Comments on: REST Personal Message TEP http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/ Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:21:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: a http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28580 a Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28580 Actually... yacy appears to accept opensearch format... Actually… yacy appears to accept opensearch format…

]]> By: a http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28579 a Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28579 I agree with you entirely about federation and that a private and non-governmental public mix would be excellent. No, Yacy doesn't appear to have opted into such a scheme, but it would be great if it did! The opensearch movement -- which permits federation -- is obviously the way to go. An excellent combo, in my eyes, would be a cleversafe hash (perhaps), a p2p crawler and indexing system and p2p accepting pushed opensearch xml (opensearch rss). As well as a means for federation, as you say although you'd have to structure the license somehow to avoid the problem that wikipedia faced with answers.com. I agree with you entirely about federation and that a private and non-governmental public mix would be excellent.

No, Yacy doesn't appear to have opted into such a scheme, but it would be great if it did! The opensearch movement — which permits federation — is obviously the way to go.

An excellent combo, in my eyes, would be a cleversafe hash (perhaps), a p2p crawler and indexing system and p2p accepting pushed opensearch xml (opensearch rss). As well as a means for federation, as you say although you'd have to structure the license somehow to avoid the problem that wikipedia faced with answers.com.

]]> By: Stephen Paul Weber http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28571 Stephen Paul Weber Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28571 @a - Ah, I see what you mean! Yes, in that sense, it's very similar, in a 'no one owns this' kind of way. Of course, if all the major search engines went down/went evil starting a search engine project from scratch would not take too long to become decent (although starting now definitely gives a headstart!). Hmm... one thing I've always thought is that while we can't trust big companies, we should let them participate. Does the Yacy federation have the technology in place that could allow Google et al to federate if they wanted to? @a - Ah, I see what you mean! Yes, in that sense, it's very similar, in a 'no one owns this' kind of way. Of course, if all the major search engines went down/went evil starting a search engine project from scratch would not take too long to become decent (although starting now definitely gives a headstart!).

Hmm… one thing I've always thought is that while we can't trust big companies, we should let them participate. Does the Yacy federation have the technology in place that could allow Google et al to federate if they wanted to?

]]> By: a http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28495 a Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28495 In order to make a decentralized 'web as a service' (decentralized in the sense that I could have my own, like I have my own linux distribution that I can change at will) you would need an enormous amount of storage, bandwidth and cycles. To accomplish search individually, to crawl & index the 9 billion or so webpages alone, just isn't pragmatic. So, in order to have 'my' part of search or to have a search that doesn't depend on the whims of a private corporation (company goes down/evil), I would have to admit that I would have to do it as a group. The physical decentralization of a P2P search system accomplishes the decentralization that I thought you were talking about: no one really has ultimate power because search is owned by all of the peers in the network. What is more, because the search engine (crawler and indexing) is open source you can be confident that it is not evil (but Yacy has yet to address security issues that could lead to peers contaminating the distributed hash). What is also useful is that the power of information -- what people search for -- is also in no one person's hands because the P2P framework of such engines as Yacy makes it almost impossible to store centrally all of an individual peer's search queries. So, I agree with you that the P2P model is decentralized in the physical sense and that it doesn't accomplish the goal of giving everyone their own personal private web service (YOUR part, as you say), but it does accomplish the goal of taking the power of out of any one particular person or groups' hands. No one and everyone would own search in such a model. I think we are actually on the same page about distributed computing - that portion of the comment was intended only to show that an added benefit and natural byproduct of a decentralized search engine (in the decentralized as in 'we all chip in' sense) and distributed computing in general is that idle computers (which are mostly those in dark time zones) would be used. I also like your xmpp idea... In order to make a decentralized 'web as a service' (decentralized in the sense that I could have my own, like I have my own linux distribution that I can change at will) you would need an enormous amount of storage, bandwidth and cycles. To accomplish search individually, to crawl & index the 9 billion or so webpages alone, just isn't pragmatic. So, in order to have 'my' part of search or to have a search that doesn't depend on the whims of a private corporation (company goes down/evil), I would have to admit that I would have to do it as a group.

The physical decentralization of a P2P search system accomplishes the decentralization that I thought you were talking about: no one really has ultimate power because search is owned by all of the peers in the network. What is more, because the search engine (crawler and indexing) is open source you can be confident that it is not evil (but Yacy has yet to address security issues that could lead to peers contaminating the distributed hash). What is also useful is that the power of information — what people search for — is also in no one person's hands because the P2P framework of such engines as Yacy makes it almost impossible to store centrally all of an individual peer's search queries.

So, I agree with you that the P2P model is decentralized in the physical sense and that it doesn't accomplish the goal of giving everyone their own personal private web service (YOUR part, as you say), but it does accomplish the goal of taking the power of out of any one particular person or groups' hands. No one and everyone would own search in such a model.

I think we are actually on the same page about distributed computing - that portion of the comment was intended only to show that an added benefit and natural byproduct of a decentralized search engine (in the decentralized as in 'we all chip in' sense) and distributed computing in general is that idle computers (which are mostly those in dark time zones) would be used.

I also like your xmpp idea…

]]> By: Stephen Paul Weber http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28469 Stephen Paul Weber Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000 http://singpolyma.net/2007/07/rest-personal-message-tep/#comment-28469 @a -- Yacy &c seems to be a different kind of 'decentralisation'. They duplicate data across donated server space so that if one server goes down/goes evil, everything still works. Whereas with 'web as a service' decentralisation it is more so that you can do it how you want and so that if a website goes down/goes evil you still have YOUR part. Decentralised computing based on timezone seems counterproductive. DC already uses only unused CPU clock cycles. This is the way to go. Then we can maximize cycles worldwide, no matter what time it is. @a — Yacy &c seems to be a different kind of 'decentralisation'. They duplicate data across donated server space so that if one server goes down/goes evil, everything still works. Whereas with 'web as a service' decentralisation it is more so that you can do it how you want and so that if a website goes down/goes evil you still have YOUR part.

Decentralised computing based on timezone seems counterproductive. DC already uses only unused CPU clock cycles. This is the way to go. Then we can maximize cycles worldwide, no matter what time it is.

]]>