Re: Re[2]: Real-time distributed Web search (Gnutella knockoff?)

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From: Adam L. Beberg (beberg@mithral.com)
Date: Fri Jun 30 2000 - 10:25:20 PDT


On Fri, 30 Jun 2000, Sandor Spruit wrote:

> But why hasn't this happened before, given the fact that *all*
> ingredients seem to have been around for ages

Ah, an eternal question, there are two answers:

1. I don't know something yet, and whatever I'm thinking in fact doesn't
   work - look for a flaw.

2. Something else works _better_, and I just haven't found it yet - keep
   reading.

In the case of your search engine question, that would be a huge #2,
centralized databases work better and give you a central thing to IPO
and lose money with. With a touch of #1, which I'm waiting for all the
*tella folks to realize.

I lost count ages ago how many people have come to me and said I should
make a search engine with Cosm, but it's well into the hundreds. I've
got my "shake head and chuckle" move down perfectly ;) then I explain
why. To be fair to all the people that ask, distributed systems aren't
somthing you encounter in life, or in a normal undergrad program, so
people aren't trained to think about them. If you try to apply familiar
rules of hierarchy and specialization to them, it doesn't work.

- Adam L. Beberg
  Mithral Communications & Design, Inc.
  The Cosm Project - http://cosm.mithral.com/
  beberg@mithral.com - http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/


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