First Community Release of Diaspora

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First Community Release of Diaspora

Posted by Unknown on Monday October 8, 2012 @10:55AM from the triple-encoded-smoked-salmon dept.

New submitter Jalfro writes "Following premature rumors of its demise, the Diaspora core team announce the release of 0.0.1.0. 'It's been a couple of exciting months for us as we've shifted over to a model of community governance. After switching over to SemVer for our versioning system, and plugging away at fixing code through our new unstable branch, we're excited to make our first release beyond the Alpha/Beta labels.'"

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Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:00 · Score: 1, Insightful

Yeah this will go nowhere.
I'll give them points for trying though.
1. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:06 · Score: 0
  
  Hey now, it's not my fault it's useless and will never gain any traction. Don't be so mad bro.
2. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:16 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, they made a branch and changed to the "basic logic" version system. Hard to keep up with them when they're doing so much more than me!
  If only they had a product and wrote some code!
3. Re:Yawn... by IANAAC · 2012-10-08 11:17 · Score: 2
  
  I know nothing about Diaspora, but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot more than you have ever done.
  How can you be so sure? S/He's an AC, just like you.
4. Re:Yawn... by MightyMartian · 2012-10-08 11:22 · Score: 1
  
  "This week we're releasing almost completely unusable alpha code, but on the bright side, the tshirts with our new logo should be shipping within a month!"
  
  --
  The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
5. Re:Yawn... by SimonTheSoundMan · 2012-10-08 11:32 · Score: 1
  
  Meh. It looks like Google+ to me if I didn't care or know about the backend.
6. Re:Yawn... by Bill+Dimm · 2012-10-08 11:33 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  I know nothing about Diaspora, but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot more than you have ever done.
  How can you be so sure? S/He's an AC, just like you.
  He is sure because he is replying to himself.
7. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:33 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Because if s/he had actually ever done something worth anything, s/he wouldn't be sitting around sneering at the perceived uselessness of other people's projects. It's just a way of making him/herself feel better.
8. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:34 · Score: 0
  
  I know nothing about Diaspora, but I'm sure it's a hell of a lot more than you have ever done.
  How can you be so sure? S/He's an AC, just like you.
  Is that somehow implying that an identity increases the chances of productivity on /.?
  If anything, the opposite is true.
9. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 12:00 · Score: 0
  
  Is that somehow implying that an identity increases the chances of productivity on /.?
  If anything, the opposite is true.
  What do you mean the opposite? Productivity increases the chances of an identity on /. ?
10. Re:Yawn... by Seumas · 2012-10-08 12:24 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Not really. As someone who kicked a few bucks into the Diaspora Kickstarter project, I have to say that for all the hype and excitement and promises of the project (which sought $10,000 and received more than $200,000), they have basically accomplished fuck-all in the last two years.
  To be fair, part of that is due to the difficulty of proposing a social network that by nature is only going to interest serious geeks (you have to either host a server running a seed or find someone who is to run your stuff through). Another part is due to the abysmal insecurities in their first released code (though, granted, it was extremely early code and probably deserved a little more slack than it got). And then there's the part where one of the Ilya (the founder of the Diaspora project) died almost one year ago.
  It's never really going to accomplish something, but it caught a lot of attention early on and may be one of those fruitless endeavors that must be forged for its own sake, even if it's not ever actually going to supplant Facebook.
11. Re:Yawn... by Seumas · 2012-10-08 12:25 · Score: 1
  
  "This week we're releasing almost completely unusable alpha code, but on the bright side, the tshirts with our new logo should be shipping within a month!"
  That sounds pretty much like what could be said in September of 2010.
12. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 13:01 · Score: 0
  
  hush now little one. no tears, only dreams.
13. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 19:21 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Are you unaware that Diaspora is not only usable, but has a number of federated pod servers such as diasp.org?
  I'm sick of people assuming that Diaspora is the same as the first alpha release. That's like judging Linux 3.6 by looking the very first Linux tarball. It's had an entire community contributing to it since the code was made public on Github two years ago.
14. Re:Yawn... by Lillebo · 2012-10-08 21:43 · Score: 0
  
  How does it feel to spend 10 bucks on some shit project when you could have used it down at the bus terminal to find some junkie to pound you in your ass? Open source is totally gay.
  Best comment I've read today. Across all websites.
15. Re:Yawn... by Seumas · 2012-10-08 23:22 · Score: 1
  
  Agreed, but the significant difference is that people actually use linux.
  Both, however, face a similar sort of uphill battle with features on their side, but complexity against them.
16. Re:Yawn... by DrXym · 2012-10-09 00:30 · Score: 1
  
  Diaspora would get a LOT more pods if it was a no-brainer to set up and install. That's what they need to hammer on. The more schools, universities, companies, libraries, groups and individuals they have running pods, the faster and more popular it will become.
17. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 01:59 · Score: 0
  
  The Diaspora people, on the other hand, accomplished as much as the AC *while* spending the effort to do something worthwhile.
  That's twice the failure and uselessness if you ask me. How must it feel for them to work constantly on something people will never use?
18. Re:Yawn... by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2012-10-09 02:40 · Score: 1
  
  No, No, No. If you really care about privacy, you have to have security as your number one goal. Everything else is just frosting on top. They screwed up securty so badly in the first release, it was clear they had no idea what the hell they were doing.
  
  --
  Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
19. Re:Yawn... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 03:19 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, I think they just mismarketed it.
  Diaspora is like social networking as OpenID is to logins.
  And OpenID is taking off. Has taken off.
20. Re:Yawn... by Jalfro · 2012-10-09 03:28 · Score: 1
  
  you have to either host a server running a seed or find someone who is to run your stuff through
  You obviously lost track... signing up couldn't be simpler: http://podupti.me/
21. Re:Yawn... by charles.fox · 2012-10-09 06:05 · Score: 1
  
  Why do people like to criticise diaspora so much -- it's currently running with 2 million users (https://diasp.eu/stats.html) and anyone can sign up just by going to joindiaspora.com, seems to have been working fine for some time for me. Sure, it won't take over the whole world, but neither did linux or android at first, maybe one day they all will. In the mean time there's some quite fun geeky banter on the streams there, think of it as slashdot with media clips while it's still growing. Much more interesting than looking at baby photos from random people you don't actually like from your old school on facebook.
Yah by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:07 · Score: 0

Yawn, I'm still hung over from the last one.
Re:Romney takes the lead, never to look back by JustOK · 2012-10-08 11:09 · Score: 0

again?

--
rewriting history since 2109
Re:Romney takes the lead, never to look back by MrEricSir · 2012-10-08 11:19 · Score: 0

All the people that pay no taxes...
You mean the people who have benefited from the Republican agenda the most? Funny how they're now enemies of the Neo-Republican agenda.

--
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Version numbers are like body language by humanrev · 2012-10-08 11:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

I know version numbers are all relative and aren't supposed to have much meaning on their own, but their first official non alpha/beta release being marked as version 0.0.1.0 kinda tells me a lot about what confidence the developers have in terms of the security and functionality of their code.

--
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
1. Re:Version numbers are like body language by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:36 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  That's totally ridiculous.
  That would imply America On-Line had an elite crack development team
2. Re:Version numbers are like body language by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:52 · Score: 0
  
  I know version numbers are all relative and aren't supposed to have much meaning on their own, but their first official non alpha/beta release being marked as version 0.0.1.0 kinda tells me a lot about what confidence the developers have in terms of the security and functionality of their code.
  Re-read the summary. It says they switched to using a different versioning system, and this is the first release that isn't labelled as alpha/beta.
  So actually the version numbers are indeed meant to mean something from this release onwards.
3. Re:Version numbers are like body language by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:58 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Having googled semver, I think the version number may have something to do with this.
  http://semver.org/
4. Re:Version numbers are like body language by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 12:02 · Score: 0
  
  No, it tells us America On-Line had either (a) an over-confident development team or (b) an overzealous marketing department. And I think we all already knew (b).
  GP said version numbers tell us what the people deciding them think about the quality of the code, not what the actual quality is.
5. Re:Version numbers are like body language by stephanruby · 2012-10-08 12:53 · Score: 1
  
  Either that, or version 0.0.1.0 could mean version 2 in binary, and in that case, that could help us foretell how usable the application will be for the average Joe-the-plumber on Facebook.
6. Re:Version numbers are like body language by humanrev · 2012-10-08 13:02 · Score: 2
  
  Thanks for that. Seems to explain a lot and rid me of my ignorance.
  Thought somehow I got modded to (Score:5, Insightful) in the space of around 10 minutes so I can't complain either way. :)
  
  --
  Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
7. Re:Version numbers are like body language by humanrev · 2012-10-08 13:04 · Score: 1
  
  But wait... Joe-the-plumber wouldn't even be aware of Diaspora, much less have any need to use anything other than Facebook. Think we're getting our audiences mixed up there - this would be strictly for nerds.
  
  --
  Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
8. Re:Version numbers are like body language by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 13:07 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Couldn't they at least have gone for 0.1?
  0.0.1.0 is the sort of number I'd expect for them to have the day after starting.
9. Re:Version numbers are like body language by Lost+Race · 2012-10-09 02:40 · Score: 1
  
  You were right, version numbers really are like body language: whatever you "read" from them is your imagination, projection, or wishful thinking.
10. Re:Version numbers are like body language by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 04:47 · Score: 0
  
  And 0.0.1.0 doesn't even seem to be an allowed version number in the SemVer system. The actual version number can only have three components, any additional info such as 'alpha', 'beta.3' or build identifiers may have any number of components but they must be separated from the main version number with a '-' or a '+'.
11. Re:Version numbers are like body language by amicusNYCL · 2012-10-09 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  You were right, version numbers really are like body language: whatever you "read" from them is your imagination, projection, or wishful thinking.
  Really? Body language actually says nothing about what the person is feeling or thinking? That should be news to behavioral scientists around the world, you should spread your knowledge.
  
  --
  "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
12. Re:Version numbers are like body language by gshegosh · 2012-10-09 21:14 · Score: 1
  
  Look at how confident Firefox developers are!
Great! by nurb432 · 2012-10-08 11:30 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think.. wtf is Diaspora? I know i could go look it up but i shouldn't have to.

--
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1. Re:Great! by Osgeld · 2012-10-08 11:34 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  not that the summary or the blog care to tell you, but after googling its a open source facebook wanna be.
  I really hate it when people want to tell everyone about their new whatever, and dont even bother to tell you WTF it even does
2. Re:Great! by Dagger2 · 2012-10-08 11:40 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It's an AGPLed, federated social network/protocol, kinda like a cross between Facebook and e-mail or XMPP.
3. Re:Great! by LordLucless · 2012-10-08 11:50 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  A little more than that; it's also supposed to be a decentralized facebook wannabe. The idea is that people can run their own node (I forget what the diaspora term is), and the system as a whole is composed of those interconnected nodes. Because you control your own node, it's impossible for any of your personal information to escape without your explicit permission.
  Personally, I think the initiative and work involved in setting up a node (even if they get it to the relatively trivial, it's always going to be harder than just signing up) is going to necessarily impact adoption, and it'll never get off the ground. Unless, of course, you have someone configuring and hosting your node for you, in which case all advantage is lost (you're still placing control of your information in the hands of a third party).
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
4. Re:Great! by elloGov · 2012-10-08 12:06 · Score: 0
  
  Diaspora is a group of inexperienced kids selling an utopian verbal solution of a decentralized social network without having written a single line of code.
  
  Call me a pessimist, but, having lived in the NYC, the Big Apple is the capital of hype and bull-shitting hustlers. With that said, I'd like nothing more than for these kids to succeed as a decentralized social network would be awesome. However, with every passing day it seems that they've opened their mouths too soon.
5. Re:Great! by nurb432 · 2012-10-08 12:11 · Score: 1
  
  I have to totally disagree, its 100% the editors fault. This is a sign of being rank amateur, and they should have their credentials ( if any ) yanked..
  
  --
  ---- Booth was a patriot ----
6. Re:Great! by Dekker3D · 2012-10-08 12:19 · Score: 1
  
  The advantage is that you can choose to do either-... set up your own node for security, or use someone else's to connect to your Diaspora-using friends.
7. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 12:54 · Score: 0
  
  Who is this "No one" you are talking about?
  I tend to agree that it won't be ubiquitious any time soon, but if it can be implemented as part of a stand alone 'freedom box', it might make a few bitcoins for the company selling it as a product.
8. Re:Great! by humanrev · 2012-10-08 13:11 · Score: 1
  
  I think.. wtf is Diaspora? I know i could go look it up but i shouldn't have to.
  Really? You're a Slashdotter and haven't glanced at or read at least one other Diaspora story here?
  That's like me asking for clarification on what BitCoins are. Some things you should just KNOW by now. :)
  
  --
  Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
9. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 13:21 · Score: 0
  
  Editor?! Where????
  They're an endangered species around these parts.
10. Re:Great! by dudpixel · 2012-10-08 14:07 · Score: 2
  
  As I understand it, there only needs to be 1 technical person to set it up for each community. So once it is set up, the rest of the community can use it without any technical knowledge at all.
  I really like that aspect of it, and the fact that you have your data in-house (or at least in your control).
  Even non-techies care about the privacy aspects of social networks - when the risks are explained to them.
  
  --
  This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
11. Re:Great! by fikx · 2012-10-08 14:29 · Score: 2
  
  if someone else sets up the node for you, you at least have a choice of who to pick to do it....kinda like how email works : I don't run my own email server, I let my ISP do it for me. If they don't do a good job, dump 'em and get a new email address
  
  --
  AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
12. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 19:59 · Score: 0
  
  Did you not understand something about the term "community release"?
  Of course he does. It means "We've blown the $200k we lifted through Kickstarter and are bored with the project now, so here's some code. Bye".
13. Re:Great! by TheRaven64 · 2012-10-08 20:13 · Score: 1
  
  They have written code. What they haven't done is documented their protocol. They've used AGPL, which barely meets the definition of F/OSS, meaning that most people wanting to do an independent implementation can't look at their code, and their ad-hoc protocol has never had any kind of even half-arsed peer review, let alone the kind that would be required to ensure that it actually enforces the kinds of privacy guarantees that they want.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
14. Re:Great! by rbrausse · 2012-10-08 23:06 · Score: 1
  
  I think.. wtf is Diaspora?
  TFS is wrong and should have used the product name correctly. You wouldn't be baffled if the submitter (or editor) just wrote "diaspora*" :)
15. Re:Great! by drinkypoo · 2012-10-08 23:41 · Score: 2
  
  Personally, I think the initiative and work involved in setting up a node (even if they get it to the relatively trivial, it's always going to be harder than just signing up) is going to necessarily impact adoption, and it'll never get off the ground
  There's a whole bunch of reasons why Diaspora is a non-starter.
  First, they're moving to a community release NOW. They should have made the community release at the same time that they brought up their site. Second, the requirements are offensive. Social networking is relatively simple, it's the amount of data to deal with that makes it complex, not the actual tasks. We've had fora and the like for ages. Everything the typical social networking site does could be handled by a typical PHP CMS (e.g. Drupal or Wordpress) and a module or three, using existing methods of syndication. Third, nobody knows or cares what it is.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
16. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 23:43 · Score: 0
  
  Diaspora is a group of inexperienced kids selling an utopian...
  I don't mean to be a grammar Nazi, but I see this all too often. With words that begin with a consonant sound sound such as Utopian, Universe, Unicycle, the proper indefinite article is "A", not "An". With words like Umpire, Umbrella, Uncle, the proper indefinite article is "An" because they begin with a vowel sound. You are looking at the word instead of listening to the sound. So, you should have wrote:
  
  Diaspora is a ground of inexperienced kids selling a utopian...
17. Re:Great! by LordLucless · 2012-10-08 23:52 · Score: 2
  
  Those requirements look pretty modest to me. They can all be installed on any half-decent linux distro with a single apt-get install command, or similar. Yeah, your average PHP shared-host won't be able to run it. That's because your average PHP shared-host blows, not because the requirements are particularly exotic. They're all freely available, well-known projects, with well-supported packages.
  And trying to build anything more than what it was designed for (ie: a simple, content-based website) on top of Drupal is a lesson in pain. Drupal is incrementally approaching professional frameworks like Rails and Django with each revision, but its doing so slowly, and it is still very much a CMS trying to be a framework.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
18. Re:Great! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 01:14 · Score: 0
  
  Which is part of the problem. Your ISP can sell you out at any time. Whereas you would control your data on Diaspora. It wouldn't guarantee you perfect control, but at least in theory, it would make it that much harder for the FBI to get their hands on your data. They would have to serve either you directly or the people you're connecting with in order to gain access.
  Of course the reality may turn out to be different, depending upon how well they do the implementing of the idea and what the governments do in terms of laws.
19. Re:Great! by drinkypoo · 2012-10-09 01:16 · Score: 1
  
  Drupal is incrementally approaching professional frameworks like Rails and Django with each revision, but its doing so slowly, and it is still very much a CMS trying to be a framework.
  I don't disagree with that, but nearly all the functionality is already there (or I wouldn't suggest it.)
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
20. Re:Great! by garbut · 2012-10-09 02:56 · Score: 0
  
  you should have wrote
  have written
  
  --
  Oh, should I have sugar-coated that?
21. Re:Great! by Rogerborg · 2012-10-09 04:08 · Score: 0
  
  people can run their own node (I forget what the diaspora term is)
  Clusterfuck.
  You can buy them with bitcoins.
  
  --
  If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
22. Re:Great! by riondluz · 2012-10-10 01:58 · Score: 1
  
  " Unless, of course, you have someone configuring
  (and hosting) your node for you"
  Like Ubuntu, RH, Slack,.... ?
  Seems to me that if a webapp like this was bundled into any distro along with a configuration script that it would be trivial to setup a home node
  
  --
  resist propaganda
23. Re:Great! by LordLucless · 2012-10-10 09:36 · Score: 1
  
  For all those people running Linux at home, yes. I hardly think that's critical mass for a popular adoption though.
  
  --
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
How hard can it be... by itsdapead · 2012-10-08 11:36 · Score: 3, Funny

...when announcing that Version X of something is released, to actually spare 3-4 words in the summary to give us readers a clue what the flying fuck the "something" you're talking about is, so we can decide whether we want to read further?
Even TFA manages to avoid saying what 'Diaspora' actually is or offering a link back to a descriptive page.
(To save others the trouble of Googling it's either an open-source social network, a freeware Battlestar Galactica game, a migraine-inducing SF Novel by Greg Egan or something to do with Jewish history... By a process of deduction, I'm going with the former...)
Come on guys, the point of a news site is to tell people things they don't know,.

--
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
1. Re:How hard can it be... by cerberusss · 2012-10-09 02:43 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, it's all of the above. It's an open-source social network of migraine-inducing jews who all play the Battlestar Galactica game. Currently, there's only one member, Greg Egan.
  
  --
  8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
2. Re:How hard can it be... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 03:18 · Score: 0
  
  It's a project that's been going on for years. Have you been on the fucking moon or something to have missed this. Ugh, complaining on slashdot of all places about tech. Get off here you old fart, this place is for people that fucking know things, not wannabe hipsters.
Can anyone explain to me by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 11:49 · Score: 0

...who needs this and why should I care?
1. Re:Can anyone explain to me by Dagger2 · 2012-10-08 12:47 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Everybody; because it's federated.
  Think about email. When you want to send mail to somebody, you just pull up your email account and do it. No fuss. You don't need to sign up for a Gmail account, a Hotmail account, an Outlook account, a Yahoo account, a gmx.net account and so on for every provider just to be able to send email to that provider's users. One account with one of them is enough to email a user of any of them.
  Social networking isn't like that at the moment. You have to sign up for separate Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Nexopia, Badoo, Bebo and so on accounts just to interact with the users of those networks. This is bad.
  To see why, just look at Gmail. Back when that was introduced, Hotmail was the go-to provider for free webmail. I don't know if you remember, but at the time Hotmail kinda sucked. It had an ugly, slow interface and an allowance of 2-4 MB. That was standard. Then Gmail comes along with a clean, responsive interface and a 1 GB allowance, and of course it's massively popular. Suddenly every other provider was cleaning up their UI and offering much larger allowances. Outlook.com, for instance, now has the clean, responsive interface and it doesn't even have a cap on the amount of mail you can store.
  If email wasn't federated, none of that would have happened. Nobody would have used or cared about Gmail back when it had no users because, well, it had no users. You'd still be using Hotmail with its 2 MB inbox. You couldn't even set up your own server to avoid all that, because your own server would be useless for mailing Hotmail users.
  Diaspora aims to bring federation to social networks, and that's why you should care about it.
2. Re:Can anyone explain to me by westyvw · 2012-10-08 13:31 · Score: 1
  
  This is a good explanation, even though I did know what Diaspora was. I usually prefer the privacy angle, but your definition really applies to a broad number of potential users.
3. Re:Can anyone explain to me by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 15:16 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You completely missed his point. You can only do that because email is a *federated* system. If it wasn't, your email server wouldn't talk to hotmail's email server. There would be islands of completely separate email networks, much like there is with social networks at the moment.
4. Re:Can anyone explain to me by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 17:12 · Score: 0
  
  >Diaspora aims to bring federation to social networks, and that's why you should care about it.
  Do you really think no one has ever thought about this?
  And while we are at it, maybe you should read Google+ and Facebook EULAs. They explicitly forbid the use of software like Diaspora for federation.
5. Re:Can anyone explain to me by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 19:43 · Score: 0
  
  They already made a product-killing mistake, so no, you shouldn't care about it.
  NEVER name a product that you want to have mass appeal "diaspora", which sounds like a fungal infection and means, literally in greek, dispersion. There is a reason that "facebook" is named facebook, and I'm amazed that the dev team didn't realize that no casual internet user will tell his/her friends: "Add me as a friend on DIASPORA".
  Call it FriendMe or SocialX or Crank, or ANYTHING other than a fungal infection.
6. Re:Can anyone explain to me by Fnord666 · 2012-10-09 00:00 · Score: 1
  
  Think about email. When you want to send mail to somebody, you just pull up your email account and do it. No fuss. You don't need to sign up for a Gmail account, a Hotmail account, an Outlook account, a Yahoo account, a gmx.net account and so on for every provider just to be able to send email to that provider's users. One account with one of them is enough to email a user of any of them.
  I do like your analogy. I think it spells out fairly well the problem that Diaspora is trying to solve. To extend that a bit, email also exemplifies what can go wrong with such a system. For certain definitions of the word, email is a "federated" system as well. The problem is that the "federation" was not baked in from the beginning but was added on as icing later. I don't consider that the fault of the designers. These things just weren't particularly relevant when email was conceived. As a result of this however a high percentage of the email flowing through the system is spam with forged headers, etc. with little to no actual authentication. Any attempts to lock it down are mostly a case of "closing the barn door after the horses are out". A federated social media network will need to take this into account as a number one priority item. The first pass at Diaspora by its creators failed badly in this and many other aspects. Hopefully this next version will address this.
  
  --
  'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
7. Re:Can anyone explain to me by Ash-Fox · 2012-10-09 01:01 · Score: 1
  
  And while we are at it, maybe you should read Google+ and Facebook EULAs.
  They have EULAs?
  
  --
  Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
8. Re:Can anyone explain to me by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-16 06:46 · Score: 0
  
  Why are you so stupid?
Grammar? by fieldstone · 2012-10-08 12:22 · Score: 2

Come on. "It's" means "it is". The article should say "its" instead, since that is the possessive.
I realize I may be a bit of a stickler here, but Slashdot is a major news site (the only one I personally check with any regularity), and professionalism means not mangling the language. Especially not in ways that make already common mistakes look acceptable. Copy-editing is important.
1. Re:Grammar? by fieldstone · 2012-10-08 12:24 · Score: 1
  
  For reference, I mean when saying "it's demise" (sic), which should be "its demise". Saying "it's been", as in "it has been", is fine.
Redundancy Department. by Cruciform · 2012-10-08 13:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Most of the visible posts are complaints about the summary not including a description.
That would indicate that the posters are too lazy to check to see if someone else had already posted it.
Pots meet kettle.
You're not perfect.
And Diaspora has been covered on here many times, so at least the submitter and the editor have an excuse.
1. Re:Redundancy Department. by Cruciform · 2012-10-08 21:36 · Score: 1
  
  PS. Articles come with tags. Some are jokes but others are quite useful in seeing the history of coverage, or explain the topic in depth. Click and enjoy.
First "who cares?"! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 13:14 · Score: 0

Really, by now, who cares anymore?
Dia-what-a-waste-of-kickstarter-funds... I think I heard of it a long time ago.
Are there a lot of grognards around lately? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 14:56 · Score: 0

So maybe I'm just getting lucky and seeing a lot of posts of the flavor of "What is X that they're talking about in the article? The summary doesn't explain it!!!". You know what? You didn't become one of the supposed enlightened by having all of your information spoon fed to you. Don't know what something is? Look it the fuck up. It's so easy these days: just type it into your favorite search engine (there are a crap ton out there) and figure it out. I'm not going to be one of these people that assumes that people "should just know" everything, but there's no excuse for being lazy. The alternative is that we explain everything all the way down. "Diaspora is a social network", "a social network is... runs on computers", "a computer is... electrons", "an electron is...". It gets absurd really quickly.
What's it look like? by kwerle · 2012-10-08 16:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

I know what a facebook page looks like. I know what a G+ page looks like. I know what a myspace page looks like.
What does a diaspora page look like?
Do I have to create an account to see one?
I really am asking for something that simple. I'd like to see the public portion of a diaspora page. That's it.
1. Re:What's it look like? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 20:53 · Score: 0
  
  What does a web page look like?
2. Re:What's it look like? by Fnord666 · 2012-10-09 00:46 · Score: 1
  
  What does a diaspora page look like?
  It looks like whatever the owner of the pod you are on wants it to look like. Pages on the diasp.org pod look very similar to Facebook. Other pods might appear differently. I would expect that eventually the pod code will support themes so that the pod owner can have his site appear however he wants. The point is that you aren't stuck with a single social media overlord. Don't like the terms of service or the terms have changed for the pod you are on? Move your profile to a different pod. Worst case scenario is that you stand up your own pod. The hope though is that there will be enough pods that you won't need to do that, but you will have the option if you wish. Right now I'm wondering if you could build out and stand up a small pod for a few users on an EC2 instance and still stay in the "free" category. If so, then once an image has been built it would be nothing to stand up your own pod and tweak it to however you wanted.
  
  --
  'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
3. Re:What's it look like? by kwerle · 2012-10-09 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  Really? Not one, simple, concrete example? That's all I'm looking for. Just one.
4. Re:What's it look like? by charles.fox · 2012-10-09 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  Mine looks like this: https://joindiaspora.com/people/c66e3f4e39e7dfac
5. Re:What's it look like? by kwerle · 2012-10-09 08:40 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you! I see you are also https://joindiaspora.com/u/charles_fox
  and that googling for
  Charles Fox (your address)@joindiaspora.com
  fails to find you on the first page of the results.
  All of that is interesting to me.
6. Re:What's it look like? by charles.fox · 2012-10-12 04:51 · Score: 1
  
  ...though ironically it does now :-) I wonder why google isn't indexing public diaspora pages then?
7. Re:What's it look like? by kwerle · 2012-10-12 08:40 · Score: 1
  
  https://joindiaspora.com/robots.txt
  ---
  # See http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html for documentation on how to use the robots.txt file
  #
  # To ban all spiders from the entire site uncomment the next two lines:
  User-Agent: *
  Disallow: /people/
  Disallow: /u/
  ---
  Which seems insane for a social networking site to do.
Also check out the Twitter replacement Tent.io by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-08 17:51 · Score: 0

http://seanmonstar.com/post/32876503398/tent-io
"I can run my own Tent server, and host and publish my own status messages on my own property. You can do the same. And our friends who aren’t as technically-savvy can use a hosted provider that’s perhaps offset by ads. We can all subscribe to each other, and see each others statuses, just like we currently can on Twitter.
The first client to consume this new Tent protocol is Tent.is. They describe the both of these like so:"
Re:Romney takes the lead, never to look back by alci63 · 2012-10-08 19:38 · Score: 0

Is this supposed to be some kind of funny parody, or are you, anonymous coward, any serious about what you're saying ? Someone from the USA, do you really have that kind of people around you ???
shennanigans...marketing word alert by globaljustin · 2012-10-08 19:44 · Score: 1

Everybody; because it's federated.
Just like Windows Zune is 'interoperable'...
'Federated' is not a technical term with a concrete definition. Like the term 'the cloud.' It is useful in some contexts but if it is not specified further it will always just confound a discussion.
Yes, Diaspora may be 'federated'...but that doesn't mean it is an 'online social networking alternative to facebook'...Diaspora requires an additional step...the local node...for every node in the network.
That step is enough. It will *never* compete against facebook.com or google+ because the billions out there just **don't want to set up a fucking social networking server**
Everyday users would rather go without than have to use Diaspora.
It must be just as easy to access as facebook...just from a browser or it will **never** compete on scale.
That said, I appreciate their effort.

--
Thank you Dave Raggett
1. Re:shennanigans...marketing word alert by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 00:46 · Score: 0
  
  I think you missed parents point. Here, let me put some words into your mouth:
  
  Yes, SMTP may be 'federated'...but that doesn't mean it is a replacement for provider-internal usenet groups...SMTP requires an additional step...the server...for every node in the network.
  That step is enough. It will *never* compete against usenet because the billions out there just **don't want to set up a fucking SMTP server**
It's been so long... by Phoenix · 2012-10-08 22:54 · Score: 1

It's been so long now that I honestly forgot what it is supposed to be. I mean I now know what it is thanks to the comments here and some research on my own, but all I can remember from the first time they announced it's creation was I was so disappointed that all I could see is a webpage with vague promises and platitudes and an email update feature that was not working. So from then till now, I honestly forgot what it was supposed to be.
For that matter I even forgot the name.

--
-- Wiccan Army, 13th Airborne Division "We will not fly silently into the night"
Installation is a royal pain in the ass by cerberusss · 2012-10-09 00:09 · Score: 2

Chrissake, this installation is a royal pain in the ass. The number of convoluted steps is just plain crazy.
First, I have to walk through a long, loooong installation instruction for Debian here. Then I turn to the Notes on installing and running, only to end halfway with a crazy error message.
diaspora@sirius:~/diaspora$ bundle install --without development test heroku Fetching gem metadata from http://rubygems.org/...... Fetching gem metadata from http://rubygems.org/.. Fetching https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git error: while accessing https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git/info/refs
fatal: HTTP request failed Git error: command `git clone 'https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git' "/home/diaspora/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@diaspora/cache/bundler/git/markerb-6697fe76410a3ed08ce3f5fd8ee64ebddd200665" --bare --no-hardlinks` in directory /home/diaspora/diaspora has failed.
Compiling Ruby from scratch, installing cruft in /usr/local, installing something weird called RVM.... What the fuck happened to ./configure && make && make install?

--
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
1. Re:Installation is a royal pain in the ass by cerberusss · 2012-10-09 00:58 · Score: 1
  
  The first problem was that for some reason, I had to re-run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure ca-certificates".
  Then I got an error "markerb ArgumentError: invalid byte sequence in US-ASCII" after the command "bundle install --without development test heroku" tells me:
  Using markerb (1.0.0) from https://github.com/plataformatec/markerb.git (at master) ArgumentError: invalid byte sequence in US-ASCII An error occurred while installing markerb (1.0.0), and Bundler cannot continue. Make sure that `gem install markerb -v '1.0.0'` succeeds before bundling.
  Solution turned out here to add the following to .bashrc:
  export LANG="en_US.UTF-8" export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"
  I stopped at the point where you configure the webserver, because SSL is required and I don't have an SSL certificate yet for my private webserver.
  
  --
  8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
2. Re:Installation is a royal pain in the ass by jandrese · 2012-10-09 02:56 · Score: 2
  
  You could just self sign a cert for now. If it's just for you and your close buddies they can accept the self-signed cert, just warn them that their browser is going to call you a thieving lying scumbag before they go to your site.
  
  --
  
  I read the internet for the articles.
3. Re:Installation is a royal pain in the ass by cerberusss · 2012-10-09 19:32 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks, yes, that's true. I did go the extra mile and got an SSL certificate after all.
  
  --
  8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Setup a server and let us know! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 01:02 · Score: 0

Setup a server and let us know!
Come on, this is /. - you should know to BYOS already.
BTW, there are other 100% F/LOSS competitors already out and connecting servers together into their federated service.
* http://buddycloud.com/
* Friendica
* Libertree
I run a pod and it's great by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-09 06:27 · Score: 0

I really enjoy running a pod.
Once you get it running, it's pretty cool to be able to have a more advanced twitter run by you and your friends.
I look forward to seeing where they go with all of this in the future.
will they? by globaljustin · 2012-10-09 09:33 · Score: 1

I'm wondering if you think Diaspora ever will do any/all of the things you listed (AGPL, no peer review, etc)?
I want to one day set up a competing system to facebook.com and I contacted (briefly) some Diaspora people from a contact in grad school...they had their funding, signed their agreements, and were basically contract employees for the investors at that point. One could have easily predicted their doom.
However, the concept of a open/user controlled facebook option is obvious to any granny who every logs on to f/b to look at grandkid pics...the structure isn't insanely complicated...
I'm wondering if Diaspora could be part of that in its current iteration....

--
Thank you Dave Raggett