0949: "File Transfer"

[Colin Fiat]

Why can't there be more real life feedback with data transfer other than time?
Mice should have more resistance when dragging large files.
USB sticks should weigh slightly more when they are full.
Windows with large data files should be more difficult to drag.

[joefaith]

there used to be an expression 'never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes'

[Anonymously Famous]

there used to be an expression 'never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes'

Three posters before you agree. (Search "underestimate" in the topic).

[webgiant]

Sometimes the USB key doesn't work. Last week I was in a teacher's office and he wanted to give me a 17MB Google Sketchup file. I handed him a 8GB USB key formatted NTFS, and his Mac wouldn't read the USB key. I had just moved the contents of the USB key onto my laptop seconds earlier.

[TiLt]

Sometimes the USB key doesn't work. Last week I was in a teacher's office and he wanted to give me a 17MB Google Sketchup file. I handed him a 8GB USB key formatted NTFS, and his Mac wouldn't read the USB key. I had just moved the contents of the USB key onto my laptop seconds earlier.

Try formatting your flash drive as either FAT or FAT32, as far as I know, all OSes should be able to read those sorts of partitions, anything else and you are liable to run into trouble.

[Rakshasa]

Well, 'File Transfer' has been a solved problem for a long time and only in the Windows world do people have any issue with this.

[lesmith11]

I was just having that problem the other day! I finally remembered I could just compress the file

[MrSnowman]

I usually use Pipebytes when I share with a single person. I like convenience.

Sometimes the USB key doesn't work. Last week I was in a teacher's office and he wanted to give me a 17MB Google Sketchup file. I handed him a 8GB USB key formatted NTFS, and his Mac wouldn't read the USB key. I had just moved the contents of the USB key onto my laptop seconds earlier.

Well the filesystem just can't be the problem. That would be horrible.

Maybe you didn't remove it correctly? Did you do safe removal? I have corrupted many a files by janking out USB sticks early.

Infact, as we speak I'm running chkdsk on my external.

[OP Tipping]

I really can't relate to this at all. There are any number of ways of doing this.

Your ISP probably gives you 100 MB or more of free space that you can use, perfectly good if the material is not secure.

It's piss easy to set up some FTP space, I have one that costs me $30 a year that I use for general storage and backup but can also be used for private FTP.

Or there are sites like yousendit.com, there's nothing really awkward about them, they are straightforward.



Mind you, I work in an industry where I sometimes need to get terabytes, or tens of terabytes, of data to clients, and seriously that still requires disk or tapes to physically be sent.

[Kurushimi]

I think if I was in that situation I would've just compressed the file with WinRAR, and, if need be, split it into a few RAR files and e-mailed them one at a time.

Maybe not the best way, but it's easier than driving.

[jpk]

I really can't relate to this at all. There are any number of ways of doing this.

Your ISP probably gives you 100 MB or more of free space that you can use, perfectly good if the material is not secure.

It's piss easy to set up some FTP space, I have one that costs me $30 a year that I use for general storage and backup but can also be used for private FTP.

Or there are sites like yousendit.com, there's nothing really awkward about them, they are straightforward.



Mind you, I work in an industry where I sometimes need to get terabytes, or tens of terabytes, of data to clients, and seriously that still requires disk or tapes to physically be sent.

$30 a year? Try setting up an account at sdf.lonestar.org. $1 lifetime fee for the basic account - this is basically a validation mechanism. $35 lifetime fee for some added storage and other perks. If you have ftp clients on your source and destination machines, this will do the job nicely for most purposes. Comes with web space, so you can also provide files to your friends and neighbors as well.

[GenericAnimeBoy]

...USB key formatted NTFS...

Well, there's your problem. FAT32 is interoperable with other operating systems. NTFS is not so much. Don't USB keys usually come formatted FAT32?

(EDITed after further research...)

[Ayelis]

Anyone else notice that Opera actually downloads torrents now? Seriously, with the prolonged stability, the multi-tab loading start times, the torrenting feature Opera has built in, and whatever this "Unite" webserver thing is, (Not to mention how well it handles CSS most of the time) shouldn't we all be using Opera?

[mcv]

Anyone else notice that Opera actually downloads torrents now? Seriously, with the prolonged stability, the multi-tab loading start times, the torrenting feature Opera has built in, and whatever this "Unite" webserver thing is, (Not to mention how well it handles CSS most of the time) shouldn't we all be using Opera?

Maybe, if all websites worked well in Opera. That's where the problem generally is. I often see sites that look fine in FF and Chrome, but are completely unreadable in Opera. A real shame, because I'm a long time Opera fan. Also, their torrent support has existed for as long as I've felt the need to download torrents.

[minus]

Awesome xkcd. Hope Minus will solve all the file sharing and publishing questions in the near future

[cream wobbly]

But seriously, is there any good way of doing this? I've been doing the dropbox + public link method, but it's kind of awkward.

FTP/web servers are perfectly good; it doesn't help those that don't have one though. NAT can be a real pain for exchanging files between two computers, I'm hoping the problem solves itself when IPv6 becomes more common.

Y'know, you're half right. Actually two thirds. When the ISPs give use IPv6, an FTP dropbox (note lowercase) is perfectly good. Tell person A to upload the file to the dropbox, move the file to a /pub folder, and tell person B to download it.

Just in case you're one of those people who's getting "Dropbox TM" and "dropbox" confused:

Code: Select all

chmod  a+wx,go-r  /var/ftp/dropbox

[cream wobbly]

Anyone else notice that Opera actually downloads torrents now? Seriously, with the prolonged stability, the multi-tab loading start times, the torrenting feature Opera has built in, and whatever this "Unite" webserver thing is, (Not to mention how well it handles CSS most of the time) shouldn't we all be using Opera?

Huh? When didn't Opera work with torrents?

[jfmonod]

Google "LinkAttach" . This is exactly what it does. I've just started using it. Give the mailerdaemon a break with those big, bulked out attachments on steroids. Nuf said.

[Spiky]

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned that major 'net players like Amazon, Apple, Google are just giving away online space in the 10s of GBs. I had need this July to transfer 2-3GB of files I was creating to my mother (semi-tech-savvy) from far away. Just changed my Amazon password for the weekend and loaded it into my free 20GB of space (via hotel internet, no less), let her pull what she needed. Changed password back later. No, the hotel connection wasn't fast, but I just let it upload while I go to bed. I'll admit we do usually just use a USB drive, my dad carries a 16GB in his pocket, mine is usually in my car.

Also using box.net with a large group of friends (international) for file sharing. Yes, this took setup and signup, but once going we can upload and download at will. I'm actually not sure of the space at the moment. 2GB for free or something. Everybody begging for "easy setup" with minimal security is asking for trouble. Put in a little effort up front with a service and be ready when you need it.

Ethernet:
Don't most computers now have smart ethernet sensing so you don't need a physical crossover cable, anymore? I'm used to Macs, which have been this way for several years, I thought the others did this, too. At home I just have everything networked, file transfer is as easy as knowing where the Network section of the OS is. The Win7Starter netbook is a PITA since it doesn't want to talk to anything, but I usually figure it out. (or whip out the USB)

[scarletmanuka]

Anyone else notice that Opera actually downloads torrents now? Seriously, with the prolonged stability, the multi-tab loading start times, the torrenting feature Opera has built in, and whatever this "Unite" webserver thing is, (Not to mention how well it handles CSS most of the time) shouldn't we all be using Opera?

Funny you should mention that. The other day I decided that Firefox was irritating me enough that I'd try Opera as my replacement secondary web browser at work. (My main web browser at work has to be IE because we have a lot of stuff that requires it.) I downloaded it, installed it, imported my bookmarks from Firefox, then went to make the one last change I needed to make to set it up before I started using it: telling it not to use the web page's specified text and background colours, but always to use black text on a white background.
I looked all over the place for a setting to allow me to do this, and even thought I'd found one (Presentation Modes) - however, changing the settings there had no discernible effect (and I tried many combinations). A web search suggested the way to achieve this was to write a custom .css file (for instance, here). Are you kidding me? I didn't consider this acceptable, so I gave up and went back to Firefox.

[Hafting]

But seriously, is there any good way of doing this? I've been doing the dropbox + public link method, but it's kind of awkward.

Sure, that is awkward.

I use scp, which is the easy way:

• No size-limited usb sticks with odd limits on filename lengths
• No silly external website, with possible privacy issues and/or size limits.
• Same-building copies works even when the internet connection is down. That can be useful.

And yes - I use this to/from other people's windows boxes too. I then have to install pscp for them, but that is a one-time job.

[rogerthedodger]

Well, doesn't document delivery in Skype work anymore? Was I the only person who used it?

[uiri]

In the US, Microsoft's legal troubles really had nothing to do with bundling software - that was simply the catalyst. What they did was coerce vendors into not bundling competing software (i.e. Netscape). Netscape managed to cut its own throat with Mozilla, in spite of winning that particular battle. However thanks to that we have a wonderful open source browser now .

I'm Canadian and too young to really remember any of it. So thanks for the clarification.

Europe, on the other hand, overreacts to everything, and so in Europe Microsoft can't bundle anything, including IE. That is bullshit, but not really important to me except that it pretty much guarantees that MS will not be bundling any new software with their OS, since it could trigger major anti-trust action in the unified countries that represent half of their install base. We'll just be getting slightly enhanced versions what is already there, and that's it. Thanks EU! Anyways...

My impression is that, in XP at least, Internet Explorer is too tightly coupled to internet settings in general. This causes problems. And represents Microsoft's view on the internet. It isn't something they really understand as much as something they have to provide. The web is the killer app of the internet so why not cut down on development costs. Or something to that effect. It just seems lazy that Internet Options is inside IE in WinXP. Things are better in later versions because of the EU.

The problem with every Linux distribution I've ever experienced (and I've experienced several, but by no means anywhere remotely close to all) is when things don't work right, they are an absolute nightmare to fix. For example, back in the days when wireless was, shall we say "unreliable" (that's being extremely kind, if you are unfamiliar with the struggles of wireless in Linux over the years), if Linux didn't have your driver in the kernel, you had potentially days of troubleshooting in store to get it to work. Even if you had the driver available, you were probably looking at a kernel recompile. That's a bit beyond Grandma's capabilities. No distribution I've used deals with this, and the reason is because this is related Linux's core design. Whereas in Windows Grandma just pops in the CD, hits play, and everything works (well, 99% of the time, anyway - driver writers can be idiots on occasion).

The wireless is just an example, obviously in recent years wireless itself has gotten much better, though even three or four years ago it was rather difficult to set up a wifi connection without entering magic code from a web site (assuming you didn't know how to use the command line tools, which I didn't).

This is, well, easily explained by, shall we say, Microsoft's dominant position. You're basically holding GNU to a higher standard than you're holding Windows. (I refer to GNU/Linux as GNU for brevity, for what I assume is the same reason you refer to GNU/Linux as Linux. Linux is easier to say, GNU is easier to type, so I use those in speech and text respectively. Also, there is no ambiguity because I know of no one who uses Android on x86 [the machines I'm assuming we're talking about] and the HURD is basically vapourware.) Now, part of this is the WinNT architecture, which is to say, it was supposed to be a microkernel but ended up with some drivers so it is a hybrid between microkernel and monolithic kernel. Linux is a monolithic kernel. Which means you don't need to download drivers [most of the time]. I've been lucky with hardware, to say the least, when it comes to the wireless department. Now, if the manufacturers released drivers/modules for Linux the same way they do for WinNT, then we would have a fair comparison. As it is, Grandma needs a GeekSquad™ type to install GNU for her. Which she needs to have Windows installed anyways. So it is an unfair comparison, but one GNU must nonetheless overcome to win over Windows users.

The other problem with Linux is less than super popular software. If it isn't in a repository, you are invariably expected to compile it yourself. Configure/make/make install don't seem that difficult, but it is infinitely more difficult than double-clicking "setup.exe", and there is a large portion of the population who is either incapable or unwilling to deal with it. I still don't understand why this has not been dealt with. The job is almost done, just package everything up in a standardized setup file and it's done (sort of like the Windows MSI or the Mac DMG). But Linux devs seem to think it's "good enough" and don't make the next logical step to improve usability. This same attitude is -everywhere- in Linux development - just look at a Linux GUI compared to its Windows or Mac counterpart. There is almost always a significant dearth of features compared to the command line version of the same apps. Average users suck at command lines.

If you can't do configure/make/install chances are you're using a distribution which has large repositories. I haven't experienced any problems with Ubuntu debs on Debian or Debian debs on Linux Mint. So you just tell them to look for a .deb and then chances are the graphical tool is there. Otherwise it is dpkg -i ~/Downloads/$file.deb which is hard for a n00b but phone-in-able. I condemn ye who dare placeth upon the technically incompetent a distro whose difficulty is beyondeth the user's comprehension.

There is certainly plenty to like about Linux (I for one love repositories - that idea was downright brilliant), and it is easily the most versatile OS available, but the occasional hard problems general lack of user friendliness (again, haven't tried the distros you mentioned, but I can't see the problems being fixed without some serious, serious work - the kind that isn't likely to happen in a free distro imo) make it not worth my time. If it isn't worth my time to deal with it, how can I then recommend it to people who are even less tech savvy than me?

Linux Mint is based off of Ubuntu which is supported by Canonical (a company paying people to work on it.) So yes, there are paid people working to make Linux for human beings. And Linux Mint makes that distro friendly to human beings who are used to Windows

Laptops these days seem to be almost free if they're more than a few years old, and you can run current Linux installs on some pretty old gear. I'd suggest you get yourself a cheap machine, install the latest release of Ubuntu, and try using it for a few weeks before you tell us what Linux is like. I'm not speaking as a fan-boy here - I actually use a Mac, myself - but I just don't like this sort of "I tried Linux once and it didn't work" stuff. Keep current if you're going to bitch about it. You're complaining about solved problems.

I really hate Ubuntu. The new interface just is…
It is ok to use an esoteric interface but not if your aim is to convert people from one OS to another. This is why Linux Mint wins for converting people, IMO.

The neat thing is, because linux is so open to messing with it, ordinary users tend to get further into the machine than they do with Windows - or with a Mac, for that matter. Four years ago, my girlfiend was using a dying windows box that her friend had cobbled together for her - the thing would crash if you spoke to it in a harsh tone, it couldn't really do much, it was a TPOS, but she had it and she just kind of got along with it, and she knew nothing about how it worked. When it died, she asked a bunch of techy people, including me, what they thought she should replace it with, and we all said, you can buy a Dell with Linux installed, and it's reasonably priced and the things you do will run better than the equivalent machine with Windows installed*. So she bought the machine and now she's comfortable operating at the command line, tinkering with stuff, and the idea of writing a shell script to do something doesn't seem like an odd one, like it did a few years ago. She's not some sort of linux geek, but she's taken a lot more ownership of the machine than she ever did with the Windows machine, just because it's there to take. And this sort of transformation, I think is the result of a concerted effort to make the machine more accessible to ordinary people, not some conspiracy to complicate the thing.

I think this is the kind of thing which makes GNU so great. Demystifying not just the computer, but the commandline too, is one of the greatest things which can happen to someone who is switched over to GNU. There is absolutely nothing wrong with GNU on the desktop, it is more of a social resistance and an anti-intellectualism with regard to computers. For some reason (Microsoft? proprietary software in general?) computers are regarded as black boxes which only do the bidding of witches (hackers in modern parlance). It is sad that most people think of hacking as security breaking - a problem to be solved with passwords - while it is simply tinkering. Needless to say, I think programming classes teaching a fun and useful scripting language should be mandatory and would be much better than current optional java classes we have today.

It took me three days to configure my laptop to connect to the secured wireless in the building, mostly re-writing configuration files by hand. My VPN access is hit and miss, and I still can't connect to a single networked printer. (Setting the same thing up in windoze took me 15 minutes.)
The software I need to use for half my work simply doesn't exist on any other platform than windows - doesn't run under emulation (and it hasn't been for lack of trying), and writing my own is not an option.
etc.
(By the way, in places where there is a near-complete windows hegemony, often Mac users have similar problems ... My conclusion is not that Linux doesn't work - it is that if You need to be compatible with systems / work with people the majority of whom use a particular system, use the same, or You'll spend half Your life troubleshooting.)

This kind of advice - use whatever your friends use - is good. Generally whatever benefits you gain from being able to phone up your buddy (or IRC/XMPP them) outweighs whatever you miss by using what may be an inferior operating system. The same goes for programming languages.

As to home servers ... I haven't had a home ISP so far that allows setting one up (just out of curiosity now I checked the T&C of half a dozen providers around - all of them have a ban), and most "unlimited" internet subscriptions around have a "fair use" restriction, which is somewhere on the order of 100 GB traffic / month (after which they won't switch You off, but if it happens a few times, You need to give a darn good explanation what You've been doing with the connection, ideally not containing the words "file sharing", "server" or "work related" for them not to terminate the contract).
Anything which has less prohibitive terms is - prohibitively expensive.

Even if they prohibit it in theory, it doesn't mean they prohibit it in practice. A home server will only dramatically increase your bandwidth usage if you'd like to use the bandwidth but can't because your computer isn't online enough hours of the day. And if that is the case, I think that the potential problems with your usage pattern would go beyond breaking a home server ban. (Generally, people going after you for copyright infringement because you torrent a lot or use a tor node. I can't think of any other high bandwidth usage patterns off the top of my head though there may be others which this wouldn't apply to.)

Anyone else notice that Opera actually downloads torrents now? Seriously, with the prolonged stability, the multi-tab loading start times, the torrenting feature Opera has built in, and whatever this "Unite" webserver thing is, (Not to mention how well it handles CSS most of the time) shouldn't we all be using Opera?

I like unix's philosophy of do one thing and do it well. Opera does pretty much everything. I therefore detest opera. It is also proprietary software, which means that RMS and free software-types won't be using it any time soon. I haven't used opera in a while so I'll be back later to edit in a short review (this post is long enough as it is).

EDIT: Opera doesn't have NoScript. Firefox wins

The wireless problem was just an example that I thought people would be familiar with (and hey you were!), it was actually the Atheros driver issue I was talking about, because it was an extremely common wireless card, especially for laptops, with any number of kludge fixes until a driver actually made it into the kernel (I think it's still done post-install on most distros, actually, because it's still legally questionable and they won't officially bundle it, but the problem is essentially well solved). After that was a shoddy GUI for the wireless, which was still horrible two years ago and hadn't gotten any better in the year that I'd been using Linux. It was not the problem that turned me off Linux the last time I used it (which, as I said, was about two years ago).

The atheros card is inside the kernel and I'm not aware of any legal issues. As far as wireless controller goes, I prefer wicd. It has a simple cli program, a Gtk interface and a ncurses interface, take your pic (and of course, you can use them interchangeably, so the cli interface in a startup script, the ncurses interface when you're in a tty and the GTK interface on your X11 desktop)

The point is not that there are problems. Every OS has problems. The point is that when there is a problem in Linux, it is almost always an absolute nightmare to fix. These kinds of nightmarish problems may become rarer as the OS progresses, but there always seem to be a lot more of them than in Windows. Windows tends to have smaller problems more often that are a lot easier to fix (though these too becomes less common as the OS progresses). These issues are rarely, if ever, show stoppers, and less savvy users can deal with them. It just makes Windows easier to use as a desktop machine.

So yeah, your friend may be just fine on a Linux install, as long as she doesn't mess with things too much she probably won't run into the issues I have. However, she probably would have been even happier if you'd just given her a clean Windows install instead.

Like I said, I've got nothing against Linux. I think it's great that Linux is a viable alternative, and I do cheer for it whenever I can. However, I find myself wasting more time fixing problems than I am comfortable with when I use it as a desktop machine, so I don't use it as a desktop machine.

The big problem with Windows for me is that the DOS shell is completely unbearable. Even OS X is redeemable because it has bash and fink (old) and mac ports (doesn't build have the time). I find Windows to be simply unbearable. Windows 7 fixes the issues which initially pushed me away (boot up time) but introduced other problems. I use anywhere from 3/5 to 1/5 the RAM which Windows 7 puts in its minimum requirements when I use GNU. It is just oriented to s different type of user. There are plenty of other features X11 has which I miss in Windows.

If you go into an OS without being open to changing how you use your computer, you will eventually hate it because you want it to just work like your old OS and it doesn't. You'll go back to your familiar frustrations rather than deal with new ones. And that's fine. The nice thing about GNU is that there is probably a distro which tries to target your usage and it'll get to usable eventually. Don't dismiss it, just try every third or so Linux Mint (or Ubuntu) release just to make sure you're not complaining about fixed problems. Or not. You can keep using Windows 7 if it works well for you.

(I say every 3 releases because that means you don't have an opinion more than two years old at any given point in time.)

[Ephemeron]

There is a significant portion of the Linux userbase that is actively (or passive-aggressively) opposed to making it more user-friendly, because then stupid people would be able to run it, and then how would they be able to tell who has stars on their bellies?

Computing is a privilege, not a right; if you can't compile your own kernel or do everything from the command line, you don't deserve to use a PC or be on the internet. And you certainly don't deserve to run a real, manifestly superior (just like its users) OS.

[dudyk]

At work we use sftp servers on Amazon AWS (free tier is free and gives you 10 gb drive) and I just registered to min.us that allows direct links and doesn't ask for an email (so spam is not an option).
If you register with an invite like this: http://minus.com/rnb024y you get 1gb extra storage.

[sig_]

That's just a sign of how broken and stupid our OS's and all that are.

If everyone would be running a Linux with their personal LAMP setup on install, you could just

scp photo.jpg friend.me:share

or something, and that's it. Actually, that's what I do most of the time; scp photo.jpg my.server.com:www/photos and then tell people to fetch it from there. Works.

[King Author]

Question: What's wrong, exactly, with emailing yourself to transfer files? Yes, there's a ton of other options, but virtually every person who uses the internet more than once a month has an email account - it's the most readily-available thing - whereas all that other stuff - FTP, website, one of those services like rapidshare - most people don't already use, so you'd have to go out of your way to set up. Scorning self-email file transfer is a bit too snobbish for xkcd, methinks.

Though personally I just use bittorrent, and can't possibly fathom why anyone would ever use anything else (except email for significantly small files).

It seems to be the most elegant solution is just to integrate an ad hoc FTP server hosting selected files from any directory into an IM client of some sort.

Your use of "ad hoc FTP server" and "an IM client of some sort" ruled out the possibility of this being "elegant."

Google Docs is an excellent solution for anything under 1 GB.

I loathe Google Docs. I'm contractually obligated to say this every time someone mentions it.

Pre-emptive response to someone asking "why?" Simple -- i t ' s . . . s l o . . . . . . . w . . .

Sneakernet always wins.


(Sneakernet - you put your files on a USB, and then you walk (in your sneakers) over to the other computer...)

The time it would take me to dig up a USB stick, you could probably copy down the bits and enter them into the front-panel switches on your Altair. (And I don't own sneakers, so lacing up the boots adds a minute or two as well)
Fortunately, my phone is usually nearby, and it does the job nicely - but ftp is even quicker.

Am I the only one who consistently has a thumb drive near his computer?

You should use megaupload, I've never seen ads or porn etc on it, it's pretty fast for an uploading site, and I've downloaded over 7 gigs in a row with it without hitting any kind of limit.

You're right, Megaupload doesn't have porn. There's a porn variant of Megaupload (identical site, software, graphics, just porn ad banners) called Megarotic, which they created because hosting porn on Megaupload is technically (read: completely) against their TOS. Megarotic has no such rule. However, 90% of the porn I've ever downloaded via Megasomething has been Megaupload; it's not like they actually check your files or anything, so only rarely is a link taken down from MU for violating their no porn policy.

I've been using Windows Live Mesh to sync my computers. It's been working fine for me so far, as long as I remember to let the program run and sync my stuff. I'm always worried though that I'll accidentally delete something from one computer and then it might be deleted everywhere.

I also once used 4shared to put a large file online where my parents could download it, and that was okay for the single occasion.

I've never liked the idea of synching folders. I dunno, I guess I just don't trust computers for that sort of task. I'm always worried it'll make a mistake and overwrite something improperly, and I'll lose data. Maybe once somebody invents an autocompletion tool that doesn't completely fuck me up if I don't disable it, I'll trust computers enough to try file synching, but until then...

Seriously, there should be some simple, 100 KB program that lets two people exchange public IP addresses, one selects a file/folder and clicks send, the other clicks receive, UDP packets get bounced off NATs until they traverse them, and the file is transferred at maximal speed without any external server (maybe throw in some compression/encryption). Sadly, when I Googled for such a thing I came up empty.

Emphasis mine. Yeah, this sounds like a hackers wet dream. May as well get your Social Security number decaled on the hood of your car. Also, 100 kb? I'd guess you could program something like that in under ten. A single kilobyte is a lot of information. We've been collectively fooled into thinking otherwise by 100s+ GB PC games, but they're only that big because of lazy programming which is done because game manufacturers know people have huge hard drives and worrying about drive space isn't really a thing anymore.

Anyone who agrees with this comic really is an idiot.

You registered just to say that? I...I just...I love the internet.

Exactly for this reason i made my own open source file uploader, but when i was ready, everyone kept saying 'ah, like dropbox?' or 'oh, like rapidshare?', so i think, these are pretty ok for most people who need to send files.

On the bright side, i have a project to show in interviews :)

What'd you write it in?

I'd recommend http://FileMail.com myself. Up to 2 GB files are supported. Simply fill in your e-mail, recipients e-mail and a message (essentially like writing a regular e-mail) and send it off. The recipient will get an e-mail with a link to the file.

You can both password protect the download and put restrictions on number of downloads or days available.
You'll also get an e-mail confirmation when the file has been uploaded and when it's downloaded from the other side.

This has saved me a couple of times when I've needed to transfer photos to friends and family and huge design files to the local print shop.

Simple as e-mail with 2 GB attachments. :D

Where's the eggs? I expected eggs with my spam.

I like Gett a lot for its simplicity (can't post links yet, so Google it). It's free, requires no account, has no ads, has persistent links, has a large file size limit, and the recipient can download while you're still uploading. The interface is fairly idiot-proof, too, so it's great for the less technically-inclined that need a solution. Not sure how they can offer it without ads for free, so I question how long it will stay that way, but hey, that's their problem.

I wonder how many hits they actually get from registering to post a single post on a single message board about a single product. Er, service.

There IS a simple solution; https://www.wetransfer.com/

Multiple recipients, multiple files, up to 2GB, no pop-ups, fast up- and download and no accounts. You just have stylish ads in the background.

Holy fuckballs.

Generally I agree with this comic. I tend to use YouSendIt, but they seem to have reduced the size limit for free accounts lately (although: no sign up required). I have a USB stick on my keyring so that's what I use if the recipient is nearby. For larger files, I'd be inclined to try BitTorrent, but I don't know how fast that would be.

I have a basic cable connection and can get a ~14 GB file downloaded in roughly 24 hours. I know this off-hand because I just downloaded the Eureka Seven movie the other day and it was 14 GB and took almost exactly 24 hours.

FileTea, men!!! :D

http://filetea.me

Really?

At least we've finally got a good way of sharing pictures (lightshot). You know, come to think of it, the easiest way of sharing files at the moment is probably opening it in a hex editor and making a screenshot.

But I would love to have some kind of lightshot for files though.

That made me happy, for some reason.

I recommend http://pipebytes.com - no registration, everything went better than expected ;)

Jesus Q. Christ!

FileDropper.com

On the one hand, its about as easy as it could possibly get.
On the other hand, it involves a middleman so you have to upload and then download (essentially doubling the time it takes) AND its not secure in any way.

There should be a simple file transfer client that doesn't require usernames. Two people have the software downloaded/installed. When you run the program it you are given a text box and an ID string, a random string of digits (different every time, approximately 9 characters long). The two people trade those ID strings, entering the other person's string into the text box. Upon hitting "connect" a server somewhere, (not sure who would run this for free, maybe google), would facilitate the secure connection between both parties. It would be great if it were a SSL connection. Once secure its like a very simplified chat client with the ability to drag & drop files. Chat would allow for verifying, "Hey is this Mike?" "Yeah, is this Kevin?" "Okay send me the video of your girls playing soccer."

I'd call it SECHAFT. SEure CHat And File Transfer. Okay, I know the name sucks, but it needs a name. Someone do one better please :)

Anyway, yeah, secure, quick and easy, maybe a buddy list but now we're venturing into AIM territory.. i like the 10 digit string idea. You call each other up, trade strings, and send files.

I think they specifically watch xkcd to look out for when products or services are the topic of the day.

The easiest method is to use bittorrent. That was what I did when I had to transfer over 2 GB of pics and videos to my friend after my last vacation. It took a while but it was pretty straightforward and we just left it to finish overnight.

That's the first thing I thought of when reading the comic but explaining it to your mother (or grandmother depending on your age/mother's computer knowledge) might not be as straightforward which was the idea of the comic I think.

People's perceptions of their potential abilities are the problem, not your ability or lack thereof to explain it well. If a person thinks computers are just beyond them, then computers are just beyond them. I know a 44-year-old who can't use a Comcast remote control -- he makes his teenager put the news on for him or whatever he wants to watch. It's a fucking remote control! I swear, the most difficult thing to get anybody to believe doesn't have anything to do with evolution or finance -- it's that competance is a choice.

Why dose nobody consider XMPP with out of band data or IRC with XDCC?
Works for me every time.
Facebook and Google are using XMPP... did anyone try to send a file over Google Talk and/or Facebook chat? XD

I dislike the word "extensible." It sounds like some a-hole trying to say "extendable" and sound fancy.

No mention yet of IP over Avian Carriers?

A lot of firms I work with use YouSendIt. Seems to work, and not too many annoying "upgrade now" e-mails. Not too many...

But they claim copyright of anything you send via their service.

But seriously, is there any good way of doing this? I've been doing the dropbox + public link method, but it's kind of awkward.

Mediafire has, and always has, worked incredibly well. None of the problems he's mentioned.

Uhgh, I hate Mediafire. You have to enable cookies to get the download link to show up. Or give MF an exception, rather. Rapidshare and Megaupload both work just fine without cookies.

I really don't get the title-text/alt-text.

The internet is simply a data pipe between computers, and sending a file (whether by email, ftp, torrent, etc) really has nothing to do with www/http. So why would Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of www) care?

I think he meant TBL would weep because people are willfully using archaic technology (emailing themselves files) when there's so much more available. It's stagnation. Remember, TBL is pushing this Web 2.0 crap nowadays.

Having tried almost everything anyone has mentioned over the years (from KickSend to SFTP to Dropbox to Mediafire to NetCat over SSH :D to ...) I haven't found anything as convenient as CloudApp (http://cl.ly/) - it's only useful for files up to 250MB (pro, or 25MB free, but subscriptions are preposterously cheap) but the official Mac app and FluffyApp for Windows are both utterly brilliant, with a keyboard shortcut or drag-and-drop being enough to share a file and get a shortlink (like http://cl.ly/2I463m0h3s1G1b1Z0p38 or http://cl.ly/9zOP at your discretion) on your clipboard in no more than the time it takes to upload. The API means that there are quite a few interesting uses of it out there and some of us write our own... :)

Just a happy user... :D

Just a happy user? I think you mean just a spammy spam spam!

PROTIP1: All instant messengers support file transfer. That has been the standard way since 1996 with ICQ. Nowadays everyone has something like a Google mail adress. And with MS there's MSN. Which always means they have an instant messenger account too, and can accept file transfers when loogged in. Even with the web interface.

PROTIP2: Opera Unite!! ’nuff said! (How the fuck is something like this not a common standard everyone has by now??)

PROTIP3: Me: “You can just upload it to my server using my web form here: http://me.server.tld/pub/upload.php. You’ll get a shortened link that you can send or tell him.”

I thought everyone did one of the above.

Opera is proprietary. Firefox is open-source. Enough said. And virtually nobody uses IMs anymore, what with Facebook's built-in chat thingy. Also, how can you possibly have thought that your web service was something "everyone" used?

Clearly some people here inhabit a bubble where the majority of their circel are programmers or highly computer literate. Some of the solutions mentioning setting up servers, or running Linux command line programs are way off the mark. In the vast majority of cases, web users don't even know what a browser is, never mind an OS. And they shouldn't have to. It should be as simple as sending an email with a file attachment. The average user doesn' care whether the file goes through a 3rd party server, or whether it's a direct connection. A lot of people I know use Skype to transfer files, but it's painfully slow.

This.

Also, more snarkily, hi, welcome to xkcd, you've never been here before, have you?

Yeah, that is exactly the problem I would have with your solution. I have no desktop right now, just my laptop, which I do not leave on when I leave the house.

I think everyone should have either a small always-on home server (for audio/video playback, including streaming, as an answering machine for all forms of communication, etc), or access to an equivalent of that, hosted by someone else.
Like the Unity part of Opera, but separate and on another computer. As a default built into the OS. Like when you install the OS, you can either say that your own box will be the server, and then it will on shutdown not really shut down but go to server-only mode, or choose a provider via a automated API, that allows for offline message/file (same thing really) storage.

I will definitely consider building that into the graphical shell I’m programming right now. (Which has *nothing* to do with whatever you could imagine as a graphical shell. It doesn’t have applications, windows, buttons, start menus, task bars, files, or any of that shit. And while that’s hard to imagine if you haven’t seen it, that’s why it’s better for professionals and your grandma alike.)

You made Al Gore cry.

Also, question: what's with your hardon for Opera?

No need to install anything with Dropbox though. I mean, you probably should if you use it all the time, but you can use the web interface and the public folder to transfer files better than the MegaDelayPopupUploadShare sites.

That, and for each person you get to use this, you get to add more space to your account.

So you have an ulterior motive for getting us to join ;p

Wouldn't that be "Sir Tim Berners-Lee sheds a single tear"

Now the fact that this guy signed up just to post this actually makes me love the internet.

For those interested, some snippets from the Acceptable Use policies from some of the largest service providers in the United States:

Technical restrictions
* use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network
content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network (“Premises
LAN”), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited
equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy
services and servers;

5. Servers. You may not operate, or allow others to operate, servers of any type or any other device, equipment, and/or software providing server-like functionality in connection with the Service, unless expressly authorized by Cox.

Customer may set up one (1) web page per service account for personal use of the Service, but Customer may not establish a web page using a server located at Customer's home. Customer will not use, or allow others to use, Customer's home computer as a web server, FTP server, file server or game server or to run any other server applications or to provide network or host services to others via Charter's network.

God forbid that you use the Internet for the reason it was created.

But the beauty of these policies is, if you want to host, you have to buy one of their expensive servers!

You can upload any file type to Google Docs now, including password protected 7zip archives. You then get an easy to share URL to pass on. Free accounts get 1GB of space, I pay $5/year for an extra 25GB.

Microsoft's Live thing gives you 25GB of free space too, but you have to use a shitty Silvershite browser plug-in to upload more than a couple of files at once.

Yeah, since those are impossible to break into.

Megaupload and mediafire are quite the awesome, especially mediafire. Just upload the file and share the link. They even support resuming paused/broken downloads.

That said, I'd still like to have instant transfer via quantum tunneling/entanglement. It might be offered as a premium service.

But if you're already entangling, you may as well dedicate a portion of your box to the global quantum ultracomputer :p

When I can arrange both parties to be online at once, I usually zip the files, and transfer them through some messenger service (yahoo messenger, skype, whatever).
When I can't arrange both parties to be online at once, for files under 1 GB, I tend to use googledocs (wait for it to be downloaded, then delete).

If the other party is completely computer illiterate, or I need to transfer larger files, trouble starts.

And yes, I actually mailed a USB stick internationally last week, and will probably mail another one soon.
(Different reasons -
case 1: I had to transfer 10 GB of data, and beside not knowing where the heck to upload it, the person I would send it to has a slow enough internet connection that it would probably take them 20 hours to download;
case 2: 750 MB of data, person on the other end doesn't seem to be able to open a googledoc link and successfully download a file :roll: )

But yes, it tends to be a hassle, and with every advance that's kicking around on the web, it's astonishing that it's a hassle.

So? They can't leave their computer on overnight and while they're at work, and come back the following night?

I'm not surprised that there isn't a simple, easy, free and commonly-used file transfer website/software/whatever -- there's very little demand. Only us supergeeks ever need to send ##+ GB files, most people get by just fine with email and AIM.

You mean there are still people who don't run an HTTP server on their local machine, which runs *nix continuously and has an uncrippled Internet connection?

Yes. Yes there are. And you make *nix users look like douchebags by asking.

Us Web Developers know how to re-encode our digicam-encoded BMPs/TGAs as JPG files.
(And resample them at a reasonable resolution, instead of 36000x28800!)

Just sayin'. (++pwned!)

Teach me!

Best method for file transfer that (im assuming) noone has mentioned yet:

Write an AutoIt script to convert the file from Binary to ASCII string, then paste the contents into pastebin (will they take 25MB of raw ASCII?)

Then the guy on the other end just needs to convert from ascii to binary again. Its a breeze. Really.

Yeah. Or just use email.

Torrents won't work over a network which blocks P2P traffic, such as any belonging to my university.

There's easy ways around those things. You could get in trouble if you were caught, but still; it's not wrong if you don't get caught.

Well, 'File Transfer' has been a solved problem for a long time and only in the Windows world do people have any issue with this.

Yeah, only 90% of people have an issue with this, and since they're dumb for not being cool like you, they don't matter.

I really can't relate to this at all. There are any number of ways of doing this.

Your ISP probably gives you 100 MB or more of free space that you can use, perfectly good if the material is not secure.

It's piss easy to set up some FTP space, I have one that costs me $30 a year that I use for general storage and backup but can also be used for private FTP.

Or there are sites like yousendit.com, there's nothing really awkward about them, they are straightforward.



Mind you, I work in an industry where I sometimes need to get terabytes, or tens of terabytes, of data to clients, and seriously that still requires disk or tapes to physically be sent.

The comic isn't about you (a tech savvy individual) having problems transferring files, it's about other people having problems and being unable to understand the solutions you offer them.

Anyone else notice that Opera actually downloads torrents now? Seriously, with the prolonged stability, the multi-tab loading start times, the torrenting feature Opera has built in, and whatever this "Unite" webserver thing is, (Not to mention how well it handles CSS most of the time) shouldn't we all be using Opera?

Proprietary. Opera is proprietary. Most 1337s won't deign to sully their hands with such programs, regardless.

Anyone else notice that Opera actually downloads torrents now? Seriously, with the prolonged stability, the multi-tab loading start times, the torrenting feature Opera has built in, and whatever this "Unite" webserver thing is, (Not to mention how well it handles CSS most of the time) shouldn't we all be using Opera?

Funny you should mention that. The other day I decided that Firefox was irritating me enough that I'd try Opera as my replacement secondary web browser at work. (My main web browser at work has to be IE because we have a lot of stuff that requires it.) I downloaded it, installed it, imported my bookmarks from Firefox, then went to make the one last change I needed to make to set it up before I started using it: telling it not to use the web page's specified text and background colours, but always to use black text on a white background.
I looked all over the place for a setting to allow me to do this, and even thought I'd found one (Presentation Modes) - however, changing the settings there had no discernible effect (and I tried many combinations). A web search suggested the way to achieve this was to write a custom .css file (for instance, here). Are you kidding me? I didn't consider this acceptable, so I gave up and went back to Firefox.

I use the last version of Firefox 2. I've never seen any reason to use anything else.

Why can't there be more real life feedback with data transfer other than time?
Mice should have more resistance when dragging large files.
USB sticks should weigh slightly more when they are full.
Windows with large data files should be more difficult to drag.

That's the one thing I don't like about Wii / Move / Kinect -- no resistance. I can swing a sword just fine, but if my sword actually hits anything, I'm immediately thrown off my game, because the sword is interrupted whereas my physical swing is not; it's impossible to keep my moves matching my character's. Thus, the remote/glowyball/camera becomes a glorified button.

Immersive VR, how long shall I've to wait for your commercial availability?

[Eebster the Great]

Incidentally, the last post is too large to torrent in a reasonable amount of time.

[forbiddenSpell]

Not sure if this has been posted, but it's relevant to the comic:

http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Pige ... m-20090909

Carrier pigeon versus African ISP.

[Manabu]

Ok, sending big files over the internet, especially for multiple people, just got harder after the Megaupload shutdown: http://torrentfreak.com/cyberlocker-eco ... on-120123/

Now creative people that wants to share their work (that isn't a video or a image, or that they don't want it re-encoded) have one less option with a low entry cost. Geeks know how to set-up torrents, but most people don't (I guess they will have to learn eventually)...

Copyright enforcement once more acting against copyright reason to exist: for people to have access to wider and better quality intellectual creations...

[Eebster the Great]

Anybody here use Filezilla? I've never actually downloaded it but it looks pretty simple and useful.

[addams]

Not sure if this has been posted, but it's relevant to the comic:

http://www.news24.com/SciTech/News/Pige ... m-20090909

Carrier pigeon versus African ISP.

Yeah! Pigeons!
The comic is so funny.
The first answer was the right answer.

Then, the poor computer nerd started to go backward in time to a more complex time.

For computer people that were creators or early addaptors; Well; That is not your FOX News nostalgia.

How does the internet work? Oh, Yeah. First it was wires.
It was faster and easier to walk down the hall and write a note.
But; "No." It had to go from machine to machine.

Who was there on the day? That day that the third machine was added? That was that day. Right?

It went through the first server. What the fuck am I blabbering on about.

You want to send a letter. Send it in e-mail.
You want to send a group of letters. Use e-mail.
What is a torrent?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_file
Wiki knows everything.
It is not possible for me to want to send a file that is that large...Is it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_%2 ... al_streams

I know it means a kind of rain. We have at least one hundred words for Rain.
Rain up in the mountians can mean water on its way to lower ground.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=168kHWL-GXw
(I like old music.) For the blue birds it is, just, another day. It looks like the deer might sleep in.

The entire works of all the world's libaraies can be sent into space.
It would be The Golden Record on Steroids.

No one will ever find it and if it were found who would care?
What is this compulsion toward communication?

Why do Humans want to share beauty with others?
Why? It is such an important question. Why?

Little Kids and Scientists ask; "Why?"
Little Kids and Scientists make mistakes, too.

Filezilla? Really?
You must be a very busy person that has lots of information to move around.
It boggles my mind. What?

[brandtsound]

You should use megaupload, I've never seen ads or porn etc on it, it's pretty fast for an uploading site, and I've downloaded over 7 gigs in a row with it without hitting any kind of limit.

Sadly that's no longer an option (I know I'm not the first to report this). I wonder what file share site will be next?

[songandsilence]

First, I apologize for necrobumping.

Second, I stumbled across this:
https://www.librarymixer.com/

It's a new filesharing service that requires no uploading to a central server. It's got a nice client program (Linux, Windows, Mac, Source available).

Here's the relevant Reddit post, since I'm kinda lazy to type out a couple of paragraphs explaining it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/s9mp5/im_a_former_corporate_lawyer_whos_decided_to_use/