[–] SonOfRobin ago
Any service that wants to get to a certain size has to contend with lawsuits. Most lawsuits will either be for loss of data(hacking), improper usage, or fraud. So the app will have to try and minimize those possibilities.
Do you need all of this? No but it helps and gives confidence in the app to the end user.
I'm not talking about a service or a corporation. It would just be a clearinghouse website or tool that connected potential customers with people willing to offer a service and a rating system for users to record their experience with a driver. Fees and negotiation would between the driver and rider.
[–] SonOfRobin ago (edited ago)
But that would be how it would have to work. A random app on a website won't be trusted unless something/someone backs it up. Opensource only goes so far. You can create the "base" app but no one will use it unless a company/foundation comes along to promote it and show its "safe" use with whatever product/service. Even then you're most likely linking your software with someone else's because some group backs it. Google, bing, open source maps, or roll your own? Payment system CC systems, cryptocoins, cash, or roll your own? Database = mono, mysql, PostgreSQL, Mssql, oracle, bitcoin, access, or roll your own?
If it's just "hey ride and rating" then yelp, yellow pages, google+, craigslist, and facebook could do this with some modification. The point of an app is to make easy/convenient for people. I already have a phone so I could call yellow cab to pick me up and look them up via yelp.
The easier you make it the more likely someone will use it. Amazon is famous for making stuff easy. Microsoft and Apple started by making things easier then their competitors.
That'll be easy. All you have to do is steal Uber's stolen software.
[–] Dumb_Comment_Bot 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Why? That means the driver will have to text and drive, having to haggle with some cheap cunt who only wants to pay him 2$ above minimum. Or there will be a small town with only one driver and he wont drive you unless you pay some exorbant amount.
Just set a price thats fair for both.
[–] aria_taint 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I can see that going bad really fast....
[–] aria_taint 1 point 1 point 2 points (+2|-1) ago
Really? So, you're going to just go to an open source app and ring up a car and trust that the person picking you up is legit? Come on. Just go stand on the side of a road with your thumb out and hope the person picking you up isn't a psychopath. This idea is the digital form of hitch hiking.
[–] [deleted] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
[–] collegetoker 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Why not just forego the server, make it p2p, and keep that 1 dollar a day for yourself?
There's several practical concerns with peer-to-peer. The internet has a bunch of things that make it kinda poor at peer-to-peer for things that need to be fully nonymous and verified. A person can have multiple IP addresses or accounts. An IP address or account can be controlled by multiple people.
When dealing with things like file sharing, this is generally ok- you can focus on the data itself being correct, and prove that with a very small subset of the data. You still run into problems with denial-of-service, but that is at least usually illegal (doesn't make it not happen, but if it were legal the internet would be shut down by the first guy who could profit from doing so), and can end up with parts of the DDOS bot not being as effective as others, etc.
So lets say it was peer-to-peer. I open the program, you open the program, they make a connection- either directly to each other, or through a few peers that pass the message along. You state that you are offering your services as a driver in location A, and I'm looking for a driver in location A. How do you know I'm legit? I could be, for instance, a taxi company looking to waste your time- a bot that generates random requests. You could also be a taxi company looking to waste my time- registering fraudulent drivers to destroy the service. The fact that there's no "central guardian" of this creates a big problem, because there's no one to basically ask the cops to patrol their network. There's also no "trusted agent" in this- someone to validate (and later exclude) me in some fashion if I'm malicious, and certainly no one to do a background check on a driver ahead of time. Also, what prevents an informational type actor from gathering up all the information that network has on every driver and customer? As it is peer to peer, compromised nodes can be used to make some kind of network attack.
Some of these problems could be mitigated, but never really eliminated. If you look at how many peer-to-peer networks were attacked- with spam (fake drivers, fake customers), faked connections, etc., you see a situation where one bad actor can have a disproportionate effect. In the cases of stuff like file sharing, you can at least generally automate the verification and blacklisting to some degree. Maybe that's just a technical problem in cases like this, but I suspect its somewhat of an insurmountable one.
[–] collegetoker ago (edited ago)
Couldn't you resolve this with accounts attached to cryptographic signatures to ensure that users aren't abusing the system? Also if you're using credit cards as the payment method, couldn't you blacklist a card that has been shown to exhibit fraudulent activity? This same principle could be applied even if you are using a payment processor to convert dollars into bitcoin.
Also, you can check for mock locations (in android), preventing automated abuse.:
public static boolean isMockSettingsON(Context context) {
// returns true if mock location enabled, false if not enabled.
if (Settings.Secure.getString(context.getContentResolver(),
Settings.Secure.ALLOW_MOCK_LOCATION).equals("0"))
return false;
else
return true;
}
[–] goatboy [S] 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago (edited ago)
Advertising. How do we communicate with the public in a way that is simple, efficient, and broad? It is one thing to create a service. It is something else entirely to make everyone aware of and use that service.
Although, I think you have a very valid point. if we could build it like a p2p craigslist, maybe we could do away with a centralized server all together. We need some way for users to easily access and bid on a ride and have drivers nearby willing to perform the service. Maybe we could make it a bid per mile and drivers could set their minimum fee per mile, region willing to work in, and number of passengers and baggage willing to take. We could implement a rating system like ebay where users rate the experience after each use.
[–] 22jam22 1 point -1 points 0 points (+0|-1) ago
Lots of legal issues most likely. Inaurance probably crazy. And i got denied an uber driving job because of a pending misdeamanor assult which is total bullshit but might actualy go to trial. When i im going to apply for lyft then email fucktards at uber. Its insane zero criminal record before this bs, and im treated as a criminal before being convicted. Fine hire me, if i lose fire me. I would be one of the higest qualified uber drivers in america. Degree no driving record issues clean as a whistle. Such utter bullshit.