Be Excellent To Each Other

make us own our own data again.

Make Opera own your data, you mean. The whole thing runs via a proprietary protocol over dedicated proxies owned and controlled by Opera.

You don't have to send any traffic through the proxies at all, they are simply a convenience mechanism for guaranteeing connectivity.

If you connect using UPnP, no traffic goes through our servers. If you use the proxy, all the traffic passes through.
If you use Unite to share files, no files are stored on Opera's servers at all.
Also: Note that while you can certainly share files through Unite, it's not really about "file sharing", but "personal web services".

I'm a little bit confused though. How is this any different to me just installing the IIS component that comes with my XP install? Surely it's just a free redirect to a web server on your local machine?

I don't really understand the value. Sure, it's all about "reclaiming your data", but if there's actually anything you'd want to keep control over, why would you put it on a jumped up insecure webserver on your local machine, that isn't even capable of encryption or access control?

They're going to get Napstered.

For sharing file around, yes I can see the value. Not really for anything else though. And you might as well just use rapidshare.

Yeah but it being massively dumbed down is the best part about it!

It's My First Server For Noobdiots. And thats ace. Especially for an idiot like me.

To have a simple easy server on my laptop installed with my browser is ace. It does nothing that can't be done already (and better) but it's all part and parcel of the browser which is awesome.

Is an un-backed up, insecure server on your own PC really preferable to a "cloud" (abusing the term, but this is what you mean, I think) service like Twitter or Blogger or Livejournal or Facebook? I run my own server and it's a frickin' headache, especially when it gets pwned and you bloody well better have a backup (I did).

It's a conflicting message though. If you want something simple and easy, why bother relying on the user to host it when everything they could possibly ever need to do that is already out there on the internet for them.

It seems to only cater for the overlapping niche of tech-noob and privacy freak. Which isn't a big market. And also assumes that the privacy freak would rather the limited security hosting it themselves offers over industrial strength hosting solutions. Also, the tech-noob will want to use Opera's proxying service and the privacy freak won't - it's a dichotomy that'll LITERALLY TEAR PEOPLE APART. Is that what you want? IS IT?

That not it at all.

Currently If someone wants to show you a video they have to go through youtube, a picture - imageshack and so on. Their activities on the web are at the permission of corporations and can be taken away from them.

This is the very first tentative step towards moving the browser towards something that not only pulls things down off the web but can also push them back up. To have that as a back up will keep web 2.0 companies in check and drive them to continue to innovate.

Lave, are you suggesting an Iranian protester is better served distributing materials his government disagrees with via a website hosted on his own IP, rather than (say) posting to Twitter and Blogger via an anonymously prepaid cellphone's GPRS signal?

Lave, are you suggesting an Iranian protester is better served distributing materials his government disagrees with via a website hosted on his own IP, rather than (say) posting to Twitter and Blogger via an anonymously prepaid cellphone's GPRS signal?

Except it really isn't the first tentative step. 15 years ago more people were hosting websites on their individual machines than were centrally hosted. That changed for four reasons:

1) Bandwidth costs
2) To allow the non-tech savvy to utilise these services
3) Storage costs
4) Marketing. Corporations are able to promote their services much better than the user is able to on their own.

Unite sort of addresses the second point - but do those people in category 2 really care about wanting to host stuff themselves? Bearing in mind 95% of category 2 will have not the faintest idea what Opera is or why they would want to use it?

I see why you want this to be a solution to a civil liberties problem of freedom of speech and the like, but it really isn't. Using your Iran example, it would take the Iranian government controlled ISPs approximately 3 minutes to block all traffic from web servers identifying themselves as Unite.

Or that someone with the drive to do something like that really couldn't find someone to configure Apache for him/her?

No, I'm saying that a £100 EEE PC dropped in a cafe flowerpot could run a website via the free wifi that allowed them to allow them to spread the proxies they were using to get access to twitter after the gov shut down access and would take seconds to do.

Read Little Brother by Cory Doctorov (of course) for more examples.

Specific examples are irrelevant really, the point still stands.

#comments" class="postlink">http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/16/lazyweb-turn-the-new.html#comments

Never underestimated the stupidity of the average user - if sharing a photo or an MP3 is as simple as a click, no uploading, no permissions, then they may well go for it.

It looks like fun

I've installed the Lounge, Media, File Sharing and Lounge plug ins.

I really don't think it's the same kinda thing. It's clearly aimed at small groups of friends, sharing with the public when you have very little upstream bandwith (and no other peers) isn't going to work.

But being able to chuck up a file for people here for a few hours is pretty nifty.

That and I think it will be really interesting what apps the community can make.

It's got the possibilty to be web 2.0 with the middle man removed and for smaller groups of people (at least to begin with), and I really, really want that.

Of course what I really want is for Mozilla to steal this and add it to firefox.

EDIT: If they got sued, opera could drop there proxy service and leave it to third parties, it's really easy to change who your proxy is so anybody can stand up to do it.

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