4 ms·

> we use it for file sharing File sharing: apparently still a problem almost four _decades_ after the Internet was invented.

evilotto 7y ago
sharing information while controlling who gets to see it, who does not, making sure it is timely, making sure it is gone when it is no longer timely, and making sure all of these things continue to be the case is still a problem more than six _centuries_ after the invention of the printing press.
checktheorder 7y ago
Heck, it's still a problem with direct connections. Take the average Windows PC. Take the average Android phone. Take a USB cable. Plug them in together. Now copy a few thousand MP3s from the PC to the phone using nothing but stock Explorer and watch the transfer rate drop to about 1/1000th of what the wired connection should be capable of, because Microsoft made sure to assign their most inept, incapable, dumbest employees when they designed MTP.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
Well, the Internet everyone uses isn't really designed for it. HTTP is a request/response model. But the model of filesharing is that I have a bunch of data and I want to send it to you, not that I have a bunch of data and I want you to ask me for it. File sharing over the internet means setting up a webserver, after which it works beautifully. But nobody wants to do that. They want to use browsers. TCP isn't asymmetric in the same way, but who's out there thinking of raw TCP as "the Internet"?
- jmkni 7y ago
  It's a shame Torrenting gets such a bad rap. If I want to share a large file with somebody who knows what they are doing, I encrypt it, create a torrent, send them the magnet URL and then they can download it and decrypt it. No web server needed. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, people have no idea what you are on about, or even if they do, they are behind a corporate firewall with torrenting blocked/on a work machine and can't install a client.

evilotto 7y ago

sharing information while controlling who gets to see it, who does not, making sure it is timely, making sure it is gone when it is no longer timely, and making sure all of these things continue to be the case is still a problem more than six _centuries_ after the invention of the printing press.

checktheorder 7y ago

Heck, it's still a problem with direct connections. Take the average Windows PC. Take the average Android phone. Take a USB cable. Plug them in together. Now copy a few thousand MP3s from the PC to the phone using nothing but stock Explorer and watch the transfer rate drop to about 1/1000th of what the wired connection should be capable of, because Microsoft made sure to assign their most inept, incapable, dumbest employees when they designed MTP.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

Well, the Internet everyone uses isn't really designed for it. HTTP is a request/response model. But the model of filesharing is that I have a bunch of data and I want to send it to you, not that I have a bunch of data and I want you to ask me for it. File sharing over the internet means setting up a webserver, after which it works beautifully. But nobody wants to do that. They want to use browsers. TCP isn't asymmetric in the same way, but who's out there thinking of raw TCP as "the Internet"?

jmkni 7y ago
It's a shame Torrenting gets such a bad rap. If I want to share a large file with somebody who knows what they are doing, I encrypt it, create a torrent, send them the magnet URL and then they can download it and decrypt it. No web server needed. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, people have no idea what you are on about, or even if they do, they are behind a corporate firewall with torrenting blocked/on a work machine and can't install a client.