Slashdot Mirror
Opera Embedding BitTorrent Client
Opera Watch writes "The next version of Opera, 8.02, will have an embedded BitTorrent client. Opera has released today a Technical Preview of this new version on its FTP directory, though they have made no official announcement as of yet."
So where's the torrent for Opera 8.02?
I predict a swarm of FireFox BT plug-ins within the next two weeks.
That's all good and fine, but do I really _want_ a bittorrent client embedded in my browser?
Now we just need apache with an embedded torrent generation/serving (or at least just serving; it'd be simpler to configure, that's for sure) for bulk static content. :)
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
This is something I'd also like to see built into the next version of iTunes or iPodderX for getting Podcasts and the like (so as to reduce the bandwidth on shows I'm interested in listening to).
Of course, to make sure that Opera doesn't get sued for having a P2P network built into their client that could be used for copyright infringements, they need to add a note into their EULA that says something akin to "Don't steal music, or movies, or - just don't steal, OK? If you do, don't blame us. Thanks." to that their intent in supplying the technology is clear.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
The real problem with this move is that even though they have a sort of "first mover" advantage, Opera is at the mercy of the Firefox/Mozilla developers with regards to this feature. Some enterprising Open Source developer will be able to incorporate BitTorrent into the Firefox browser without much trouble, and then Opera, the only significant for-pay browser left, will turn back into an also-ran.
The key for Opera is to get into niches where they stand a chance, handheld computers and cellphones are one area they are very active in. Per-unit licensing for their browser on cellphones makes them a lot of money. I hope they do well into the future.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Well, "milestone" is lofty, but this certainly does lend legtimacy to the software as a real tool just like, say, winzip or anything else that just does a job, and people use it for good and "bad".
Should make Opera look good too.
The underlying thing here that looks great for BT is that Opera must have done some due diligence and decided they were on good legal ground to embed the software... which may be seen as a green light for others to do the same.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Thanks to google's summer code we can hope to have a functional BitTorrent client built with XUL/XPCOM.
:-)
6 874
Included in Firefox?
Check the Mozilla development projects that have been accepted for Google's Summer of Code program:
http://summer.mozdev.org/projects.html
And the MozillaZine news about it here:
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=
...that bittorrent the technology is not going away. In fact, it is a vastly superior method that should replace HTTP/FTP for most file downloads. There should be no more need to find mirrors, simply run it and let the program decide which sources are the faster. An integrated client will introduce a lot more people to it. Now, if they get consistantly better download performance perhaps you'll even see popular demand :)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I see the advantages here and in other ways I see the disadvantages. In one way I'm excited at the thought of not having to run a seperate program to download a file using torrents. I even see that it might force other browsers to do the same (I'm betting we see a firefox addon in about a week). I could even picture a time when all webpages are sped up via torrents.
At the same time I'm worried about a browser doing too many things. I'm not going to start using opera just because it can handle torrents but if IE or Firefox starting doing it I would be rather happy. It's kinda like the various PlayStations playing Dvds when competing with a dreamcast or 64.
This also begs the question, will this help make torrents more mainstream? I know plenty of average people who have no idea what a "torrent" is. If more of the general public starts picking it up who knows what will happen with things like piracery.
Meh, just my thoughts.
I'm perfectly happy with Azureus. I doubt that the BitTorrent client integrated into Opera will be better.
This seems to be an unnecessary feature. I don't see myself using it over Azureus.
BitTorrent clients also tend to use up a lot of memory because of the nature of BitTorrent. Would this impact Opera's preformance as well?
What a great way to see that they get banned from corporate desktops across the planet.
This will change Opera browser installs on enterprise systems to go from "officially not allowed but generally ignored" to "hunted down and killed at every opportunity".
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
I predict that networking sites will be swamped by Opera users
sites... swamped... by... Opera users ???
Does not compute.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Is "Opera vs FireFox" the new "vi vs emacs" ?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The precedent recently set is that you cannot distribute a tool with the intent that it be used to infringe copyrights. Grokster distributed software and said "Go illegally download songs to which you have no license!" Opera is saying "Go and download really big files!" Including Bittorrent is no different than including HTTP in their web browser, since either can be used for both lawful and unlawful purposes. What would make Opera a target is if their new release were advertised (at all! ... hahaha, I kill me) with the tagline "Opera 8.5 with Bittorrent: the world of pre-release movies is at your fingertips."
I think he means they both gang up and hit a site at the same time ;)
Join the Free Software Foundation
What's wrong with wanting money? Not everyone can subsist on rocks and mud, you know.
Netadmin: We've been Operadotted!!!
Pointy haired: What's that mean?
Netadmin: Two Opera users hit our web server within the same hour.
Pointy haired: What's Opera? Is that a new virus?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Adding a Bittorrent client to a browser doesn't seem like a good fit to me - a BT client needs to run continuously in the background, downloading and uploading the files.
A browser's model is more one of "load the thing and show it" or "Stream the thing and show it". How does that map to BT, where you cannot even "stream" a thing (since you are getting the pieces out of order)?
Will we see people who's torrent clients only serve the file while it is being downloaded, and then stops?
Personally, I run Torrentflux - which is a PHP CGI app that allows me to download & serve torrents on my server - then I just point my browser at it to set things up.
Now, *if* the browser plug-in then communicated with a [daemon|service|external program] that did the torrent work, and all the plug-in did was send the command to the external entity to command the queuing of the download (and then open a window in the browser when the download is done)- then that might make sense.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Are you crazy?
Irc chat in mozilla doesn't suck. It has replaced every other irc chat that I had on my computer. I use windows as my everyday desktop (games & graphic apps), but chatzilla, when coupled with dialogmate (a small utility that offers, among others, the possibility to put programs in the systray), is mostly everything I need.
The embeded download manager doesn't suck as bad as you think. Sure, the resume doesn't work, but the downloads can be retried and it has its limited uses. Just as I assume the torrent client will have when is embeded in Firefox.
In my oppinion, this is a good thing. It will expose more people to BitTorrent and will atract more people from the non-firefox users world, as it will be an extra feature they will get.
I'll do the stupid thing first and then you shy people follow...
I'd be more impressed if Oprah offered support for BitTorrent.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Opera is a commercial company and with their relatively modest research and development budget they've come up with a fairly neat idea to incorporate BitTorrent into a web-browser. Now granted, it doesn't take a genuius to be able to put 2+2 together, afterall, one might see it as a simple extension of what web-browsers already provide. What slightly annoys me is comments like 'some enterprising firefox/mozilla will have this feature in a couple of weeks' - couple that with statements such as 'open source drives innovativation'. While I don't doubt either statement, this example is one where open source hasn't driven the innovation. It has helped (BitTorrent is open-source, without it Opera would have nothing). But then, if an Open Source browser developer just 'copies' this feature - where is the innovation? If open source really drove innovation, why didn't some bright OSS developer have the idea for such a feature sooner?
When I click on a torrent it already automaticly launches and starts. The BT installer is mean and lean, no worries there.
Won't this just mean one more thing for Opera to have to write/maintain/patch themselves?
Still a cool move, just... why?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Where is the bloat?
I'm for making it easier and more convenient to do stuff online. I hope Firefox gets a built in BT client too.Clever signature text goes here.
That's sith talk there buddy, watch it.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
With Opera vs Firefox, each contender has many advantages; the argument could go on forever and in the end it's just a matter of taste, and of suitability for a particular role.
With vi vs emacs, it's a much more important issue that has thankfully already been settled by vi winning.
^Z
^C
end
quit
ZZ
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
this is just one step closer to the dream of webpages being served as torrents. Imagine the benefit to mid level, and non commercial websites. http://www.4chan.org/ comes to mind as a major benefactor.
Bittorrent is great. Having it as part of the browser is great. But isn't it about time that the Bittorrent protocol become a W3C standard? Or is Bittorrent too hacky, and ill-suited to be a standard? If Bittorrent wants protection from IP litigators and large-scale adoption, this would help a lot.
I don't know about you, but when I click a link to a .torrent file, it pops up btdownloadgui... how is this any better?
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
Another precedent being set for the LEGAL use of BitTorrent.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
so it seems kget/konqueror isn't going to be the first browser to support bittorrent after all. http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57591 I think it is a very nice feature to have. downloading from torrent feels almost the same to an end user as downloading from an ftp or http site. and it saves the hosting server a lot of bandwith. to bad microsoft won't support it natively in their webbrowser.
I can see two problems with this.
The first is that bittorrent is not really a stable protocol. By which I mean, the protocol itself is still under active development. I could imagine in-browser bittorrent being great for about two weeks, then all of a sudden Azureus will come up with some kind of funny extension or the main Bittorrent team will come up with a better multi-root-tracker swarming mechanism or some such and all of a sudden the in-browser client won't work with any of the new torrents out there. That would get obnoxious.
The second is that web browsers are not stable. I mean, web browsers crash a lot. I expect a torrent to be running for hours and hours, becuase if it won't be going that long, well, it makes less sense for it to be torrented in the first place. Even the most stable web browser I've ever used, I'd be a little cautious to run bittorrent inside it because some afternoon I could be reading a site it doesn't like or something and I could crash two or three times, getting booted out of my hypothetical torrent each time, before that torrent finishes. I'd hope or wish there was some way to move the actual bittorrent downloading into a separate process, one that isn't effected by browser crashes, even if it's transparently "part of" the web browser from a GUI perspective. (Come to think of it, I kind of wish at times someone could make a web browser where every window got its own process space, or something, so one browser window could lock up or crash without effecting the others. Web browsers are practically OSes now, they might as well start acting like it.)
Other than these things it seems like a good idea.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Out of curiosity, why? Whenever I click on a torrent link, Firefox opens a BT client window in much the same way that clicking on an FTP link opens an FTP client window. What's the inherent advantage of an integrated client?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
> I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore
Corporate firewalls
- sigs are for wimps.
1. the file is available at all. If I'm serving a file that's very popular and consequently my ISP sends me an extra bill, I'll stop serving the file...
2. The file is available when it's very popular. If my web server is at maximum connections you're not getting much content, are you?
In Soviet Russia, BitTorrent embeds Opera
No, thank God - at least not on Unix. The last thing you want is $random_app being able to request that your firewall open ports. While it'd be convenient, the security implications far outweigh the possible benefits.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Funny for myself a former long time Opera user (used it from version 3.5 onward, until FF 1.0)I keep re-trying Opera, but already I am addicted to firefox features and functionality, and keep returning to Firefox.
A couple of times recently I thought I would give Opera yet another try, and I got frustrated with bookmarks both times.
First I was using it with folders on my bookmark toolbar. But when I tried middle clicking the bookmarks in folders nothing happened so I couldn't launch them in new tabs, like I can on firefox. Small thing but frustrating.
So a bit later I got into using the sidebar for bookmarks instead on Firefox, so I thought, hey this probably works on Opera. Yes now I can middle click to a new tab in Opera as well. Good. But the damn panel buttons are always there taking up space uselessly.... Grrrrrrr...
Even if it had worked to my liking, I think without extensions Opera is doomed. I love my gmail notifier, flash blocker, adblocker etc...
Opera still has some great advantages like true MDI interface and page linking. Ultra fast caching, but these are shrinking.
Integrated Torrent client... Yawn...
My grandma calls it Mozulla Foxfire.
Swear to God.
"It looks like Opera is just listening to the mozilla community, and implementing faster."
despite the "Opera has only 2 users" jokes, Opera does have it's own community you know. considering all the features that make it into firefox that were originally in Opera, i imagine quite a few firefox devs are in that community.
I think this is where there are differences. First, I have yet to see a useful extension that could not be replicated for any browser via another helper program or userjs or whatever.
Second, what I do see is the possibility of exploits for extensions same as BHOs in IE.
Third, I see many people having popular extensions break when they upgrade.
For me, extensions seem to be far more a hassle than they are worth. And as far as I can tell, there are enough people out there who feel the same to make Opera profitable. And that, not market share, is what matters to me as an Opera user.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Most standalone consumer-grade routers have UPnP support built-in, although you may have to turn it on through the router's setup page first. I'm assuming you're using a Linux/BSD computer as your router, so you may want to look at the links on the open-source UPnP SDK project site for pointers about plugging it into your existing setup.
Note that UPnP's port forwarding features are a potential security risk if you're using NAT as a "firewall" (yes, I've heard it referred to as such) to block out all incoming traffic, since malicious apps can now forward arbitrary ports without your intervention. Granted, IMO it's not a big security risk, since you've probably got bigger problems than forwarded ports if you're running malicious code on your computer.
At least in Opera 7.xx, you can disable that toolbar and only display the side panel. Haven't tried it with 8, but then again I rarely use the side panel.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion