Test of Opera Unite as local repository
Posted: Fri Oct 15, 2010 11:31 pm
Following the slight derailment of this thread, I've looked into this thing a bit.
(The whole thing took a lot longer than it should, due to the fact that I screwed things up... To make a short story long I had already made an account on OU some time ago, but had long since forgotten the password. And since I thought I had used an email address to which I've long since forgotten the password to set up the account, I tried to just ignore the old account and set up the new one. Trouble was that my Opera still remembered that I had the other one, so the option of making a new one didn't show up. After a bit of frantic searching in inboxes to find some proof that I actually owned the other email so I could get my password reset, I stumbled across the OU activation email. That's what you get for trying to do stuff involving thinking and memory after having celebrated the demise of a couple of American vultures. But I digress.)
Before I go on: This is initially just a test to see how the technical side of things work. The bigger issues, ie the legalities of this kind of OXP distribution, and - legalities aside - whether this kind of distribution is desirable, I have not offered much thought. Obviously those will have to be dealt with if this thing looks promising.
Okay, so the premise is this: Opera Unite is a feature that allows a user to share the contents of any folder on a local machine with the outside world without actually uploading any content anywhere. The obvious downside to this is of course that the moment I turn off my computer, my content is no longer available. Also, it is naturally vulnerable to upload speed issues. As such, it is almost certainly unsuitable as a primary way of distributing OXPs. My thought was more along the lines of having a small cluster of backup download locations, for those cases where the main location is unavailable.
For instance, we could put a "Download not working? Look here" thing on the OXP page, giving the alternate locations while providing a warning that any or all of those might also be temporarily unavailable and most likely a lot slower than the primary location. Oh, well, just brainstorming here.
Anyway, just to test that this thing actually works as intended, I've put up a folder with a text document in it. So if someone could try http://avenger.vonshacklestein.operauni ... e_sharing/ and see what comes of it, we at least know if I managed to get the thing working. I enabled the password protection just for fun, just use my name to get in.
(At some point it might be an idea to test whether I actually have to have Opera running on my machine for the download to work, or if being connected to the hyperweb is sufficient.)
(The whole thing took a lot longer than it should, due to the fact that I screwed things up... To make a short story long I had already made an account on OU some time ago, but had long since forgotten the password. And since I thought I had used an email address to which I've long since forgotten the password to set up the account, I tried to just ignore the old account and set up the new one. Trouble was that my Opera still remembered that I had the other one, so the option of making a new one didn't show up. After a bit of frantic searching in inboxes to find some proof that I actually owned the other email so I could get my password reset, I stumbled across the OU activation email. That's what you get for trying to do stuff involving thinking and memory after having celebrated the demise of a couple of American vultures. But I digress.)
Before I go on: This is initially just a test to see how the technical side of things work. The bigger issues, ie the legalities of this kind of OXP distribution, and - legalities aside - whether this kind of distribution is desirable, I have not offered much thought. Obviously those will have to be dealt with if this thing looks promising.
Okay, so the premise is this: Opera Unite is a feature that allows a user to share the contents of any folder on a local machine with the outside world without actually uploading any content anywhere. The obvious downside to this is of course that the moment I turn off my computer, my content is no longer available. Also, it is naturally vulnerable to upload speed issues. As such, it is almost certainly unsuitable as a primary way of distributing OXPs. My thought was more along the lines of having a small cluster of backup download locations, for those cases where the main location is unavailable.
For instance, we could put a "Download not working? Look here" thing on the OXP page, giving the alternate locations while providing a warning that any or all of those might also be temporarily unavailable and most likely a lot slower than the primary location. Oh, well, just brainstorming here.
Anyway, just to test that this thing actually works as intended, I've put up a folder with a text document in it. So if someone could try http://avenger.vonshacklestein.operauni ... e_sharing/ and see what comes of it, we at least know if I managed to get the thing working. I enabled the password protection just for fun, just use my name to get in.
(At some point it might be an idea to test whether I actually have to have Opera running on my machine for the download to work, or if being connected to the hyperweb is sufficient.)