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Dvorak Sees MS Conspiracy Against BitTorrent
kilgortrout writes "Dvorak has an interesting editorial up, where he links the recent stories of alleged 'security problems' and 'spyware problems' bittorent has been having with the recent MS announcement of research into a file sharing app called 'Avalanche'. concluding it's all part of an orchestrated MS disinformation campaign against BitTorrent." From the article: "The problem is that no big company controls it, and Microsoft, asleep at the wheel, let it slip too long to do much about it. So now I suspect Microsoft is playing dirty to discredit the thing. There is no other explanation for the recent series of coincidental stories and events." Especially interesting in light of Bram Cohen's take on the situation.
Apparently Dvorak developed a taste for being correct after the Mac-on-Intel news (even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while), so he has shifted from total-crackpot mode to state-the-painfully-obvious mode. Or, rather, a combination of the two.
/. goatse trolls with more insight than Dvorak's piece.
His main points:
- "Avalanche" is a textbook FUD salvo against BitTorrent. (MSFT TRICK ME? NO WAY)
- While spyware can be distributed through BitTorrent, this doesn't mean BitTorrent is spyware. (WTF R U SURE, J.D.?)
- "Avalanche" is vaporware. (F'REALZ? OMG!!)
The column isn't wrong, it's just a waste of bandwidth. I've read
Unless they were a... *gasp* coincidence.
Why would bittorrent be the P2P app that scares MS? What about Napster, or Kazza? Those were around years ago. This makes no sense to me.
It's actually rather easy.
Step 1. Include support in IIS (via Patch)
Step 2. Include support for it in IE (via Patch)
Step 3. DONE!
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
The factor isn't so much the speed, as it is the fact that the bandwidth isn't as centralized. Now a project like Slackware, Debian, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc., can widely distribute its large, legal CD or DVD images without incurring the massive bandwidth costs. Indeed, for non-corporate organizations that can be a real blessing!
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Yes, Microsoft research is funded by the rest of Microsoft Corp. but people who work for MSR are primarily academic researchers and have a wide latitude in their work. MSR is to Microsoft what Bell Labs was to AT&T, PARC was to Xerox and TJ Watson Research Center is to IBM.
MSR researchers publish in all the same conferences as academics at Universities and National Labs, go through the same peer-review process as everyone else, and have too much reputation at stake to publish junk papers or overtly push an agenda.
Yes, their research may be nudged in directions that MS wants to go, but it is real research and not a part of a conspiracy.
Can someone tell me a real,legal use for bittorrent?
/. about some game, or app, or package, or video, and tried to download it but have been met with dead servers? Bittorrent solves that problem and for that alone it is worth having installed.
You're posting on it.
Seriously, how many times have you seen a post on
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
As for Avalanche being FUD, it's not. Microsoft didn't announce it. Someone picked it up from an academic research conference. All sorts of stuff goes on under the banner of research, and no one that I know of at Microsoft is claiming that it will make it to market. BitTorrent has well known problems, and the researchers were presenting ideas to address those problems, but there was no message of BitTorrent is bad, don't use it. So Avalanche isn't FUD of any kind.
As for being vaporware, that's a bit premature. Since no one from Microsoft has indicated that there will be a product, it's not vaporware. I've thought about high performance web servers, but I've never announced the impending release of one, or even started developing one. Avalanche is no more vaporware than my high performance web server. Someone from Microsoft has to at least indicate an intention of releasing a product before it can be vaporware.
So I think you're dead wrong. JD isn't nailing the obvious. He's seen the broad side of the barn and thrown the basketball, but he sure didn't hit it.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Why would MS seek to undermine BitTorrent?
Why would MS be interested in BitTorrent?
Because they are pretty good at seeing where the market is going.
BitTorrent is *not* a niche protocol. BitTorrent is the *dominant* form of net-traffic.
http://www.cachelogic.com/research/slide3.php
Ask anyone who works at a major ISP.
BitTorrent is currently the *dominant* protocol on the net, in terms of bits transfered. Yes, bigger than HTTP, FTP, all the normal protocols, and all the other P2P protocols.
In addition to *ALL THAT TRAFFIC*, BitTorrent is starting to see siginifcant corporate legitimacy. Blizzard uses BitTorrent in a customized downloader to distribute patches.
Valve uses a BitTorrent-like (read, licensed from Bram Cohen (infact developed by him, http://www.ferrago.com/story/2963) protocol for distributing their software.
One can imagine that the legitimate electronic channels of distribution in the future will uses BitTorrent or BitTorrent-like schemes. The cost savings on bandwidth alone will set companies that use it apart from the competition.
And right now, MS has no technology that comes close. This is from a company that once dreamed of making MSN synonmous with 'The Net'.
More likely than not, MS currently sees BitTorrent as a massive threat to their having a position in the content distribution networks of tomorrow. Why use a Microsoft solution if you can either write your own in-house OSS solution, or hire another company with a pre-developed, pre-test solution (steam), that crushes the MS solution in bandwidth efficiency.
In the realm of content distribution (which is a big, big place, and a place where 'visionaries' see a lot of growth (perhaps real, perhaps imaginary), BitTorrent is the 'big fish'. And Bram Cohen occupies a similar spot to Linus Torvald's position in the 'Linux World'.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
It's an academic research paper that was published at IEEE Infocom, a very prominent academic conference. Look at the URL:m
http://research.microsoft.com/~pablo/avalanche.ht
See the "research."? See the ~pablo? This is one of MSR's researchers publishing a piece of academic research. Of course, it's not a product, because it's not intended to be. Researchers often will build a prototype, but don't have the time or the inclination to produce production-quality code. Do you think Microsoft would be openly publishing the design details if it were intended to be a product?
There is no FUD and no vaporware and no conspiracy. This whole storm in a teacup over Avalanche is probably a good example of why publishing research papers openly on the web for other people (i.e. people who don't understand research) to see can be a bad idea.
There is no other explanation for the recent series of coincidental stories and events.
Except for "coincidence".