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Firefox Gets File Sharing Extension
Jonnty writes "Firefox finally has a good P2P extension.. "[It] incorporates peer-to-peer capabilities into the browser via a sidebar. AllPeers "combines the strength of Firefox and the efficiency of BitTorrent" to add media sharing to the long list of available extensions." "
This is interesting but I don't think that BitTorrent-style is the right way to go about it. The browser will definitely be the new "feel the pulse of society" provision, but what is going to be the best way to get that feel?
There are other protocols that, in my opinion, are better that BT. I've seen a few that use other (third party) users to mask both the sender and receiver from one-another. I believe this is going to be important especially when it comes to government regulation and censorship. I'm anti-copyright, so I couldn't care less about who owns what.
I believe the next step beyond the protocol will be the need to find a way to properly packet-ize information better. I guess ZIP or RAR is fine, but it isn't enough. A sender of any media (website, file, e-mail, etc) would need to implement the data into a packet and set that packet as public or private. Public packets could be dropped into the "Sharing" folder, which replaces the temporary internet files folder completely. Users would instantly share the webpage packets, the image packets and even the music or programs they download.
Popular files would be much easier to get, and the shortcomings of BitTorrent in terms of censorship would be greatly reduced. I could even see a future where we could do away with DNS in the long term as we could access webpages or other information through this network of shared temporary file folders. No need to host your own information on a server, just drop it into your share/temp folder and let others find it via whatever search engine or "torrent host" they use.
Could this be expanded to create a mini-bittorrent type network where if the browser can't contact the server, it checks its peers to see if a cached copy exists, and download it from them?
no comment
Since the allpeers site is just a bunch of pictures and promises, with no actual extension available, shouldn't the title be "Firefox MIGHT get file sharing extension"?
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Color me cynical, and unimpressed.
Why would I run code written by morons that can't even get a webpage right? Here is a version of their index that works without javascript, not exactly rocket science is it?
n al.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitio
<html>
<head><title>AllPeers browser detection</title></head>
<body>
<script>
if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("Firefox") != -1)
{
window.location = "index_f.htm";
}
else
{
window.location = "index_nf.htm";
}
</script>
<noscript>
Firefox users, please <a href="/index_f.htm">click here.</a>
Users of other web browsers, please <a href="/index_nf.htm">click here.</a>
</noscript>
</body>
</html>
Actually, this might not be such a bad idea and it sort of makes sense. For webpages that heavily depend upon video or audio, this would work perfectly if implemented well. It makes sense that if you downloaded the file and played it in a built-in player in Firefox or other. I can also see it saving a lot of bandwidth for sites. It also saves the need of having to get another client, like Azureus, and downloading the .torrent file and all that extra stuff to download something, while having it just download in Firefox. This may be a new interesting to way spread content, so I think it should be watched closely.
Its like watching cartoons or reading comic books. If any other nation in the world makes it, its a cartoon or a comic book. As soon as it comes from Japan though, it magically becomes high art and is called anime or manga. Same thing for erotic cartoons/comics. If it comes from japan (preferably with tentacles) its magically "hentai" instead of porn. This applies to fans of cartoons as well. If you like cartoons, well then you like cartoons. OTOH if you like cartoons from Japan then you are an Otaku or something. Its not like we go around calling french movies "le films", but apparently stuff from Japan is so freaking cool we have to translate animation or cartoon to "anime".
Why not fork?
Since it is a plugin and not a part of Firefox, no. This is one of the best advantages of a plugin architecture. You can allow controversial functionality, like adblock, to be added and avoid consequences. They may go after the plugin writers, but so what? Even if they stop them, 10 more would probably be released, especially if the original implementation is open source.
How come everyone automatically leaps at the pirating side of Bittorrent? Bittorrent is quite an idea, using distributed bunches of bandwidth to serve a file instead of a server needing a lot of bandwidth.
There are a lot of legitimate uses for this technology, such as, Linux distribution. I've noticed it used a lot in this vein, and it takes a lot of pressure off web servers, especially in the OSS market where profits are slim-to-none for the server itself.
I understand that Bittorrent is usually used for piracy, but that doesn't mean that's all the protocol does or is good for. Besides that point, Firefox can't be sued for simply allowing extensions to be written for it. Technically it's open source so anybody can write any extension they want, but that is the responsibility of the developer, not the responsibility of Mozilla. What you are saying is roughly equivalent to suing Microsoft for allowing the development of P2P apps on their platform.
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