Oh dude, no harm done. I’m just discussing one teeny tiny aspect of something that isn’t even implemented yet. My opinion differs from yours - no big deal. I hold someone who has an opinion in much higher regard than someone who doesn’t.
Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.
And - as I think you’ll see below - we had different definitions of “early stages”, causing each to misunderstand the points that the other made.
BTW - the “being a dick” tags that I put was because in there I was using attacking language instead of my goal of using a neutral fact-based approach. I think the last time I was a dick on these forums you “threw a pillow at me” - no we’re just playing man it’s all cool. Hope you got schwasted and had a good time last night!
I see two possible approaches here:
The one I brought up “several posts ago”
But that’s an app/addon and would be on the Permanent Network - not the Testing Network.
Now if you’re just talking about the Testing Network then that’s a whole 'nother ballgame. That opens the door to interacting with the clearnet and working with servers etc to get the Network up and running.
The plan is to reset it every two weeks ( @Ross said “fortnight” I think… ) so if this is just for testnet then we can have a countdown clock in the launcher until they are reset again. Since this requires time - I didn’t even think about doing something like this with your proposal. But if this is just for testnet then it’s perfectly fine.
The QA team has the stats of the servers that are being used to run the Network at the moment. They can have a server send that information to launchers telling them how big the Network is, what the uptime percentage is, the bandwidth, yadda yadda yadda. We can do a whole lot if we make this just for testnet.
If you re-read my posts in the sense that such a change would be on the Permanent v1.0 Network then they may make a bit more sense. In that case it would be much preferred to defer to an RSS/Atom feed-type addon to the launcher. But if we’re just looking to update people on the status of the testnet - only while the testnet is active and no longer once the testnet is over, then yes, it could be a good idea.
In my mind:
early stages != testnet
early stages == Internet circa 1995
Now, to do this, the launcher code itself would have to be amended to gather information from a clearnet server, as there is no guarantee that the information would be registered in the same spot in every version of the testnet - as it is constantly resetting.
I am - for obvious reasons - hesitant to do such a thing. But if could be done safely and securely then that negates the risk.
However, to do such a thing would require non-trival tasks of the team. QA would have to monitor error reports constantly and run tests to confirm or deny those reports. QA would also have to set up a service to push those reports out - probably another DO droplet.
Then on top of that, the devs would have to write the code for the launcher to not only display those messages, but to retrieve them as well - periodically. That would require a time-based operation for the launcher and I don’t know if the launcher has time or not.
They would also want to test that code to make sure that there’s no leakage between the Network and the Internet. I don’t know how they have it wired up ATM - and not sure if that’s something that they’ve already wrestled with or something that they haven’t touched yet.
Also, keep in mind that all this effort - even if they were to drop everything and institute this today - would only be valid for the duration of the testnet. And not just the duration of the testnet, but only the part of the testnet where we don’t have vaults.
If this is instituted and included the vault information (as proposed above), I would be dreading the release of the vault binaries because that means that all of my data statictic notifications go away as Maidsafe (the company) no longer has control of the vaults that are put onto the Network and cannot gather information from the Network as such. I want to be excited for when the vaults are released, not disappointed.
So even though, with the further clarification that this is only to be used on the testnet, I do agree that having information about the status of the testnet would be handy, I don’t believe that the tradeoffs along with the time and energy necessary to achieve this functionality would be worth it considering that the same service would be neither feasible nor needed on the Permanent Network.
P.S. For the record, I really am kind of a dick.