Opera to take web back to the old days
Opera raised the browser feature ante today by announcing Opera Unite - placing a web server in every client and encouraging end users to share content from their own desktop with the world. Rather than compete with the cloud-based services that are currently so popular, Opera is proposing, and enabling, a return to how the …
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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 :)
Publishers and Consumers
"..Conspiracy fans have long posited that the proliferation of NATs and Firewalls is part of a process to divide the internet into "publishers" and "consumers",...."
If so, they really are paranoid. NATs is about getting around the inherent address space limitations (AFAIK, please correct me if wrong) and a firewall is about system protection from all the well documented 'nasties' out there.
The ISPs are the ones who want us to be 'consumers', with the asymmetrical connections they provide (usually, download is about 10 times faster than upload speed). They hoped that we'd be 'consuming' from them, paying for news and entertainment, but Google/iPlayer/YouTube/bit-torrent etc beat them to it. The ISPs are now data-movers and no different from water and sewerage companies as regards what they do for us.
If we had symmetrical speed connections, then the entire world could be a very distributed and robust cloud with people running a background app that stored and maintained a relatively small amount of data and running a distributed application, on behalf of a 'cloud provider'. (In exchange for which, a user would get a discount on cloud services).
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.
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...
Old days
True, like old days of exchanging music and stuff on IRC ;) I wonder how MPAA/RIAA are going to respond to that "new" old threat.
It is an interesting functionality although lots of websites provide pretty much the same stuff, not to mention IM clients. That can stop it in its infancy. Also Opera's market share is quite small (especially outside Europe) so that can also be a deal breaker.
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.
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 whole NAT idea is outdated anyway
"Conspiracy fans have long posited that the proliferation of NATs and Firewalls is part of a process to divide the internet into "publishers" and "consumers", and Opera is happy to play up their part in reversing this process"
Lalala..
NATs are shot anyway, practically any service bypasses that little problem these days (want an example? What do you think Skype does?). But that's not the biggest issue - IPv6 is certain to put a stake through NAT once we've gone past the slow adopters phase where people NAT an IPv4 network onto an IPv6 ISP circuit..
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.
Some real paranoid fuckers here
This is just fancy folder sharing, hardly an internet apocolypse.
Seems there are Microsoft fanboys here too today.
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?
I agree
"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."
This is the first thing that crossed my mind.
This is just opening a can of worms, worms from troy.
P... fffffffffff...t!
The sound of a damp squib (not) going off.
So this is the thing that will change the internet? It's actually just another social networking attempt
You've got "the lounge", photo sharing, a thing called "the fridge" - not an attempt to be cool, but a place to stick notes - and a file sharing system. I fully expect that the user group will go the way of pretty much every other similar effort: some narcissistic and easily-led types will give it a try, post a few things, then forget it forever - once they realise that no-one is even the remotely bit interested in them, what they are doing or who their "friends" are.
Just about the only peple who WILL take an interest are the lawyers from all the suppression organisations who will keep a close eye on what files, pics and music they're sharing.
@Kev K
"though I can see the peados rubbing their hands"
Hands? That's optimistic...
Routing
If UPnP is enabled then only the opera name server is used, otherwise data flows directly from computer to computer, and not through opera servers.
For those with an open mind (and not shooting this idea down before investigating it), have a look at the Unite thread on Reddit, where one of the Unite devs was answering questions.
Security is of foremost importance, and they realise this.
Great browser, BTW, especially with Turbo mode on for slow connections.
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
@Charles 9
"And people wonder why client-side servers are strongly discouraged by most ISPs."
ISP's discourage client-side servers because their help desks don't want to be flooded with calls from grannys wondering why their Apache mod's aren't working.
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.
Hmm... Naah
It'll be good for some people but the last time I put anything on the web was when it was too big to send via IM. This looked promising as a quicker and easier way to achieve this until I read the bit that says you have to wait for them to approve it.
It'll be all the rage for a lot of bloggers no doubt.
Innovate
I try not to use the same browser all the time. After getting convinced to try Opera by a Norwegian friend, it has wound up on a number of friends' and family members' underpowered machines that cannot gracefully handle the bloat of modern browsers. Either upgrade the memory and/or processor or use Opera. One is free, and the other is not. Opera loads pain in the a$$ slow pages in short order. It is fast. It doesn't always render things so pretty since some sites are setup completely for IE and Firefox, but it makes up for it in speed.
The performance of previous releases has impressed me, and I am looking forward to finding out what Unite has to offer. Nice to have the luxury of choice these days. Hats off to the Opera folks for the new Innovation. Looking forward to it.
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!
Web Servers
Most ISP don't allow you to run a web server (or any other server) from your home computer since the bandwidth will affect their networks.
AFAIK ISP's also do port scans to make sure you are not running a web server.
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!!!!!!
hmmm
It is interesting, just how much harder would the internets be to police for our lords and masters if this were to exist? Although as everything goes through central servers hmmm.
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...
Hey, wait a moment!
If I'm browsing the web with dial-up, this isn't going to work too well.
If I've got a high-speed connection, running file-sharing software or a web server, on my computer - even if I have DSL, instead of cable Internet, where the upstream path is much slower than the downstream path - is a violation of my terms of service.
So exactly who is this browser supposed to be for? Grandmothers who have their own T1 connection?
Most ISPs include a personal web page with their service, so the Internet is not a one-way thing.
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.
They had me up until
"Routing is handled by servers at Opera"
sounds a bit crap really.
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.
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