WASTE

[andrewducker]

Right, that's it, I'm off of WASTE.

It's a nice enough system in some ways, but I've decided that I really don't like the fact that if I'm friends with Bob and Bob's friends with Charles and Charles is friends with Derek, then Derek has as much right to my bandwidth as Bob does.

I want to be able to shared files with my friends. And it'd be nice if they could share files with their friends, but that's no reason for me to be sharing with them. If I want to share with the world, I'll do it via Kazaa or something similar.

Nathan's challenged me to come up with something that works along these lines, so that'll be a good project for me.

Cheers for the people that helped me play around with the system. Sorry it didn't quite work out.

Comments

[protempore.livejournal.com]

Yes, well do keep [us] up to date on your brainstorming and any fruition thereof. I think I've nearly grabbed all the files I'm interested in, so I might drop waste too :-)

[guyinahat.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sick of it now too, for the same reasons.
I'm sure you version will be much better anyhoo.
And go for a better name while you're at it...

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

How about a normal FTP server with accounts for your friends? (or depending on your OS possibly a more secure file share protocol, FTP hacks arent fun)) If they stop being friends switch off the account, if you need the B/W, shut down the service.

All this peer-peer malarky is a nightmare for security. Call me old fashioned but I think the traditional ways are just fine :o)

[andrewducker]

No searchability.

I want something that I can say "Who has some Gotan Project?" and have it tell me, not have to trawl through hundreds of folders looking for it on dozens of FTP servers.

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

You're describing an index, which is a discrete function from the actual upload/download process. The issues you have with security and bandwidth are more the later process than the former.

Use a simple and robust existing protocol for the actual transfer and design an app which indexes your files somewhere that people you want can view them. This could be a http (or similar) server on your machine, a list you publish and send to your friends for them to localy search, or a central depository.

Actualy, WindowsXP has various automatic indexing functions built into it, dont know if its presented via an API but you might be able to hook into the OS's own indexing and searching.

[andrewducker]

Of course, FTP also doesn't support file-swarming, which I view to be a pretty essential part of any modern file transfer system.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

Surprisingly, I feel the same way. Once you've grabbed the files you want, you're relying on someone else then getting more files which you want too. Which kinda defeats the purpose, as you can just go on to Kazaa and get them yourself.

I'll stick with it till I grab all I can see I want (or until everyone else has vanished off it and there's nothing for me to grab), then I'm giving it the heave too.