Bram Cohen's Response to Microsoft's Avalanche

An anonymous reader writes "Bram Cohen has reduced Microsoft's proposed file-sharing application--codenamed Avalanche--to vaporware, dubbing its paper on the subject as "complete garbage". "I'd like to clarify that Avalanche is vapourware," Cohen said. "It isn't a product which you can use or test with, it's a bunch of proposed algorithms. There isn't even a fleshed-out network protocol. The 'experiments' they've done are simulations.""

Comments

Not even close to finished, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Windows.

Re:Not even close to finished, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Avalanche sounds like a big snowjob.

Re:Not even close to finished, you say?

[TomorrowPlusX]

The awesome part is that that means BeOS is DONE. And OS2/Warp. And AmigaOS...

Use the Coral Cache!

[darkmeridian]

I cannot believe that we still do not use the Coral Cache and Bittorrent to prevent crashing poor servers. I mean, now we're just going to end up slashdotting that first link, uh, slashdot...

Forget it.

Not bad!

[markild]

"It isn't a product which you can use or test with, it's a bunch of proposed algorithms. There isn't even a fleshed-out network protocol. The 'experiments' they've done are simulations."

Another interesting project from the Microsoft team then? Looks like they've made an entire department, dedicated to making ideas about things that they could make, but never intend to do.. Nice going

Re:Not bad!

[Nasarius]

Did you even look at the website you linked to? Everything there has a functioning prototype that you can play with. There's a whole fucking box called "Graduates of Lab", which shows former lab projects that you're now probably familiar with as part of Google!

How did this get modded up?

SDLC

[savagedome]

Hi Bram, just to let you know that Microsoft Software Development Life Cycle works a 'little' different. We market it first, then release it, then develop it and then design it. And maybe, just maybe we might make it work if enough people are using it.

Hope that helps.

Sincerely,
Microsoft

PS: Note that I used maybe twice.

Torrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody have the torrent for the app?

Re:Torrent?

[vagabond_gr]

Who cares. Here's the .avalanche file.

Somewhat patronizing?

[sczimme]

"Unfortunately, [the paper] is actually one of the better academic papers on BitTorrent, because it makes some attempt, however feeble, to do an apples to apples comparison," he said.

Then Mr. Cohen patted Microsoft on the head, gave it a cookie, and sent it outside to play.

We don't know yet

[dtfinch]

Microsoft might just release it as an API, without releasing an easy to use client of their own. That way they don't promote piracy, but they can reduce the bandwidth needed for software updates and assist adware producers in delivering full motion full screen ads to unsuspecting users.

Article is all wrong,,,

[Bionic_Baboon]

Its not vapourware, in fact its going be desinged to use WinFS.

Yeah, We Know It's Going To Be Garbage

[Master of Transhuman]

The question is: Will it be pulled from Longhorn?

(Yes, this is a joke, morons.)