The biggest reason right now is that there is a working, stable implementation of Starfish - there isn't one for pNFS. Data redundancy and high-availability is another strong reason to choose Starfish over pNFS. That being said, it is an unfair comparison - pNFS was not designed for highly-available clustered environments. Starfish is also a POSIX-compliant file system, it supports extended attributes and we provide all of the source code.
How much does the software cost?
The software is free for up to 1TB of storage or up to 10 nodes in a cluster (which is most of the website clusters in operation today). We also give very generous licenses (usually free) to academic and research institutions.
-- manu
If you are interested in real solution to semantic web markup that works (and is being used) right now, you might want to check out the Microformats website. There is a growing following that is working on getting the semantic web working properly. The Firefox and Songbird guys are looking at using Microformats to make browsing the web a much richer experience - NOW, not 10 years from now.
There are currently Microformats for marking up people, places, events, geographic locations, music, and many other widely used data items on the web. For more information on what Microformats are, check out the info page on Microformats.
Starfish is a highly-available, fully decentralized, clustered storage file system. It provides a distributed POSIX-compliant storage device that can be mounted like any other drive under Linux or Mac OS X. The resulting fault-tolerant storage network can store files and directories, like a normal file system - but unlike a normal file system, it can handle multiple catastrophic disk and machine failures.
And you can build clusters at relatively low cost:
For a 2-way redundant, RAID-1 protected, 1.0 Terabyte cluster: $2,000 (Jan 2007 prices).
Per server, that breaks down into around $400 for a AMD 2.6Ghz CPU, 1GB of memory, and a motherboard with integrated 100 megabit LAN connection, SATA support, 350 watt power supply and a commodity server enclosure. Four SATA 500GB hard drives will run you around $600.
The cluster would ensure proper file system operation even in the catastrophic failure of a single machine. Hard drive failure rates could even approach 50% without affecting the Starfish file system.
(warning: I work for the company that created Starfish)
network, app servers, etc aren't highly available, you have a whole new range of equipment and services that needs an HA solution as well I couldn't agree with you more. I focused on the storage aspect because the article, thread, and Starfish is about HA storage.
I worked at a place where a $400 million project that spent tons of money on high availability database and server components was crippled by bad switches and application servers. I'm sorry to hear that. What an embarrassingly colossal waste of money. I'm assuming that was US tax payer dollars at work?
Full disclosure: I am one of the authors of the Starfish file system.
With all of these redundant, even a single server can be quite reliable.
Hmmm... you seem to be concerned with a completely different class of problem than the one Starfish addresses. HA systems assume that your single server will fail eventually (which it will). There many single points of failure in the scenario you describe (ram, motherboard, glitch in the redundant power supply). What happens when you need to take the machine down for maintenance? What happens when the power strip or the UPS you have the machine plugged into fails? Your proposed solution also doesn't scale very well. If you connect 10 clients to a file system exported by your single redundant server (you have created a fantastic bottleneck in your system architecture).
Of course, at some point a bunch of big mirrored servers and playing with automount becomes pretty tedious to maintain.
I'm glad you said this - you are quite right. Most people do not address the amount of money that it costs their system administrators to get it right.
However, with a stable, mature, free and high performance parallel FS the balance would shift to much less storage per server (perhaps even using just internal storage). I'm just not convinced such a thing exists yet, however much I'd like to see it.
Just because something has just been released to the public doesn't mean it is not stable and mature. You are drawing a false parallel between "time that the software has been available to the public" and "stability".
We postulated that most web server clusters out there right now did not need more than 1TB of back-end storage. We use Starfish internally for our storage needs. The system is free for the previously mentioned conditions and has the source code available. We are attempting to provide a solution to the problem that you state at the end of your post.
What about backup? Both solutions are not providing any means of backing up the presumably huge amount of data. As you get into the 50 TB+ regime, how you would ever be able to make a backup? Here is where a HSM kicks in: backups are not necessary anymore.
Starfish was designed to automatically back data up - HSM was designed in from the beginning. You never have to backup a Starfish storage network. Take another look at Starfish - it does exactly what you're asking for:
I would not suggest cluster file systems such as Lustre for a small installation; they're generally designed to scale up to hundreds or thousands of servers, but not to scale down to a handful.
Our first Lustre cluster was 3 servers - it worked just fine. Starfish effortlessly scales down to 2 servers. Here is an example of it doing so:
Just because something scales to thousands of active nodes and disks, doesn't mean it can't scale down gracefully. The Internet is a good example of this concept.
Full Disclosure: I am one of the authors for the Starfish file system.
Software like Lustre and Starfish only wants you to help testing the software.
Both are not OSS in my opinion and not ready for the production.
Lustre is open-source and it has been production ready for years. The open source notice is on their website - GPL. You don't get much more open source than GPL. Lustre provides support to commercial enterprises.
As for Starfish, we eat our own dog food at our company. The newest version of Starfish will be taking over full-time for all of our HA storage systems in one months time. The website that runs on top of it is Bitmunk, our bread and butter. The license allows anybody to setup a small HA cluster for free. This is going to help a great deal of small websites and research institutions. If they want us to fix bugs that they find, we'll be more than happy to oblige. However, depending on your customers to find your bugs is not only a horrible business practice, it is reckless. We put ourselves at risk far before we make a release - if there is a bug, we're usually the first people to find it.
Full Disclosure: I'm one of the authors of the Starfish file system.
We've played around with MogileFS. It does a very good job at archiving files. It is write-once, which is good for certain very specific applications. Unfortunately, it did not solve our problem. We needed a POSIX-compliant file system that looked like just another disk to Linux, but was inexpensive, simple to set up, fault-tolerant, and performed automatic data backup.
Starfish and Lustre are really for people that just want the file system to work with most of the 15,000+ packages for Linux. No muss, no fuss.
To give you some background: we needed applications like Samba, Apache, MySQL, NFS, and PHP to just work with the file system without needing any modifications. MogileFS is not POSIX-compliant, thus wasn't a good drop-in replacement for us. Starfish is POSIX-compliant and so is Lustre. Which file system fits your application really depends on your needs. In general, the further away from POSIX-compliant file systems that you go - the more development you will have to do to make your system work correctly.
Full Disclosure: I'm one of the author's of the Starfish Filesystem.
As others have mentioned, HA solutions are complicated and expensive. Unless you really need it, you probably don't want to go down that route.
High-availability solutions don't have to be complicated and expensive. Starfish is the perfect example of such a simple and low-cost system. In fact, it is THE reason we wrote Starfish: To provide an in-expensive, fault-tolerant, highly available clustered storage platform that works from the smallest website to the largest storage network. We've based the technology on the assumption that having expensive hardware/software is the wrong way to go about solving the problem.
Buying bigger servers and attaching massive storage systems to them is not a very good idea when it comes to reducing single points of failure in your HA network. You must assume hardware failure - it is going to happen, when you have so many pieces of spinning metal you will hit the point at which you are losing a hard drive every day. You will start losing machines at least once a month. Or worse - what happens when you lose one out of your four "big servers" and 155TBs goes off-line in an instant? Buying bigger and more expensive hardware is a "throw money at the problem and maybe it'll disappear" solution. It is wishful thinking at best. The system you describe is a nightmare scenario when it comes to HA - I would highly advise that nobody solve their storage problem with that approach.
As for Lustre, it's really a specialized solution for HPC, made for multiple compute nodes striping to the storage nodes at full speed using a collective IO API like MPI-IO.
Not really. We've used it for years on several of our web clusters. It does a very good job at providing great I/O throughput, yes - but it is applicable to many more problems than that. It is a good file system back-end for any website that has to deal with a large amount of data. It might not be right for what you want to do with it, but that doesn't mean it should be pigeon-holed to only being a "specialized solution for HPC".
Full Disclosure: I'm one of the author's of the Starfish Filesystem.
Simply not true anymore, lukas84. High-availability solutions don't have to cost "big money". Starfish is the perfect example of such a system. In fact, it is THE reason we wrote Starfish: To provide an in-expensive, fault-tolerant, highly available clustered storage platform that works from the smallest website to the largest storage network. We've based the technology on the assumption that having expensive hardware/software is the wrong way to go about solving the problem.
Full HA environments do not need to be incredibly complex. If your HA solution is incredibly complex, you've done something wrong. Take a look at how easy it is to set up a Starfish file system:
DICLAIMER: I am the CEO of Digital Bazaar, the company behind the Bitmunk P2P network. Take what I have to say with a grain of salt if you must, but go and check out the site and decide for yourself.
We're really trying to help everybody out here - non-DRMed, high quality MP3 files, fair prices determined by market forces (not suits in a boardroom) and best of all - the artist gets to set their prices, licensing options, distribution countries, etc. The fans can re-distribute the artists content legally, and charge a small fee (for bandwidth, etc) if they so desire.
Especially indie artists that want to spread their stuff via P2P under their terms (artists get to set prices, distribution formats, countries, descriptions, and licenses). We even have Creative Commons licensing options that the artists may use.
I just want to make this clear - I'm not astro-turfing - I'm the CEO of Digital Bazaar, the company that created the Bitmunk P2P music network - so don't take my word for it, check it out and come to your own conclusions.
In short, we're a non-DRM, P2P network that pays the artist up to 84% of the sale price regardless of who downloads/uploads their stuff on the network, the artist gets paid. All songs on the network are high quality 192kbps-320kbps VBR MP3s (which will play in any MP3 player). Additionally, you may then turn around and sell the artists work on the network and add your own small fee (which you can then use to buy more music on the network - or withdraw to your bank account).
This article sounds like more like FUD to distract from the existing file-sharing networks to me.
I'm one of the primary architects behind this system, we've poured all of our energy into this system in an attempt to find a balance between all the conflicted parties (DRM vs. P2P)... this isn't FUD, it is a very concentrated attempt to create a system that works for everybody. Please, read on...
Their system doesn't "guarantee" it either -- for example even "copyright aware" tech can't know if Linux is covered by SCO copyrights without help.
Sorry, but you're dead wrong - our system does guarantee legal file trades. You're making the false assumption that we use some sort of file detection software to figure out if something is copyrighted or not - which is not the case (you might want to read over our website before making statements like this).
We clear each and every creative work on the network. When you select a creative work (such as The Beatles, Penny Lane) and associate it with a file (such as an MP3) - that creative work has been cleared for sale on the network by the artist.
Absurd. Personally, I wouldn't want to give them a license to distribute all my copyrighted works.
Which is perfectly fine, the only people that really should be interested in registering their creative work with us, are those artists that want to make a living doing what they love. If you want to give your stuff away, put it up on a website or another P2P network. We're trying to help artists make a living doing what they are driven to do.
Similarly, lots of stuff from the public domain will be registered on our network. We will be charging money for them because it is worth $2 to somebody to aquire quality recordings of old Appalachian folk music, or classical music, or a TV show in the public domain. Those that don't want to pay $2 for 20 songs can go to any of the P2P services and spend countless hours trying to find a good recording.
For more information on how this whole process works, you might want to take a look at our website:
Couldn't you defeat a digital signature by resigning after slight modifications?
The seller is the one that digitally signs the file - you would have to have access to the seller's private key (which is very difficult to do). You could self-sign the file, but that wouldn't really be a trustworthy signature, now would it? =P
It is very difficult to defeat the digital signatures used on Bitmunk (just as it is very difficult to defeat digital signatures in general).
You only share with other people that already own the software or music?
Instead of sharing, think buying and selling. If you legally own a copy of the copyrighted work (ie: you own the CD) - you can rip the CD to MP3 and sell it on the network legally - the artist gets their royalty and you get a bit of cash for helping to distribute the file - which you can use to buy more stuff on the network, or just withdraw to your bank account.
The rest of your questions are answered on the website:
I don't know if you are trolling, or just haven't read through the site yet. I am the CEO/President of the company that put this technology together - so let me try and summarize what we're trying to do.
The system described in the whitepaper has been implemented - its purpose is to enable anybody on a P2P network to support the artist while trading files legally with their friends and other people on the net. We have a very difficult balancing act to perform: help the artist and fan without removing any of their rights.
The protocol is open because we want to enable software interoperability (we don't want to lock anybody out of the network using special file formats or nasty DRM - we believe in protecting fair use).
Here is how the system works, in a nutshell:
Artists register a creative work for sale on Bitmunk - they set a royalty, each time a file sale happens, a royalty is distributed to them. Lets say 30 cents (almost 3 times as much as the artist gets from iTunes or similar services).
Somebody comes along and has an MP3 or FLAC or OGG of the creative work registered by the artist and wants to provide it on the network. They setup a sales server and want a cut of the sale whenever somebody buys it from their sales server. Lets say their cut is 20 cents. Bitmunk's cut is 15 cents (for providing the service).
Somebody searches the network and finds the seller and the creative work they are selling and buys it for 65 cents.
The person that just bought the file can then turn around, set their own sales server up and (since they like the artist, and also have a slower connection) charge 10 cents for re-distributing the song on their sales server. Now people have a choice between buying the song for 55 cents or 65 cents.
What incentive do people have for using such a system? Here are a couple:
Its legal - you don't have to worry about a lawsuit.
You can support the artist more directly, and make money doing it. You can then use that money to buy other stuff off the network, or transfer it directly to your bank account.
We don't use DRM for copyright enforcement. The system doesn't treat you like a criminal.
The financial aspects of the network operate on efficient market theory - it is incredibly efficient at finding the perfect price for the artist and the buyer (this means cheaper music, with more money going to the artist). If you look at a supply/demand curve - the network finds the equilibrium point very quickly.
None of the online music stores do this. In the iTunes world, it is a corporation selling to you. On Bitmunk, it is your peers selling to you and vice-versa with most of your money going to the artist.
Bitmunk is a network where you are (along with the artist) in control of setting the prices. We're not trying to emulate a "true P2P" network as you put it - we're trying to do something that is far more important - help artists and fans. This isn't marketing BS speaking - we are putting everything we have into making a system that works for everybody.
If you would take the time to look over the site, you would see that we are making a very serious attempt at solving the current problems with digital media distribution. Go to the forums, ask some questions - I guarantee that we can answer them.
Hey Attorney Generals - how about you let me decide if P2P is 'dangerous' or not?
Hey, but guess what - you're not going to be the one deciding if P2P gets to live- its going to be the attorney generals.
Their mis-guided letter is a side-effect of "they just don't get it" syndrome. Face it, they think the worst part about P2P is that it can give you a virus! Did you see them outline the legitimate uses of P2P in the letter? No... they just did some hand waving saying "We know there are legitimate uses for communication and technology and business!". They don't know what the legitimate uses of P2P are... YOU need to educate them by writing your representative and letting them know.
or find any other P2P service that is trying to make a positive difference in the world. Freenet - allowing democracy to survive in non-democratic countries.
At the same time that governments saw that corporations make significant coin, and wanted to follow their model to help improve the efficiency of government. We stopped being citizens at that point, and started becoming customers.
Unfortunately, local governments didn't try to look too far into the future - corporations with similar interests tend to cluster together or fly apart (if their interests do not match).
Smart commercial corporations know that governmental ties help their bottom line and get them favors. So it is in the best interest of corporations to make friends with government - and since government isn't too far removed from a corporation - it is easy for a corporation to say "Hey, we want to help your customers - lets talk."
Let's be honest, there are a ton of illegal goings on on the various P2P clients/networks. That doesn't mean that P2P doesn't have its legitimate uses.
I agree... P2P has a ton of legitimate uses and as a technology is probably one of the most powerful publishing tools available to small/unknown artists. The big problem with technology and artists is that they rarely tend to mix unless the technology is dirt simple to use (which is one of the reasons iTunes is so successful).
We could go back to the monks/scribes vs. the printing press argument. This is completely in parallel with the cd duplication/distribution vs. the P2P distribution model. One of them is incredibly inefficient, damaging to the environment, unfair to small artists, and highly risky. The other (P2P) is incredibly low-cost and efficient. The big problem the companies are having right now, however, is getting past the whole "How do we protect our content?" hurdle. Everyone on Slashdot knows that DRM isn't the solution - but most artists want to feel protected - they want a guarantee of food on the table.
P2P companies need to get their act together and stop throwing up their hands and going "Its just the nature of P2P... it can't be controlled!".
In reality - it IS possible to control the content on a P2P network - not by filtering, or force (which is the current tactic being employed), but by giving people a reason to support a legitimate P2P network.
Some get reward for supporting the artist (by redistributing), some get it from letting their friends know about the artist, and some just want to see some cash come their way if they help out.
It is possible to create a truly legitimate, non-DRM, P2P network that works for everybody... I'm not just rambling on aimlessly - we started a company to do just this (legitimize P2P). Here is the proof:
The 4GB partition is what the BlackRhino distribution gets installed -into-. In other words, the distribution must be uncompressed to somewhere, and that 4GB partition is it. You can make that partition any size you want or wipe out one of the already created partitions and use that to house the BlackRhino Linux distribution.
If you already have Kondara installed, great! Installing Kondara is the hardest part of the installation. Back-up and wipe out all the files in one of your already created partitions and install BlackRhino into that newly cleaned partition. Note: Do not delete the Kondara partition, you might still need it after the BlackRhino Linux installation.
Well, the reasons for not getting the Debian project involved are many... basically, BlackRhino Linux was never going to become a publicly supported Debian release and there are some problems with the bootloader and the Debian way of doing things.
That option is open to the project now, if the Debian people want to support the small PS2 Linux development community. We welcome them to contact us... it would be very cool to merge BlackRhino into the Debian collective, the real question is... will it be practical and legal for the Debian community to support such a small developer distribution?
There are also things that don't quite fit with the Debian way... such as the PS2 Linux kit is not freely available/open. The bootloader for the system is still closed and thus the PS2 Linux Kit is not an "open" system by definition... Debian requires that all core packages be made of unencumbered software, which the bootloader clearly is not... this is probably the main reason why we haven't bothered contacting the Debian community.
As for your other comments... Blackrock people!? Jeeez, we spent all that time coming up with such a witty distribution name only to have people mock us... =P
We prefer to be called "BlackRhino people", or "those freaks over there", or even "half-crazed crack-monkeys"... but "Blackrock people", you wound us deeply, my fellow Slashdotter...:P
Glad to hear that you're going to try out the BlackRhino distribution:)
I'll attempt to answer your questions and somebody from Sony can correct me if I'm wrong...
The PS2 Linux platform was being evaluated as a possible game development mechanism, but as far as we know it will not be due to several technical considerations.
Sony isn't misleading the Linux community by providing the kit, they are simply stating "Hey, we support homebrew development, here is a kit for you homebrew developers". They really went out on a limb by releasing the kit... I can't imagine that they're making any money from it... infact, they are probably losing money on the kit. What they're hoping (and this is completely my opinion) is that a couple of thousand people will familiarize themselves with PS2 development and might become PS2/PS3 developers in the future.
There are so many knock-on effects that happen as a result of releasing a kit such as this that nobody knows what will happen, but somebody up in Sony thought "Hey, this is going to help us in the long run..."
So, I don't think they're being deceptive in any way and having spoken with most of the people involved with the project at Sony... they're being honest and straight-forward with the PS2 Linux community... more than they have to be at times.
The PlayStation 2 has a SPDIF digital optical out that could connect to a very nice home theatre system.
Use Samba to mount your MP3s from your PC.
Using XMMS, you could play all of your MP3s over your home stereo system in full digital glory.
The same goes for most Internet Radio stations.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are interested in real solution to semantic web markup that works (and is being used) right now, you might want to check out the Microformats website. There is a growing following that is working on getting the semantic web working properly. The Firefox and Songbird guys are looking at using Microformats to make browsing the web a much richer experience - NOW, not 10 years from now.
There are currently Microformats for marking up people, places, events, geographic locations, music, and many other widely used data items on the web. For more information on what Microformats are, check out the info page on Microformats.
-- manuEver heard of Starfish? It's a new distributed clustered file system:
Starfish Distributed Filesystem
From the website:
And you can build clusters at relatively low cost:
(warning: I work for the company that created Starfish)
-- manuHmmm... you seem to be concerned with a completely different class of problem than the one Starfish addresses. HA systems assume that your single server will fail eventually (which it will). There many single points of failure in the scenario you describe (ram, motherboard, glitch in the redundant power supply). What happens when you need to take the machine down for maintenance? What happens when the power strip or the UPS you have the machine plugged into fails? Your proposed solution also doesn't scale very well. If you connect 10 clients to a file system exported by your single redundant server (you have created a fantastic bottleneck in your system architecture).
Of course, at some point a bunch of big mirrored servers and playing with automount becomes pretty tedious to maintain.I'm glad you said this - you are quite right. Most people do not address the amount of money that it costs their system administrators to get it right.
However, with a stable, mature, free and high performance parallel FS the balance would shift to much less storage per server (perhaps even using just internal storage). I'm just not convinced such a thing exists yet, however much I'd like to see it.Just because something has just been released to the public doesn't mean it is not stable and mature. You are drawing a false parallel between "time that the software has been available to the public" and "stability".
We postulated that most web server clusters out there right now did not need more than 1TB of back-end storage. We use Starfish internally for our storage needs. The system is free for the previously mentioned conditions and has the source code available. We are attempting to provide a solution to the problem that you state at the end of your post.
Starfish was designed to automatically back data up - HSM was designed in from the beginning. You never have to backup a Starfish storage network. Take another look at Starfish - it does exactly what you're asking for:
Starfish Introduction (mentions file mirroring)
Our first Lustre cluster was 3 servers - it worked just fine. Starfish effortlessly scales down to 2 servers. Here is an example of it doing so:
Starfish Quickstart TutorialJust because something scales to thousands of active nodes and disks, doesn't mean it can't scale down gracefully. The Internet is a good example of this concept.
Full Disclosure: I am one of the authors for the Starfish file system.
Software like Lustre and Starfish only wants you to help testing the software. Both are not OSS in my opinion and not ready for the production.Lustre is open-source and it has been production ready for years. The open source notice is on their website - GPL. You don't get much more open source than GPL. Lustre provides support to commercial enterprises.
As for Starfish, we eat our own dog food at our company. The newest version of Starfish will be taking over full-time for all of our HA storage systems in one months time. The website that runs on top of it is Bitmunk, our bread and butter. The license allows anybody to setup a small HA cluster for free. This is going to help a great deal of small websites and research institutions. If they want us to fix bugs that they find, we'll be more than happy to oblige. However, depending on your customers to find your bugs is not only a horrible business practice, it is reckless. We put ourselves at risk far before we make a release - if there is a bug, we're usually the first people to find it.
Please take a look at both sites more thoroughly.Full Disclosure: I'm one of the authors of the Starfish file system.
We've played around with MogileFS. It does a very good job at archiving files. It is write-once, which is good for certain very specific applications. Unfortunately, it did not solve our problem. We needed a POSIX-compliant file system that looked like just another disk to Linux, but was inexpensive, simple to set up, fault-tolerant, and performed automatic data backup.
Starfish and Lustre are really for people that just want the file system to work with most of the 15,000+ packages for Linux. No muss, no fuss.
To give you some background: we needed applications like Samba, Apache, MySQL, NFS, and PHP to just work with the file system without needing any modifications. MogileFS is not POSIX-compliant, thus wasn't a good drop-in replacement for us. Starfish is POSIX-compliant and so is Lustre. Which file system fits your application really depends on your needs. In general, the further away from POSIX-compliant file systems that you go - the more development you will have to do to make your system work correctly.
Full Disclosure: I'm one of the author's of the Starfish Filesystem.
As others have mentioned, HA solutions are complicated and expensive. Unless you really need it, you probably don't want to go down that route.High-availability solutions don't have to be complicated and expensive. Starfish is the perfect example of such a simple and low-cost system. In fact, it is THE reason we wrote Starfish: To provide an in-expensive, fault-tolerant, highly available clustered storage platform that works from the smallest website to the largest storage network. We've based the technology on the assumption that having expensive hardware/software is the wrong way to go about solving the problem.
Buying bigger servers and attaching massive storage systems to them is not a very good idea when it comes to reducing single points of failure in your HA network. You must assume hardware failure - it is going to happen, when you have so many pieces of spinning metal you will hit the point at which you are losing a hard drive every day. You will start losing machines at least once a month. Or worse - what happens when you lose one out of your four "big servers" and 155TBs goes off-line in an instant? Buying bigger and more expensive hardware is a "throw money at the problem and maybe it'll disappear" solution. It is wishful thinking at best. The system you describe is a nightmare scenario when it comes to HA - I would highly advise that nobody solve their storage problem with that approach.
As for Lustre, it's really a specialized solution for HPC, made for multiple compute nodes striping to the storage nodes at full speed using a collective IO API like MPI-IO.Not really. We've used it for years on several of our web clusters. It does a very good job at providing great I/O throughput, yes - but it is applicable to many more problems than that. It is a good file system back-end for any website that has to deal with a large amount of data. It might not be right for what you want to do with it, but that doesn't mean it should be pigeon-holed to only being a "specialized solution for HPC".
Full Disclosure: I'm one of the author's of the Starfish Filesystem.
Simply not true anymore, lukas84. High-availability solutions don't have to cost "big money". Starfish is the perfect example of such a system. In fact, it is THE reason we wrote Starfish: To provide an in-expensive, fault-tolerant, highly available clustered storage platform that works from the smallest website to the largest storage network. We've based the technology on the assumption that having expensive hardware/software is the wrong way to go about solving the problem.
Full HA environments do not need to be incredibly complex. If your HA solution is incredibly complex, you've done something wrong. Take a look at how easy it is to set up a Starfish file system:
Starfish QuickStart Tutorial
That solution doesn't cost "big money", nor is it "incredibly complex".
Bitmunk P2P Music Network
DICLAIMER: I am the CEO of Digital Bazaar, the company behind the Bitmunk P2P network. Take what I have to say with a grain of salt if you must, but go and check out the site and decide for yourself.
We're really trying to help everybody out here - non-DRMed, high quality MP3 files, fair prices determined by market forces (not suits in a boardroom) and best of all - the artist gets to set their prices, licensing options, distribution countries, etc. The fans can re-distribute the artists content legally, and charge a small fee (for bandwidth, etc) if they so desire.
Or to indie artists in general.
We listen to indie artists: Bitmunk
Especially indie artists that want to spread their stuff via P2P under their terms (artists get to set prices, distribution formats, countries, descriptions, and licenses). We even have Creative Commons licensing options that the artists may use.
I just want to make this clear - I'm not astro-turfing - I'm the CEO of Digital Bazaar, the company that created the Bitmunk P2P music network - so don't take my word for it, check it out and come to your own conclusions.
In short, we're a non-DRM, P2P network that pays the artist up to 84% of the sale price regardless of who downloads/uploads their stuff on the network, the artist gets paid. All songs on the network are high quality 192kbps-320kbps VBR MP3s (which will play in any MP3 player). Additionally, you may then turn around and sell the artists work on the network and add your own small fee (which you can then use to buy more music on the network - or withdraw to your bank account).
The network launched this past Monday:
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=709
We've been covered by Slashdot before:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/13/183324 5&tid=95&tid=98
I'm one of the primary architects behind this system, we've poured all of our energy into this system in an attempt to find a balance between all the conflicted parties (DRM vs. P2P)... this isn't FUD, it is a very concentrated attempt to create a system that works for everybody. Please, read on...
Their system doesn't "guarantee" it either -- for example even "copyright aware" tech can't know if Linux is covered by SCO copyrights without help.
Sorry, but you're dead wrong - our system does guarantee legal file trades. You're making the false assumption that we use some sort of file detection software to figure out if something is copyrighted or not - which is not the case (you might want to read over our website before making statements like this).
We clear each and every creative work on the network. When you select a creative work (such as The Beatles, Penny Lane) and associate it with a file (such as an MP3) - that creative work has been cleared for sale on the network by the artist.
Absurd. Personally, I wouldn't want to give them a license to distribute all my copyrighted works.
Which is perfectly fine, the only people that really should be interested in registering their creative work with us, are those artists that want to make a living doing what they love. If you want to give your stuff away, put it up on a website or another P2P network. We're trying to help artists make a living doing what they are driven to do.
Similarly, lots of stuff from the public domain will be registered on our network. We will be charging money for them because it is worth $2 to somebody to aquire quality recordings of old Appalachian folk music, or classical music, or a TV show in the public domain. Those that don't want to pay $2 for 20 songs can go to any of the P2P services and spend countless hours trying to find a good recording.
For more information on how this whole process works, you might want to take a look at our website:
http://www.bitmunk.com/help.php?action=fulldisplay &term=bitmunk_introduction
The seller is the one that digitally signs the file - you would have to have access to the seller's private key (which is very difficult to do). You could self-sign the file, but that wouldn't really be a trustworthy signature, now would it? =P
It is very difficult to defeat the digital signatures used on Bitmunk (just as it is very difficult to defeat digital signatures in general).
Here is how it works for buyers, sellers and artists:
http://www.bitmunk.com/help.php?action=fulldisplay &term=bitmunk_introduction
You only share with other people that already own the software or music?
Instead of sharing, think buying and selling. If you legally own a copy of the copyrighted work (ie: you own the CD) - you can rip the CD to MP3 and sell it on the network legally - the artist gets their royalty and you get a bit of cash for helping to distribute the file - which you can use to buy more stuff on the network, or just withdraw to your bank account.
The rest of your questions are answered on the website:
http://www.bitmunk.com/help.php?action=fulldisplay &category=seller
The system described in the whitepaper has been implemented - its purpose is to enable anybody on a P2P network to support the artist while trading files legally with their friends and other people on the net. We have a very difficult balancing act to perform: help the artist and fan without removing any of their rights.
The protocol is open because we want to enable software interoperability (we don't want to lock anybody out of the network using special file formats or nasty DRM - we believe in protecting fair use).
Here is how the system works, in a nutshell:
- Artists register a creative work for sale on Bitmunk - they set a royalty, each time a file sale happens, a royalty is distributed to them. Lets say 30 cents (almost 3 times as much as the artist gets from iTunes or similar services).
- Somebody comes along and has an MP3 or FLAC or OGG of the creative work registered by the artist and wants to provide it on the network. They setup a sales server and want a cut of the sale whenever somebody buys it from their sales server. Lets say their cut is 20 cents. Bitmunk's cut is 15 cents (for providing the service).
- Somebody searches the network and finds the seller and the creative work they are selling and buys it for 65 cents.
- The person that just bought the file can then turn around, set their own sales server up and (since they like the artist, and also have a slower connection) charge 10 cents for re-distributing the song on their sales server. Now people have a choice between buying the song for 55 cents or 65 cents.
What incentive do people have for using such a system? Here are a couple:- Its legal - you don't have to worry about a lawsuit.
- You can support the artist more directly, and make money doing it. You can then use that money to buy other stuff off the network, or transfer it directly to your bank account.
- We don't use DRM for copyright enforcement. The system doesn't treat you like a criminal.
- The financial aspects of the network operate on efficient market theory - it is incredibly efficient at finding the perfect price for the artist and the buyer (this means cheaper music, with more money going to the artist). If you look at a supply/demand curve - the network finds the equilibrium point very quickly.
None of the online music stores do this. In the iTunes world, it is a corporation selling to you. On Bitmunk, it is your peers selling to you and vice-versa with most of your money going to the artist.Bitmunk is a network where you are (along with the artist) in control of setting the prices. We're not trying to emulate a "true P2P" network as you put it - we're trying to do something that is far more important - help artists and fans. This isn't marketing BS speaking - we are putting everything we have into making a system that works for everybody.
If you would take the time to look over the site, you would see that we are making a very serious attempt at solving the current problems with digital media distribution. Go to the forums, ask some questions - I guarantee that we can answer them.
Hey, but guess what - you're not going to be the one deciding if P2P gets to live- its going to be the attorney generals.
Their mis-guided letter is a side-effect of "they just don't get it" syndrome. Face it, they think the worst part about P2P is that it can give you a virus! Did you see them outline the legitimate uses of P2P in the letter? No... they just did some hand waving saying "We know there are legitimate uses for communication and technology and business!". They don't know what the legitimate uses of P2P are... YOU need to educate them by writing your representative and letting them know.
If you need an example, use us:
http://www.bitmunk.com/help.php?action=fulldisplay &term=bitmunk_introduction
or find any other P2P service that is trying to make a positive difference in the world. Freenet - allowing democracy to survive in non-democratic countries.
Unfortunately, local governments didn't try to look too far into the future - corporations with similar interests tend to cluster together or fly apart (if their interests do not match).
Smart commercial corporations know that governmental ties help their bottom line and get them favors. So it is in the best interest of corporations to make friends with government - and since government isn't too far removed from a corporation - it is easy for a corporation to say "Hey, we want to help your customers - lets talk."
I agree... P2P has a ton of legitimate uses and as a technology is probably one of the most powerful publishing tools available to small/unknown artists. The big problem with technology and artists is that they rarely tend to mix unless the technology is dirt simple to use (which is one of the reasons iTunes is so successful).
We could go back to the monks/scribes vs. the printing press argument. This is completely in parallel with the cd duplication/distribution vs. the P2P distribution model. One of them is incredibly inefficient, damaging to the environment, unfair to small artists, and highly risky. The other (P2P) is incredibly low-cost and efficient. The big problem the companies are having right now, however, is getting past the whole "How do we protect our content?" hurdle. Everyone on Slashdot knows that DRM isn't the solution - but most artists want to feel protected - they want a guarantee of food on the table.
P2P companies need to get their act together and stop throwing up their hands and going "Its just the nature of P2P... it can't be controlled!".
In reality - it IS possible to control the content on a P2P network - not by filtering, or force (which is the current tactic being employed), but by giving people a reason to support a legitimate P2P network.
Some get reward for supporting the artist (by redistributing), some get it from letting their friends know about the artist, and some just want to see some cash come their way if they help out.
It is possible to create a truly legitimate, non-DRM, P2P network that works for everybody... I'm not just rambling on aimlessly - we started a company to do just this (legitimize P2P). Here is the proof:
Disclaimer: I work for this company -
http://www.bitmunk.com/help.php?action=fulldisplay &term=bitmunk_introduction
If you already have Kondara installed, great! Installing Kondara is the hardest part of the installation. Back-up and wipe out all the files in one of your already created partitions and install BlackRhino into that newly cleaned partition. Note: Do not delete the Kondara partition, you might still need it after the BlackRhino Linux installation.
-- manu
That option is open to the project now, if the Debian people want to support the small PS2 Linux development community. We welcome them to contact us... it would be very cool to merge BlackRhino into the Debian collective, the real question is... will it be practical and legal for the Debian community to support such a small developer distribution?
There are also things that don't quite fit with the Debian way... such as the PS2 Linux kit is not freely available/open. The bootloader for the system is still closed and thus the PS2 Linux Kit is not an "open" system by definition... Debian requires that all core packages be made of unencumbered software, which the bootloader clearly is not... this is probably the main reason why we haven't bothered contacting the Debian community.
As for your other comments... Blackrock people!? Jeeez, we spent all that time coming up with such a witty distribution name only to have people mock us... =P
We prefer to be called "BlackRhino people", or "those freaks over there", or even "half-crazed crack-monkeys"... but "Blackrock people", you wound us deeply, my fellow Slashdotter... :P
-- manu
BlackRhino Linux press release
http://blackrhino.xrhino.com/main.php?page=press
Sony PS2 Linux Kit Community Webpage
http://playstation2-linux.com/
Sony PS2 Linux Kit coding conteste st/
http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/codingcont
BlackRhino Linux download pagea d
http://blackrhino.xrhino.com/main.php?page=downlo
xRhino Linux kernel websiten el/
http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/xrhino-ker
BlackRhino PlayStation 2 Linux Community Project Page/
http://playstation2-linux.com/projects/blackrhino
BlackRhino Linux Project Mailing Listk rhino-general
http://playstation2-linux.com/lists/listinfo/blac
-- manu
I'll attempt to answer your questions and somebody from Sony can correct me if I'm wrong...
The PS2 Linux platform was being evaluated as a possible game development mechanism, but as far as we know it will not be due to several technical considerations.
Sony isn't misleading the Linux community by providing the kit, they are simply stating "Hey, we support homebrew development, here is a kit for you homebrew developers". They really went out on a limb by releasing the kit... I can't imagine that they're making any money from it... infact, they are probably losing money on the kit. What they're hoping (and this is completely my opinion) is that a couple of thousand people will familiarize themselves with PS2 development and might become PS2/PS3 developers in the future.
There are so many knock-on effects that happen as a result of releasing a kit such as this that nobody knows what will happen, but somebody up in Sony thought "Hey, this is going to help us in the long run..."
So, I don't think they're being deceptive in any way and having spoken with most of the people involved with the project at Sony... they're being honest and straight-forward with the PS2 Linux community... more than they have to be at times.
-- manu
The PlayStation 2 has a SPDIF digital optical out that could connect to a very nice home theatre system.
Use Samba to mount your MP3s from your PC.
Using XMMS, you could play all of your MP3s over your home stereo system in full digital glory.
The same goes for most Internet Radio stations.
-- manu