What exactly does Dropbox do that WebDAV can't do?
Be so easy to install and use that my mother can use it on her own. That's the big advantage that Dropbox had and still has over something like WebDAV.
Why we are leaving Dropbox
121–130 of 139 posts
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no offline access or syncing. The data is available over gigabit link. It is local, after all. No need to sync to hide the latency. And after all, there is more data on NAS, that the drive on my notebook can handle. No need to have it all locally.
So you're not actually doing everything (or even most things) that Dropbox does. I mean we also have a file server with a several TB of disk and gigabit links and VPN and all that jazz at the office, but that is in no way a replacement for what Dropbox offers.
So I guess we have different needs.
For us it is important to work on the same files. To make them available to our co-workers, to have the same versions, etc.
Syncing is a mechanism. If it would help us to achieve our goals, we could use it. If some other mechanism achieves our goals more efficiently, we would use it instead. Syncing in itself does not have value to us.
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
The infections needed to have access to web console (in Synology case, that's port 5000). Unless you are targeted, that's very difficult to achieve even in slightly secured networks (i.e. every possible toggle in settings is not ON). When you are targeted, it does not matter, whether you use Synology or Dropbox, the approach is tailored to your situation.
For just one technique, read up on DNS rebinding attacks vs home "routers". Same works against NAS devices. These devices are so common that it is cost effective to do against a bunch of device+vuln combos in a mass drive-by fashion (served by compromised or shady ad networks or any of the other 100 methods that get you to follow a bad link). Or there's going to be another taiwanese device or PC compromised on your L…
Well, it the rebind attacks depends on multiple weak points. Our DNS cache does not allow for external DNS servers to return IP addresses from our internal range. But I guess not everyone's router does that.
But your point is valid.
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#124[deleted]
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I'm saying I'm cynical about everyone's motives in this space, and suspect that there's a reason you lead with naming a bogeyman instead of just accusing the company of being NSA stooges.
I have an Obama "Yes We Scan" image as the banner of my Facebook page. And yes, I see the irony of me having a Facebook page. I use it minimally, and to post social criticism rather than baby and cat pix. Fighting fire with fire. I am cynical about human apathy and selfishness. Which makes me cynical of your cynicism, which is directed at people's taking a stand :(
> Which makes me cynical of your cynicism, which is directed at people's taking a stand :(
I'll cop to that.
Once upon a time "taking a stand" meant something: risking your life when our imperial British overlords marched into town; risking imprisonment to help slaves escape the antebellum South; risking social alienation, unemployment, or arrest to undermine segregation laws -- or even just expending hours of inconvenience and exhaustion walking to work instead of taking the Montgomery public transit system.
Today, when people "take a stand" on an issue, it generally looks more like GamerGate: piling on to the Internet's latest episode of the Two Minutes' Hate, doxxing some poor pizza-baking morons in Indiana, and issuing them death threats. For this the mob encounters no risk to life, limb, or prosperity, little inconvenience save the time they choose to invest, and are often lauded in their own communities for their "bravery", or cited as paradigms of what a push for social justice looks like today: impassioned young people TAKING A STAND. In other news, up is down, freedom is slavery, and the White House goes around trying to "speak truth to power".
There are a few good exceptions, sure, but even Ferguson was marred by looting.
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you're not actually doing everything (or even most things) that Dropbox does. I mean we also have a file server with a several TB of disk and gigabit links and VPN and all that jazz at the office, but that is in no way a replacement for what Dropbox offers.
So I guess we have different needs. For us it is important to work on the same files. To make them available to our co-workers, to have the same versions, etc. Syncing is a mechanism. If it would help us to achieve our goals, we could use it. If some other mechanism achieves our goals more efficiently, we would use it instead. Syncing in itself does not have value to us.
Dropbox and a NAS or file server fulfill different needs with not that much overlap. Sure you can probably hack your NAS to be a bit like Dropbox and perhaps you can hack Dropbox to work a bit like a NAS, but a the end of the day they're complements not competitors. If you don't need what Dropbox offers that's cool, but that's not the same as saying that Dropbox doesn't have anything to offer over a NAS. Personally I use both and would never want to trade one for the other.
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#127What exactly does Dropbox do that WebDAV can't do?
Be so easy to install and use that my mother can use it on her own. That's the big advantage that Dropbox had and still has over something like WebDAV.
How is something being easy to install an advantage over something that works without an install?
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#128I've moved away from Dropbox purely because the desktop (OS X) app has gotten so terrible. Besides the lack of responsiveness mentioned in the article, Dropbox routinely takes up > 90% of my CPU resources while running. If I'm working at a coffee shop without power, having Dropbox running literally halves my battery life. This is new as of the last six months, and happens consistently across multiple Macs. I've asked…
In my experience, Dropbox responds to all file system I/O, even those outside of the Dropbox folders, strangely. If I'm running, say, npm install or bundle install or installing Xcode (or doing anything else I/O heavy), Dropbox starts using a bunch of CPU, proportional to the amount of I/O going on at the time. Note that none of these operations are inside my Dropbox folder. I do believe the FSEvents infrastructure a…
Same. I'll run npm install on my desktop and suddenly dropbox is at 110% CPU doing nothing. I end up having to force quit it and forget to restart it. It's VERY frustrating.
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#129I know no one likes me doing this, but...
I use bittorrent sync (stay with 1.3.109 until they stop messing it up or syncthing gets a bit more mature). I've never paid for it, it Just Works (no install, just binary, takes literally 30 seconds to get two machines syncing, I've used it to send files to my mum because it's easier than teaching her to use mediafire), it's not storage limited, it end-to-end encrypts and because it's peer to peer, it is way faster because it doesn't upload to a server first.
Remind me again why you lot insist on using third party providers for this stuff?
Re: Why we are leaving Dropbox
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have an Obama "Yes We Scan" image as the banner of my Facebook page. And yes, I see the irony of me having a Facebook page. I use it minimally, and to post social criticism rather than baby and cat pix. Fighting fire with fire. I am cynical about human apathy and selfishness. Which makes me cynical of your cynicism, which is directed at people's taking a stand :(
> Which makes me cynical of your cynicism, which is directed at people's taking a stand :( I'll cop to that. Once upon a time "taking a stand" meant something: risking your life when our imperial British overlords marched into town; risking imprisonment to help slaves escape the antebellum South; risking social alienation, unemployment, or arrest to undermine segregation laws -- or even just expending hours of inconv…
Dude, I'm totally with you (I think the U.S.'s use of a volunteer army and more so drone warfare is very bad, and I lament our Facebook Like- and Twitter Retweet-based "viral protests" and fashionable ice-bucket challenges, and superficial hipster counter-culture), except...
> Once upon a time "taking a stand" meant something: risking your life when our imperial British overlords marched into town; risking imprisonment to help slaves escape the antebellum South; risking social alienation, unemployment, or arrest to undermine segregation laws -- or even just expending hours of inconvenience and exhaustion walking to work instead of taking the Montgomery public transit system.
...is a kind of straw man. You're basically saying that the only fights worth fighting are the epic ones with the costs you describe. (btw, most recently I took part in shutting down the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the racist police departments and the killing of Micheal Brown, Eric Garner and many others).
And there actually is a significant cost to being principled about the software and services you use. Most people don't actually have anything to hide from the NSA, so denying oneself the convenience and zero out-of-pocket cost of Dropbox or Gmail and choosing often fringe alternatives, is usually all sacrifice, no personal gain. The only gain is the promise of the greater good if your protest ultimately prevails. This is analogous to the "inconvenience and exhaustion walking to work instead of taking the Montgomery public transit system."
By the way, what is your current protest (this thread) costing you?