[Non-member submission]
Well, Napster servers are now open source and so there are going to be
multiple servers appearing reasonably soon. These servers are tied
together by a server search engine called Napagater. How well it will
work... ::shrug::
On the other hand, there's a BBS style service called Hotline which has
been doing much the same thing for many, many years now. Originally
Hotline was mainly used to distribute Mac shareware, but has since
expanded to be much like Napster, except with files other than mp3s as
well. Hotline servers are wholly independent with each other. The enxt
level up are servers which track the existence of the various servers.
Then _those_ servers provide search information to top level search
engines available via the web (and recently through independent
applications.)
The other option is that I might be clinically dense and be missing the
point of your questoin, but I don't see any reason why Hotline doesn't
meet the criteria that you've establish...
Omri.
On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Alex Future Bokov wrote:
> Transhuman Mailing List
>
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>
> Okay, this is a theoretical question that I'd like to ask without
> getting bogged down in politics. I'm using Napster and Gnutella as
> convenient examples and not because I approve or disapprove of either.
>
> 1. Gnutella--
> It's distributed and therefore robust. You cannot shut down
> gnutellanet by shutting down one, or ten, or a thousand servers.
> However, you cannot do exhaustive searches on it. The content
> you're looking for might be out there and yet not be guaranteed
> to show up on a search. Another disadvantage is that the
> searches make inefficient use of bandwidth.
>
> 2. Napster--
> It is exhaustive. For better or worse, you'll find every single
> instance of Michael_Jackson_Thriller.mp3 that anybody on the
> network is serving. However, the server/s that store the
> content listings and corresponding locations of the content are
> all under the control of one company, which means they are
> vulnerable to legal action, censorship, company-wide technical
> failure, corporate abuse, and attack by hackers.
>
> So, what about combining the best of the two? Decentralization and
> exhaustive searching? Is it a logical impossibility, or is it merely
> something that hasn't been done yet?
>
> - --
>
> Arkanside gun Special Forces
> Why are the above words in my signature? Check out:
> http://www.echelon.wiretapped.net
>
>
>
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Omri.
------
And earthquakes are to a girl's guitar
They're just another good vibration
-- Red Hot Chili Peppers (Californication)
------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:35:26 MDT