Re: fond ftp memories
Bittorrent actually makes a lot of sense within organizations, particularly if employees need to distribute a lot of large files to many recipients (such as pre-release product builds). Rather than everyone pounding on the same server or small cluster you can let employees peer-distribute. Better latency, better use of bandwidth, better resiliency.
But few organizations seem to realize this. I suggested it years ago but most people here continue to use FTP (sigh)1 or SMB (yuck) or Sharepoint (beyond yuck) for this sort of thing.
We do have Filr (because it's our product), which IMO is one of the better versions of the Dropbox-style "HTTPS plus a native client if you must" approaches. But while it's pretty convenient and responsive – certainly far better than SMB – it doesn't have the peer-to-peer advantages of Bittorrent.
1Don't get me wrong. FTP in passive mode has its uses, and it runs just fine over TLS, so this "FTP is plaintext!" panic is bullshit. FTP's use of separate data and control channels, for all the problems that causes, makes it maximally efficient for a single-server data-transfer mechanism while still being responsive to control flow. But many FTP holdouts don't bother running it over TLS, and the FTP haters have made it inconvenient for non-technical users.
Fortunately Pale Moon still supports it. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari can just fuck off as far as I'm concerned. When I want a nanny I know where to find one.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
