Yeah, I don't think people have any idea what 'cloud storage' entails. Cloud storage as done by big companies right now is they have five data centers across the world or maybe even nine if they're big enough and send data between them on Tier 1 lines (if that). Data inside the datacenters is shared across 100GB or 1TB fiber lines between servers.

There is no way you can do a truly decentralized storage on a 'neighborhood' scale. The bandwidth requirements for the average user to take part in it would be ginormous (putting aside bandwidth caps). Accessing files would take 10-60 seconds, assuming it's split up rather then all in one place. The coin would then be more about bandwidth rather then about storage capacity or a equal relationship across both (more storage capacity means you need more bandwidth to 'mine' it).

Even though Burst is all about capacity, it's not about bandwidth and that's a major component in any sort of cloud storage operation. It's just not meant to be for this coin unless they completely redo the coin (which they may). You could found a coin based on this though and it would be pretty easy to calculate payouts as it would be based on capacity + bandwidth and then you could make a weighted formula that takes into account both of them, then distribute a few copies across multiple piers and have a bittorrent type data sharing.

Time to access the file would still be ridiculous like I said, but it would be doable. Maybe something along the lines of archive storage. You could throw in encryption as well and make it anonymous storage. Split up the parts more so one 'host' never has a whole file and it's even more anonymous if not completely impossible to put it back together without the keys. There would have to be limitations on 'max' sizes per host as well. If one person has too much of the network capacity then it dilutes the redundancy aspect.

That is possibly something burst could do. Decentralized storage for 'sensitive' information with high encryption levels and complete anonymity. That's not really about capacity anymore though, but it fits Bursts MO.

I have just gone through the process of setting up a wallet for the first time, wow what an awful experience...

This should be your focus not a lottery, it took me over 40mins to download the blockchain to the 5th january and then the rest of the night to do the rest. The JAVA runtime that opens CMD seems to be bringing my netbook to its knees too.

You may ask why am i using a netbook, but the average user hasn't got the latest gaming PC like all the nerds who mine these coins. I only went through the process of setting up a wallet so i could store my coins, but i wish i hadn't i think i'll just leave them on an exchange and wait for them to hit 1 sat, cos this coin needs a LOT of work to be usable to even the most computer literate of us.

Is there any sort of timeline or schedule for any new developments to do with BURST?? Also is Ethereum a direct competitor, in which case, do you not think that they will release something that is really user friendly and BURST will just get left for dust, after all they have a lot of money backing them?