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April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#61

Post by blowski »

fit2rule wrote: post #35

I'm still not using Dropbox. I absolutely detest the idea that I'm relying on a 3rd party for a feature that I consider should be built into every modern Operating System. At the point when OS vendors relinquished to the Web 2.0 Cult their responsibilities for such features as easy filesharing, the world lost something. Absolutely, its great that people can share files this way. But absolutely, its terrible that it r…

I think the biggest OSes _have_ integrated something like this, but unfortunately they don't work well between operating systems. So if I'm on an Android phone, an iPad, and dual boot Windows and Ubuntu then it doesn't really help. Dropbox does allow me to backup and sync on all of those.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#62

Post by mattlutze »

fit2rule wrote: post #35

I'm still not using Dropbox. I absolutely detest the idea that I'm relying on a 3rd party for a feature that I consider should be built into every modern Operating System. At the point when OS vendors relinquished to the Web 2.0 Cult their responsibilities for such features as easy filesharing, the world lost something. Absolutely, its great that people can share files this way. But absolutely, its terrible that it r…

I would love a simple integrated file hosting solution built into OS X, where my computer is actually the host instead of iCloud.

I think, though, that the lack of high upload bandwidth for almost every Internet consumer makes this less useful today. However, if a big OS would actually develop and ship it, perhaps we'd have users demanding greater upload bandwidth and help push forward the idea of the "person as Internet producer", versus just the current "person as a consumer".

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#63

Post by smtddr »

raverbashing wrote: post #17
broodbucket wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His statement is correct, and totally irrelevant when considering consumers.

> and totally irrelevant when considering consumers. That's the most important part, and the mostly often ignored in HN discussions It's the same with the difference between the Apple I and Appple II

>That's the most important part, and the mostly often ignored in HN discussions

Example... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572743

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#64

Post by benjamincburns »

poolpool wrote: post #58

So many people today are still harping on the security aspect (Not ~ free ~ software, you don't own the servers). How does that matter at all when selling to a large consumer base? How many customers of dropbox know what those words mean? Like so many commercial offerings you could built it from source and get some hacky scripts going on your own but 99% of the world isn't going to do that.

Regarding specifically the "free software" statement, It's a holy war. One where I'm on the side of the religious zealots, for once. The special extra fanatical wingeing about big software like DropBox not being free comes from seeing the founders as smart people who have a base ripe for promoting your (my) view (that free software is just plain better for the world), and if they just saw it our way, maybe things would start to change. So we complain. Well, I try not to outright complain, because I know that's a shitty way to get what you want and that my views are ultimately tangential to their cause, but you get the idea...

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#65

Post by fit2rule »

ErsatzVerkehr wrote: post #37
fit2rule wrote: post #35

I'm still not using Dropbox. I absolutely detest the idea that I'm relying on a 3rd party for a feature that I consider should be built into every modern Operating System. At the point when OS vendors relinquished to the Web 2.0 Cult their responsibilities for such features as easy filesharing, the world lost something. Absolutely, its great that people can share files this way. But absolutely, its terrible that it r…

Why should OS vendors also supply cloud storage? Who would provide this cloud storage for Linux distributions?

Umm .. because accessing such resources as files in a shared way is a duty of the OS, after all. Or, to put it another way, lets rephrase your question: "Why should OS vendors supply drivers for filesystem _X_?" "Why should OS vendors provide a way for users to share files, at all?" The answer: because it is the duty of the OS to provide such features.

Another thing: who says we need a Cloud model in order to deliver the same results as Dropbox? It could be just as easily possible to enable filesharing on a local workstation that is accessible to the public/chosen-users over the Internet, after all. The technology exists to implement these features entirely without relying on a Cloud at all: its called 'the computer in front of you'.

The "cloud" aspect of the feature is not actually necessary to deliver this kind of filesharing functionality - this is only a marketing gimmick that is used to justify 3rd-party, commercial access to ones information. Remember, if you're not paying for it you're not a customer: you're a product.

The features that Dropbox provide should already be in the OS. I create a Shared folder, I administer it with local OS features, I publish.

I believe that OS vendors were asleep at the wheel during this Web 2.0 cult phase, but I hope they wake up soon and relieve us of the security and privacy nightmare that is Web 2.0.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#66

Post by scrrr »

There's people who try everything that is new and enjoy innovation, and there's people who tend to be skeptical at first. The first kind is busy trying out the software while the others are busy expressing their negativity on a website.

And there's of course those who find it a big shame, that Dropbox and other cloud services have become completely unusable thanks to the host country's government.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#67

Post by _pmf_ »

bstar77 wrote: post #3

Dropbox is definitely a case where a single person's vision was required to create a revolutionary product. Judging by the comments, leaving it to HNers as a group would have just resulted in a faster usb drive.

> Dropbox is definitely a case where a single person's vision was required to create a revolutionary product.

In the case of Dropbox, I think the main factor was (and this is the exception rather than the regular case) the perfect technical execution, not the vision.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#68

Post by icebraining »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #41
ErsatzVerkehr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should OS vendors also supply cloud storage? Who would provide this cloud storage for Linux distributions?

I think the point is that your computer connected to the internet is your cloud storage. There's no reason why that functionality needs to be farmed off to a third party.

Besides vectorjohn's point, which is completely true, there's also a point about upstream speeds. Considering that most of us have asymmetric connections, sharing a big file with multiple people would be a pain if I had to upload it over and over again, while with a intermediary I can just upload it once and let it push to clients at greater speeds (and in parallel).

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#69

Post by fit2rule »

vectorjohn wrote: post #50
hackinthebochs wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that your computer connected to the internet is your cloud storage. There's no reason why that functionality needs to be farmed off to a third party.

A cloud requires at least 2 computers to be online at the same time. This is not the common case for people.

Only because the feature is not in the OS. Were it actually in the OS, people would leave their computers on in order to share things. It makes sense.

Re: April 5, 2007: "Show HN, Dropbox"

#70

Post by netcan »

The top two comments are critical (though not mean).

The first comment is pretty interesting.

'My suggestion is to drop the "Throw away your USB drive" tag line and use something else... it will just muddy your vision.'

He's more or less correct. 'Like a USB' is a bad analogy. Dropbox only replaces some of a USB's use cases and does lot of things that a USB doesn't. OTOH, he's wrong because there is no other 3 word sentence that could have done a better job. 'Like a USB' is probably the best starting point even if it only gets across 25% of the message because 25% is better than nothing. 25% (assuming it's the right 25%) might get the user to install it. Then they might get to know the backup, file sharing/sending, versioning, or whatever subset of functions they use.

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