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#	Post Title	Result Info	Date	User	Forum
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	2 Relevance	5 months ago	DKoenemann	Seminar Forum
	... In a system like this, the connection between open source and decentralization is straightforward. If the information is spread out over a large number of essentially private computers and you expect to be able to request information from any of those computers, the source code indicating how you would make such an information request of another computer and how your own personal computer would understand information request coming in from other computers, that code all has to be freely available to all. If that protocol is not openly available, the netwo ...
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Tim Chambers	Seminar Forum
	Email was the first killer app on the internet, not the web. In the earliest days of the internet, online identity was strongly tied to one's email address. The most compelling reason one would have had to run one's own server would have been to receive email. It was interesting to hear Peter talk about Google's decision to offer Gmail to deter competitors. I was also amused that Jean-François chose Gmail over administering his own server. It has become much easier to administer one's own mail server in recent years. I outsource it for $60 a year, though. I remain a loyal customer of a certain ISP, which, through acquisition of another domain which you can determine without much effort, is the same service provider I started with in the 90s. I'm into personal branding, so I give out a variety of email addresses from my timchambersusa.com domain. I am privileged to have a lifetime email address through my college, and I give that address out to people I care about. Like JF, I use Gmail because it's convenient. But I don't give out my @gmail.com address to people I care about. The web was the second killer app, and I have published through my ISP since the earliest days. I didn't care to run my own web server, either. That changed when I discovered micro.blog. I don't run it myself, though. I pay micro.blog to handle timchambersusa.com web traffic.
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Larry Sanger	Seminar Forum
	That's why I never used those systems!
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Larry Sanger	Seminar Forum
	Yep. Basically things got so complicated around 2000-ish that web hosting became much more popular for SMEs. Before that, again, sysadmins would keep websites up and running. If you had a lot of traffic, you literally bought more servers. Sometimes you'd pay for rack space in other parts of the world. This is still possible though. It's just a lot harder than it used to be.
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Larry Sanger	Seminar Forum
	That's just not true. I think what Jean was saying (it was Jean, right?) is just that the simplicity of running things like mail servers, etc., made it much easier for SMEs each to run their own servers, which they did. That much is definitely true. Centralized email for enterprise didn't really come in until 2008-ish, I guess. ISPs, universities, corporations, etc., they all installed and ran their own email, Usenet, IRC, Telnet, SSH, and other services. The people who kept such services going were "sysadmins." Sufficiently skilled geeks ran servers right from home. The exciting thing about NASes is that, for the first time, those services or modern versions thereof can be brought back to local management. I basically run my own replacement for web hosting (of startthis.org, anyway), Dropbox, music, images, password data (which is a relief), calendar data, etc. I could also host a lot more video (I could put my entire DVD collection on my NAS and make it all available online). But this is for the first time. This stuff has never been doable by regular non-geeks, and NASes still need occasional support from actual geeks.
	What Is the Decentralized Web? 25 Experts Break it Down	1 Relevance	5 months ago	hampson	Seminar Forum
	thanks all who participated in yesterday's seminar discussion! came across this link recently and wanted to share some other viewpoints from distinguished tech experts on the topic of decentralization. this resource may provide a broader perspective of what opinions exist and also who is writing about these topics in the public space. what is your favorite quote from the list? are there any that clearly DON'T match the definition of decentralization?
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	ramontesano	Seminar Forum
	A decentralized peer to peer network is more robust, so is likely to propsper long term. Today's (2021 Big Tech) centralized internet may fade away over time.
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	hampson	Seminar Forum
	individuals largely hosted their own privately owned content and didn’t rely on major corporations to provide basic services for web and email hosting. the open source community’s goal is to further this mission and develop tools that individuals can use to communicate and conduct business, without monitoring and censorship from corporate or government entities.
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Larry Sanger	Seminar Forum
	In the 1990s, few people ran their own servers, though it was more common for geeks to do so. What made the Internet more decentralized generally speaking is that people interacted through software that was installed on many different servers (email, Usenet, mailing lists, etc.). Yahoo was bigger than Google for many years, and prior to Google, there were many competitive search engines.
	RE: Week 1: The possibility of decentralized networks in 2021	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Ben Hekster	Seminar Forum
	... is problematic. Whether or not they are using such power for ill purposes right now at this moment is sort of irrelevant. The question to me is whether it's a good idea even to place the temptation of so much power into any one entity's hands— we are discussing decentralization, after all. Second, don't forget that They are essentially a data collection organization. I can only imagine what kind of profile you could construct of somebody just by amalgamating their DNS queries. And no need to worry anymore about pesky browsers blocking third-party cooki ...
	RE: Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Christian Gribneau	Seminar Forum
	The Intenet was decentralized from the ground up, with some centralized characteristics to make things work. IPv4 addressing, as an example, uses centralized address allocation, but then many Autonomous Systems route traffic using standard protocols to determine where any given packet needs to go. The Domain Name System allocates authority centrally, but many systems participate in resolving names to addresses so we don't have to remember all those numbers. Protocols like HTTP and SMTP (email) were decentralized by design, running atop the naming and addressing provided by IPv4 (later IPv6) and DNS. Many different servers handle those protocols, and it is still possible today to launch your own instance of each. Back in the early 2000s, participatory peer to peer file sharing operated by users constituted a bulk of traffic traversing the internet. These systems (BitTorrent, LimeWire, KaZaA, GnuTella, eDonkey, Napster) were wildly popular but had no mechanism to protect intellectual property and the content one might find there was often riddled with various sorts of malware. The "Web 2.0" companies, notably Spotify, NetFlix, and YouTube, became very popular by offering greater convenience, and it soon became apparent that people would pay for access to music and movies. The underlying protocols are open to encourage implementation, and many of the earlier peer to peer protocols were always or have become open source. BitTorrent, as an example, is simply in the public domain. The Web 2.0 companies, on the other hand, typically develop proprietary, closely held technology.
	RE: Week 1: Digital naïveté	1 Relevance	5 months ago	DKoenemann	Seminar Forum
	... journey to try and disentangle myself from their ecosystem but it is really hard. For work I basically have to use Google docs. Trying to switch to Linux OS has its challenges as well. Linux is like the flipside of the coin for decentralization. There are so many versions that popular and useful software often isn't written for any Linux distribution. So in some sense it is laziness. But in another sense it is workability. Going without Google and Microsoft, at least in professional life, is nearly impossible. Private life is maybe different, and that is w ...
	Week 1: History of decentralization	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Larry Sanger	Seminar Forum
	In what ways were the networks created by original protocols of the Internet decentralized? What is (or was) "decentralized" about them? What conceptual and historical relationship is there between open source (or public domain) technology and decentralized networks?
	RE: Week 1: The possibility of decentralized networks in 2021	1 Relevance	5 months ago	Ben Hekster	Seminar Forum
	... over a sense of feeling dirty by giving in. On the other hand, I absolutely refuse to 'sign in' and so I'm unable to contribute to the conversation going on there. Thanks for posting on alternative platforms; I'll be following there from now on. Some quick comments: "Centralization is inevitable"-- yes, this is human nature. But decentralization is also inevitable-- the desire to be free is also human nature. Put in simplisitic terms, there is a battle between good and evil. We can accept that, and not simply give up just because there is a struggle ...
	Impact of filters & rankers on standards	1 Relevance	6 months ago	Inventor2525	Encyclosphere
	... and will not seek censorless platforms without added extra value to them, or until their rights are taken). Currently, the customers are not the users but those who would wish to buy influence over the users using what you'd call ‘filters’. Doing this leaves them massive advantage over any (decentralized) system that morally objects, but it also ties their hands behind their backs. Their business being the sale of the user, they can only provide the user such a utility level of a filter before their market would collapse. This leads to stagnation of user f ...