At 11:47 AM 9/22/2002 -0700, Todd Boyle wrote: >ABSOLUTELY NOT. Paypal is nothing but a front end for banks. >Peer to peer settlement systems must not have *any* component >hardwired to any particular bottleneck. Otherwise that *one* actor >is in a position to harvest much of the economic value generated >by the entire system.
You mean, sorta like the way that one bad actor is free to P2P-away all the value of that connection you're sharing? One yahoo who decides to set up a KaZaA supernode will happily suck as much bandwidth as you'll allow. >- So few people use my node that I won't bother. Anyway I'd pay for the bandwidth >anyway for my own use so it's not costing me anything extra. Whatever it does cost you, you're probably buying it from someone who doesn't expect to give you even 25% utilitization. Whatever it does cost you, someone else will happily take that much value (eventually) if you're giving it away and their radio is within reach of yours. What fraction of people live near teeming hot spots of travellers, what fraction are parked in relative backwaters where the only potential users are their neighbors? >- I'll just mark it up to advertising. I've only got to sell 3 extra coffees a day to >cover it and I'll use the bandwidth myself in the evening anyway. And people and entities do blow money on advertising, but they want it to be effective. For example, I talked to a municipality who was thinking about wireless as a way to promote their town, to make it more attractive to industry and well-heeled workers. The cost of a T-1 and wireless equipment to light up downtown was far less than they were spending on booklets, but realistically, they had to realize it would end up being a nice subsidy to a small number of businesses downtown who'd use it regularly. - John -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
