On 01/18/2011 12:05 PM, Michael Blizek wrote: >> I think the key question, as has always been the question when it >> comes to P2P network, is usability. Skype "just worked" so well >> that it took off like mad. Same for the major pirate networks >> (though even those are surprisingly unwieldy). A wireless mesh will >> only take off if it's absolutely dead simple. > > Making it simple is one of my goals. There is not really anything that you > really need to configure... except maybe which traffic has priority.
Great! The less the better. If you can get rid of the need (or even option) to prioritize traffic, best of all. >> 1) You buy this USB device from WalMart, and plug it in for the first time. > > You mean an USB WLAN adapter? I mean something that is clearly named that you can say to your mom "Go to WalMart and by Blah". Your actually *better* if you support *fewer* options. "USB WLAN adapter" is too vague -- there are too many options, and even if you supported all of them, it's too scary for most people to even think about that choice. Better to pick one exact thing to start with, and make its support absolutely flawless. So rather than "an USB WLAN adapter" I'd suggest you pick a specific model and tell people to get that, and don't even try to support anything else. Though since I wrote my first email I've revised my thinking: just start with BlueTooth. Every laptop and phone already has it so there's no hardware issue to worry about. > >> 2) An app launches, whether you're on Mac, Windows, Linux, iPad, whatever. > > This will not work. Cor is currently linux only. Users of other operating > systems can still use it, by getting a router letting the router translate > between TCP/IP and cor. This will probably be a common use. > > You will also need to install the cor software yourself in most cases... Ah, then you're screwed. Wireless meshes require high node density, which means Windows and Mac. >> 9) You have a vast interface to browse the photos, videos, songs, >> updates, profile information, and basically a lot of stuff about >> everybody around you. The USB dongle is used to install on a new >> computer, and connect directly without the internet, but even >> without the dongle an installed computer can continue to participate >> in the mesh via the internet. > > Cor is *not* about social networks. It is about forwarding data to hosts > which are not connected locally. You can build on top of it whatever you > want. That's like saying Car is not about moving people. It's about moving cargo in oblong 50-300lbs units; you can build on top of it whatever you want. The point is: nobody wants to build on top of Cor. They want to share files. Until it solves a real problem that people actually have, it doesn't solve a real problem that people actually have. >> 10) If any particular computer gets lost or compromised, you can >> unfriend them (or remove just that device) immediately. >> Furthermore, your node is configured to monitor unfriending to >> automatically "quarantine" any node that has become suspect. (For >> example, one of my friends lost his iPhone; he'd remove that device >> from his profile and my devices would stop talking with it, without >> any involvement from me.) > > This is only effective, if: > 1) Your friend does not have any cached data on the device > 2) The unfriending happens before the attacker makes use abuses the data Again, you're not thinking like a user. If you took that mentality to everything, you'd never leave the house. Nobody expects perfection, don't get hung up on trying to create it. >> 11) And because your USB dongle is owned by you, it can store data >> such as your private key so you can easily move it between computers >> -- or even quickly access your mesh using someone else's computer, >> without leaving any trace on the computer itself. > > You mean that you want to boot from this USB dongle? Even then, if the owner > of the computer wants to attack you, he can and there is little you can do > against it. Think about attaching a firewire cable to that computer and > reading/manipulating the memory via DMA... Anybody sufficiently equipped and motivated to do that, wouldn't. They'd just put a bag over your head and interrogate you. >> Anyway, ultimately I think mesh technology will be far less >> important than mesh *usability*. It needs to be packaged up with >> really simple, excellent software that enables the most basic peer >> activities -- especially file transfer -- to be done in a totally >> seamless way > > I do not think that technology will be of little importance. Currently meshes > have a *very* low capacity. Bandwidth requirements are constantly growing and > hardware/time will not help us here. You've raised a bunch of completely irrelevant concerns that merely demonstrate my point. By caring about a bunch of things that don't matter to real people, you're ignoring the much simpler and more important things about which they do care. That's why nobody will ever use what you build, and you'll whine when somebody makes something 1% as powerful and complex, but that happens to actually be useful to real people. I'm sorry to phrase it so strongly and antagonistically. But this is my point: technology is not the bottleneck. It's not even the hard part -- not by a wide margin. If we devoted half as much time actually polishing this stuff up for real world use as we did solving the next esoteric edge case, we'd have had all this years ago. -david _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
