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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.
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.
Free XBox, PS2
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.
"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.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Another pointless article. Troll me, but the fact is that this is addressing something that is behind MS's closed doors.
Ah, you mean like this research paper that Cohen is criticizing.
Or perhaps you are referring to these completely unfounded claims (from TFA):
The developer said Microsoft had completely misunderstood the way BitTorrent operated. The paper quotes "the tit-for-tat approach used in the BitTorrent network" as an inspiration for parts of Avalanche's own operation. Under the approach, a peer-to-peer client will not upload any content to another client unless it has also received a certain amount of content in return.
Cohen said, however, this was a waste of time and had been discarded long ago.
"I can't fathom how they came up with this," he wrote. "Researching either the source code or the documentation on the BitTorrent Web site would have shown that the real choking algorithms work nothing like this."
"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." BitTorrent is currently at version 4.0.2.
Cohen went on to say that the 'tit-for-tat' approach was used when BitTorrent was still being developed, but that the first real-world test with only six connected machines showed that it did not work well.
Yup, that's a guy bashing closed doors alright.
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
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
No, Avalanche sounds like a big snowjob.
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
Yeah, I know most of the posts here are bashing Cohen for bashing microsoft (and I was agreeing with them until I decided to RTFA - the summary is not a good one). Bram isn't randomly attacking them for having a vaporware product, he is specifically pointing out the many mistakes that they make in their paper, where they compare Bittorrent to their proposed algorithms. It seems that they made too many mistakes to make their research paper valid, so their simulations are crap... RTFA!
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
So, lay off! :)
You are not the customer.
Try using a legitamite source for BT.. such as bt.etree.org (and i don't care if you think that music sucks)
you will find that the popular torrents on there FLY, and that's because of the mentality of the userbase. they like to share, and don't hop off a torrent right when it's done. there is nothing illegal about it, thus no fear of the man knocking down your door. i've left seeds on there for months.
so.. if you are getting crappy speeds, i'd recommend finding yourself a better group of people to swarm your files with. bashing on BT isn't going to solve your problems, and niether is a piece of vaporware from microsoft
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.
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.