Misc p2p article

George at Orwellian.Org George at Orwellian.Org
Mon Apr 16 08:45:20 PDT 2001


Also, today's NYT has an article about national security
needs for more language experts.

----

http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB987356381635082061.htm
#    
#    April 16, 2001
#    
#    Asian Technology
#    
#    Two New Peer-to-Peer Programs Aim High, but Still Have Glitches
#    
#    By JEREMY WAGSTAFF Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
#    
#    Time to grovel. I was hoping this week to be able to trumpet 
#    a bunch of new programs that free you from some of the physical 
#    constraints of modern computing. I was hoping to be able to say 
#    that, at last, you were free of shackles such as overprotective 
#    technical staff, the corporate Intranet and endless e-mail 
#    attachments.
#    
#    But paradise, I'm afraid to say, has to be postponed for a while. 
#    The two programs I've been toying with, new versions of which 
#    were both released last week, are Groove Networks Inc.'s Groove 
#    (www.groove.net1 ) and GoToMyPC (www.gotomypc.com2 ) from 
#    Expertcity Inc.
#    
#    Groove is the first serious attempt to introduce peer-to-peer 
#    computing to the business marketplace, giving employees a chance 
#    to communicate and share files by setting up their own online 
#    work groups. GoToMyPC offers the first Web-based -- and legal 
#    -- method of accessing and controlling another computer. Both, 
#    in theory, are great ideas, elegant in their simplicity and 
#    genuinely useful. But neither worked perfectly.
#    
#    Peer-to-peer computing -- where multiple users can interact 
#    directly, rather than through a server -- is probably the next 
#    great thing for the Internet. Best known as a way to swap music 
#    over the Net via Napster, so-called P-to-P applications allow 
#    much more, such as letting users share files, messages or 
#    calendars, or collaborate in real time on a document or drawing.
#    
#    As I've mentioned before, the Web will start coming into its 
#    own once people stop obsessing about how to make money out of 
#    other users and start capitalizing on the intrinsic benefits 
#    of having millions of people all sharing a network.
#    
#    Peer-to-peer computing offers users the chance to set up their 
#    own personalized networks atop the public Web. Without these 
#    P-to-P systems, people have to use a number of imperfect 
#    alternatives. For instance, users can rely on their Internet-
#    service providers to provide the tools (but they may be held 
#    hostage to proprietary programs or HTML); or use corporate 
#    networks (jealously guarded by techies rightly afraid of viruses 
#    and other abuses); or shuffle e-mail messages among team members 
#    (a cumbersome process).
#    
#    In practice, Groove isn't quite mature yet. The preview edition 
#    looks and feels professional, and carries loads of useful 
#    features, including instant messaging, file sharing, even a 
#    doodling pad. It also supposedly works behind a firewall, and 
#    around problems such as connecting to computers that share the 
#    same Internet connection.
#    
#    Although the program is sturdier than its beta ancestors, I found 
#    it unstable and unreliable. On one computer it wouldn't load 
#    properly; on another it behaved erratically through the company 
#    firewall and offered no easily accessible options that I could 
#    tweak to make it perform better.
#    
#    Disappointing, but not fatal. Groove, or something like it, is 
#    definitely the wave of the future: Freeing up employees to set 
#    up their own peer groups without cluttering the corporate Intranet 
#    makes sense. Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, for one, 
#    agrees: Last week it bought 10,000 licenses for more than 100,000 
#    employees world-wide, making it Groove Networks' first paying 
#    customer.
#    
#    GoToMyPC, meanwhile, tackles a similar problem from a slightly 
#    different angle, and is a unilateral peer-to-peer system, rather 
#    than the more common variety that lets anyone talk to anyone 
#    else. Whether on the Net or not, users have been hamstrung by 
#    the fact that generally they only can run one computer at a time. 
#    Working from home? Chances are you only can access the office 
#    network with difficulty. Forget a vital file at home? There are 
#    only one or two programs available that allow you to access a 
#    remote computer, and most of them aren't Internet-based. Instead, 
#    these programs rely on actually dialing into the computer via 
#    a phone line.
#    
#    GoToMyPC aims to make the process simpler by harnessing the 
#    Internet to link computers. It sounds simple, and it is: Assuming 
#    the two computers are connected to the Internet (and most office 
#    computers permanently are hooked up, as are PCs on a cable modem 
#    or other high-speed Internet connection), the software merely 
#    links them together. It establishes a digital handshake between 
#    the two computers and makes sure the connection is secure from 
#    prying eyes. That in a nutshell is how GoToMyPC works.
#    
#    Once again, in theory, this sounds good. The number of times 
#    I've left important files in the office, or at home, doesn't 
#    bear thinking about. To be able to fire up an Internet connection 
#    -- any-where, anytime, since the software is simple to install 
#    and not limited to any particular host PC -- and access your 
#    data and programs is a very appealing idea.
#    
#    In practice, of course, there are problems. One is security. 
#    If you can get into the computer, chances are some ne'er-do-well 
#    can too, whatever levels of security Expertcity applies (and 
#    there are plenty of them). That's why a lot of people disconnect 
#    their computers from the Internet when they aren't around, even 
#    if they're paying for a 24-hour connection (and if you don't 
#    you should seriously consider doing so).
#    
#    The other problem may perhaps be due to my own dumbness and the 
#    slowness of my connection but I couldn't get my two computers 
#    to talk to each other at all. What's more, the software didn't 
#    appear smart enough to know it already was loaded, so it would 
#    go through this song-and-dance routine of installing fresh widgets 
#    every time I tried to establish a connection. In the end it would 
#    have been quicker for me to have gotten a taxi, caught the 
#    afternoon shuttle flight, walked home from the airport and grabbed 
#    the files myself.
#    
#    Finally, I'm not sure system administrators are going to be that 
#    happy about allowing this kind of thing on their networks. Indeed, 
#    Expertcity appears aware of this and offers a template for an 
#    e-mail message you can send to your system administrator. Knowing 
#    a few of these guys myself, it sounds a bit optimistic.
#    
#    Both of these programs are worth trying out -- they're free, 
#    at least for the moment -- as long as you've got a good Internet 
#    connection and you don't mind tinkering with glitchy software. 
#    I'm not going to get too excited about them for now, but one 
#    day we may all be wondering how we lived without them.
#    
#    Write to Jeremy Wagstaff at jeremy.wagstaff at awsj.com5

URL for this Article:
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB987356381635082061.djm

Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://www.groove.net/ 
(2) https://www.gotomypc.com 
(3) http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB98633805226227884.djm 
(4) http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB974071105710705230.djm 







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