Talk:949: File Transfer

About three years ago, I stumbled across this comic during an xkcd re-read, and I immediately thought "Hey, the small business I work for could make GREAT use of Dropbox!" Today, my boss says that bringing Dropbox to her business is one of the best ideas I've ever had. Boct1584 (talk) 01:22, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Years ago the usb drive was a floppy disc and the transfer was called "sneaker net". This "solution" is much, much older than the web. Also, why would TBL shed a tear? What's an HTML server got to do with file sharing? Do you think Randall meant Tommy Flowers? -- ‎188.29.119.251 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

You are right. I deleted the sentence about Tim Berners-Lee, because the comic shows a perfectly legitimate use of the internet: transferring a 25 Mb file, which is much complicated than it should be. Xhfz (talk) 21:00, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

He wasn't really right, and the title text should still be explained. I have done so. 108.162.219.223 20:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Just split the file into two pieces and send them in two emails. 123.24.93.198 10:29, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

With a chisel? Not everybody has a chisel around the house, these days. 108.162.219.223 20:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually Dropbox has a web interface, you don't need to download any program. Still, both need to have Dropbox account. --JakubNarebski (talk) 15:41, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes. Yes, you do. 108.162.219.223 20:35, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Guys, dropbox supports link-sharing, for users without an account. Although, that feature probably wasn't around at the time this comic was written. 173.245.55.73 02:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Although those neccessarily need either a password or are just kinda insecure because it's on the open internet. 162.158.170.65 12:53, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Duke: I THINK that the TIM BERNERS LEE part is not just to do with the protocols. If you had to send it to your friend's laptop , you *could* mail it your friends email id rather than to yourself, essentially using the email service in the *right* manner. 141.101.81.237 07:27, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

After all these years I stumbled only now upon this note in Wikipedia's WebDAV article:

Tim Berners-Lee's original vision of the Web involved a medium for both reading and writing. In fact, Berners-Lee's first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, could both view and edit web pages.

So Tim Berners-Lee was imaging an interactive web when he invented html and http, instead of the static "web 1.0", which came alive. In his envisioned web, people probably would have uploaded a file to a webpage directly, instead of using the web-interfaces of email providers or services like Dropbox, which are complicated work-arounds to achieve the same thing. Enkidu (talk) 11:58, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Hah, now we have darkhttp. Just download and install (a matter of seconds), execute (give root-of-to-share folder) and forward the ports on your router (2mins max). This should be rather easy :-). Alternatives could be also tftp etc. Or send something via GDrive^^108.162.253.174 10:11, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

"forward the ports on your router" isn't "2mins max" if your ISP puts its residential subscribers behind carrier-grade network address translation. For many, the only way out from behind CGNAT is to lease a static IP, and even for that, some ISPs require a commercially zoned service address. --Tepples (talk) 16:17, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm surprised they didn't just use bittorrent. It's such a simple and easy way to transfer files. -- The Cat Lady (talk) 00:23, 23 August 2021 (UTC)