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Comment by jgfoot | Hacker News Reader

I am an employee in a non-technical position working in a locked-down environment with (appropriately) paranoid IT staff. The only applications on my work computer that can talk to the Internet are a mail client and a web browser. There are millions of me.

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So you're saying that you expect an application in your browser to reach down and monitor, upload, and download gigabytes of data to your filesystem?

Your appropriately paranoid IT staff would collapse in convulsions of terror if this were possible. Fortunately, it's not. The reason Dropbox (and rsync, and lipsync) are native apps isn't because the developers are unaware that there are people in locked down environment and need a browser-based tool, it's because the apps need to be native.

I think he's saying that it'd be nice to have a web interface for getting/putting one or two files on machines that can't have the client installed. Dropbox has this.

At which point, his (appropriately) paranoid IT staff should give him full-time access to his files by way of a visit to HR and a final paycheck.

IT has the machines locked down for a reason.

Installing rsync and uploading a file to Dropbox's web interface are significantly different actions. The install restrictions might not be to prevent offsite transfer of files - it might just be to prevent people from installing AIM and trojan horses.

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