Hi,

got a funny idea, just in case
1. it is possible
2. somebody feels it is fun to implement :-)

Coda is great to put one's data on. In general, seemlessly and safely
available everywhere. Alas, in some cases there are limitations.

One of the limitations is the need to fetch-and-cache the whole file even
when we need the file exactly once (say watching a movie present as
a 700MB file) or even a fraction of it (when the movie is bad :)

I would imagine a lookalike of netcat which talks rpc2 to Coda servers,
optionally given a name and a pass, or just given a present token
for that realm. (easily done by calling clog with suitable parameters -
with name and pass possible even on a host without Venus).

All of that is transparently doable in user space, isn't it?

Then we would avoid both 1.waiting until the file would be fetched
and 2.storing the file on the client computer, which may lack the needed space.

Then we could [ab]use Coda servers for streaming like

cnc /coda/konvalo.org/introduction.theora.ogg | mplayer -

(calling the hypothetical coda-netcat "cnc")

Authentication (mutual) and replication will be there for granted.

(hm, even putting a big file to Coda sometimes can be desirable
from userspace without caching, say when a diskless digital videocamera
would wish to store the data without buffering it. though we might need
to know the size in advance, do we?)

May be such utility would be in fact useful?

My 0.00000000000002c
--
Ivan