Re:OpenKeyval.org, a free data store/social experiment
by markchristian on Friday October 29, 2010 @01:49PM
(#1848185)
Good challenge! Here's a start:
Say you and I want to chat with each other. We both pick a random key to store our messages in. Let's call those key[markchristian] and key[heretoo]. Each of those has a read-only version -- readonly[markchristian] and readonly[heretoo]. I'll post the key readonly[markchristian] to "markchristian-to-heretoo". You post the key readonly[heretoo] to "heretoo-to-markchristian". Our chat clients can just poll those keys, looking for new messages -- whatever hand-wavy format we want to have.
Problems: 1. Requires us to agree to chat ahead of time and know each other's usernames. 2. Nothing to stop a malicious third-party from putting a different readonly key at the "heretoo-to-markchristian" pointer keys.
An append only store might solve it, with a key that is globally known. Some sort of broadcast channel. An append only, with limited size appends, and cleared at regular intervals.