On 9/12/2011 12:14, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> After reading several dozen forum posts, it seems nobody has a really
>> good solution for doing this.
>
>    You can thank Windows for this.

Nah. You can thank NAT for this.

> Traditionally in the unix world
> transferring files from one computer to another has been one of the
> most basic features (and it's the reason why there are so many ways
> of doing that, including rsync, rcp, scp, ftp, sftp, wget, and so on).

Note how all of those require a running server on a public IP address.

> Of course this requires for one of the computers to act as a server.
> This is made difficult in Windows. (Yes, I know it's not impossible.
> I didn't say that.)

Transferring files in Windows is trivial. You RDP into the other machine, 
and use copy/paste just like in the file manager. Or you mount the share off 
the other machine. Or let RDP mount the share for you.

It just requires you not be behind a NAT.

>    The other traditional method to send files is through irc. This has
> worked in the unix world for something like 20 years. Given that irc is
> mostly dead nowadays (it's too "old-fashioned") most people don't even
> know what it is. This works perfectly in Windows too, if only irc was
> still popular there.

All the chat programs still have this, including messanger and all (afaik) 
the other chat clients like jabber and AIM and such.

>     One of the most common modern variants of this, one which also works
> easily in Windows, is skype. Of course many people refuse to use skype
> out of principle (the same kind of principle as avoiding facebook).

The principle being "I don't route my phone calls through random third-party 
computers, especially those who haven't given me permission to use their 
public computer as a NAT bridge."

For example, you can't use skype in google because google has enough 
bandwidth that half the world would be routing their skype calls over 
google's links if you did.

>    If you are regularly transferring files to someone, just make him install
> skype.

Or any IM client, really.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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