Windows 10's Version of AirDrop Lets You Quickly Share Files Between PCs (theverge.com) 108
Microsoft is testing its "Near Share" feature of Windows 10 in the latest Insider build (17035) today, which will let Windows 10 PCs share documents or photos to PCs nearby via Bluetooth. The Verge reports: A new Near Share option will be available in the notification center, and the feature can be accessed through the main share function in Windows 10. Files will be shared wirelessly, and recipients will receive a notification when someone is trying to send a file. Microsoft's addition comes just a day after Google unveiled its own AirDrop-like app for Android.
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A new (un)security portal opens.
needs a catchy name - how about BlueHole ?
Re: IR link (Score:1)
Re:IR link (Score:4, Insightful)
IR Link was horrible, because most laptop IR transceivers had a very narrow view. It was sort-of okay for PDAs if you held the PDA directly against the IR port, but impossible to align for a pair of laptops reliably.
Bluetooth file transfer is also pretty mature at this point. I've used it between Windows, Mac, and FreeBSD machines and with old Nokia and new Android phones (it probably works with iOS, though it didn't in the original iPhone). Pairing is a bit annoying, but once that's done it's basically drag and drop.
AirDrop is nice because it uses bluetooth to identify nearby machines and to advertise public keys, but then creates a two-device ad-hoc wireless network and transfers at high speed. WiFi direct now provides a somewhat more standard and mature mechanism for doing this.
I'm quite annoyed that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all developing independent protocols for this though. I want an open protocol that works with all of my devices, not a mess of protocols where I can use one between my laptop and Android phone, one between my laptop and iPad, none between my iPad and Android phone, a different one between Windows devices, and so on.
Re:IR link (Score:4, Insightful)
An open protocol could exist between PC and Android. Apple would never want to play ball as file transfer would be at odds with the Golden Cage concept.. or was it called Walled Garden? I do not recall. ;)
I think of it as the Golden Shower Cubicle concept.
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I don't like Apple's push for proprietary interfacrs either but to be fair to them they support OBEX over Bluetooth already, at least for OS-X.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Wait whatnow? They do? I'm so used to Apple pushing their proprietary stuff that I had given up even the notion that they'd try to maintain some level of compatibility with other manufacturers.
Oh, there it is, in the Bluetooth menu. Huh. Whodathunkit. Now if only they'd do the same thing in iOS. But I guess they're too busy turning people into smiling talking poop.
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Licensing headaches aside, of course...
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And pay $PPLE a shit ton of money, or risk getting sued?
No risk if you do the reverse engineering of the protocol in the EU - which specifically allowed you to do that. See the UK Act: The Copyright (Computer Programs) Regulations 1992 [legislation.gov.uk], read 50B (2)(a)
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wouldn't it make more sense for MS and Google to adopt that technology or something compatible?
You mean like an open standard that allows products from different companies to interoperate? Apple doesn't license Airdrop or Airplay or Facetime because doing so would allow people to easily use devices from other manufacturers.
Re:IR link (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, Bluetooth is very useful for dealing with old phones. But in this age of phones that capture 4K video, it's slower than a snail dragging a brick. So's IR. Same with NFC. We need either an entirely new wireless standard for this, or a standard that uses ad-hoc wifi like so many manufacturer-specific Android ones do.
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Agreed, however if Microsoft do this right and provide support in iOS and Android then they'll have a solution which works for 100% of the
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Agreed, however if Microsoft do this right and provide support in iOS and Android then they'll have a solution which works for 100% of the mobile market and 83% of the desktop market.
This isn't so so great if you're the 17% on something else - but better than AirDrop today which only works on 13% of desktops and 18% of phones.
Now there was nothing to stop Apple (or even Google) doing the same - however they've had 5 years since AirDrop came out to do something ... but chose not to.
This is called the Microsoft instant we are the standard outlook. Microsoft comes late to the game, and their fans complain that Apple isn't compatible with Microsoft's late entry, and it's those damn hipsters at Apple's fault.
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Some Apple fans might, but not me.
My point was more that Apple already provide Bonjour services for Windows (and have done for several years).
As such, there was no reason why, in the past 5 years, they couldn't have built and bundled in an AirDrop service for Windows too.
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That is exactly why it was good. Line of sight in a narrow angle is secure. Bluetooth is insecure by design.
Re:IR link (Score:4, Informative)
Bluetooth file transfer is also pretty mature at this point. I've used it between Windows, Mac, and FreeBSD machines and with old Nokia and new Android phones (it probably works with iOS, though it didn't in the original iPhone). Pairing is a bit annoying, but once that's done it's basically drag and drop.
...
I'm quite annoyed that Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all developing independent protocols for this though. I want an open protocol that works with all of my devices, not a mess of protocols where I can use one between my laptop and Android phone, one between my laptop and iPad, none between my iPad and Android phone, a different one between Windows devices, and so on.
Not sure why we need a new protocol when we've got OBEX.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Like you say it's supported by literally everything.
My Galaxy S5, Windows machine and Mac all support it. Even old feature phones did - in fact that's where it was invented.
As far as pairing goes it's not too bad now. With NFC you can tap to pair, though I've never owned two devices that support it. Even without it you can fiddle around in the GUI once to pair and then click OK on both devices - the PINs are synched automatically. It's about the minimum security that is viable to stop drive by downloads.
I.e this is a solved problem and there's no need for a new protocol. If it is more convenient it will necessarily be less secure. And a vendor specific protocol is obviously not going to be much use with a heterogeneous bunch of devices.
Also if you want more speed Android, Mac, Windows and Linux/BSD all support SMB networking over Wifi. So for a large file you can just copy to a mutually visible network share.
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OBEX started off on serial and IRDA and moved to Bluetooth. You could presumably run it over WiFi - e.g. encapsulate the packets into TCP/IP or UDP. I'm guessing done right - with the right windows size basically - you should be able to get close to the native speed of the WiFi connection.
There's a standard for OBEX over TCP/IP
https://books.google.com/books... [google.com]
https://i.imgur.com/WhzUaDB.pn... [imgur.com]
The problem would be how you'd balance convenience and security. With Bluetooth you need to pair. With Wifi you need
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So what happens with OBEX over TCP/IP? Both devices would need to be on the same subnet, unless you had some sort of evil NAT avoiding technique to punch through to an external server.
Why do they need to be on the same subnet? If IP broadcasts are used for discovery, wouldn't it be sufficient to be in the same IP broadcast domain? I was not able to find anything about how OBEX handles discovery over IP.
I agree with other posters on this subject that file sharing between adjacent devices is much difficult than it should be. The smaller USB connectors found on handheld devices have poor or questionable long term reliability. I would consider IRDA ideal but it is deprecated. Bluetooth
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Bluetooth simply isn't fast enough. A while ago I recorded a few minutes of 60 fps HD video on my Galaxy S7 and it was about 400 MB. I wanted to send it to my friend's Galaxy S5. I started up a Bluetooth transfer like I'm used to and wtf, 2 hours remaining?! So I tried S Beam and it was done inside of 30 seconds -- but it was only possible because we both happened to have Samsung phones.
We need an industry standard that works sort of like S Beam. Wifi is the only wireless technology found in all devices tha
iOS and Bluetooth (Score:3)
IR Link was horrible, because most laptop IR transceivers had a very narrow view. It was sort-of okay for PDAs if you held the PDA directly against the IR port, but impossible to align for a pair of laptops reliably.
On the other hand, most of the PDA and phone I've had back then all worked nicely. Seems engineering spent more time testing if the IR solution was optimal, compared to laptop where IR was an additionnal check on the feature list.
Bluetooth file transfer is also pretty mature at this point. I've used it between Windows, Mac, and FreeBSD machines and with old Nokia and new Android phones (it probably works with iOS, though it didn't in the original iPhone).
Nope. Bluetooth file sending (OBEX) doesn't work on iOS anymore. Apple has removed the feature and replaced it with a proprietary Bluetooth-enabled version of AirDrop.
AirDrop is nice because it uses bluetooth to identify nearby machines and to advertise public keys, but then creates a two-device ad-hoc wireless network and transfers at high speed.
Which is stupid and redundant given that most recent bluetooth standards (Bluetooth 3.0 + HS and more recent) can d
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I stopped needing Bluetooth file transfer when I got my DropBox account 10 years ago. Having access to my files everywhere is much simpler.
So when you want to give a file to the person right next to you, you first tell him to download dropbox, and then give him your account details to access the file. Yeah, makes sense.
Re: IR link (Score:2)
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IR Link was horrible
Horrible by today's standards, sure. But everything back then was horrible by today's standards. I used IR Link to sync my Palm and my old Powerbook. It worked well, and was no more or less fidgety than the serial port method that was the alternative. When sending something laptop-to-laptop, you did indeed need to line up the IR ports - but that was relatively simple compared to the alternatives:
1. Splitting your file into pieces to fit on a series of floppies.
2. Hooking the two laptops up with a serial cab
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Meanwhile, here's part of Microsoft's announcement for their latest build containing this new feature:
"Due to a bug that causes PCs with AMD processors to bugcheck during upgrading to current builds, we are blocking PCs with AMD processors from receiving this build. We are investigating and working to fix so we can remove this block."
(Note: "bugcheck" is official Microsoft-speak for Blue-Screen-Of-Death, although in Windows 10 I think it's actually green now)
Yet another completely useless and pointless "fe
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The part that really gets me, is that it is 2017 and we are still do not have a good/secure standard to transfer files.
We have many options some are good but none of them are standardized across all systems and devices.
For this Air-Drop, it seems like they are all trying to make their own brand of air-drop utility Apple, Microsoft, Google. In hope that we will have our competing infrastructure build around the brand, vs built around which product suits our needs.
I may Like my Android Phone, Windows 10 PC, a
Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to have my "Airdrop-like" feature decades ago, simply by clicking on "share via bluetooth", until phone manufacturers (or OS companies) decided to ban sharing stuff over bluetooth. Which is the same Apple has, with the exception that they combine bluetooth and wifi (and I guess their own API) to pretend they did something new/unique.
Computer monkeys at Google and Microsoft must be really boring if they are "implementing" airdrop. Just stop f*cking messing with the information users are allowed to share (allowed... ha... it's supposed to be my bloody phone!).
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I used to sync files via FTP to my phone, because the MTP implementation in Windows was broken. A couple of months ago Microsoft finally patched the issue and I can use USB again, which is much, much faster.
That's the problem with wireless file transfer: it's slow. For large files I'll use USB and charge at the same time. For small files it's usually easier to just email/messenger app them to myself or keep them in cloud storage.
Transfert speed (Score:2)
That's the problem with wireless file transfer: it's slow.
Almost a decade ago, Bluetooth introduced the 3.0 + HS revision of the standard, which included "Alternate MAC/PHY".
This enabled Bluetooth to using the 800.11 MAC/PHY used by WiFi to achieve faster transfert speed.
If both device supported it (e.g.: smartphone with combined radio chipsets, or laptop using combined Wifi+Bluetooth mini cards) it means fast transfer.
For large files I'll use USB and charge at the same time.
Depending on the combination of feature supported by the phone (e.g.: 800.11N dual or even AC, but only USB2.0 micro USB, the transfert over USB m
Re: Transfert speed (Score:2)
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Original AC here. Yes, you can still use it, but it very much depends on whether your smartphone allows you to transfer any file, or only certain files (normally photos). The other extreme is found in phones like the nokia N9, where I could actually browse the phone's file system from my computer after connecting it via bluetooth. Not just send/receive stuff, but actually browse the phone as any other network shared resource. But for some reasons, those (good) phones are not popular.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Funny)
I don't like their new name for this technology, "Near Share". That's boring.
Back in the Zune days, Microsoft used to call it "Squirting", which is a much more entertaining name.
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I wonder if that was one of the reasons why Zune failed. The idea of squirting something to somebody else in public probably didn't (and still wouldn't) go over too well. I want to share files, not take part in a kinky porno.
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I thought that was just a joke on the Penny Arcade web comic. You mean that's a real thing?
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LOL! Yes it was! They advertised that you could "squirt" music to your friends.
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Decade*S* ago? With which phones? How did you see the destination phone(s)? What name(s) did you see? Was the recipient asked if they wanted to even allow receiving a file?
Even if the underlying technology is similar, making a usable UI that anyone can use instead of "Share mypic.gif via Bluetooth to 123.213.124" is doing something new....
python woof.py (Score:1)
Just use woof its a simple python script that allows easy sharing temporarily. I have been using it cross platform for years.
of course it won't, but - (Score:2)
I wonder if it will work with any of the other bluetooth sharing things, like the Samsung one.
I wonder which one will become the standard, if ever, or if there'll eventually be half a dozen of them obstinately refusing to talk to each other.
A solution searching for an application (Score:5, Insightful)
Or may I say, a security hole waiting to be used?
Quite frankly, this strikes me as one of those things that have very limited usefulness with a wealth of exploit potential behind it. What is the scenario for the use of this feature? When you have a meeting and want to exchange documents? What company does NOT have a wireless AP in their conference rooms these days? Oh, when you have to exchange documents with someone outside your company who you can't let on your WiFi for security reasons? Use an USB Stick. If you're security conscious enough to not let a stranger onto your WiFi that is administered and controlled by your IT staff, you should definitely be security conscious to NOT let some marketing or management computer illiterate make decisions about sharing stuff on his laptop, the same laptop that probably contains the marketing strategy or the financial data for the next quarter, most likely in the same folder as the document that should be handed over.
So what sensible application is there for this security-hole-in-the-making?
Re: A solution searching for an application (Score:1)
Re: A solution searching for an application (Score:2)
Re: A solution searching for an application (Score:2)
Meetings at Starbucks? Exchanging 200 MB InDesign or video files?
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VERY bad example. I don't know a single Starbucks that does NOT have free WiFi access.
But if you're security conscious, get an USB stick and transfer the data that way. And yes, considering the awesome 2.1mbit of 2.0 + EDR (provided your device supports it, else you should be happy to get 700kbit), even USB 2.0 is faster. Hell, chances are that encrypting and dropboxing the file is faster.
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I don't know anything about Windows' sharing, nor whatever Google demoed that's Airdrop-like..
But do you mean literally setting up file sharing, and one person logging in, etc? That's FAR more difficult than the actual AirDrop UI.
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Knowing just how well Bluetooth works in most implementations and just how convenient most drivers are, I'd guess you'll have it mailed faster than you get a stable Bluetooth connection going.
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Now try it with Windows, I dare you.
You see, I don't doubt that it works on Apple stuff. Their whole selling point is "just works". Especially between Apple products.
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Now try it with Windows, I dare you.
LOL. I wouldn't.
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If it unlocks the phone when it hits the fingerprint sensor, I'd start to worry.
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Use a USB Stick.
I will get right on that with the current courage for removing full sized USB ports in favor of USB-C, dongles, or nothing.
PFFFFF (Score:3)
I congratulate Microsoft for this great achievement, they finally implemented a feature which Ericsson R520 had 17 years ago.
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FYI http://www.news.com.au/technol... [news.com.au]
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Sure, why not (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's use the most insecure protocol ever developed to send potentially personal information into the ether for everyone to grab.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Let's use the most insecure protocol ever developed to send potentially personal information into the ether for everyone to grab.
What could possibly go wrong?
Manufacturers, choose the answer most likely to generate profit:
A) Consumers don't give a shit about security or privacy.
B) Consumers don't give a shit about security or privacy.
C) Consumers don't give a shit about security or privacy.
D) Both A and C.
E) All the above.
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Let's use the most insecure protocol ever developed to send potentially personal information into the ether for everyone to grab.
What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing. Every implementation of Airdrop, or similar systems use some form of encryption.
Oh you thought you were more clever than the people who came up with the idea didn't you?
For security (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd prefer a system for portable devices that required physical contact.
If there's so much data to move you can't hold the devices against each other reliably for long enough... you can probably find the time to sit them on a table.
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I'd prefer a system for portable devices that required physical contact.
If there's so much data to move you can't hold the devices against each other reliably for long enough... you can probably find the time to sit them on a table.
Since we're talking about PC to PC, here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Belkin-... [amazon.com]
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I was thinking something more like pad on my desk using a near-zero range inductive coupler to connect a smartphone or portable storage to my computer as soon as I put it down, or allowing two smartphones to talk back-to-back or edge-to-edge.
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Still way too fiddly for non-technical people. Unless it gets a system where you plug the systems together and both pop up something offering to transfer files through the cable, it's not going to catch on. Users cannot be expected to set up a SMB share, discover the other side's auto-configured IP, and then fiddle with passwords, encryption options and no-password sharing mode until some combination is found that works.
One side needs to be able to offer files to the other, which sees a notification allowin
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Right, that would be nice to have a standardized port that allowed for two-way communications on a cell phone. We had something close years ago, called "on the go" as I recall. I could get one of these "universal serial cables" with identical connectors on both ends. Not terribly expensive either, $5 or $10, maybe $15 if you wanted it longer or gold plated or something. The ports on the phones doubled for charging and data, and if I connected two phones together with these ports using this "on the go" c
Have they have patched their Bluetooth stack? (Score:2)
Recent Bluetooth vulnerability. [eweek.com]
knowing how well they test Windows 10 (Score:2)
Something else for IT to disable (Score:2)
I wonder what % of /. readers sees sees these "new feature" announcements as something to add to their ToDo list for blocking.
Anywhere that security is more than a passing fancy is going to se this as 2 things. A new improved attack vector and an inte5resting way to leak information. Was this an NSA idea?
Great *sigh* (Score:2)
More stuff to disable on the work computers around here, until they fix all the bugs and security issues. Then more questions from the users about "why can't we have that airdrop thing?" and more of me being the 'bad guy' by telling them 'no you can't have it'.
Since Windows is so good in the workgroup, why not just use the LAN!?
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More stuff to disable on the work computers around here, until they fix all the bugs and security issues. Then more questions from the users about "why can't we have that airdrop thing?" and more of me being the 'bad guy' by telling them 'no you can't have it'.
Since Windows is so good in the workgroup, why not just use the LAN!?
Until you get calls from your users asking you to help them get their Skype for Business bluetooth headsets working for their meetings.
A whole new hacking target! (Score:3)
Wow, a whole new target for hacking. Bluetooth range is pretty variable - someone sitting in a conference room or a waiting room has a good chance of contacting a computer on the other side of the wall. Many users will be completely unaware that this feature even exists.
How long until the first hack?
What a beakthrough (Score:2)
Wonderful /s (Score:2)
A native tool for bridging air gaps, circumventing network ACLs, and connecting wireless to external/unmanaged devices.
I hope they don't forget to include a Group Policy setting to disable it. Bluetooth is bad enough on its own. I'd rather not deal with another chatty, proprietary network protocol.
Oh look another feature (Score:1)
Stop with the rapid releases! (Score:2)
Shoot. I was just starting to like the new Microsoft after Windows 7 and the failure of gnome3 for a desktop OS (not server). Windows was finally stable, gorgeous, and after Balmer released .NET core for Linux, SQL Server for Linux, R for Linux, Microsoft Code, and included Python and Android emulators with Visual Studio.
Hell froze over and finally MS is getting with the times.
Windows 8.1 was fine if you had a start menu replacement which was annoying as hell, but lighter than 7 and ran much better with mob
Windows misses Python (Score:1)
python -m http.server