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by definition decentralizedness means no one is responsible That is flat out wrong. In this sense, I would go as far as to say “Protocols are for when there’s

by definition decentralizedness means no one is responsible That is flat out wrong. In this sense, I would go as far as to say “Protocols are for when there’s no good centralized way of getting things done.” That isn't even logically connected to the previous sentence at all. I don't understand this bit, either: Realtime protocols like PubSubHubBub and RSSCloud are there because that’s the only way to make the Web work in realtime. It doesn’t work the other way around. The only way I can parse this is as refuting the strawman that "the web works in real-time because there are realtime protocols". But of course it does, even Twitter has internal protocols that work in real-time. Would GMail be faster if they had invented their own protocol? No, it would just be dumb. So... in summary: wait, what?

thinkingisfun 14y ago
Sorry for being so snarky, but I really don't think you make any valid/coherent point I could see. Let me make a counterpoint, maybe someone can find holes in it: Imagine Twitter supported OStatus.[1] Anything going on between users signed up on Twitter would be instant just as it is now. Twitter could still have ads, and it could justify those ads by offering great features (OStatus et. al don't tell you what you can do, after all, they just restrict what you can share with other apps that implement it), and great speed. Twitter users could then still subscribe to someone hosting their website from their crappy DSL connection; just those updates would be slower. And it would be up to that person to either get a really fast server, and/or pay for a CDN etc., or simply suffer the cost of the delay, and the fact that some people might not even subscribe to them because of that delay. [1] Now image GitHub supporting OStatus.. Wordpress, forum software, everything. Why not? Turns out the content aggregator IS THE INTERNET, and the people who "don't get it" are those who desperately try to see it as a pie that can and should be carved up. But you cannot fool all the people all the time, and by the chain of logical fallacies based on wrong claims/assumptions, I really wonder what audience this is even aimed at. Hackers, or people with money/eyeballs? We - and I don't mean "hackers", I mean most people if you asked the question straight - do not need or want middlemen for something as basic as communication or trust. That's what it boils down to. Just like everybody should be able to read and write and do basic math, everybody should at least have the option to have their own address on the web, without being forced into one of the gated communities. There is a hope for an ironic twist: should protocols and DIY take off, Facebook and Twitter and others better support RSS, OStatus etc; because otherwise they'll just have walled themselves into a tomb, while we play in the actual garden. After all, a garden is where exciting things can happen, where people play games for fun, where they build crappy things with stones and branches and leaves, and where it's boring most of the time - in contrast, the alley is where people mistake drug addiction for fun, the mall where they mistake consumption for creativity, and the whorehouse is where the fun never stops. I know where I'd rather be. (no offense to prostitutes intended, I'm just running out of metaphors) To finish my rant: in the wake of the app.net enthusiasm I often read that even 10000 users would be great if those were "the right people". Well, I will not ever be able to get to know, much less dedicate time to, even a 1000 people. So give me a network of 10000 people who are willing to read manuals and fiddle, if they can keep their independence and dignity that way. I don't mean hackers, I'll never be a good programmer myself; I mean people who are semi-intelligent and stubborn like me. People who write for themselves, not for audiences, who not only don't care what's on TV, who don't even know. That's enough. A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door. -- Friedensreich Hundertwasser
- mbell 14y ago
  > We - and I don't mean "hackers", I mean most people if you asked the question straight - do not need or want middlemen for something as basic as communication or trust. That's what it boils down to. The fatal flaw in this argument is asking the person. Very few will say 'I want a middle man in my news', but at the same time few will question that middle man. Quite to the contrary, they will spread that middleman's link to everyone they know through Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. This even happens on Hacker News (e.g. constant TechCrunch and HuffingtonPost articles). Often times people will say what paints them in the best light. They will answer questions not in the context of what they would actually do but what they would do if they were whom they imagine themselves to be.
volaski 14y ago
I agree my post wasn't coherent. Forgive me I just wrote down what came to my mind and posted it. That said, I don't understand what you are trying to say either. It would have been nice if you discussed why my argument "by definition decentralized means no one is responsible" is "flat out wrong". Also regarding my statement "Realtime protocols like PubSubHubBub and RSScloud are there because that's the only way to make the Web work in realtime", maybe I didn't state it clear enough, but it's not as obvious as it sounds in my opinion. Before RSSCloud and PubSubHubBub, if you wanted to run an aggregator you had to actively poll sites, which was extremely inefficient. With these protocols now aggregators can deliver content in near realtime because they just have to implement those protocols. The point I was trying to make was, even these efforts will never be completely reliable because they are built on top of protocols and standards. Protocols and standards work only when "good enough" is good enough. For example, building a decentralized version of a stock ticker system sounds cool but in practice its performance will never be as good as the original centralized version.
- andreasvc 14y ago
  In a decentralized system like email or jabber there is responsibility, @example.com is responsible for delivering messages to its users, and for the necessary communication with other servers. And of course you'll want to use push messages for communication between servers. It really doesn't have to add all that much latency, a few roundtrips is perfectly doable. That's a very small price to pay for the benefit of being independent of the whims (or unreliability) of a single entity. That said, it's probably not going to happen soon, but not because of technical issues. I think it's just a matter of inertia among users, just like people are still using MSN messenger or skype instead of jabber.
  - volaski 14y ago
    I think the when we talk about Twitter, the definition of "reliability" is entirely different. When we talk about emails, we can say it's reliable as long as my email gets delivered one way or another. For example, if I send a mass email to 20 friends, I don't assume anything about when each of them will receive my message. I just think that it will get delivered in a reasonable amount of time. However what Twitter brings to the table is this: It is safe to assume when I tweet, all my followers will be able to see it immediately. This is a huge difference not because of the delivery time, but because of the type of behavior it enables. Being able to assume that my message is delivered in realtime is very different from not being able to assume. And this is not a technical issue, so even if you build a "good enough" realtime system using decentralized architecture, it wouldn't be half as good as Twitter.

thinkingisfun 14y ago

Sorry for being so snarky, but I really don't think you make any valid/coherent point I could see. Let me make a counterpoint, maybe someone can find holes in it: Imagine Twitter supported OStatus.[1] Anything going on between users signed up on Twitter would be instant just as it is now. Twitter could still have ads, and it could justify those ads by offering great features (OStatus et. al don't tell you what you can do, after all, they just restrict what you can share with other apps that implement it), and great speed. Twitter users could then still subscribe to someone hosting their website from their crappy DSL connection; just those updates would be slower. And it would be up to that person to either get a really fast server, and/or pay for a CDN etc., or simply suffer the cost of the delay, and the fact that some people might not even subscribe to them because of that delay. [1] Now image GitHub supporting OStatus.. Wordpress, forum software, everything. Why not? Turns out the content aggregator IS THE INTERNET, and the people who "don't get it" are those who desperately try to see it as a pie that can and should be carved up. But you cannot fool all the people all the time, and by the chain of logical fallacies based on wrong claims/assumptions, I really wonder what audience this is even aimed at. Hackers, or people with money/eyeballs? We - and I don't mean "hackers", I mean most people if you asked the question straight - do not need or want middlemen for something as basic as communication or trust. That's what it boils down to. Just like everybody should be able to read and write and do basic math, everybody should at least have the option to have their own address on the web, without being forced into one of the gated communities. There is a hope for an ironic twist: should protocols and DIY take off, Facebook and Twitter and others better support RSS, OStatus etc; because otherwise they'll just have walled themselves into a tomb, while we play in the actual garden. After all, a garden is where exciting things can happen, where people play games for fun, where they build crappy things with stones and branches and leaves, and where it's boring most of the time - in contrast, the alley is where people mistake drug addiction for fun, the mall where they mistake consumption for creativity, and the whorehouse is where the fun never stops. I know where I'd rather be. (no offense to prostitutes intended, I'm just running out of metaphors) To finish my rant: in the wake of the app.net enthusiasm I often read that even 10000 users would be great if those were "the right people". Well, I will not ever be able to get to know, much less dedicate time to, even a 1000 people. So give me a network of 10000 people who are willing to read manuals and fiddle, if they can keep their independence and dignity that way. I don't mean hackers, I'll never be a good programmer myself; I mean people who are semi-intelligent and stubborn like me. People who write for themselves, not for audiences, who not only don't care what's on TV, who don't even know. That's enough. A person in a rented apartment must be able to lean out of his window and scrape off the masonry within arm's reach. And he must be allowed to take a long brush and paint everything outside within arm's reach. So that it will be visible from afar to everyone in the street that someone lives there who is different from the imprisoned, enslaved, standardised man who lives next door. -- Friedensreich Hundertwasser

mbell 14y ago
> We - and I don't mean "hackers", I mean most people if you asked the question straight - do not need or want middlemen for something as basic as communication or trust. That's what it boils down to. The fatal flaw in this argument is asking the person. Very few will say 'I want a middle man in my news', but at the same time few will question that middle man. Quite to the contrary, they will spread that middleman's link to everyone they know through Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. This even happens on Hacker News (e.g. constant TechCrunch and HuffingtonPost articles). Often times people will say what paints them in the best light. They will answer questions not in the context of what they would actually do but what they would do if they were whom they imagine themselves to be.

volaski 14y ago

I agree my post wasn't coherent. Forgive me I just wrote down what came to my mind and posted it. That said, I don't understand what you are trying to say either. It would have been nice if you discussed why my argument "by definition decentralized means no one is responsible" is "flat out wrong". Also regarding my statement "Realtime protocols like PubSubHubBub and RSScloud are there because that's the only way to make the Web work in realtime", maybe I didn't state it clear enough, but it's not as obvious as it sounds in my opinion. Before RSSCloud and PubSubHubBub, if you wanted to run an aggregator you had to actively poll sites, which was extremely inefficient. With these protocols now aggregators can deliver content in near realtime because they just have to implement those protocols. The point I was trying to make was, even these efforts will never be completely reliable because they are built on top of protocols and standards. Protocols and standards work only when "good enough" is good enough. For example, building a decentralized version of a stock ticker system sounds cool but in practice its performance will never be as good as the original centralized version.

andreasvc 14y ago
In a decentralized system like email or jabber there is responsibility, @example.com is responsible for delivering messages to its users, and for the necessary communication with other servers. And of course you'll want to use push messages for communication between servers. It really doesn't have to add all that much latency, a few roundtrips is perfectly doable. That's a very small price to pay for the benefit of being independent of the whims (or unreliability) of a single entity. That said, it's probably not going to happen soon, but not because of technical issues. I think it's just a matter of inertia among users, just like people are still using MSN messenger or skype instead of jabber.
- volaski 14y ago
  I think the when we talk about Twitter, the definition of "reliability" is entirely different. When we talk about emails, we can say it's reliable as long as my email gets delivered one way or another. For example, if I send a mass email to 20 friends, I don't assume anything about when each of them will receive my message. I just think that it will get delivered in a reasonable amount of time. However what Twitter brings to the table is this: It is safe to assume when I tweet, all my followers will be able to see it immediately. This is a huge difference not because of the delivery time, but because of the type of behavior it enables. Being able to assume that my message is delivered in realtime is very different from not being able to assume. And this is not a technical issue, so even if you build a "good enough" realtime system using decentralized architecture, it wouldn't be half as good as Twitter.