Opera Invents New P2P System

jeffy124 writes "Opera Software has developed a new P2P communications technology, buzzword description being a platform independent real time short- to medium-range interpersonal communications technology. A press release is available on their website, as is a demonstration of the technology, which Opera has called "Soundwave"."

Comments

Holy crap

[nmb3000]

All this bullshit and they STILL are posting dupes.

It's nice to see some things don't change.

Re:Holy crap

[NanoGator]

"All this bullshit and they STILL are posting dupes."

They're probably doing that because people needlessly bitch about them.

I find it amusing, really. A lot of you act like somebody spit in your face when a dupe is posted. Never mind that not everybody may have seen it the first time around, I can't believe some of you get so bent out of shape about it. If it's old news, move on. Not a big deal.

It never happens that way though, does it? No no no, you've just got to come in and bitch about it. Bitch! Bitch!! Bitch!!! Dupe! Dupe!! DUPE!!! I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the dupes today were intentional just to have a little fun with you loudmouths with no sense of proportion.

Re:Holy crap

[ChuckleBug]

Your reply is a dupe of a previous reply to a dupe of the article (dupe) to which you are replying. In dupe. I am outraged.

Re:Holy crap

[smallpaul]

Dupes annoy me for the following reason: I am a professional. I try to put care into meeting my customer's needs. I expect the people who provide services to me (ad-sponsored and paid alike) to do the same. A Slashdot editor who cannot be bothered to read Slashdot insults me on a variety of levels: first, Slashdot is such a trivial medium that even its editors cannot be bothered to read it. So why do I read it? I guess I'm the fool. Second, my time is worth so little that they have the right to waste it, like a fast-food employee chatting on the phone with friends or a cable guy who says he'll arrive "sometime in the afternoon". Admittedly the dupe only wastes a second of my time but when you multiply that second across a tens of thousands of users it is actually quite costly.

Ultimately it is just the lack of professionalism and respect for the audience that is galling. The very nature of an "editor's" job is to save the readership from distracting little annoyances. An "editor" without professionalism should get a different job. They are like a computer programmer who doesn't think logically.

Re:Holy crap

[NanoGator]

"Admittedly the dupe only wastes a second of my time but when you multiply that second across a tens of thousands of users it is actually quite costly."

Err.. okay. I have two problems with this argument:

1.) What does the total number of seconds lost across 10's of thousands of people have to do with anything? I'm sorry, but this is one of the weakest rationalizations I have ever heard. If Slashdot delays are so bad, you would have a super long list of things that gall you.

2.) Why isn't there an accounting of the people who didn't catch the original stories? The 1 second lost by you may be gained by me because I don't sit on Slashdot reading every single story.

Maybe I just don't have a lot of sympathy for you because often times I catch the 'dupe' without seeing the original.

"Ultimately it is just the lack of professionalism and respect for the audience that is galling."

What's so galling about it? Why is this galling, but Slashdot posting a story you already read on Yahoo news isn't? Don't answer just yet, think about it. I mean, you've mentioned that you are offended by Editors not constantly reading up on Slashdot, but have you taken any consideration at all into how the system works? They get tons of story submissions a day. In order to make Slashdot work, they probably queue up the story for publishing. In this case, it's possible for two seperate people to okay a story. Heck, even if it's the same editor, how can you expect him to be the memory man? Slashdot is very active. In the last two days there have been seventy seven articles posted. (I know this because I subscribe to the RSS feed.) How can they not have dupes?

Eh forget everything I just said. What I find most comical about this rant about dupes is that Slashdot actually disclaims that there may be dupes. If this is so fricken unacceptable, then why even bother hanging around? I mean, if you go to McDonald's, and there's a sign saying "You may be kicked in the balls", can you really get mad about somebody attempting a field goal?

Re:Holy crap

[smallpaul]

2.) Why isn't there an accounting of the people who didn't catch the original stories? The 1 second lost by you may be gained by me because I don't sit on Slashdot reading every single story.

According to this logic, Slashdot should run every article over and over again in case someone missed it. If there is a problem with people "missing" articles that they would have wanted to see then personalization features are a much better solution than accidentally posting the same thing multiple times even for those who DID read it the first time.

"Ultimately it is just the lack of professionalism and respect for the audience that is galling."

What's so galling about it? Why is this galling, but Slashdot posting a story you already read on Yahoo news isn't?

I'd appreciate it if you would read what I wrote before responding. The answer to your question is above. A Slashdot editor posting an article from Slashdot is doing his job. A Slashdot editor reposting a dupe is just lazy. I guess I'll just admit that I'm offended by laziness in service providers. I also don't like typos in newspapers, dead air between television shows, poorly informed journalism, etc.

Don't answer just yet, think about it. I mean, you've mentioned that you are offended by Editors not constantly reading up on Slashdot, but have you taken any consideration at all into how the system works? They get tons of story submissions a day. In order to make Slashdot work, they probably queue up the story for publishing. In this case, it's possible for two seperate people to okay a story.

As you point out, Slashdot is a software system. This implies that there are two different ways to to solve the problem: manual and automatic. Let's take this most recent example. Slashdot is a linking system. So an important hint about the purpose of a post is its links. One of the dupes has a single link. The other has two. The one link is duplicated across the two articles. Therefore the slashdot CMS could easily inform the editor: "Warning: this article has links that are similar to these other articles: ...". Using fuzzy matching it could easily pick up all articles about Opera recently but even just using exact text matching it could have picked up this particular dupe.

On the other hand, the manual way of doing this is pretty straightforward as well. You are posting something about "Opera". So you query the site and the queue for articles about "Opera". If there is something similar on the site or the queue then you don't add the new submission to the queue. It would add five minutes of effort to each article post. They can't be bothered to spend five extra minutes per story to make a more professional product. As someone who DOES try to make professional products , it bothers me.

Heck, even if it's the same editor, how can you expect him to be the memory man? Slashdot is very active. In the last two days there have been seventy seven articles posted. (I know this because I subscribe to the RSS feed.) How can they not have dupes?

Think it through. How does usatoday.com not have dupes? How does the New York Times not have dupes? They have editors. That's what editors do. Slashdot "queue clearers" call themselves editors but they are too lazy to do the job. Seventy seven articles over two days is not really that much to keep in one's head.

Eh forget everything I just said. What I find most comical about this rant about dupes is that Slashdot actually disclaims [slashdot.org] that there may be dupes. If this is so fricken unacceptable, then why even bother hanging around? I mean, if you go to McDonald's, and there's a sign saying "You may be kicked in the balls", can you really get mad about somebody attempting a field goal?

Sure. Why not? The EULA for every piece of software you buy says that you may encounter bugs but that doesn't mean that you accept the bugs happily. A parking garage sign may say that they take n

Re:Holy crap

[NanoGator]

"According to this logic, Slashdot should run every article over and over again in case someone missed it."

Sorry, no, my logic doesn't imply that. An occasional re-run is a far cry from rapidly repeating each story. Anybody who has ever watched TV before should have figured this out.

"I'd appreciate it if you would read what I wrote before responding."

I did, actually. Frankly, that answer, and the one you just posted isn't doing it for me. You're holding Slashdot's professionalism in too high regard, plus you're letting yourself getting worked up over something extremely frivilous. Slashdot could just as easily not post the story and you'd be none the wiser. Don't get me wrong, it'd be kinda nice if Slashdot never duped, but the 'damage' it's causing in it's current format is so minimal it's extremely pointless. I could understand if Slashdot guaranteed a new story every n minutes and occasionally ran dupes, I'd be a lot more sympathetic in that case. However, this is simply not the case. Sorry.

"Using fuzzy matching it could easily pick up all articles about Opera recently but even just using exact text matching it could have picked up this particular dupe."

If they wrote all that code to do all that, what would be the benefit? Less dupes? What good would that do? What if there's a detail in Slashdot's architecture that makes that not so easy? (Don't forget that Slashdot has all kinds of processes in place to keep the server load down.) Then there's the matter of making that work. Can it be done without any down time? If not, then is the down time worth it? I doubt it. I remember the last time /. went down a few hours. I thought there'd be a riot. What if this system is somewhat flawed the first time around (it's a law of software development) and it prevents other stories from making it through? I can see that happening right now. Some dupes aren't actually dupes at all, they're updates. You'll find similar links there. All this work, and the benefit is... no dupes? Do you realize how fucking easy it'd be to just ignore the story?
" If there is something similar on the site or the queue then you don't add the new submission to the queue. It would add five minutes of effort to each article post."

Actually, I don't really have a problem with this. I think it's completely fair to ask that Editors do this. I really don't think it's fair to tar and feather them if they don't, though. A.) Human error will always happen, B.) Whoop-de-fuck. There's a dupe. Let's light our torches and sharpen our pitchforks.

"They can disclaim all they want and I will still be unhappy that they don't give a shit about the quality of their work."

Alrighty. You're unhappy with the service. Because you're unhappy with the service, you're now making other people unhappy about it. You worry about people wasting time reading a dupe story, but you're ignoring the fact that people are wasting your time reading your complaint about it.

" But one typically does so only after a particular situation has gotten intolerable."

Right. So now your goal is to make it intolerable for others? I can honestly say that my biggest complaint about dupes is all the complaining about dupes. I know I'm not alone here.

"Slashdot's "editors" are apathetic and lazy"

They cranked out almost 80 stories in 2 days. Those lazy bastards.

Re:Holy crap

[smallpaul]

You seem to think that 80 of 48 hours is a massive number of stories. Let's presume that there is only one editor working at a time in 8 hour shifts. Then the editor needs to post one article every half an hour. They don't need to write the interesting content: someone else does that. They don't need to find or summarize the content: the submitter does that. Presuming that the Slashdot CMS software is half-way comparable to the various free programs I've used (I haven't tried Slash), the editor basically selects the post, writes a sentence of text, writes a department-line and selects a category.

Doing this in half an hour is not a heroic act. In fact, I am pretty confident that the scroll rate of Slashdot is selected based upon their perception of reader preferences, not based upon the rate at which they can post. Frankly, it seems like a cushy job to me.

By the way, I've never done a dupe-complaining post myself. You started this meta-thread about whether dupe-yellers and I got involved because it seemed ludicrous to me that you are complaining about consumers asking editors to ... er ... edit. Other commercial media sources don't find it so difficult. There is nothing uniquely difficult about editing Slashdot. Many sites (with much higher volume) actually link new articles to PREVIOUS articles on the same topic: this is much harder than finding out if such a previous article exists.

Re:Holy crap

[NanoGator]

If you consider sifting through hundreds of submissions to get to it, yes it is.

"They don't need to write the interesting content: someone else does that. They don't need to find or summarize the content: the submitter does that."

I think you'd be surprised at how much editor intervention it is. I'm not claiming it's a lot, but it could easily soak up 10 minutes.

" Other commercial media sources don't find it so difficult."

Other commercial media sources go get the stories by people specialized in the area that the story resides in. They don't sift through user-generated crap to get to it.

"There is nothing uniquely difficult about editing Slashdot."

Wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's impossible for them to do. I don't think, however, the effort they'd put into it would yield much reward. I'm just not sold on this particular argument of the debate.

"By the way, I've never done a dupe-complaining post myself."

I apologize for mis-labeling you. I don't agree with you, but I certainly do not intend disrespect.

Re:Holy crap

[NanoGator]

Err. Sorry for screwing up the italic tag. Hehe. :)

Nothing for you to see here, please move along.

[cybercobra]

Wow, a repeat on April Fools Day.
Honestly, I never saw it coming.

Re:Nothing for you to see here, please move along.

[agraupe]

Gentoo not with overzealousness? Are you insane? I'm a gentoo user, and I think a lot of users to way too overzealous...

-sigh-

[Omnieiunium]

My god.. it's still 4 PM.. 8 more hours of this..

Nothing for you to see here, please move along.

[chronos82]

Nothing for you to see here, please move along.

54 april fools and counting

[Seft]

Really. I'm going to stop reading slashdot if this continues.

Re:54 april fools and counting

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes they do...

DUPE!

[chrisopherpace]

And from the same day, as well. It's an April Fools dupe though!

April Fools

[nachoqtpie]

I just can't get enough of the April Fools stories. They never get old. Even though I've read it, it still makes me giggle with glee

5 Billion post on Slashdot

[MatthewNewberg]

I think the constant rate of post on Slashdot is a April Fools Day prank. I bet it is just a big shell script that keeps them coming, and they just still there and watch how stupid we are.

WTF

[stupidfoo]

I mean for fucks sake.

First, about 19 dupes ThinkGeek stories (yes, I know, they varied ever so slightly) and now this.

Re:WTF

[NanoGator]

"First, about 19 dupes ThinkGeek stories (yes, I know, they varied ever so slightly) and now this."

Strange things happening on April 1st!? Wanna what's spooky? Every year around the end of October, I get harrassed by a bunch of kids!

Re:WTF

[stupidfoo]

Dang kids! Get out of my yard!

Not again...

[DavW]

Marginally more humorous than some but way too late.

first of April

[Neduz]

in europe it's already the second of April,but as I'm reading the subjects on the main page, US obviously still enjoys the first of April

Re:first of April

[Fizzog]

"US obviously still enjoys the first of April"

After all of this I am not sure if 'enjoys' is the right word...

Buggy P2P System!!!

[PridIdOct]

I've only been using it for around 10 seconds. No replies, no status reports, not even a blinking LED to indicate that an attempted transfer is occuring. This'll never catch on.

Re:Buggy P2P System!!!

[cheide]

I tried to share some music using this scheme, but all of the peers suddenly went away.

Re:Buggy P2P System!!!

[dazlari]

You need to use it until all facial indicators turn red. Failing that, increase the output until they turn blue. It often also helps to increase the output signal in short sharp bursts. If this still fails then it is likely that the receivers are non-functional.

Re:Buggy P2P System!!!

[PridIdOct]

Just finished trying what you said--it seems to be that the receivers are non-functional (or, as I'd like to say, dysfunctional). I did, however, turn some of my facial indicators red and they aren't turning back. My mom said it looks like I burst some capillaries due to strain...so we have a P2P system that has a shorter range than my home wireless network AND as a bonus can cause physical and/or aesthetic damage to its users. Next thing you know, there will be viruses plaguing the system. I know my antivirus defences, though--don't open an *.exe in a response to a question like "What time is it?".

Chill!

[Twisted Grind]

Let those of us who enjoy crude humor be and quit posting comments about the banality of April 1st if you don't like them! If you're sick and tired of it...STOP READING! Go outside! Get a job/start doing some actual work at your job! Meet people! Or hell, just read another website for 8 more hours if it offends you so much. I swear, some of you sound like someone just sh*t in your umbilical cord...

Re:Chill!

[DavW]

That's one of the oddest images every to be formed in my head.

losing respect for slashdot

[omiee]

april fools going too far

Time Zones

[lager_monste]

Well its 2nd of April from where I'm at. Fool! What ever happened to internet time . . . . ?

LOL !!

[totalcaos]

Way to go Opera ... that was a good one !!

In AD2005, war was beginning

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Rumble, Laserbeak, Ravage: prepare for battle. Operation: warfare. Eject... eject... eject..

I don't get it

[riqnevala]

What is today's date?

They keep telling me it is 2nd of april.

I guess it is april fools day all-year-round when it comes to IT-business news.

Next dupe..

[TheJavaGuy]

The next dupe will come in Opera's new SoundWave.