Bram Cohen's Response to Microsoft's Avalanche

An anonymous reader writes "Bram Cohen has reduced Microsoft's proposed file-sharing application--codenamed Avalanche--to vaporware, dubbing its paper on the subject as "complete garbage". "I'd like to clarify that Avalanche is vapourware," Cohen said. "It isn't a product which you can use or test with, it's a bunch of proposed algorithms. There isn't even a fleshed-out network protocol. The 'experiments' they've done are simulations.""

Not even close to finished, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Windows.

Use the Coral Cache!

[darkmeridian]

I cannot believe that we still do not use the Coral Cache and Bittorrent to prevent crashing poor servers. I mean, now we're just going to end up slashdotting that first link, uh, slashdot...

Forget it.

Not bad!

[markild]

"It isn't a product which you can use or test with, it's a bunch of proposed algorithms. There isn't even a fleshed-out network protocol. The 'experiments' they've done are simulations."

Another interesting project from the Microsoft team then? Looks like they've made an entire department, dedicated to making ideas about things that they could make, but never intend to do.. Nice going

SDLC

[savagedome]

Hi Bram, just to let you know that Microsoft Software Development Life Cycle works a 'little' different. We market it first, then release it, then develop it and then design it. And maybe, just maybe we might make it work if enough people are using it.

Hope that helps.

Sincerely,
Microsoft

PS: Note that I used maybe twice.

Torrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anybody have the torrent for the app?

Somewhat patronizing?

[sczimme]

"Unfortunately, [the paper] is actually one of the better academic papers on BitTorrent, because it makes some attempt, however feeble, to do an apples to apples comparison," he said.

Then Mr. Cohen patted Microsoft on the head, gave it a cookie, and sent it outside to play.

Re:Not even close to finished, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Avalanche sounds like a big snowjob.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we supposed to take this "article" any more seriously than a pro-Microsoft "study" by some Microsoft shill?

Slashdot is turning into the Jerry Springer of tech news.

"My P2P architecture is soooo much better than your P2P architecture, bitch!"
"Oh no you didn't!"

So, when will we get to see the topless crack-whore midgets?

A long time ago Alan Turing...

[Anonymous Coward]

A long time ago in the 1930's, a british fellow named Alan Turing came up with some ideas for a fantastical machine that could automatically compute mathematical formula. Unfortunately for those whose lives the "computer" might have changed, he was immediately shouted down by the trolls of Slashdot shouting "Where's the implementation?!"

We don't know yet

[dtfinch]

Microsoft might just release it as an API, without releasing an easy to use client of their own. That way they don't promote piracy, but they can reduce the bandwidth needed for software updates and assist adware producers in delivering full motion full screen ads to unsuspecting users.

And there it is!

[Anonymous Coward]

BitTorrent Web site would have shown that the real choking algorithms work nothing like this.

Illegal file swapping uses asside, one of the advantages that I had expected BitTorrent to provide was increased download speed. I expected that the use of multiple download sources would allow me to saturate my connection rather than be at the mercy of a single FTP server's connection. What I have experience repeatedly, version after version, with BitTorrent has been quite different. I have experienced slow connections, at least much slower than I would expect and in some cases, slower that a single FTP server. Now we see the problem. It is because of the "choking alogrithm".

Now, don't even bother offering your comments on configuration of BitTorrent or the firewall, I know what I am doing and I know that the configurations were fully optimized. The fact is that BitTorrent consistently under performs because of its "choking algorithm".

This choking algorithm may be beneficial in the sense of increasing the total connections that a seed will accept but it robs the system of its performance benefits. So what is the advantage then? Provide slow connections to the largest possible audience or provide better performance? The answer seems to be the former, which is very advantageous to the illegal P2P crowd but doesn't really help the legitimate users. There's little or no benefit in being able to connect to an ISO download when it will take a week to complete the download. It is better than waiting a week for a connection and then downloading the ISO is 15 minutes!

But, Cohen doesn't want to here this stuff. In fact when presented with these ideas, he reacts like a mental patient! It is because of Cohen and his arrogance or mental disorders that MS Avalanche will emerge from its vaporware as a vastly superior system. It will of course also include DRM so it won't help the P2P crowd very much.

Article is all wrong,,,

[Bionic_Baboon]

Its not vapourware, in fact its going be desinged to use WinFS.

Re:Not even close to finished, you say?

[TomorrowPlusX]

The awesome part is that that means BeOS is DONE. And OS2/Warp. And AmigaOS...

Re:Dont Underestimate MS. They'll Integrate Avalan

[Anonymous Coward]

As they're cutting features left and right, you expect them to build, integrate and test something that's just been released as a *proposed algorithm* into Longhorn at *this* stage of development? Are you on crack?

Re:Torrent?

[vagabond_gr]

Who cares. Here's the .avalanche [dont-click.silly] file.

Yeah, We Know It's Going To Be Garbage

[Master of Transhuman]

The question is: Will it be pulled from Longhorn?

(Yes, this is a joke, morons.)

Re:Not bad!

[Nasarius]

Did you even look at the website you linked to? Everything there has a functioning prototype that you can play with. There's a whole fucking box called "Graduates of Lab", which shows former lab projects that you're now probably familiar with as part of Google!

How did this get modded up?

Sweet no more lawsuits

[Anonymous Coward]

but your honor the file sharing software is an intregral part of the operating system if you remove it windows wont work so i had to share all my files.