Slashdot Mirror
The Secure Public Data Repository?
jducoeur writes "So Hailstorm has died an unlamented death. But the demand for the idea of an information repository isn't going to go away -- users demand convenience, and this would be convenient. So here's a timely question looking for wild speculation: how would a truly secure, public data repository work? How would your data be stored? Would it be centralized or distributed? How would you grant access to specific elements within it? What would the business case for running such an archive be? Maybe if we can come up with a good design now, we can head off the next inevitable bad one..."
Sorry, but this question is just stupid. Microsoft was trying to use its market position to cram Hailstorm down our throats. Their thinking was:
1) Force/con everybody into using hailstorm
2) Make sure that hailstorm become the choke point for all e-commerce.
3) Start collecting marketing data and sell it
4) Start charging a referral fee to online merchants that sell to a hailstorm user
At that point Bill would have achieved his aim of getting a penny or two out of every Internet transaction.
Microsoft couldn't cram it down people's throats so you are asking:
1) How should I make mine work?
2) How can I make money off of it?
3) How can I disguise this as an altruistic effort?
To which I respond: Please go off and spend three or four years working on this and leave the rest of us alone. We'd like to get something useful done. When you bother us again to tell us that you're done, we'll take a giant crap on it because you are fundamentally asking us to pay (directly or indirectly) to give up control of our lives for the sake of convenience.
At least you will have been out of our hair for a while.
Go away.