4 ms·

Email is centralized to a great extent. Think of gmail, yahoo mail or outlook / hotmail.

by id 12y ago

JetSpiegel 12y ago
Bitcoin is centralized to a certain extent. Think GHash, etc See how silly this sounds?
- kaoD 12y ago
  Your counterargument sounds silly because it is silly. Email is a federal system. Even if it's more decentralized than having a single point of failure, it still has authoritative nodes and just a few points of failure (maybe 4-5 instead of a single one, not much of a difference here). If your system has servers on which clients have to rely, it's not fully decentralized. A fully decentralized system is peer-to-peer only and does not rely on anyone else. You just join the network as a peer and that's all. There's no single point (or a few points) of failure because everyone is authoritative. If, for example, GMail is taken over your email is gone and any email sent to you thereafter is lost. Your mail address is owned and controlled by GMail, they just allow you access. Even switching from GMail to Yahoo is a burden! All your contacts have to update their address books and all non-updateable media (think printed, downloaded or out of your control, like some whitepapers I published which feature my email) is stuck with your old, unusable address forever. My Bitcoin address is working, regardless of who joins or leaves the Bitcoin network. Your GMail/GHash simile is misleading. GHash users can leave the pool and they'll still have their coins in their wallet, operating normally. If GHash is closed or DDoSed users could carry on normally, or even switch to another pool if they want to do so. GHash is external to Bitcoin (a service to gather peers for convenience), while GMail and other massive email servers are critical parts of the system. Even if you set up your own email server, other servers could refuse to relay email to you, or perhaps DNS servers might choose not to handle your domain... and you're gone. In a federal system, other authoritative nodes have to acknowledge you, which they might not. And even if they acknowledge your existence, your server is still a single point of failure for yourself! And you're still relying on other single-points-of-failure for delivery. Even if your server is fine, you might not be able to deliver messages to your friend in GMail if it's gone. We've already seen this happening. MtGox is gone, but Bitcoin (the system, not the community) didn't even notice.
  - paulasmuth 12y ago
    All your points seem to focus on DNS. Nobody would argue that DNS is a decentralized system. And in fact neither is IP. As far as I understand nothing in SMTP makes it inherently more centralized than any piece of software that relies on IP (and for that matter, the web itself). Isn't the internet the poster child of a decentralized system? Does bitcoin/bitpost not rely on IP?
    - kaoD 12y ago
      > All your points seem to focus on DNS. Not at all. How did you get that impression? DNS is just one of the many ways email is centralized (email relies in a centralized third party service to resolve domain names and find mail servers for them) but I just mention it near the end in a single sentence. Remove the sentence and my point still stands. Please read again and understand my comment! > And in fact neither is IP. Actually IP is neither centralized nor decentralized. Our current largest scale implementation (which we call the Internet) is centralized, but it's a side-effect, not a requirement. > As far as I understand nothing in SMTP makes it inherently more centralized than any piece of software that relies on IP Re-read my comment. Perhaps you don't know how Bitcoin works? In Bitcoin there are no servers... or rather, everyone is a server. The cool thing is I'm still receiving coins whether I am connected to the Bitcoin network or not. It just works, regardless of who is or isn't connected to the network! In email, I'm still tied to a provider (even if I'm my own provider) which is a single point of failure. I'll say it again: if your systems has clients relying on servers (which Bitcoin does not), it is not decentralized. Come on, this is actually what makes Bitcoin so revolutionary! > Does bitcoin/bitpost not rely on IP? It does (remember IP is not inherently centralized), but it does not rely on the Internet. Even if we're using IP (the protocol), Bitcoin is transport-agnostic. In fact it is a goal for the community to use other transports (such as radio or satellites) to avoid the problem of relying on the centralized Internet. Even then, IP (the protocol) will probably be used for addressing and such, but in a decentralized manner. It's not a requirement, but IP is a useful protocol and nobody wants to reinvent the wheel.
      - paulasmuth 12y ago

Email is centralized to a great extent. Think of gmail, yahoo mail or outlook / hotmail.

by id 12y ago

Email is centralized to a great extent. Think of gmail, yahoo mail or outlook / hotmail.

JetSpiegel 12y ago

Bitcoin is centralized to a certain extent. Think GHash, etc See how silly this sounds?

kaoD 12y ago
Your counterargument sounds silly because it is silly. Email is a federal system. Even if it's more decentralized than having a single point of failure, it still has authoritative nodes and just a few points of failure (maybe 4-5 instead of a single one, not much of a difference here). If your system has servers on which clients have to rely, it's not fully decentralized. A fully decentralized system is peer-to-peer only and does not rely on anyone else. You just join the network as a peer and that's all. There's no single point (or a few points) of failure because everyone is authoritative. If, for example, GMail is taken over your email is gone and any email sent to you thereafter is lost. Your mail address is owned and controlled by GMail, they just allow you access. Even switching from GMail to Yahoo is a burden! All your contacts have to update their address books and all non-updateable media (think printed, downloaded or out of your control, like some whitepapers I published which feature my email) is stuck with your old, unusable address forever. My Bitcoin address is working, regardless of who joins or leaves the Bitcoin network. Your GMail/GHash simile is misleading. GHash users can leave the pool and they'll still have their coins in their wallet, operating normally. If GHash is closed or DDoSed users could carry on normally, or even switch to another pool if they want to do so. GHash is external to Bitcoin (a service to gather peers for convenience), while GMail and other massive email servers are critical parts of the system. Even if you set up your own email server, other servers could refuse to relay email to you, or perhaps DNS servers might choose not to handle your domain... and you're gone. In a federal system, other authoritative nodes have to acknowledge you, which they might not. And even if they acknowledge your existence, your server is still a single point of failure for yourself! And you're still relying on other single-points-of-failure for delivery. Even if your server is fine, you might not be able to deliver messages to your friend in GMail if it's gone. We've already seen this happening. MtGox is gone, but Bitcoin (the system, not the community) didn't even notice.
- paulasmuth 12y ago
  All your points seem to focus on DNS. Nobody would argue that DNS is a decentralized system. And in fact neither is IP. As far as I understand nothing in SMTP makes it inherently more centralized than any piece of software that relies on IP (and for that matter, the web itself). Isn't the internet the poster child of a decentralized system? Does bitcoin/bitpost not rely on IP?
  - kaoD 12y ago
    > All your points seem to focus on DNS. Not at all. How did you get that impression? DNS is just one of the many ways email is centralized (email relies in a centralized third party service to resolve domain names and find mail servers for them) but I just mention it near the end in a single sentence. Remove the sentence and my point still stands. Please read again and understand my comment! > And in fact neither is IP. Actually IP is neither centralized nor decentralized. Our current largest scale implementation (which we call the Internet) is centralized, but it's a side-effect, not a requirement. > As far as I understand nothing in SMTP makes it inherently more centralized than any piece of software that relies on IP Re-read my comment. Perhaps you don't know how Bitcoin works? In Bitcoin there are no servers... or rather, everyone is a server. The cool thing is I'm still receiving coins whether I am connected to the Bitcoin network or not. It just works, regardless of who is or isn't connected to the network! In email, I'm still tied to a provider (even if I'm my own provider) which is a single point of failure. I'll say it again: if your systems has clients relying on servers (which Bitcoin does not), it is not decentralized. Come on, this is actually what makes Bitcoin so revolutionary! > Does bitcoin/bitpost not rely on IP? It does (remember IP is not inherently centralized), but it does not rely on the Internet. Even if we're using IP (the protocol), Bitcoin is transport-agnostic. In fact it is a goal for the community to use other transports (such as radio or satellites) to avoid the problem of relying on the centralized Internet. Even then, IP (the protocol) will probably be used for addressing and such, but in a decentralized manner. It's not a requirement, but IP is a useful protocol and nobody wants to reinvent the wheel.
    - paulasmuth 12y ago