Re: Distros (byte-ranging)

[mike808@users.sourceforge.net]

> Pfft.  Reading email in a browser... *skin crawls, shivers*  mutt, thanks. ;) 
> Most of the people I know do in fact fetch large files with wget or curl.

You travel in a far, far different circle than Suzie Desktop worker drone.

> but after getting burned a few times (their browser crashes and loses the
> file) they're going to switch to a different program, not a different 
> protocol.  I say this because the only FTP tool most people have is, well, 
> their crash-prone web browser.

No they won't. They'll call tech support, who will tell them to reboot and
try again. They may try that "FTP" link next to the "HTTP" one after the
third time. After the third reboot, they give up. They do not switch to
a different program unless someone holds their hands and "does it for them"
(i.e. downloading the program, installing it, configuring it, and then
downloading the file they wanted in the first place). Then after that, 
the next time they need to download something, they call *that person*
to "help" them download another file. Because getting someone else to do 
your work is always easier than actually learning to do it for yourself.
Our workforce has been trained for this behavior ever since they invented
the "hourly wage".

Most browsers handle FTP URLs just fine, sending your email
as the password (hint - using FTP for image source URLs make a nifty 
email snagger), automatically go into PASV mode (makes NAT easier) and
use the browser proxy settings automatically as well. This keeps the
corporate folks happy, instead of explaining to users that they need to
set an environment variable called "FTP_PASSIVE" or some such for ncftp
and friends to always use passive mode to get past the corporate firewall.

Last I checked, IE doesn't know a darned thing about the rsync protocol.

> The only ftp program you get with Windows, and MacOSX are commandline 
> based interactive tools.

No. Internet Explorer talks FTP just fine. No command line needed.
It's all clicky-clicky. And then there's WS_FTP if you like a different GUI,
also $0. Not open source, but free as in beer.

> Not easy for the sane user to knock out UNIX commands.. but when someone 
> asks, and you tell them to type "wget" followed by the URL (no FTP commands 
> or login crap to get mixed up) they are able to do it.

Except wget doesn't come with Windows. And IE does. And that's 95% of the
surfers out there, like it or not.

BTW, Kbear is shaping up like a nice GUI FTP client for KDE.
http://kbear.sourceforge.net/

mike808/


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