futuō quis, finis

i’m really having a hard time with my work of the week. i am spending ridiculous amounts of time and energy replicating that most ridiculous of services – a file transfer protocol server. why not use YouSendIt, you ask? or another reasonable binary asset exchange system (say, for instance the one we built for the dental industry)? why, because it might not be secure!

Oh! Ok.

SSL encrypted data transfer to an AES256 encrypted file repository isn’t nearly as safe as FTP. Note the lack of an S there, people. that’s right! clear text unames and passwords. booyah!

oh, i subscribed to YouSendIt. 25 user corp account. “use this!”, i decry. “distributed access. high bandwidth infrastructure. better security than your average bank. (ask me how i know. better yet, don’t.)”

but alas, alack. my people were all about it. “great job!”, they laud. “oh, but wait. The customer can’t get the file”.

“qua?”, I quack.

“their IT department has blocked YouSendIt. they worry that it’s not safe. they’ve opened up FTP to our public IP’s though.”

i quack again, and again for emphasis, and swim away to my little pond of sanity.

truly, “quis futuō”.

update:  since i wrote this, we’ve been able to convince everyone to use an https upload/download system provided by Wing FTP.  its very nice. and obviates most of the nuttiness of the above rant.