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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.""
The question is: is it GOOD vaporware? Can the proposed algorithms deliver the results we want? That Microsoft has the manpower to turn it into real software is a given.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
RTFA! It's still there people! But if you haven't RTFA and want to spout off something please keep in mind the following: He invented Bittorrent, and his biggest problem is this "research" is based on massive misunderstandings of how Bittorrent actually works.
I was hoping that Bram would address that article claiming that BitTorrent is being used to distribute spyware instead of this Avalanche crap. I think it's more important to keep people from being afraid of using BitTorrent than it is to deal with misconceptions about a program that isn't even out in beta form yet.
--Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Actually, even as a research paper, the paper falls rather short. There has been prior work on P2P using forward error correction (FEC). FEC also means that you don't have to get every single chunk, but that you can reconstruct missing chunks from data you already have.
The authors should have demonstrated that their approach is better than FEC-based P2P protocols, but instead, they only compared it to simple P2P protocols. So, their protocol may actually not be better than the state of the art at all, and may actually be harder to implement in practice.
Yup. Bram's blog makes it clear that MS's approach to P2P is to reverse engineer an outdated version of his protocol. The result will probably be similar to MS's effort to reverse engineer the Macintosh: Windows 3.1 -- meaning that it will be buggy, slower and vastly more popular.
Keep reading Bram's blog. How far do you get before it starts going over your head? The dude has skillz that dust 98% of the wannabes here on Slashdot.
And as for motives, in my experience with autistics, it's common for those with Asperger's Syndrome to be quite guileless. They speak and act without consideration for other's "feelings". As a result they are more frank and honest than most people are comfortable with. Sorta like if Mr. Spock insults your work. He's not doing it to hurt you, or out of jealousy, he's saying it because it is the most logical observation.
Bram mentions that a malicious user would be able to poison an Avalanche based system by uploading bogus data. BitTorrent gets around this by precomputing checksums on each chunk of data and storing them in the .torrent file. Why would this approach not work for Avalanche? You would have to precompute the hashes on the FEC codes instead, but I don't see where it is fundamentally different than BitTorrent.
I read the internet for the articles.
He's calling it vaporware for two reasons:
1) It doesn't exist yet, early or not, which is a point other articles on the subject might not have emphasized before they started talking about a "competitor" to BT.
2) As stated, it's not going to work as far as he can tell, which is the second point other articles on the subject might not have emphasized before they started talking about a "competitor" to BT.
In other words, vaporware does not depend on how old the vaporware is. Microsoft can announce vaporware five minutes from now based on an idea still in in someone's head, with no papers or anything, and it's still vaporware until you get to at least an alpha test product.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
i have my doubts about some (but not all!) of the research that people undertake in the academic world of computer engineering/systems. from what i have seen, some academics will rush to publish for the sake of having a paper, even if it means cutting corners on an otherwise interesting idea or application. while i won't say that this is the norm at the very best institutions in the world, things on the whole can seem less than perfect.
h tm
i imply nothing about the individuals in the paper that Bram attacks, since i haven't interacted with them firsthand. however, it might be interesting to note that the primary author is a grad student at Georgia Tech. according to his web page, his stint at MS research was just a ~6 month period, 2/04-6/04 & 7/04-8/04:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~gantsich/biography.htm
the call for papers for this 2005 conference set a deadline of 7/7/2004:
http://www.ieee-infocom.org/2005/call_for_papers.
this does not leave a huge block of time for one student to brush up on the research background, flesh up the practical aspects of the idea, implement (and validate?) a simulator, complete a preliminary set of data runs, and write a paper draft worthy of acceptance. let's not forget any downtime that might arise at the start of an internship (moving over the pond, getting acclimated, etc.).
here, i assume the not unrealistic situation where the official research scientist principally serves as a primary investigator. he brews the idea, perhaps working out some more theoretical aspects of the problem, and handles all the headaches related to funding/approval/propaganda. this entrusts a good deal of the grunt work to the student. i tend to see this sort of behavior in the ivory tower, but it is entirely likely that research in industry is much more balanced!
time should not be an excuse in any case, but it does raise an eyebrow toward the paper-happy nature of some research these days. you make the call on what you believe is reasonable concerning those flaws in methodology that Bram has so derided in his blog.
does anyone have a clue about the timing of the media's spin on things? The Register's article from the first slashdot posting is one of the first according to Google News...
The hardware is a single 350mhz P2 with 128mb ram and a 13GB hd. Aside from occasional minor slowness in Gallery, it is completely adequate for its purpose. I have no use or need for a GUI so X is not installed, but when it was I had no complaints about its performance.
Contrarily, I have a box running Windows Server 2003 as a domain controller for my family that also hosts a few ASP.Net pages and acts as a source control and build server. It's a 1.8Ghz Celeron with 256mb ram and 20GB hd.
The windows box is constantly pissing me off due to its slowness. Takes 30-45 seconds to log in, screen updates are slow and ASP.Net pages are painfully slow to compile (though once compiled they usually pop just fine).
If I could uninstall the GUI on the Windows box I would do it in a heartbeat.. Unfortunately, that's not an option. So instead I'm forced to by newer hardware or deal with less-than-acceptable performance.
In my experience, the only people who argue that Linux isn't "useful" on old hardware are people who have never tried it.
>SMTP/POP3/IMAP mail, web hosting (dynamic sites with Gallery and Drupal), DNS, IP routing, firewall, etc etc for 6 domains including 3 businesses
:
A professional webhost would look at that an be appauled!
But...
Your network and your specific needs. Not mine.
I never generalized anyone's needs and overcomplement an operating system based on an assumption. My post was a response to unrelated ( and mostly untrue ) remarks that strayed from Avalanche P2P. And as to how, when properly implemented, Microsoft can perform.
>Contrarily, I have a box running Windows Server 2003 as a domain controller for my family that also hosts a few ASP.Net pages and acts as a source control and build server. It's a 1.8Ghz Celeron with 256mb ram and 20GB hd.
Hence my remark on "specific tasks". But that doesn't matter now does it?
>In my experience, the only people who argue that Linux isn't "useful" on old hardware are people who have never tried it.
I HAVE used Linux ( countless distros and my own compiles ) for years. I've used it and been more frustrated with it than more times than I can count. I've used it for desktop, server and firewall. Again, with distros ( SmoothWall, IPCop, ClarkConnect etc.. as well as my own stripped down compiles ).
But the original post had to do with Avalance for which I saw people critisizing the Microsoft OS and its business practices! Completely unrelated, which is why I had to respond.
>The windows box is constantly pissing me off due to its slowness. Takes 30-45 seconds to log in
Again "Specific tasks"... Gee I wish people would follow their own advice on open minded ideals before removing posts.
>The windows box is constantly pissing me off due to its slowness
Guranteed misconfiguration. How many services did you stop from auto startup? I bet you did that in Debian.
My Windows server
800 Mhz 512Mb RAM.
ASP.Net portal I use with MSDE installed.
Even with the load of external network users connecting all the time as well as on the intranet, it has one of the fastest response times on the network.
>If I could uninstall the GUI on the Windows box I would do it in a heartbeat
You don't fix a broken leg with an arm cast.
You do it with a leg cast. The GUI isn't the problem.
>I have no use or need for a GUI so X is not installed
My users DO need a GUI ( kinda hard to do image editing without one ). And I wasn't talking about their server interaction, It was their desktops. Again "Specific tasks".
As in applications... As in the start of the thread with Avalanche.
>though once compiled they usually pop just fine).
Bingo!
That's why its there. For that purpose.
>They are also not useful nor insightful
I see this happening over and over again, and I guess it won't change.
Whenever some comment about particular purposes and their associating OS's are mentioned, no one wants to hear it if its in Microsoft's favour. When did SlashDot go from "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters" to "You're not welcome to offer an alternative view"?
It matters to me and a hell of a lot of other people here.
- Cassius