Hmm

Piracy? Can't see the Recording Ass. being happy with this.

Security? Sounds like a handy little way of making a spam server.

"Routing is handled by servers at Opera"

I really have a big issue with this after I tried (for a while) Opera's latest mobile phone browser and found that everything was routed via their servers. The main problem was the lack of speed, even noticeable on my phone's 3G broadband and in the end I just gave up. If they're going to pitch this concept seriously they'd better make sure they have the resources to handle it..

Not on any of my networks

EVER

I shall just blacklist all opera sites in my firewalls

Maybe Im stupid but I fail to see how that will make any BOFHs life anything but a nightmare

though I can see the peados rubbing their hands

Fail on so many levels

And VERY good it is too.

My mum had no idea how to publish content to the internet. Even Picasa Web is too complicated and convoluted, however I showed her how to do it in Opera Unite, and she was more than happy with how it worked.

Simplez.....

I feel today Opera have truly reinvented the web. However too many people have blinkers on to not see it, and are so far up Mozillas ass, or simply too bogged down in default IE installs to ever see it.

Intriguing.

I've done most of these things myself, using apache, a domain name app to link my dynamic IP to a 'free' hostname as well as playing around with FTP clients, but this definately looks interesting. A all-in-one service that installs and just works out of the box :)

I don't know how well their implementation is going to work, what the potential bottlenecks in resources and usability are, but I know I will be downloading this when I get home from work.

If this is as good as it looks on the tin (I'm too old to believe in vendor-sqeak), I think we might expect to see something similar in firefox and chrome in a few years time :)

If it does take off I hope opera agrees to open up their routing system or at least make the specs available so mozilla and google can make their implementations compatible, and we net doesn't suffer from browser segmentation :)

I don't know what's worse

Either they are using this to make people think they are "running the web" when in fact the routing, terms etc will mean Opera finds out your interests, activities & secrets (cf Facebook, Google)...

or they want to put a webserver on every computer, wasting bandwidth (on ADSL the upstream matters) and inviting a gigantic exploit.

Not sounding good to me.

What could...

What could possibly go wrong?

Not very green IT is it?

Won't this just lead to more desktops being left on 24/7? The reason I upload to a server is because it's already always on and then I can hibernate my desktop.

what was that i heard

i think the uk goverment just had a unified heart attack !!!

lol

Planet Saving Technology

One more reason for people to leave their computers on when they aren't using them...

Oh, great!

"But the real concern to most technically-minded users will be the security implications of allowing every Opera user to run their own addressable web server - even if everything is being routed through Opera's servers."

Just what the already-shaky Internet needs: a whole bunch of new servers the owners know nothing about, probably going to have a number of undocumented vulnerabilities that will end up with the lot of them turned into the next big botnet. And people wonder why client-side servers are strongly discouraged by most ISPs.

another sad attempt

to get noticed

in the name of evolution

Security (or lack of) never stopped evolution. So I think this will be quite popular, as it is indeed nifty for average people.

The web reinvented?

To quote a certain Royal - "my arse!"

Web servers have been built into Windows for about 12 years now, albeit as an option you have to enable yourself (PWS).

What's the point in having a web server that's only available while your computer is switched on? Anyone who's interested in file sharing is already using one of the umpteen different ways of doing this, including ways that don't rely on your computer being on all the time. e.g. Dropbox.

I can't see this doing anything to change the web or increasing Opera's market share.

Further thoughts on this...

I think Opera just launched a modern BBS :o)

That is not to say that I'm not excited as a kid on christmas eve.

Time to dig out the floppys with the low res Samantha Fox gifs :D

Does anyone have a copy of keen?

@Kev K

"though I can see the peados rubbing their hands"

Hands? That's optimistic...

next best thing? or not?

Just installed and was up and running within seconds, it has an easy use interface but I do have security concerns. As this is only in alpha so far im not going to be hosting my own site any time soon but will wait and see.

It does have the potential to save money and open up remote files for small companies with low IT budgets but again the security issue would need to be addressed.

ICQ 99b did this

Back in the day, IIRC, the bloatware that was ICQ had it's own web server, I'm sure of it.

Meanwhile....

...instead of whining like a little bitch about security i've just installed the thing and had a play around, pretty impressive stuff.

Passwords are generated randomly by default, no open access, limited folder sharing, our work firewall blocks all access from internet, not bad at all.

And i'd trust Opera when it comes to security more than ANY of the security-hole riddled other browser bods.

Steady on...

From what I've read it's not a whole server being bared to the internet, but a limited set of content services. I think it's great and will definitely open up the web for people like my parents who will never make their own website, but can understand the simple steps required to share some pics with faraway relatives.

It's not made clear above but only the person 'serving' requires Opera, the content can be accessed through any browser. This isn't a lock-in technology.

Can't wait to try it later

Nat and Firewalls.

Apart from the numbering issues, yer NAT router with an inbuilt firewall is great protection against the gits out there.

The sound of running boots in the background is that of scumbags trying to be the first to take advantage of all the Opera users having a discernable port open and forwarded to their PC.

Still, I suppose that even if every single Opera user switches this on, the resulting botnet will still be quite small by usual standards.

Genius...

I hear what you say about upload speeds, security and Opera's capacity issues. Nonetheless, this is a game changer - proper peer-to-peer sharing, seamless web and local resource delivery through a simple interface, and so on.

Yes, you lose the data source when the remote PC is switched off - you don't need to leave it on 24x7, the end user can always cache it if it's that important - but that adds to your security, surely.

Most importantly, it removes the big guns (esp. Google) from owning your stuff - and the right to search it and share it.

Love it!

To further reinvent nature...

Nature is the true master/mistress of effiency. Examine how a tree moves nutrients around and copy it.

Naysayers rejoice....

It's the end of the web as we know it!!!!!!

P2P for everything!

I posted about this on my blog http://www.hyperactivesam.com

We made an app called pixleyalbum a few years ago that involved the same type of technology - tiny web server on client machine - for sharing pictures.

Privacy, security, bandwidth, piracy, etc!

So many things wrong with this.

Essentially this is P2Ping the web. Aside from the privacy & security concerns. ISPs are going to get in a hump over the upstream bandwidth consumption and MPAA/RIAA etc are going to come down like a tonne of bricks just because your "server" is hosting something they object to. You could end up being sued because you legitimately listened to some music which you have a licence for downloading but you are not allowed to share (for example).

And as anyone knows, P2P doesn't make things faster. Just makes it more available. Imagine waiting for your page to come down from someone's crappy 512kbps BT connection that's heavily overloaded and serving up files at slower than a snails pace.

The reason it "worked in the old days" was because client and server were practically in the same room. Not to mention the web never worked like this in the old days anyway. X Terminals, yes, but not WWW.

Oh great, here we go again

Now they are going to sue Microsoft because they are bundling IIS with Windows since it is 'Abusing their monopoly' and preventing Opera from having a bigger market share.

oh dear god no!!!

As someone said this is just opening people up wide to attacks, if people are too dumb to keep there computer updated how they gonna secure a web server

Just because its hard

Is not a reason to not try. If we never took a risk where would we be?

Many B(l)ogs & Twitts are annoying enough

Now not only we will be treated to the garbage people are happy to put online and "share" with the rest of them but we'll have a sneak peak at their closets.

ewwwwwwwww

Terms of Service...

Not to mention that many ISP's state in the agreement that you can't run servers...

Revolutionary...

And as dangerous as revolutions always are. Kudos for our Norwegian friends!

Fidonet 2.0

I for one welcome our new Opera loving overlords!

An accident waiting to happen

That's what it looks like to me. Can you see all these people who can 'finally' have their own webserver at home - without knowing the first thing about it - opening up their computers to the outside, ready to be enlisted in the next spam-sending botnet...

My computers are not visible on the internet, and that's how I want to keep it. If I want to take data on the road with me, I'll use a USB-stick.

@Publishers and Consumers

The main problem with delivery from a non-business connection is the lack of a static address. A lot of ISPs specifically forbid the running of services on these links in the AUP and port scan to check for compliance (normally excluding ssh). While asymmetric bandwidth is a contributing factor the upload speeds for most broadband links is more than fast enough for the popularity most sites would achieve.

Doesn't matter

None of this matters because nobody actually uses Opera do they? Apart from the mobile version which is okay there's no point in Opera still exisiting.