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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.""
Sounds like it, and the first salvos have gone back and forth... having read both, I have to give the points in the first round to Bram. Microsoft won't find him so easy to push around, methinks.
Sounds like pretty much any Linux distribution out there too... Mac OSX too... why do you think they keep releasing new versions and updates?
This really shouldn't come as any surprise...after all, Microsoft's goal here wasn't to actually come out with a product, but to create the illusion of one. Microsoft will design a P2P system if and when they're good and ready...until then, Avalanche serves as a satisfactory decoy.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Call me crazy, but what does this prove? What is the point to bashing this?
I can find no purpose to bashing a research paper ( per cohen ), especially from Cohen.
This is MS bashing, pure and simple. I'm sick of it. I'm not a fan of MS, I think they and their products are questionable at best, but needlessly bashing them instead of understanding their strengths is a fools' errand.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
In other words, intentionally or not, the simulation is completely rigged against BitTorrent.
1) They don't want any other software to function at all, but since they know that a lot of users are wanting this, they want to jump on the P2P bandwagon and say "oh yeah, we have that". I guess they didn't want to buy any existing P2P apps, because of the bad publicity. So, the next best thing is "innovation" (i.e copying other's source code and changing the names of functions and authors).
2) put some DMCA crap in it and say, oh yeah, it is like totally unbreakable. 3) Profit!
I guess microsoft is just doing research, so they can patent their inventions. Those patents can than be used to make (other) fileswapping/p2p programs illegal due to patent infringement.
They are marketing their IDEA, not the actual software at this point. Sure, what they have done is research and simulations, which is obviously just one part of their software development cycle.
Microsoft has a huge amount of resources that they can and probably will pour into the p2p projects they are working on. It is foolish to mouth off and bash their development procedure, treating it as something other than it is. Microsoft has a strong track record of eliminating its competition by integrating products into its OS. Dont be too suprised if you see Avalanche as part of Longhorn.
"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate." -Zapp Brannigan
BT is relatively new, I am sure within a few years some serious inadequacies will be found which will make this research from Microsoft more significant.
BT is NOT relatively new - in fact, it's relatively old, and there HAVE been a few years for any "serious inadequacies" to surface. What has happened in those years is that users of other P2P networks have flocked to BT by the millions, simply because it works much better at delivering maximal bandwidth for highly sought-after files.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Most software isn't spouted off as the best thing since sliced bread when it's at this stage. Then again, this IS Microsoft we're talking about (not a dig at Microsoft's coding abilities, but they're PR department).
Microsoft, on numerous occasions, has indicated that they have a(n) [ insert competitors product ] killer... with a cool code name and features that look very appealing. We find out months/years later that their product either doesn't materialize or doesn't deliver on the original specifications. Sure the 2.0 or 3.0 version might, but my point is, they fend off competition by using vaporware.
I'm tired of it... I'm moving back to my TRS-80
Longhorn is just one prime example. I wonder how many people didn't consider switching over to Linux/?nix/OS X/etc. etc. because of the overly hyped features of Longhorn... which now are disappearing left and right.
It takes years to make something like bittorrent, but it takes days for a marketing team to come up with a flashy code name and feature list.
Bit torrent is 4 years old. They have been testing various configurations for the last four years.
I think this guy knows a bit more about how an effiecent torrent is going to work.
MSFT is once again playing catch up. In a few years they are going to end up duplicating the entire effort of bram just ot make a closed source version of the software, which will then fizzle out because msft won't make clients for anything other than windows. Yet Torrents can be had for any OS.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Good. The mud has officially been slung. We are in for a hell of a fight, it seems.
The "Avalance is vaporware" vibe is a true one, but let's give Microsoft a chance for a real-world test before we cast our lots. Not completely dismissing the paper demonstrates Cohen in a more rational and less infuriated moment, and is fortunate that he did so, as industry leaders who dismiss competition get burned all too often. This is not to defend the test model in the slightest, which is junk and atypical of typical Bittorent usage as Cohen rightly points out.
The Avalanche paper is a start. Microsoft will need to finish, refine, and check their facts about the product with which they are competing. The idea of building a file without all the pieces reeks of difficult implementation, for example.... that's one protocol I would love to see come into reality. Bittorent will need to flex and build upon the established track record of the protocol, and innovate on top of that. Decentralized trackers were a good step.
The Crimson Dragon
Research papers that are released, even by MS, usually aren't intended to get the attention of the broader market. They're intended to put forth ideas and let a few select people know what's going on inside the heads of MS engineers. That, and to raise the ire of slashdotters who don't read them and choose to automatically assume that MS persues every single research idea as a major project.
Look at it this way - MS can't afford not to be looking into the area of filesharing, because it's obviously something that their customers really, really want. There hasn't been any announcement of any product, there's just a whitepaper with no details. The not-so-sinister truth is that this research paper is just evidence that they are starting to think about the problem, not a representation of an imminent product offering.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
"Avalanche," as a name for a product or project, would be just about the worst possible choice. As a P2P tool that would imply bandwidth problems and the potential for a single point of failure.
Um... Would it? Why? I don't see these implications at all. Quite the opposite, really. An avalance is (in popular imagination, anyway) started by a small cause and quickly develops into an unstoppable mass of snow. Just like a single limited-bandwidth uploader of a popular file to a P2P network can result in many Terabytes of data being moved.
Quite similar to the "Torrent" part of BT.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
you know, Cohen was referencing the algorithms that microsoft was using to design their p2p system. If the algorithms are faulty I don't see how the derived software is going to turn out much better. He was also commenting on their misconceptions of how bittorrent operates, and that their idea of how it worked was ignorant at best. As the author of bittorrent I think he has the grounds to say what he said, he wasn't just mouthing off.
twitter.com/gravitronic
Ooh. So Cohen's got an ego... He's arrogant... He's an asshole...
So what?
You don't have to live with the guy. You don't have to work with the guy. All you do is use his software. So why the fuck do you care what he's like as a person? If he spends his spare time sucker punching old ladies, what does it matter to you?
This is not first time M$ is trying to steal other's ideas, and create FUD about original product. They have tried it with Office, LAN servers, Internet Explorer, SQL server, Instant Messenger, Java, IP (4 and 6 both) and recently iPod and now BT.
I can understand Bram's fear, if he thinks M$ is after his ideas to steal them and kill him.
hilarious
Jeeeez. Is someone a little defensive of his turf? (It's not even like Cohen invented the idea of peer-to-peer software delivery.)
Microsoft Research, and many other research labs and universities, publish papers on "vaporware" every day. Only, this is not vaporware because it is not supposed to be a product--even if some news media who don't know the difference between Microsoft and Microsoft Research make that mistake, Bram and others should know better. On the other hand, research on algorithms is fundamental to the development of the next generation of products, because no amount of pure coding can make the kinds of technological leaps that are necessary. To that end, it behooves us not to bash it, or at least only to evaluate it based on what it is.
Sort of like Google labs?
Best Buy can have you arrested
> "Either they just heard 'tit-for-tat' and just made this up, or they for some odd reason dredged up BitTorrent 1.0 and read the source of that."
... see this is why corporations HAVE corporate communications departments, to keep people from jumping the gun with embarrassing announcements like this. Though, did MS announce it, or did some random doofus just dig it up from MS research and start screaming like a nutter about it?
Considering that the only up-to-date documentation of the protocol IS the source, one is not surprised. The only paper of Bram's that really details the protocol refers to version 1.0.
Still, you'd imagine Microsoft would have a fellow or two who can read C or python (is the reference implementation still in python?) Contamination might be an issue, but you'd also imagine they could just cleanroom another implementation of their own prototype if they were serious about productizing it.
Nope
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
> Most software isn't spouted off as the best thing since sliced bread when it's at this stage
Who's the one who spouted off? This was a paper on the MS research website, not an ad on prime-time TV. It's loudmouths like the ones ACTUALLY doing the spouting that will cause MS to just replace that page with a static placeholder and reveal NOTHING to the outside. It's already gutted, it really won't take much more to turn it into a complete facade. Thanks a lot.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
The words the original poster was seeking were surely closer to "not even close to started".
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
That's exactly the point. The paper is based on _simulations_; Bram hasn't found any good reliable simulations for bittorrent, so he has little faith in this.
Vaporware is technically correct: you can't download and use Avalanche. But you may be able to in a year or two. Hopefully, they'll make it useable by then.
Here's the thing, they're using a 'tit-for-tat' algorithm that was in bittorrent v1, 4 years ago. Which makes me believe that they are currently 4 years behind BT. They do have the advantage of following, so they can catch up faster than Bram's original work, but this is still just ideas.
I must say, I too don't see the point of error correcting codes, I mean, you have to transmit them too. You're substituting data for other data. And instead of tring to calculate all of what you need, Bittorrent will save you the CPU and HD cycles and just wait and find the original, instead of trying to build it. This might work fine if you have 2 processors and 4 gigs of ram, but I'll stick with bittorrent until Avalanche is a proven product. Even then, it will probably still not be cross-platform...
I couple years this may be better than BT(today's) in pure network speed, but then again, BT will likely be faster by then as well. Right now its just academic.
Bram may be right about Microsoft's paper, but he would have had more credibility if he had taken the high road.
Quotes like "The lack of any concrete numbers at all shows the typical academic hand-wavy 'our asymptotic is good, we don't need to worry about reality' approach" certainly don't earn him much respect from academics in system programming research who work very hard, thankyou very much, to ensure that their results are realistic. He has turned a simple observation about the paper (they neglected certain overheads) into a bigoted rant (academics are foolish). Not cool.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
a) new features
b) bug patches
Just because they keep releasing new versions doesn't mean it's not 'finished'.
I think most people, including the parent, who say Windows isn't finished are eluding to the fact that it's released in an unstable, insecure, and generally half-assed condition.
If a product is released and a year later a new feature is added to that same product, does it mean the previous product went unfinished for a whole year? Not really. Why do you think they use version names? Mac OSX 10.1 is a finished product - when changes for 10.1 are released, it's under a new version number representing a newer finished product.
Distributions of Linux, and the kernel itself, have updated releases on a much more frequent basis. But that's why there are production (or stable) and testing (or unstable) branches. The production version is a finished product.
Arguably you could still say that all the aforementioned software is never finished, but then the same could be said for a lot of things. Car models are updated on a yearly basis - does that mean the previous year's model was not finshed? No.
At some point a product which is periodically updated must be defined as 'finished' and separated from development leading to the next version of the finished product.
As I mentioned, Microsoft never seems to release a 'finished' version of Windows because it's in a perpetual state of half-assedness. Or like Longhorn, the release date is constantly being pushed back and it appears as though it'll never be finished.
-kidlinux.
I recall that a past article discussed Brams Asperger's/Autism tendencies. The presence of this trait in anyone would lead me to believe that what he states is pretty much legitimate. Folks with Aspergers/HP Autism don't typically react defensively. That of course and the fact that he is a decent, intelligent person and could pretty much be regarded as the leading authority on this type of technology.
Microsoft's standard operating practice is to release vaporware of a product long before any such products exists. They used to call it slideware because the product existed only on powerpoint slides. The idea is to choke off the air supply (ie: revenue) of any competiting company by giving people an excuse to wait for the Microsoft product.
MS research is messing with all sorts of interesting ideas. They've hired a number of gurus in computer science research (such as Tony Hoare and Leslie Lamport). They publish lots of papers. How many of these things will turn into real products? Who knows. Mostly they just want to play with ideas so that they stay at the cutting edge of things, rather than missing the boat as they did with the Internet boom.
> "Vaporware is technically correct: you can't download and use Avalanche. But you may be able to in a year or two."
You'll probably be saying that again two years from now. Anybody remember the debacle Microsoft had when Gates said that MS was working on a 64-bit operating system that, according to him, would be available a year after he said that? It was nearly five years before it finally happened.
Avalanche? That's actually what Microsoft will end up buried in, only it won't be snow, it might just be trash in a landfill.
And of course one guy working in his appartment has the same resources as Microsoft so of course if he couldn't find or make a reliable simulation for bittorrent then there's no way a billion dollar company could with their product either.
Don't be silly! BT is very new.
xmodem is old!
"I'd rather win in an ugly car than lose in a pretty car" - Jari Lahdenpera