On Sat, 2007-10-06 at 17:46 -0700, David Barrett wrote: > > Distributed systems can be enormously scalable even though centrally > controlled. DNS is a good example of a massively distributed but > completely > centralized service. By extension, you could say that all services > that > depend on DNS (web, email, etc) are also massively distributed but > completely centralized. BitTorrent is another example (relying upon > DNS and > trackers, both of which are centralized but distributed). > > At the end of the day, the only value I see to decentralization is > that it > prevents central control. This is only useful if your application > expressly > requires a lack of central control (for privacy/anonymity reasons).
(Hi, first post to the list.) Privacy and anonymity is not the only reason to prevent central control. I tend to think that the economic reasons are more important. Mostly two economic reasons. 1. Central control means central decisions. And centralized control over an economy (allocation of scarce resources in a network) is often worse than a free economy. 2. Central control menas that those in control can transfer value from those without control to themselves. (Which actually just follows from 2) Regards, John _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
