Re: [jdev] decentralized omniscience

2013-03-30 Thread Justin Karneges

On 03/29/2013 09:55 AM, Kevin Smith wrote:

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Justin Karneges  wrote:

The reason I bring this up here is to discuss some protocol. I think all
that is really needed for a system like this to work is for the smart entity
to act as a proxy.


Is this the same idea as the BC inbox, where you request lots of feeds
and you have a local service that massages them to send to you?


I'm not familiar with BC inbox but it sounds similar. The tricky part is 
making sure the smart entity in the middle (the "inbox" or such) has 
access rights to the feeds. For example, if the feed is private but has 
granted access to your JID, then you'd need a way to have access granted 
to the inbox JID as well. Does BC have a solution for that?


My suggestion is to generalize the approach of having one entity act on 
behalf of another.


Justin
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Re: [jdev] decentralized omniscience

2013-03-29 Thread Kevin Smith
On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Justin Karneges  wrote:
> The reason I bring this up here is to discuss some protocol. I think all
> that is really needed for a system like this to work is for the smart entity
> to act as a proxy.

Is this the same idea as the BC inbox, where you request lots of feeds
and you have a local service that massages them to send to you?

/K
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Re: [jdev] decentralized omniscience

2013-03-17 Thread Geof
On Mar 16, 2013 8:11 AM, "Justin Karneges"  wrote:

> **
>
> In thinking about federated social networks, I started to wonder if
> certain features enjoyed in monolithic systems might not carry over very
> well to our world. There are many situations where Facebook tailors your
> view based on its all-knowing graph database, but these kinds of things may
> be hard to pull off when there isn't any all-knowing entity.
>
>
>
> Take, for example, the case of viewing a Facebook post that contains many
> "likes". If any of your friends liked the post, then their identities will
> be placed in the data summarization of that post. This scales well, too. A
> public post which might have 1 likes will still manage to include your
> 1 friend that liked the post in the summary.
>
>
>
> I'm not sure if it's possible for these kinds of features to exist fully
> decentralized (or at least not without it being insanely complex), but we
> of course we don't want a wholly centralized system either. Maybe there's a
> middleground, whereby complex brainpower can be offloaded to special
> services dedicated to the task, without putting everything in that basket.
> I'm thinking of a model like the web and search engines. The web is
> functional without Google, but Google adds a lot of all-knowing value to
> those who wish to use it. So, perhaps services like Buddycloud could take
> care of all the storage, actions, federation, etc, but then separate smart
> searchy entities could be optionally integrated to augment the experience.
>
>
>
> The reason I bring this up here is to discuss some protocol. I think all
> that is really needed for a system like this to work is for the smart
> entity to act as a proxy. So, when fetching a post, you'd send a request to
> the smart entity, which then requests out to the post source. If the post
> has 1 likes, then the smart entity would need to download all of these
> and create a customized summarization to be returned to the initial
> requester. Oh, and of course we'd need a way for the post source to
> validate that the smart entity can act on behalf of the initial requester.
> The smart entity should not have full access to everything, but only what
> it is able to see based its users. The end result is that there isn't
> necessarily any smart entity that knows *everything*, but perhaps several
> that independently know enough to get the job done for their users. Like
> search engines on the web, these smart entities of federated social
> networks could be proactive in crawling, subscribing to, and caching data,
> such that in many cases they will immediately have answers for their users
> without needing to proxy out every time.
>
>
>
> Perhaps this could be accomplished with something like XEP-291 (to allow
> your JID to vouch for a third party JID allowed to act as you), and SHIM
> (for the proxied request to stamp who the original requester was).
>
>
>
> Is that it? Can anyone think of a smart feature they've seen on Facebook
> or Google+ that could not be accomplished with this very simple protocol?
> Maybe there are some features that absolutely require a central entity?
>
>
>
> Justin
>
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>
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[jdev] decentralized omniscience

2013-03-16 Thread Justin Karneges
In thinking about federated social networks, I started to wonder if certain 
features enjoyed in monolithic systems might not carry over very well to our 
world. There are many situations where Facebook tailors your view based on its 
all-knowing graph database, but these kinds of things may be hard to pull off 
when there isn't any all-knowing entity.

Take, for example, the case of viewing a Facebook post that contains many 
"likes". If any of your friends liked the post, then their identities will be 
placed in the data summarization of that post. This scales well, too. A public 
post which might have 1 likes will still manage to include your 1 friend 
that liked the post in the summary.

I'm not sure if it's possible for these kinds of features to exist fully 
decentralized (or at least not without it being insanely complex), but we of 
course we don't want a wholly centralized system either. Maybe there's a 
middleground, whereby complex brainpower can be offloaded to special services 
dedicated to the task, without putting everything in that basket. I'm thinking 
of a model like the web and search engines. The web is functional without 
Google, but Google adds a lot of all-knowing value to those who wish to use 
it. So, perhaps services like Buddycloud could take care of all the storage, 
actions, federation, etc, but then separate smart searchy entities could be 
optionally integrated to augment the experience.

The reason I bring this up here is to discuss some protocol. I think all that 
is really needed for a system like this to work is for the smart entity to act 
as a proxy. So, when fetching a post, you'd send a request to the smart 
entity, which then requests out to the post source. If the post has 1 
likes, then the smart entity would need to download all of these and create a 
customized summarization to be returned to the initial requester. Oh, and of 
course we'd need a way for the post source to validate that the smart entity 
can act on behalf of the initial requester. The smart entity should not have 
full access to everything, but only what it is able to see based its users. 
The end result is that there isn't necessarily any smart entity that knows 
*everything*, but perhaps several that independently know enough to get the 
job done for their users. Like search engines on the web, these smart entities 
of federated social networks could be proactive in crawling, subscribing to, 
and caching data, such that in many cases they will immediately have answers 
for their users without needing to proxy out every time.

Perhaps this could be accomplished with something like XEP-291 (to allow your 
JID to vouch for a third party JID allowed to act as you), and SHIM (for the 
proxied request to stamp who the original requester was).

Is that it? Can anyone think of a smart feature they've seen on Facebook or 
Google+ that could not be accomplished with this very simple protocol? Maybe 
there are some features that absolutely require a central entity?

Justin___
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