Diaspora is not about standards. it is about decentralization though. But they want their product to be the one on all the servers.

If you want to look at open standards, look at the stuff around Buzz (not buzz itself) but things like activity streams, Salmon, pubsub. Most of those protocols have been about for ages but are only getting traction now.

The thing that really pisses me off is that instead of talking about protocols, we're talking about diaspora, loading them up with requests and expectations way before there's even a glimmer of a product.

Damn right! Diaspora has already pissed me off, 4 college kids getting their funding in 10 days when there's been open source projects slogging it out for years. I'll bet they'll be "learning" heavily from the OSS projects too. So how come these guys got the public eye? as far as I can tell it's cos they've got a nice name, and got featured on HackerNews. Until they release code they're got getting any support from me.

You missed the centripetal force of the orbit they're in :)

Not a great analogy. The cars do kinda jitter and freeze, as cars == data packets, or somesuch.

better analogy would be that they reckon the stock exchange stops working... then again with no traders it might.

This traffic analogy is broken.

How about if there's traffic on the roads, all doors to houses & offices will stick, only open to admit an arm, or be welded shut?

I don't mean to down the kid, he deserves kudos for doing the work.

BUT. I agree with parent, the basics of this idea is pretty similar, and they've been tryingf to grow 3d nanocrystals for years which has yielded few practical results. all this kid did was some research, he hasn't built a prototype, hasn't proven the principle, nor worked out all of the engineering challenges that will inevitible come up.

So I get annoyed when a lay-mans armchair idea as parent called it gets lauded as brilliance when all the real challenges of *making the damn thing work* are still ahead.
Now get off my lawn!