations for more storage and processors).

    I'm not sure that the advantages would outweigh the costs in terms of physical network requirements, or even if the advantages are real or just imagined, but I thought it was an interesting idea I could maybe throw out there for someone who actually knows enough to maybe pull it off.

    --
    Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
    1. Re:A wierd idea I had by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You want to run Mosix.

  45. P2P is not just file sharing by asv108 · · Score: 1
    People seem to be confused in to thinking that P2P is just file sharing, P2P includes: Instant Messaging, Networked Devices(such as bluetooth), web services and even a lot of old school stuff such as Usenet fits under the P2P definition. What is the definition of P2P some may ask? Well, according to the Oreilly P2P book in a chapter written by Clay Shirkey the P2P Litmus test is:
    • Does it allow for variable connectivity and temporary network addresses?
    • Does it give nodes at the edges of the network significant autonomy?
    I don't think Sun is funding this on the idea that there will be instant monetary benefits from Jxta, but I do think Sun is looking to implement features of P2P in to their own product line sometime in the future. Even if they don't incorporate any P2P features in future projects, what they are trying to do is get a head start over Microsoft for the "Next Big Thing." Is P2P going to be the "Next Big Thing?" Well, that is obviously debatable but one only needs to look at the top ten applications on Download.com to see that at least the file sharing and IM P2P applications are incredibly popular.
  46. The future... by dachshund · · Score: 1
    The future needs something like JXTA, although having messed with the code, I get the feeling that JXTA isn't quite it. Yet.

    What is it, specifically, besides (insert file-sharing utility here) with enhanced security?

    That's a very poor way of characterizing it. What JXTA is (or attempts to be) is a platform upon which you can easily develop and deploy a p2p app-- without all that messy reinventing the wheel that would otherwise be required. File sharing apps are certainly one application you could develop, but you can also build distributed computing/streaming/chat utilities. And anything else you can imagine.

    So the concept is great. Unfortunately, JXTA doesn't seem to be quite there yet. JXTA currently only provides a working implementation of the lower-level components required to put together a p2p app. Peer discovery isn't very sophisticated at this point, though the basic tools with which you might build a more sophisticated system are there. And performance isn't great.

    This is only my opinion, but the problem I see is that JXTA seems to be more of a research project than an attempt to build a practical p2p platform. Maybe in time JXTA will be refined into a more practical tool, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was displaced by a better performing, less flexible platform (based off of Kazaa/Morpheus, maybe.)

    1. Re:The future... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

      That's a very poor way of characterizing it.

      Point taken. Summing any major piece of software in a single sentence is unlikely to be fair.

      The underlying question I have remains: given the smorgasboard of existing protocols, how does this new effort simplify effort, or add capability? Or is it just counter-battery fire in response to C#?

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    2. Re:The future... by dachshund · · Score: 1
      The underlying question I have remains: given the smorgasboard of existing protocols, how does this new effort simplify effort, or add capability? Or is it just counter-battery fire in response to C#?

      I think C# is the wrong comparison. The equivalent of JXTA is something like the gIFT/OpenFT. Both of these are libraries (written in C, incidentally) that help you write p2p apps by implementing a lot of the features an average p2p app needs.

      If you were trying to write a p2p app, would you really want to go to all of the trouble of defining a communication protocol for inter-node messages, building a system that can route messages between nodes, etc. when all of this has already been done by other p2p applications? Or wouldn't it be easier just to start with a library containing an implementation of a communication protocol and a whole bunch of useful routines for peer discovery and communication? That's what JXTA and gIFT/OpenFT try to be. Neither is quite there yet, and I don't think there are any other Open Source projects that are further along (there are a handful of Open Source p2p apps out there.)

      With one of these libraries, building a p2p app could be as easy as a) call some library routines to discover other peers on the network, b) start an engine thread that handles incoming messages and updates the list of nodes we're connected to, in case some drop out, c) upon receiving a request message, call a routine to send a reply message, or open a "pipe" to that node so we can send data. With a library that took care of all the tricky p2p stuff, you could write a variety of complex p2p apps very easily.

      JXTA is trying to do a neat thing. Essentially, it helps abstract away all of the complicated stuff. Every node on your p2p network gets a unique ID number. If you want to communicate with that node, you can create a "pipe" class to that ID number. The library will then figure out the details of how to actually get your data to the node in question (it may involve routing through other p2p nodes, or transparently encrypting the data). If you know the IP address of one other node on the network, the JXTA library contains routines that help you find others. Your application can sit "above" the JXTA library and not trouble itself dealing with the complexities involved in a p2p network. Now, none of this seems to be implemented enough to be practical. But the concept is a great one.

      Futhermore, I would submit that for p2p application development, protocol compatibility isn't a very big deal (at this juncture, at least.) If I want to write a p2p app for sharing files, and another app for chat, it's perfectly ok if they use different protocols, and build separate networks. I could use OpenFT/gIFT for my chat app, and JXTA for my file-sharing app. Unless I wanted the two applications to be compatible, there'd be no reason to settle on pick one just to use a standard. Maybe at some point in the near future, it'll be useful for all p2p apps to speak a standardized protocol so that clients with different needs can all combine their resources, but not now.

    3. Re:The future... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

      I was too colloquial: '...counter-battery fire in response...' != 'comparison'.
      The rest of your reply answers the question, though: Sun is not just producing a product as a direct attempt to blunt the market impact of C#/.Net.
      Though who's to say what the long-term strategic thinking in the mind of McNealy might be?
      The gist of '...abstract[ing] away all of the complicated stuff...' seems that it's a cleaner design/implementation. Other p2p protocols might be wrapped in classes for JXTA. The value added would then be some Grand Unified P2P Theory Application (GUPTA)!?!

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
    4. Re:The future... by dachshund · · Score: 1
      Other p2p protocols might be wrapped in classes for JXTA. The value added would then be some Grand Unified P2P Theory Application (GUPTA)!?

      I imagine this'll be the way of things some day. Generally, you wouldn't write your own GUI library to draw windows and menu bars nowadays, so probably in a few years the same'll be true of p2p applications.

      Though I doubt it'll be JXTA. Too kludgy, and written in Java. My guess is that the first library to garner popular use and support will be the one to take off, even if it's not as flexible as JXTA. And that'll probably be a more practically-oriented C/C++ implementation. JXTA reeks of "research project".

  47. Sun announces Jeinfeld by ClosedSource · · Score: 0, Troll

    Today Sun Microsystems announced Jeinfeld, a new technology about nothing. "Jeinfeld is a major breakthrough" says Bill Joy, chief scientist at Sun. "By eliminating any functionality whatsoever, Jeinfeld brings the platform-independent dream of Java, Jini, and Jxta fully to fruition."

    Sun Microsystems "The White Paper is the Product"

  48. Who makes money with the telephone? by vscjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Gosh, all these people talking to each other, and no central servers of any kind (except for a few 900 numbers). How does anybody make money?

    Actually, the fact that your mindset became widespread is probably one of the worst things that happened to the web and Internet. It used to be mostly P2P until VCs and other companies started hijacking previously decentralized services and putting them on big, inefficient, hard-to-maintain, vulnerable central servers.

    P2P represents a return to the roots of the web and Internet. If you want to chat with someone or exchange information with other people, you put it on a machine you control. Hopefully, ISPs and web hosting servicese will improve the quality of their product in response to increased demand. Improved services means both better outgoing bandwidth, better usage metering, and better naming services (so that people can find you).

    Oh, in case you still don't get it, the people who make money with P2P is the ISPs, software, and hardware makers.

    1. Re:Who makes money with the telephone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the telephone company, stupid

  49. The trouble with JXTA by Sanity · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Adam Langley, a Freenet developer, wrote an interesting article for OpenP2P.com on Jxta a few months back which, from reading the article, still seems to hold true today - read it here.

    Essentially the problem with Jxta is that it is built on the assumption that P2P needs a communication standard above the TCP/IP level, and I am unconvinced that it does. The range of applications that call themselves P2P are sufficiently diverse that they each have different (and often mutually-exclusive) requirements of the communication layer that sits above TCP/IP, yet this is exactly the layer that JXTA tries to mandate.

    As an example, Freenet has very strict requirements about how encryption is implemented at a low level, most other P2P architectures have no such requirement (and, in fact, would fail if such a requirement was forced upon them). Freenet, Fastrack, Mojo Nation and other systems also have very different ideas about how peer discovery is achieved, yet again, JXTA tries to mandate this too (adopting a Gnutella-inspired approach).

    Standards are useful in some circumstances, but for P2P, TCP/IP is probably the highest-level standard we need.

    1. Re:The trouble with JXTA by PureFiction · · Score: 2

      ... but for P2P, TCP/IP is probably the highest-level standard we need.

      And in some cases, even TCP is too high level. One of the significant problems with peer networks is handling NAT's and using bandwidth efficiently.

      A project I am working on requires a lot of very small messaging data be sent to a lot of peers directly. For this situation, UDP/IP is the best choice.

      Not only does this UDP based protocol cross dual NAT chasms that TCP cant touch, but it is also very low overhead for simple messaging in terms of bandwidth and kernel.

      But your basic premise still stands. JXTA will probably be usefull for many things, but it no way will it be usefull for _ALL_ things peer oriented. There is just too much diversity in requirements and functionality for JXTA to hope to support.

  50. Snake oil? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Jxta rhymes with Hucksta.

  51. Many uses for P2P by conan_albrecht · · Score: 3, Informative

    I can't believe P2P gets such a rap from this crowd. There are *lots* of things you can do with it besides file sharing or MP3 thieving. First, let's take a look at what has already been done with it (although it wasn't called P2P at the time):

    1. The WWW itself is purely P2P. links form the backbone of the P2P network. Search engines make the spidering more efficient, but they are really just cached spidering. At the base level, to get around, you spider just as in Gnutella.

    2. Samba is P2P.

    3. CUPS is P2P, letting you share your printers.

    4. NFS is P2P when you connect to and start using enough servers (although when you do this, let the hacking begin...)

    Here is what *could* be done with it:

    1. I'm currently heading a project to share genealogical information. Post your GEDCOM to your computer's P2P app, and it is automatically spiderable on the network. For those interested, its still at alpha/beta stage and at gntp.sourceforge.net.

    2. Wouldn't a world wide library application be wonderful? Input your book or article, and all of the libraries worlwide that have your book show up. No, I'm not talking about the textual WWW. I'm talking about a strongly-data-typed library network.

    3. What about a P2P e-business network. Again, it could be strongly-typed and object oriented. Much more powerful than WWW. I developed one of these and I'm publishing a paper on it right now. It would make today's registries and marketplaces useless. Allow anyone on, user-customizable categorization scheme, etc. This one would take a big player like MS or IBM to really implement, though, because you need lots of people on it all at once to make it useful.

    My point is that there are many, many uses for P2P. People just need to open their minds to what has already been done and what could be done. File sharing is great, but it is only the beginning of the types of networks we could build.

    1. Re:Many uses for P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every one of the 4 things you list is typically used in a traditional client-server model. Sure, you could say it's P2P if you stretch things, but there's nothing inherently P2P about any of those things.

  52. Well NO SHIT!!!! by bytes256 · · Score: 0
    Seriously, when was the last time that Sun actually delivered something that worked as advertised?

    Jini - what the fuck is it?

    Java - compile once, run anywhere MY ASS!

    NFS - oh fucking brilliant! can you say bug-of-the-month-club and slower than windows 98 on a 486

    Solaris - ever try porting something(of reasonable size) to it? maximum breakage! compatibility MY ASS!

    At least Microsoft can deliver some of it's promises...let's see win95...winXP...ie4...even if it always takes them a little longer

    Ah, Slashdot, where there are two categories for everything - Microsoft and NOT Microsoft

    --

    Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
  53. Re:Who pays for P2P ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    there is two question here.
    1/ can you pay get paid through a P2P platform
    2/ What do you sell/buy through a P2P platform

    I have no answer for the second question but IMHO, JXTA is the only P2P platform whith an (planned) anonymous payment system inside, where each peer can act as a merchant (getting paid) AND as a consumer (able to pay securely)...

    Who is able to answer to the second question ?

  54. Shoe event horizon by Tenebrious1 · · Score: 1

    Hmm. I can see some big shoe manufacturers buying into this. Your shoes gathering data like how much you wear them, how many G's they take while you walk, how the tread pattern is holding up. At night when you're sleeping, the shoes jack in and Big Shoe Company trolls the P2P network looking for data. Pretty soon, every shoe company is putting larger and larger chips into their shoes, sending up more and more data. Incredible bandwidth is sucked up by shoe data, and advertisers join in on the game. All too soon, it is unprofitable to do anything but shoe related networking. The process reaches the "Shoe Event Horizon", after which civilization collapses, and those with the right genetic makeup mutate into large vulture like birds... (my apologies to Mr. Adams).

    --
    -- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
  55. Useful P2P Is Here. Try Red Swoosh. by dew · · Score: 2
    Useful (and potentially profitable) P2P is here. Check out Red Swoosh, done by the same fine folks as brought you Scour.net. They're already serving up pages for Deviant Art, where you can get art and skins for things like Trillian (which I'm very happy with), and are closing other deals with certain varied media empires.


    Think Akamai with peered nodes and intelligent network mapping.

    --

    David E. Weekly
    Code / Think / Teach / Learn
    h4x0r for

  56. I know everybody loves to hate Intel Corp, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Intel (Where I used to work at)They had an internal P2P app they were just rolling out over the last few months called Share and Learn Software. It was a lame little P2P client that would allow Andy Grove and the crew to speak to us on our standard Windows 2000 build workstations without clogging up the hopeless WAN links with multicast or whatever. I had the app installed on my laptop, but never did get a chance to see it in action. If I recall correctly, they made some case that during the roll-out of one of the company wide speeches that the P2P package saved the day by successfully allowing folks at the Israel site to get a copy of the video where traditional means had failed.
    At any rate, if a somewhat conservative outfit like Intel corp could manage to half-ass deploy a useful and assumedly working P2P app, you'd think others would have by now also.

  57. HTTP is decidedly NOT p2p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The WWW itself is purely P2P.

    NO! HTTP is classic master-slave. A master - your web browser, barking at some random port between 1025 and 65535 - orders a slave - the web server, listening at the fixed port 80 - to send it a web page.

    [Truth be told, true peer to peer computing is very nearly impossible, if not provably so. Everything in computer science eventually degrades to master-slave.]

    1. Re:HTTP is decidedly NOT p2p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but if I'm running apache on my desktop machine (possible, just stupid), then it's peer-to-peer...

  58. Sun's attitude. by JMZero · · Score: 2

    I think that Jini was fine. As is Jxta, I'm sure (though I've only briefly looked at the thing). The problem is Sun.

    They come down off the mountain with these standards like they were revelations. I think this puts a lot of people on the defensive. No matter how open the standard is, Sun wants to keep reminding us that it was their idea.

    In part it's also a chicken and egg problem. JXTA will have more value as it becomes a standard, but until then it has only marginal benefits over whatever proprietary system people use (and thus its adoption is slow).

    I think people should concentrate on SOAP. There's no reason P2P couldn't be implemented this way instead.

    --
    Let's not stir that bag of worms...
  59. OT: Moderation by JMZero · · Score: 1

    I wish that moderators would also leave replies to comments. I don't particularly disagree with the idea that my post here is a Troll (as I'm an idiot and prone to say stupid things).

    But I'd like to know if the moderator has some sort of insight here.

    And yes, I can stand to lose some Karma...

    --
    Let's not stir that bag of worms...
  60. Re:Groove != pals with Micro$oft by Dave21212 · · Score: 1


    Ray Ozzie, the inventor of Lotus Notes is the head of the Groove P2P product mentioned in the article. And it's a very interesting product at that (try it!).

    I seriously doubt that this is anything more than a very casual marketing thing... Please don't use Ray Ozzie's creations in the same context as the Evil Empire, it pains me physically !!!

    Thanks.

    --
    "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
  61. Was... by JMZero · · Score: 1

    You're right, file sharing is still a killer app. But it's no longer one that Sun can exploit to sell Jxta.

    Though I'm sure the RIAA would love to see it try.

    --
    Let's not stir that bag of worms...
  62. Juck-sta? by JamesOfTheDesert · · Score: 1
    Joy's new pet project is called Jxta (pronounced "Jucksta," and short for "juxtapose"), [...]

    It's a bad sign when you have to tell people how to pronounce the cutesy name of your technology. I look at Jxta and hear "Jicksta", or maybe "Jecksta".

    --

    Java is the blue pill
    Choose the red pill
  63. I agree by Sanity · · Score: 2

    I did consider saying IP rather than TCP/IP since I do think that UDP/IP is likely to become more popular with P2P apps, but since today most P2P apps use TCP I stuck with that. As you say, this is orthogonal to my main point.

  64. Is intermittent P2P useful? by Estragon · · Score: 1
    I'll admit to being one of those with a P2P-is-useless bias. I can imagine a lot of uses for P2P. However, the P stands for peer, and the internet is not made up of peers.

    Millions of people may have used Napster, but what percentage of them were solely consumers of other people's files? How many gave as many uploads as they took downloads?

    Can you be a first class P2P participant if:

    • You dial in to the internet for one or two hours a day (that is less than 10% of the time).
    • And/or your maximum available bandwidth is 28.8K or less
    • And/or you do not have a fixed internet address.
    • And/or your service provider does not allow you to be the server side of an IP connection.

    My serious problem with JXTA is that all four of those problems apply to me, and I do not see why I should put any intellectual effort into software that I cannot use. And I think that there are a lot of people like me out there.

    ---

    --
    I rejoice that there are owls.
  65. No, it's Jackster! by krmt · · Score: 2

    EZ-Jackster to be precise.

    It's all coming true!!! Is Bill Joy Sir-Paid-A-Lot's secret identity or something?

    --

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."

  66. Watch Red Dwarf? by mancuskc · · Score: 1

    According to RD, Jxta is the noise a cat makes when it catches it's spuds in a door....

    --
    When I were your age, all round here were fields...