Opera Embedding BitTorrent Client 542
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."
torrent (Score:5, Funny)
Re:torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:torrent (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially considering that bittorrent downloads normally take a while to get up to steam.
Re:torrent (Score:5, Informative)
Re:torrent (Score:3, Informative)
Back when aqua teens were still coming out I'd bittorrent the new episode the next morning at an average of >500KB/s (with it going over 1.1MB/s near the end)
It all depends on the popularity of the torrent (and making sure you forward a port if you're behind a NAT)
Re:torrent (Score:5, Interesting)
consider this.
the average torrent (i assume a movie or something) is being initially uploaded by one seed with, being generous, a max of 80 kBps. The person still manages to send all that information to everyone rather quickly (given a slower start to send 1-2 full copies out into the swarm).
Microsoft Pipes have like, what, 1000000 times the bandwidth? So yes, you usually download as fast as your connection can handle. So yes, you WILL download faster than a popular torrent at the beginning of it distribution cycle.. if the person hosting originally had a small pipe.
If Microsoft used torrents, their overall bandwidth would increase - they just dont need to.
But let dream of the day that every single dedicated 'fat pipe', 'home user', and business used torrents instead of http / ftp / other p2p:
we would see a HUGE increase in bandwidth across the internet.
The reason you beleive torrents are slower has nothing to do with the protocol, but rather the people who use it.
The only issue I have is that torrents die after some time, because people do not seed to 1:1, or people loose interest files that arent 'fresh'.
If Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera embeded bittorrent, forced 1:1 seed ratios, and seeded every file in your download folder out to whoever needed it most.. well..
wouldnt that be peachy?
Re:torrent (Score:4, Interesting)
problems i'd forsee arrive when the tracker needs to be responsible for seeding several files at once while still acting as a tracker... however, on the "fat pipes" we've been talking about, this should be less of an issue, and because of the nature of bittorrent, the tracker should only need to be a seed for a short amount of time, especially with a relatively popular file.
Re:torrent (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry but are you serious? Don't get me wrong I do understand your sentiment but don't compare the situation with downloading torrents with only a few thousand seeds or less.
To get a real feeling of how it would be I recommend trying out the Azureus [sourceforge.net] bittorrent client, keep it around and fire it up when a new Azureus version has been released, then look at the speed with which it dowloads (through a torrent) the new version and self-updating/installing itself. It's blazingly fast when one has five-digit numbers of seeders and at least on my network the limiting factor becomes my local pipe-size and nothing else. And this even when I'm behind a router with NAT which I haven't poked a hole through for Azureus! (OT: fixing the router is on my todo-list of course).
Now imagine the same with Mozilla, Firefox, Open Office, and other similar large userbase F/OSS projects.
Want to increase the speed even further? Use the same bandwidth that would otherwise be used for fixed server2client downloads for torrent seeding instead as needed.
And I get ecstatic simply thinking about how it would be if at least the major F/OSS client software used something akin to Azureus' self-updating/installing (however that would not be good for server software which should not selfupdate in such a way).
Slightly off topic Azureus is the sweetest Java program I've ever come across, it has not been entirely flawless but it is getting close now, proving that Java can be "done right". And unless you're using the Safepeer plugin the startup is fast and smooth.
Back to the topic: once again Opera does something truly innovative, I recon the F/OSS community will see the beauty of the idea and be fast to do the same: a good idea is a good idea, no shame in using it. I hope to see this implemented in both Mozilla and Firefox since I use both, and I hope F/OSS also sees the ingenuity of the Azureus solution described above.
Do we want to leave IE7 dead on the start-line? Then integrate and make good use of bittorrent!
Re:torrent (Score:5, Informative)
Traditional downloads are likely to be marginally faster when the source has excess bandwidth to requirements, but anything less than that and you'll start seeing Bittorrent showing its advantages. And even below that, the hosting costs go down with Bittorrent downloads, so it's just more attractive in general.
Re:torrent (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were to download the latest version of Firefox today, you'd be right. But if you've ever tried downloading the latest FF milestone on the day of release, you'd know P2P has a definite advantage.
Re:torrent (Score:5, Informative)
BT wasn't meant to be completely P2P with all peers on small pipes. BT was meant to aid BIG sites in order to avoid flash crowds when a new big thing comes (new distro, new game patch, new vid).
The sites have huge pipes, for normal use, but when the number of users triples, even the huge pipe isn't enough. This is where BT comes in to play.
Re:torrent (Score:3)
Bittorrent is not the be-all end-all of file transfers.
But for the purpose it fills, it works well.
Re:torrent (Score:3, Informative)
Re:torrent (Score:5, Informative)
Back when WoW came out, there were large patches, with 100.000s of users, which led to things comming to a crawl. Overloaded trackers, non-connections, ect.
Made a bad impression, but i was suprised that the last patches worked quickly without any problems, so i guess they ironed out the process.
Re:torrent (Score:3, Insightful)
I smashed my foot on my coffee table by accident this morning therefore my coffee table "tripped me".
Both are cases of displaced blame stemming from user incompetence.
Try forwarding the ports/watching where you are walking next time.
Re:torrent (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:torrent (Score:3, Insightful)
Because if the file you want isn't today's hot movie or game then there's a good chance you won't find a seed. Then you get to download 85% from peers and sit around wishing you could get the rest of the file.
Re:torrent (Score:3, Insightful)
...sez the guy who apparently doesn't have to contend with NAT. Torrent+IPv6 should be nearly universally convenient, but you basically have to configure a list of per-host NAT rules if you want to use it on multiple clients sharing the same IPv4 address.
See also: active vs. passive FTP. Any protocol that requires remote hosts to connect back to your client is going to make your network admins hate you.
Re:torrent (Score:3, Insightful)
Err, it's hardly ever faster for me. When the last version of Fedora came out, I gave BT a try at it and gave up after 24 hours. I switched over to FTP from USF.edu and got 485K/s. Download was done rather quickly.
Another thing that irks me with BT is that it stops perio
Corporate firewalls (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporate firewalls
Re:torrent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:torrent (Score:5, Informative)
On a side note, it should be noted that Opera is no better in that field...
Re:torrent (Score:2)
Prediction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Prediction... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess now it will
Another prediction (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Another prediction (Score:5, Funny)
I predict that networking sites will be swamped by Opera users
sites... swamped... by... Opera users ???
Does not compute.
Re:Another prediction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another prediction (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re:Another prediction (Score:4, Funny)
Swear to God.
Re:Prediction... (Score:5, Informative)
http://moztorrent.mozdev.org/ [mozdev.org]
Re:Prediction... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Prediction... (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Fine, but... (Score:2)
Re:Fine, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Next question, please.
Re:Fine, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Does this sound like a consistent UI to you?
Re:Fine, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fine, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Where is the "bloat"? (Score:5, Informative)
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.Re:Fine, but... (Score:4, Funny)
So I take it then that you're opposed to Firefox's inclusion of FTP and Gopher [floodgap.com]?
Because I mean, come on, either you're with bloat in the browser world or you aren't. You don't need to access gopher or FTP via a webbrowser, there are command line tools for that. And how often do you really use gopher anyway?
Curse this mozilla featuritis! Just think, if they dropped support for Gopher, they could possibly remove an entire kilobyte of bloat!
Will no one think of the kilobytes??
Re:Fine, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a large number of people out there that wouldn't mind a browser that could serve as a convient portal for all things 'internet' as long as it could serve them well. If you make all things so black
Apache (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Apache (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I had this same good idea a couple of years ago. It could effectly wipe out the slashdot effect. What if, each time server load went over a preset amount, it served a torrrent containing the HTML and image files instead of the HTML file itself. When the browser sees the torrent with special HTTP headers, it automagically unpacks the torrent after completing the download and displays the HTML locally. An apache plugin for this was started and never completed. The problem was getting the browser/torrent client to do the right thing once it got the HTML so the fact that you downloaded a torrent instead of the HTML directly was transparent to the user. Once torrent clients are embedded into the browser, competition will force the other browsers to include this feature. Then no more slashdot effect, yea!!!
Re:Apache (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apache (Score:2)
Re:Apache (Score:3, Insightful)
Squid takes the load off the database, torrent takes the load off the bandwidth. combine the two systems and you get websites that are pretty much immune to the slashdot effect.
Re:Apache (Score:2)
Re:Apache (Score:3, Interesting)
I just used mod_rewrite to parse the URL and append
Re:Apache (Score:2)
Re:Apache (Score:5, Informative)
they [mailto] need help.
Re:Apache (Score:5, Interesting)
Our world is changing, and I?m concerned. By way of explanation, three anecdotes.
Anecdote the first: In one of his books, Frank Herbert, author of Dune, told me how he had once been approached by a friend who claimed he (the friend) had a killer idea for a SF story, and offered to tell it to Herbert. In return, Herbert had to agree that if he used the idea in a story, he'd split the money from the story with this fellow. Herbert's response was that ideas were a dime a dozen; he had more story ideas than he could ever write in a lifetime. The hard part was the writing, not the ideas.
Anecdote the second: I've been programming micros for 15 years, and been writing about tyhem for more than a decade and, until about a year ago, I had never-not once!- had anyone offer to sell me a technical idea. In the last year, it?s happened multiple times, generally via unsolicited email along the lines of Herbert?s tale.
This trend toward selling ideas is one symptom of an attitude that I?ve noticed more and more among programmers over the past few years-an attitude of which software patents are the most obvious manifestation-a desire to think something up without breaking a sweat, then let someone else?s hard work make you money. Its an attitude that says, ?I?m so smart that my ideas alone set me apart.? Sorry, it doesn't work that way in the real world. Ideas are a dime a dozen in programming, too; I have a lifetime?s worth of article and software ideas written neatly in a notebook, and I know several truly original thinkers who have far more yet. Folks, it?s not the ideas; it?s design, implementation, and especially hard work that make the difference.
Virtually every idea I?ve encountered in 3-D graphics was invented decades ago. You think you have a clever graphics idea? Sutherland, Sproull, Schumacker, Catmull,
Smith, Blinn, Glassner, Kajiya, Heckbert, or Teller probably thought of your idea
years ago. (I?m serious-spend a few weeks reading through the literature on 3-D
graphics, and you?ll be amazed at what?s already been invented and published.) If
they thought it was important enough, they wrote a paper about it, or tried to commercialize it, but what they didn?t do was try to charge people for the idea itself.
A closely related point is the astonishing lack of gratitude some programmers show for the hard work and sense of community that went into building the knowledge base with which they work. How about this? Anyone who thinks they have a unique idea that they want to?own?and milk for money can do so-but first they have to track down and appropriately compensate all the people who made possible the compilers, algorithms, programming courses, books, hardware, and so forth that put them in a position to have their brainstorm.
Put that way, it sounds like a silly idea, but the idea behind software patents is precisely that eventually everyone will own parts of our communal knowledge base, and that programming will become in large part a process of properly identifylng and compensating each and every owner of the techniques you use. All I can say is that if we do go down that path, I guarantee that it will be a poorer profession for all of us - except the patent attorneys, I guess.
Anecdote the third: A while back, I had the good fortune to have lunch down by Seattle?s waterfront with Neal Stephenson, the author of
Snow Crash and The Diamond Age (one of the best SF books I've come across in a long time). As he talked about the nature of networked technology and what he hoped to see emerge, he
Re:Apache (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I tend to agree with Abrash on this. The usual pattern is:
1. CompSci invents concept.
2. 10 Years later, everyone uses it.
Situations like Google where the concept is taken directly to the market are very rare. As Honeywell (Multics) and Symbolics can tell you, being ahead of your time can really suck.
That being said, it's not that ideas have no value. The problem is that their value is ethereal and cannot tr
Good feature (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Good feature (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't "steal" movies or music (or anything, for that matter) with BitTorrent, either, since that implies that downloading is theft. Theft leaves the original owner lacking in the item you 'stole'.
Either way, this is an interesting move from Opera. Now it's only a matter of time before Microsoft will announce that they are embedding BitTorrent into Longhorn. Like all those other goodies they are planning
I'm not impressed (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:I'm not impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox with BT support would be a good thing. For Opera too. It would move BT further into the mainstream, and that would benefit anyone who wants to use it. Opera probably has something in mind, such as distributing Opera through BitTorrent. Why else implement it?
Re:I'm not impressed (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope. That depends entirely on what you are looking at. Opera and Mozilla's CSS box models are similar to each other, while IE gets most of it wrong. IE is the odd one out, not Opera.
So what you are saying is that you are all
Re:I'm not impressed (Score:5, Informative)
As far as Opera are concerned, they are doing very well in their niches, and as far as the desktop goes, I think they have a common cause with Firefox in making as many people as possible consider alternatives to IE. A person who thinks "I've been hearing so much good about features other browsers provide" is a far more likely customer than a "IE came with Windows. Good enough." person. Not to mention that enough non-IE users force sites to follow standards, levelling the playing field against IE.
Odd, FF keeps luring me from Opera (prev Op user) (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:Odd, FF keeps luring me from Opera (prev Op use (Score:3, Interesting)
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 pro
Re:Bookmark sidebars compared. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm not impressed (Score:3, Interesting)
Whenever I move from Opera to Firefox, I find myself frustrated and going back.
It continues to surprise me that people don't see thirty bucks of value in Opera, and settle instead for the piss-poor experience of MSIE and the clumsy experience of Firefox.
A milestone for BT... and a green light. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
And Mozilla is on it's way... (Score:5, Informative)
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 [mozdev.org]
And the MozillaZine news about it here:
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=
Way to go, Opera! (Score:2)
Re:Way to go, Opera! (Score:2)
Re:Way to go, Opera! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Legal problems? (Score:2)
Crazy as this is, arent Opera just asking for trouble here? Surely the smart thing to do would be to have someone develop plugin that provided BitTorrent functionality. Opera doesnt have pockets as deep as most corps but they are deep enough to make them a target.
Re:Legal problems? (Score:5, Informative)
Just more proof... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kjella
Re:Just more proof... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have been thinking how it would be great for streaming media (even live feeds), if you only delay the play cursor 30-60 seconds.
The media players with embedded bittorrent clients would swarm on the feed for the data before the play cursor, and if there are any missing pieces (maybe 5 second
Re:Just more proof... (Score:3, Informative)
Correcting:
Current BitTorrent betas support "trackerless" torrents [bittorrent.com], which removes the only problematic step. If you can host a file, you can host a torrent.
Well I guess (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Is this necessary? (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
So much for the corporate desktop (Score:2, Insightful)
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".
The new "vi vs emacs"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The new "vi vs emacs"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course not (Score:3, Funny)
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
Re:The new "vi vs emacs"? (Score:3, Funny)
No, "Firefox vs Opera" is the new "vi vs emacs".
And, just like before, everyone knows firefox is better than opera.
This is pretty cool (Score:2)
For most people this will make fetching torrents a lot easier. Problem is ofcourse that most people are still using IE.
It wont make me switch back from Firefox (I used to use Opera), as I'm simply addicted too extensions. Plus I still haven't encountered a better bittorrent client than Azureus [sourceforge.net].
And as the rest of the people here say: I bet we will see a bittorrent extention for Firefox pretty soon. The wonders of competition. Security issues apart, this shows why a browser monopoly is just as bad as o
Doesn't seem like a good fit to me.... (Score:5, Informative)
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 [torrentflux.com] - 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.
Oprah? (Score:5, Funny)
Hrm... why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Won't this just mean one more thing for Opera to have to write/maintain/patch themselves?
Still a cool move, just... why?
html over torrent? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Bittorrent and ad-hoc standards (Score:3, Interesting)
Open with... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Open with... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's akin to asking why Acrobat provides a plugin - after all if I click on pdf Acrobat would start anyway...
It's good for Opera and BitTorrent (Score:5, Insightful)
Problems with this. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Elsewhere... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Money (Score:2)
Any extensions for FireFox that connect to a BitTorrent client?"
Or, in my own words:
"It really is too bad ZakuSage is choosing to charge for his work and creativity, or force people to look at his ads, or I'd
Re:Money (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Opera Banned! (Score:3, Insightful)
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 as
Re:And open source is innovative? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's a fix in search of a problem. When I click on a torrent in IE, Netscape, or Firefox my client opens up and starts downloading. How would this be better? Now if I were an Opera user I would be loading up a BT client whenever I use my browser even though I rarely use it.
Hey, have the Opera guys been hanging around with the MS Office guys?
Re:NAT + torrent? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:NAT + torrent? (Score:4, Insightful)
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 [sourceforge.net] 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.
Re:Opera following mozilla users? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.