9 ms·

I wish browsers and OS would implement torrent by default. Not only would it make the sharing file experience (downoading, sending, etc) much better, but it wou

I wish browsers and OS would implement torrent by default. Not only would it make the sharing file experience (downoading, sending, etc) much better, but it would open the door to many cool P2P stuff on the client side. It's a standard, we know it works and how.

kome 10y ago
Opera 12 had torrent... It's incredible how Opera was innovative at the time. Nowadays it just another useless chrome.
- akjainaj 10y ago
  Yes, and it also had an IRC client. Having lots of features unrelated to web browsing did not make it better.
  - manojlds 10y ago
    But it was better. The UX was way too good, even if things like standards implementation weren't great.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      I seem to recall that back then Opera stood shoulder to shoulder with Mozilla about standard correctness.
      - Macha 10y ago
        Iirc, Opera was actually quite ahead of Firefox in passing acid3, though can't remember if they were first or if WebKit was
        xorcist 10y ago
        It probably helped that Håkon Lie, who proposed/invented CSS, worked at Opera.
      - gsnedders 10y ago
        Until ~2010ish, Opera was per-se pretty much competitive (after that, the other vendors were implementing new specs quicker), but there were some notable differences, especially around places where specs allowed multiple behaviours and every vendor except for Opera had converged on one behaviour a decade earlier (rounding of CSS values comes to mind here, but was far from the only case), and that caused more and more problems and web-developer pain as the web became increasingly complex.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I seem to recall that the Mozilla suite had a irc client as well.
    - smhenderson 10y ago
      They did and still do. The SeaMonkey[0] product from Mozilla comes with all the components that Netscape^ shipped with. A browser, an email client, an IRC client and an WYSIWIG editor for HTML called Composer. [0] http://www.seamonkey-project.org/start/ http://www.seamonkey-project.org/start/ ^ version 4 I think but maybe earlier versions too
      - u801e 10y ago
        Thunderbird can also connect to IRC (as well as XMPP). It also offers choices of Google Talk, Twitter, and Yahoo.
- etatoby 10y ago
  Opera's layout engine and UI were incredibly fast, responsive, and lightweight, remaining the fastest for decades. I have no doubt it was the product of a very small team of brilliant engineers. Its userscript support was also top-notch, allowing things that are tricky or impossible even today in a browser extension. Too bad it couldn't keep up with the whole Web 2.0 sh*tstorm.
- vbezhenar 10y ago
  What's point in bundling unrelated features? I used Opera in the past, but I never used nor IRC, nor mail (their mail was very cumbersome for me, I used The Bat instead), so it was wasted effort for me. Now if Opera would provide JS API for torrents or mail to enable further integration between those technologies, that would be interesting and innovative.
  - takeda 10y ago
    I also didn't like its mail client, but IRC was useful multiple times. Especially when browsing some kind of open source project and wanted to get an answer, I just clicked on a link on their page and was able to join their channel. The great thing was that Opera 12 even with IRC, mail, torrent and other goodies (such as HTTP server) was still lighter on resources than Firefox and Chrome. I really do miss the old Opera, and even the Vivaldi is not really good replacement since it still uses Blink engine. I switched to Firefox after, I like its extensions but it's not perfect.
  - angry-hacker 10y ago
    Somehow they still managed to keep the installer size small, ux reasonable and product fast. If you can do this, I don't care how many useless features you add. Nowadays it's opposite. I didn't use those features either but they never bothered me.
- ComodoHacker 10y ago
  It also had Unite!
cesarb 10y ago
An interesting tidbit: the original bittorrent implementation mimicked the download dialog for a browser of that era (back then, each download opened a new dialog box, with its own progress bar). That is, the user experience for a normal download (click on a .mov) and for a bittorrent download (click on a .torrent which downloads a .mov) was almost identical.
oelmekki 10y ago
It also sounds like a cool caching technique : since people already have the resource cached on their local system, why not allow them to distribute it? HTTP headers can allow to know when to flush cache (just like it's currently done) and provide last known md5/sha1/whatever digest to make sure page is not tempered with (let's say it's checked when the download is complete, and retry a download if the signature does not match: it should not happen often anyway). It obviously won't work for pages which distribute auth related content, but it would be great for assets. I guess a problem could be that page load will be slower (depends on the ability to parallelize and to contact geographically close peers, I suppose), but it would mean way less heavy load on servers.
- NTripleOne 10y ago
  >It also sounds like a cool caching technique : since people already have the resource cached on their local system, why not allow them to distribute it? Sounds like a cool way to deter people from using it if you ask me.
  - puddintane 10y ago
    Especially with Comcast now introducing a 1 tb cap to its non-business users.
    - oelmekki 10y ago
      I'm not from USA, am I correct to think Comcast is a mobile ISP? If so, this is a non issue : mobile apps can already decide not to do big update when not on wifi, browsers can do the same.
      - bespoke_engnr 10y ago
        Unfortunately Comcast is one of the two companies (along with Verizon) that have monopolized the ISP market in the US. Together they own most of the market, and have agreements to stay out of each others' territories. This affects something like 40% of home Internet customers in the US :(.
zython 10y ago
Yeah, thats cool but I dont want to pay to be a part of Microsoft's/Apple's/ you-name-it's insfrastructure. I dont want to be (potentiall forced to) distribute software. With recent developments in net neutrality and data plans, p2p could drastically impact my data plan and cost me money. Sure I can see why you would think the potential is, but for me p2p data distribution is out of the question, at least for now.
- johnnyhead 10y ago
  Man, windows 10 already does that. In the advanced update options there is a distributing method menu and it is pretty clear they are using our machines to distribute updates to others. Disclaimer: Haven't checked in a while and can not do it now, but it was there until not long ago.
  - zython 10y ago
    Makes me even happier to use Linux almost exclusively now.
  - ChrisClark 10y ago
    Yes it's still there. I just turned it off last week. But still let it share the updates with the other computers in my household LAN.
    - atmosx 10y ago
      Is this on by default?
      - smhenderson 10y ago
        IIRC yes, unless your internet connection is marked as Metered, in which case the default is off. What I can't remember and am unable to check at the moment is whether Metered is turned on by default or not. But regardless of defaults, if you mark a connection as Metered than the background update distribution is turned off.
jagermo 10y ago
Oh god, I hope not. Not because the technology is not awesome, but because of laywers. Especially in Germany they target torrent users and try to sue them like crazy. If you download, for example, a Windows.iso from technet and start sharing it via the integrated p2p system, I can see a shitstorm of lawsuits raging through the web.
- thirdsun 10y ago
  I doubt that very much. Wouldn't a wide spread use of torrents help to legitimize the technology?
  - sametmax 10y ago
    My thoughts precisely.
- fuzzy2 10y ago
  That’s not a good example. You simply don’t have the rights to redistribute a Windows ISO, even if you need a license to use it. So a C&D is justifiable. Microsoft usually doesn’t care though. You’ll be perfectly fine sharing legal stuff like Linux ISOs or mods for your favorite game using BitTorrent 24/7.
- buildbuildbuild 10y ago
  Discriminating against users based on the protocol they use rather than by the content they distribute, be it by rate limiting or by angry legal letters, holds back innovation in my opinion. Users should not fear a content-agnostic protocol. Mass adoption of bittorrent would render this type of discrimination much more difficult.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Even if you're not pirating stuff, it seems very difficult to automatically seed things you download. Even if you have the legitimate right to download something that doesn't necessarily mean that you also have the right to distribute it. Everything you download would have to have an appropriate licence.
some-guy 10y ago
I would agree with you 100%, but first you'll have to convince Comcast to lift my 1TB data cap. :)
- bnjms 10y ago
  You have that exactly backwards. First we have to make it an issue that will place market pressure on the provider to raise data caps. Until their customers begin to consider leaving or even relocating to other solutions the ISPs will not look for a solution that allows greater data caps. (Also 1TB sounds reasonable to me. As long as none of the data is throttled.)
  - tracker1 10y ago
    When 4K takes off, 1TB is no longer reasonable. Especially when the ISPs are now double-dipping to get money from Netflix and the like.
    - bnjms 10y ago
      Exactly. When 4K takes off that will do more than anything to remedy the situation.
- scarface74 10y ago
  That and the abysmal upload speeds of cable internet providers. Comcast's 1Gbps option has 35mbps upload speeds and they charge more than both Google and AT&T. I pay $70 a month for 1Gbps symmetrical upload and download from AT&T - flat rate no additional fees or taxes. On my best computer, I can usually get 950Mbps+ up and down wired. My house is wired for gig-e throughout.
- patmcguire 10y ago
  That's a cartoonishly large data cap. How are you getting that?
  - craftkiller 10y ago
loeg 10y ago
It's not nearly as well documented as HTTP RFCs, for example. Is it even a standard? I know there are some documents published by the author and others, but I was not aware any standards body had ratified it.
WorldMaker 10y ago
«open the door to many cool P2P stuff on the client side» I think this is a part of the exciting proposition intended by WebTorrent (webtorrent.io) in having an entirely JS/client-side-capable BitTorrent stack that can run directly inside a browser (or in Node or Electron or Cordova apps) with potentially minimal setup.
- aphextron 10y ago
  The problem with WebTorrent right now is interop with regular bittorrent clients. As it is, a desktop client cannot seed to a WebTorrent client. greatly reducing the usefulness of it. Hopefully this can be solved.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    There are several desktop clients that support the "bridge" between WebTorrent and BitTorrent. This includes WebTorrent Desktop [1] prominently linked on the WebTorrent site, but also some "traditional" clients like Vuze have started supporting that, too. [1] https://webtorrent.io/desktop/ https://webtorrent.io/desktop/
kybernetikos 10y ago
You can implement something very like torrent using web tech. https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/

kome 10y ago

Opera 12 had torrent... It's incredible how Opera was innovative at the time. Nowadays it just another useless chrome.

akjainaj 10y ago
Yes, and it also had an IRC client. Having lots of features unrelated to web browsing did not make it better.
- manojlds 10y ago
  But it was better. The UX was way too good, even if things like standards implementation weren't great.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    I seem to recall that back then Opera stood shoulder to shoulder with Mozilla about standard correctness.
    - Macha 10y ago
      Iirc, Opera was actually quite ahead of Firefox in passing acid3, though can't remember if they were first or if WebKit was
      - xorcist 10y ago
        It probably helped that Håkon Lie, who proposed/invented CSS, worked at Opera.
    - gsnedders 10y ago
      Until ~2010ish, Opera was per-se pretty much competitive (after that, the other vendors were implementing new specs quicker), but there were some notable differences, especially around places where specs allowed multiple behaviours and every vendor except for Opera had converged on one behaviour a decade earlier (rounding of CSS values comes to mind here, but was far from the only case), and that caused more and more problems and web-developer pain as the web became increasingly complex.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  I seem to recall that the Mozilla suite had a irc client as well.
  - smhenderson 10y ago
    They did and still do. The SeaMonkey[0] product from Mozilla comes with all the components that Netscape^ shipped with. A browser, an email client, an IRC client and an WYSIWIG editor for HTML called Composer. [0] http://www.seamonkey-project.org/start/ http://www.seamonkey-project.org/start/ ^ version 4 I think but maybe earlier versions too
    - u801e 10y ago
      Thunderbird can also connect to IRC (as well as XMPP). It also offers choices of Google Talk, Twitter, and Yahoo.
etatoby 10y ago
Opera's layout engine and UI were incredibly fast, responsive, and lightweight, remaining the fastest for decades. I have no doubt it was the product of a very small team of brilliant engineers. Its userscript support was also top-notch, allowing things that are tricky or impossible even today in a browser extension. Too bad it couldn't keep up with the whole Web 2.0 sh*tstorm.
vbezhenar 10y ago
What's point in bundling unrelated features? I used Opera in the past, but I never used nor IRC, nor mail (their mail was very cumbersome for me, I used The Bat instead), so it was wasted effort for me. Now if Opera would provide JS API for torrents or mail to enable further integration between those technologies, that would be interesting and innovative.
- takeda 10y ago
  I also didn't like its mail client, but IRC was useful multiple times. Especially when browsing some kind of open source project and wanted to get an answer, I just clicked on a link on their page and was able to join their channel. The great thing was that Opera 12 even with IRC, mail, torrent and other goodies (such as HTTP server) was still lighter on resources than Firefox and Chrome. I really do miss the old Opera, and even the Vivaldi is not really good replacement since it still uses Blink engine. I switched to Firefox after, I like its extensions but it's not perfect.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  Somehow they still managed to keep the installer size small, ux reasonable and product fast. If you can do this, I don't care how many useless features you add. Nowadays it's opposite. I didn't use those features either but they never bothered me.
ComodoHacker 10y ago
It also had Unite!

cesarb 10y ago

An interesting tidbit: the original bittorrent implementation mimicked the download dialog for a browser of that era (back then, each download opened a new dialog box, with its own progress bar). That is, the user experience for a normal download (click on a .mov) and for a bittorrent download (click on a .torrent which downloads a .mov) was almost identical.

oelmekki 10y ago

It also sounds like a cool caching technique : since people already have the resource cached on their local system, why not allow them to distribute it? HTTP headers can allow to know when to flush cache (just like it's currently done) and provide last known md5/sha1/whatever digest to make sure page is not tempered with (let's say it's checked when the download is complete, and retry a download if the signature does not match: it should not happen often anyway). It obviously won't work for pages which distribute auth related content, but it would be great for assets. I guess a problem could be that page load will be slower (depends on the ability to parallelize and to contact geographically close peers, I suppose), but it would mean way less heavy load on servers.

NTripleOne 10y ago
>It also sounds like a cool caching technique : since people already have the resource cached on their local system, why not allow them to distribute it? Sounds like a cool way to deter people from using it if you ask me.
- puddintane 10y ago
  Especially with Comcast now introducing a 1 tb cap to its non-business users.
  - oelmekki 10y ago
    I'm not from USA, am I correct to think Comcast is a mobile ISP? If so, this is a non issue : mobile apps can already decide not to do big update when not on wifi, browsers can do the same.
    - bespoke_engnr 10y ago
      Unfortunately Comcast is one of the two companies (along with Verizon) that have monopolized the ISP market in the US. Together they own most of the market, and have agreements to stay out of each others' territories. This affects something like 40% of home Internet customers in the US :(.

zython 10y ago

Yeah, thats cool but I dont want to pay to be a part of Microsoft's/Apple's/ you-name-it's insfrastructure. I dont want to be (potentiall forced to) distribute software. With recent developments in net neutrality and data plans, p2p could drastically impact my data plan and cost me money. Sure I can see why you would think the potential is, but for me p2p data distribution is out of the question, at least for now.

johnnyhead 10y ago
Man, windows 10 already does that. In the advanced update options there is a distributing method menu and it is pretty clear they are using our machines to distribute updates to others. Disclaimer: Haven't checked in a while and can not do it now, but it was there until not long ago.
- zython 10y ago
  Makes me even happier to use Linux almost exclusively now.
- ChrisClark 10y ago
  Yes it's still there. I just turned it off last week. But still let it share the updates with the other computers in my household LAN.
  - atmosx 10y ago
    Is this on by default?
    - smhenderson 10y ago
      IIRC yes, unless your internet connection is marked as Metered, in which case the default is off. What I can't remember and am unable to check at the moment is whether Metered is turned on by default or not. But regardless of defaults, if you mark a connection as Metered than the background update distribution is turned off.

jagermo 10y ago

Oh god, I hope not. Not because the technology is not awesome, but because of laywers. Especially in Germany they target torrent users and try to sue them like crazy. If you download, for example, a Windows.iso from technet and start sharing it via the integrated p2p system, I can see a shitstorm of lawsuits raging through the web.

thirdsun 10y ago
I doubt that very much. Wouldn't a wide spread use of torrents help to legitimize the technology?
- sametmax 10y ago
  My thoughts precisely.
fuzzy2 10y ago
That’s not a good example. You simply don’t have the rights to redistribute a Windows ISO, even if you need a license to use it. So a C&D is justifiable. Microsoft usually doesn’t care though. You’ll be perfectly fine sharing legal stuff like Linux ISOs or mods for your favorite game using BitTorrent 24/7.
buildbuildbuild 10y ago
Discriminating against users based on the protocol they use rather than by the content they distribute, be it by rate limiting or by angry legal letters, holds back innovation in my opinion. Users should not fear a content-agnostic protocol. Mass adoption of bittorrent would render this type of discrimination much more difficult.
adrianN 10y ago
Even if you're not pirating stuff, it seems very difficult to automatically seed things you download. Even if you have the legitimate right to download something that doesn't necessarily mean that you also have the right to distribute it. Everything you download would have to have an appropriate licence.

some-guy 10y ago

I would agree with you 100%, but first you'll have to convince Comcast to lift my 1TB data cap. :)

bnjms 10y ago
You have that exactly backwards. First we have to make it an issue that will place market pressure on the provider to raise data caps. Until their customers begin to consider leaving or even relocating to other solutions the ISPs will not look for a solution that allows greater data caps. (Also 1TB sounds reasonable to me. As long as none of the data is throttled.)
- tracker1 10y ago
  When 4K takes off, 1TB is no longer reasonable. Especially when the ISPs are now double-dipping to get money from Netflix and the like.
  - bnjms 10y ago
    Exactly. When 4K takes off that will do more than anything to remedy the situation.
scarface74 10y ago
That and the abysmal upload speeds of cable internet providers. Comcast's 1Gbps option has 35mbps upload speeds and they charge more than both Google and AT&T. I pay $70 a month for 1Gbps symmetrical upload and download from AT&T - flat rate no additional fees or taxes. On my best computer, I can usually get 950Mbps+ up and down wired. My house is wired for gig-e throughout.
patmcguire 10y ago
That's a cartoonishly large data cap. How are you getting that?
- craftkiller 10y ago

loeg 10y ago

It's not nearly as well documented as HTTP RFCs, for example. Is it even a standard? I know there are some documents published by the author and others, but I was not aware any standards body had ratified it.

WorldMaker 10y ago

«open the door to many cool P2P stuff on the client side» I think this is a part of the exciting proposition intended by WebTorrent (webtorrent.io) in having an entirely JS/client-side-capable BitTorrent stack that can run directly inside a browser (or in Node or Electron or Cordova apps) with potentially minimal setup.

aphextron 10y ago
The problem with WebTorrent right now is interop with regular bittorrent clients. As it is, a desktop client cannot seed to a WebTorrent client. greatly reducing the usefulness of it. Hopefully this can be solved.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  There are several desktop clients that support the "bridge" between WebTorrent and BitTorrent. This includes WebTorrent Desktop [1] prominently linked on the WebTorrent site, but also some "traditional" clients like Vuze have started supporting that, too. [1] https://webtorrent.io/desktop/ https://webtorrent.io/desktop/

kybernetikos 10y ago

You can implement something very like torrent using web tech. https://webtorrent.io/ https://webtorrent.io/