Morpheus DOS'd and Moving to Gnutella 283
wackysootroom writes "According to a message from the CEO of Music City, a group of individuals has launched a DOS attack and tampered with the morpheus network in order to disallow logons to the FastTrack P2P filesharing network through the client.
According to the CEO's note, the hack involves changing registry settings on the client's machine (ouch) and rerouting the messages destined for their ad servers.
The good news in all of this is that morpheus will be giving up the proprietary FastTrack network for a Gnutella based filsharing system." It's
an icky framed page and you have to click through to read the really interesting
parts, but it looks to be true. Wonder how Gnutella will handle the growth
spike.
Sounds to me . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
This move to Gnutella allows them to survive and to purport to offer a distinct file sharing product. Perhaps this will lead to some enhancements that make it back to Gnutella, since without the central login servers, they have no reason to repeat their forcing out of open source clients.
Gnutella + bandwidth aggregation = good.
Re:Sounds to me . . . (Score:1)
Hardly.
There was a recent story posted on
They've been planning this for a while now... (Score:1)
Re:Sounds to me . . . (Score:1)
I have been using Morpheus the past week and the service was slow and sometimes you couldn't connect at all. The program gave strange errors like "you need to update your program to the new version" (There is no new official version yet). It worked fine on my other machine though. The musiccity website was down also. So I kind of thinks they really got DOSed, that's the feeling I get from what I saw.
Re:Sounds to me . . . (Score:2)
morpheus and rebol? (Score:1)
a couple of months ago the rebol site announced
that version 2.0 of morpheus would be based
on their language and i thought it was very interesting
and i have seen no one mention it since!..
it's still on rebol.com's homepage..
Actually an agent based search feature would help (Score:1, Troll)
Automation is the key. If this process could be stored as a command of some sort and sent to other peoples computers so that when you log off or shut off your machine the computers can search for and find all the files while your computer is off,then the location of the files be sent to you when your computer is turned on again.
I think rebol sounds interesting, Scripting sounds cool, i think automation is something that would take file sharing to the next level.
Not just automation, but perhaps an ability to use AI to figure out the type of music a user likes and doesnt like, and somehow use this improve search results for the music the user likes.
Like connecting to a network of all techno because the user downloads mostly techno, and have hundreds of little subnetworks created based on the music files people have on their computers.
so if you have mostly techno you connect to a group of techno networks, if you have mostly rap you connect to mostly rap networks.
Small networks of say, a few thousand users each while they may be somewhat centralized in nature, if theres enough of these networks its not like anyone would be able to stop it, and it wouldnt be morphues hosting it, it would be the users themselves.
maybw almost like direct connect or hotline, but your connection to these networks would be based on what you search for usually. If you search for many diffrent types of music you'll connect to some general network.
Music companies who would try to check up on whats on the network would most likely search from as wide a range as possible using some program or script, and would connect to a general network.
I dont know its just an idea and i have no idea how to technically do it, but something similar to how winMX works, using AI to discover the servers based on what users like, the discovery process would be whats automated
So let's help them out... (Score:1, Funny)
an icky framed page? (Score:5, Funny)
What about the others? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also can anyone confirm that it does change the registry settings? Seems kinda farfetched even for just a file sharing program unless there were huge undisclosed security holes.
Re:What about the others? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What about the others? (Score:2)
Maybe Kazaa paid the FastTrak people to do it or something.
Whatever you do, don't switch to Kazaa. It is filled with Spyware, they are assholes.
Tim
Pointless vandalism (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Pointless vandalism (Score:1)
it wasn't "kids" at all. The "virus" was kazaa taking back their revenue stream through a propagating back door.
RIAA? (Score:1)
Re:RIAA? (Score:1)
thanks.
Grokster w/o spyware (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Grokster w/o spyware (Score:4, Informative)
features include
* No spyware, trojans, or viruses
* No advertisements
* Bleeding edge core LimeWire components
* LimeWire setup window during first launch for optimum performance
* Small installer size (Clean LimeWire=2.1 MBs vs Official LimeWire=3.8 MBs)
* Clean, friendly installation
* No registry entries
* Simple uninstaller included
* Fully compatible with official LimeWire release.
* Tested for compatibility within the new Windows XP operating system
* Fixed several bugs: German install compatibility (includes other countries now, too), improved LimeWire execution, corrected desktop icon, failure of LW to minimize to system tray, & more.
Re:Grokster w/o spyware (Score:2)
you should be using gnut [gnutelliums.com] like a real geek!
:)
Re:Grokster w/o spyware (Score:5, Informative)
Filenavigator [filenavigator.com] is better.
1) never had any spyware to begin with
2) searches the gnutella network
3) searches its own p2p network
4) fast/many search results
Gnuttella apps gulp bandwidth (Score:2)
well and good.. (Score:1)
but is gnutella really better ? ymmv , but my experience has been that its far from effective....in getting requested relevant info
also iirc gnutella hsa `viral nodes` which can be injected into the network...wonder how that will affect the scenario here
Unframed (Score:4, Informative)
Gnucleus... (Score:5, Informative)
Better still, Gnuclues doesn't have banner adverts, let alone (ick) popups.
Re:Gnucleus... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, whatever protocol Morpheus decides to use will suddenly have millions of people on it.
I like the gnutella network, and in fact I really like how in accessing it, Morpheus is using its 'supernode' technology (only computers that meet certain speed/connection requirements become nodes). Searches are faster, because you're not waiting on someone with a 56k dialup to process your search request before he passes it on. (by the way, I hear that BearShare is going to, or has already started, implementing this same idea to help stabalize the gnutella network)
But my main point is this: whatever network Morpheus decides to use, be it fast track, gnutella, something else, or a combination, there will instantly be a large amount of shared files on said network.
So, in my interest of finding the maximum number of DivX movies possible, I think I'll probably stick with Morpheus for the time being.
I do hate the damn popus, though.
Re:Gnucleus... (Score:2, Interesting)
Gnutella is Toasting better every day (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gnutella is Toasting better every day (Score:1)
Not good for other FastTrack clients (Score:5, Insightful)
so wait a minute... (Score:1)
Re:so wait a minute... (Score:1)
Re:so wait a minute... (Score:1)
A little off topic, but open source != better security. take a look [php.net]
Re:so wait a minute... (Score:2)
Perhaps so, but if Morpheus had access to the FastTrack source, they could easily work around the problems that Sharman networks introduced. Instead, they have to throw away their whole system and start over with Gnutella. An excellent demonstration of the dangers of depending on closed source software, IMHO.
Gnutella? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gnutella? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, the short answer to your question is that it's because gift doesn't work anymore. :(
Re:Gnutella? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Gnutella? (Score:3)
Unlike FastTrack, which is run by a company looking to turn a profit, and thus is readily attackable through the courts, giFT (OpenFT) will be completely decentralized and user-to-user, just the way FastTrack claimed to be. They might attack the people who distribute the software, but as deCSS showed, there'll always be mirror sites.
At this moment, I see 65 people on OpenFT, sharing 64,042 files totalling 399.0 gigabytes. Granted, that's not an awful lot compared to FastTrack, but then, there isn't a working FastTrack client for Linux anymore, so you take what you can get. And of course, the more people share, the more stuff there'll be to search through. And sooner or later, there will be Windows & Mac OpenFT clients.
Re:Gnutella? (Score:2)
But yes, they do need Windows and Mac clients. And I expect that, once everything's ready, they'll have them. Heck, you might even volunteer your services to help them code up one.
(And now, looking at my giFT-fe window, I see 128 users sharing 106,692 files for 541.0 gigabytes. Not bad for a tiny Linux-only network still in beta.)
Re:Gnutella? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gnutella? (Score:1)
Also, as far as protocols go, I don't think you can get more "communist" than Gnutella. Also, I'm a fool for replying to a troll.
Re:Gnutella? (Score:3)
I've done some playing around with some Gnutella clients (including the relabeled Gnucleus that calls itself Morpheus) over the past couple of days. Beyond scalability, one other point in FastTrack's factor is that the protocol allows for a sizable amount of metadata to be sent along with the search results. That way, I can (for instance) tell if an MP3 is encoded at a reasonable bitrate or I can determine the resolution and (if applicable) codecs used by an MPEG or AVI file. This helps FT's usability immensely, and Gnutella would be wise to add something similar.
I also tried out Grokster, but uninstalled it when it quit working after I had let Ad-aware wipe out the spyware components. Grokster punts if it doesn't find a Cydoor DLL to run. This page [project-insomnia.com] tells you how to install Grokster sans spyware; in addition to cleaning with Ad-aware and one other program, it has you install a dummy Cydoor DLL.
Great news for decentralized file-sharing (Score:1)
I've already noticed that there is more traffic in gnutella through the Limewire client. This could be the end for all proprietary file-sharing protocols including Napster.
Good riddance!
Maybe an alternative (Score:1)
The best decentralized file sharing ive used is WinMX also known as openNAP or Napigator.
Making a program which works like this, but using an automated way to generate subnetworks instead of having users create them.
Imagine connecting to a general network.
Once you connect you search for MUSIC.
This connects you to a general music network.
You dont search for just music but jazz music.
This connects you to a group of other people who also search for and have alot of jazz music on their computer. So you connect to the jazz nodes.
By breaking networks up into groups, just like in the real world people with the same interests, they form cliques, clubs, groups, a network in my opinon would be best if using AI it created networks and subnetworks within them based on what groups of users like.
You like jazz, rock and rap, and this is what the majority of your files are, this can be calculated via fuzzy logic that you like mostly these 3 types off music, so you become part of one of, or all of these 3 networks. The AI also watches for what you search for alot, and connects you to networks based on that. Because you dont really know what networks you are connecting to it seems very decentralized.
Gnutallas problem is it connects everyone to everyone, perhaps creating small groups, and then connecting these small groups to each other would be best.
The person with the fastest connections will help in hosting the lists of nodes on a subnetwork.
The company, simply has to connect people to the main networks such as Jazz, Rap, Rock from which the subnetworks get formed by the users, and leeches connect to the subnetwork host nodes.
I dont know if this would work, its not like i tested it, but hotline does something similar just not in a very good way.
a funny quote (Score:2, Interesting)
"This unprovoked attack is being carefully investigated, as it appears that federal laws may have been violated. We are still attempting to discover who would want to eliminate the community of millions of consumers who are using the Morpheus software product to connect with other users around the world."
the RIAA anyone?
interesting that prior to this teir start page was
assuring users that "rumours" of a security hole in Morpehus was false. appaerntly it allowed others to change your registry settings...
Doubting Thomases (Score:2)
Gene
FastTrack looked nice... (Score:1)
Re:FastTrack looked nice... (Score:2)
It's always worked fine through the Linux-based firewalls I set up, though a smaller group of files will be available than if you can forward the appropriate port (I think it's 1214) to the machine that's running the client.
Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... (Score:1)
I tended to fire up Win4Lin and use Morpheus, simply to have access to the greater file selection available on that network. If Music City is able to move their Morpheus users over to Gnutella, I won't have to worry about that any more. Even if only 40,000-50,000 people move over, that still dramatically increases the number and types of files available via gnutella.
And we won't have to use a crappy Windows Morpheus client. Qtella will instantly gain access to those files.
If the gnutella network can handle the load, it sounds like a win-win situtation to me!
Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... (Score:5, Informative)
If you go to the limewire site, click on the "network size" menu option and than the "historical", you will get a nice graph of the gnutella network size. You will notice two significant increases in network size over the past few months.
The first one occured when limewire released their 2.0 client with super peer functionality. Essentially this eliminated most of the scalability issues. The second little bump occured when morpheus released their gnutella client yesterday.
Right now the graph indicates over 200K nodes in the network. I'm connected to it using the limewire client. I consider this to be one of the best gnutella GUIs but luckily there's plenty of alternatives for those who don't like it.
Two notable features are missing however (also in the new morpheus client): Browsing someone else's files (like napster used to be able to do, morpheus consistently crashed if I tried to use this feature) and displaying/searching meta information (like album or song name).
The first feature would require a change to the protocol. Limewire tried to implement it using download slots but generally there are not enough available for this to work. The second feature requires some standard way of handling queries (right now it is unspecified what a gnutella client should do with a query).
My Impressions (Score:4, Informative)
One thing that is lacking in Gnutella is metadata - when downloading songs you can't tell how long they are, what album they are from (important when there are many different versions of a song - radio/street/2 step edits etc.), and comments about this. Hopefully this can be added to a new spec of the Gnutella network so all companies using the standard can have a common format.
I think this will be good for p2p and gnutella: an open standard, which will (hopefully) become better over time. If musiccity really GPLs their work with Gnucleus, everyone should be a winner.
Split (Score:1)
Think about it, how many people are going to be running both clients? Spyware aside (you can disable all the Kazaa junk with a few dll wipes & registry play), both the FastTrack & Gnutella networks will end up with less content, at least for a while. I'm sure only the very determined will bother running both clients, meaning things will be a touch harder to find.
If you look at it even now, FastTrack seems to have put up with a swamping of new users, but 1 out of 3 people aren't sharing (sitting behind a firewall? yea right..). I'm certain Morpheus isn't going to get a lot of it's defected client base back, mostly the net newbies I'd imagine, which will leave Morph' on Gnutella with it's only problems with file availability.
I don't know, it's hard to say anything for certain; let's see how the Gnutella network handles the extra load. As long as I can find my pr0^H^H^H educational videos somewhere, I'll be happy
Re:Split (Score:1)
Re:"Spyware aside" (Score:2)
Spyware will make your system unstable. Any small program that patches into Windows or Internet Explorer is always a bad idea. Products from Microsoft are notoriously unstable as is; the last thing they need is even more instability from hack patches like spyware. Has your browser been freezing up? Having unexplained system crashes? Spyware is a prime suspect for these outrages.
The fact that it's even possible for unknown software to patch and corrupt Windows is ultimately, of course, yet another sin of Microsoft, just as Microsoft must ultimately bear responsibility for all Outlook and IIS viruses.
Further, spyware is hidden. It typically won't show up in your lists of programs and only a sophisticated user can even tell that it's there.
Spyware remains in your computer even if you uninstall the software that originally infected your system. You won't get rid of it unless you sweep your registry (bad idea for most people) or run some software produced by virtuous programmers to remove it, like Ad Aware.
Spyware also represents a security risk. Think of your typical marketing type, hiring some low budget programmer to write software they don't expect a normal user to ever see. Do you think they're going to worry much about making their code secure?
There's already been exploits of people using spyware to download executables into your computer (typically by giving the malicious file the same name as the spyware executable).
What's the real story here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Last week they wrote something like, "one of our software providers made updates without telling us that made Morpheus software unable to connect to the network."
It sounds to me like FastTrack upgraded protocol versions, or something?
I don't see why Morpheus would voluntarily move to gnutella, since gnutella is quite inferior and their new software is pretty crummy. I've been looking around their forums and everything, but I can't seem to figure out what's actually going on. Anyone know any more info?
Re:What's the real story here? (Score:4, Interesting)
No shit!! The entire explanation seems a bit wierd to me, a Software Engineer. It feels like a know-nothing higher up threw together three or four buzzwords to come up with some idiotic story.
Look at this quote:
According to the CEO's note, the hack involves changing registry settings on the client's machine (ouch) and rerouting the messages destined for their ad servers.
He could just be talking about individual users who were blocking their Advertisements by using their hosts file!!!!
This smells. Not that I'm complaining, it was nice while it lasted, and it was "free" as in beer. But now I've got 2-3 GB of partially downloaded files that are useless. (shagrined is the word.)
Ok, next time, lets use a "free as in freedom" network that doesn't have any centralized login. Do all the uneducated schmucks out there hear me?
Re:What's the real story here? (Score:2)
Re:What's the real story here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: The real story here (Score:4, Redundant)
Just in case no-one does moderate him up, I'm reposting his link with my bonus. I can't be whoring because I'm capped
Excellent journalism here. [zeropaid.com]
Re:What's the real story here? (Score:2)
What I don't get is that Music City/Streamcast/Morpheus has licensed their code from FastTrak which is now this other company. Licenses usually involve cash. Why would you fuck one of your only 2 customers/partners? Are ads really worth that much? I don't think so... and can't Streamcast sue for breach of contract (I mean, if they could find this other shadow company that is...)
-Russ
I know that Kazaa is not performing as well (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, silly man that I am, I had both Morpheus and Kazaa installed on my machine (even though, until recently, they were exactly the same.)
So, last week, Kazaa, which is what I ordinarily used since I have a sick attraction to the color yellow, stops working well. The number of hits I get for searches drops by about a quarter, when I search successfully at all; for some reason I keep getting booted from the network and having to reconnect. "That's odd" I say to myself. Also, it proceeds to ignore the "maximum uploads" setting in my preferences, which I keep low so that other broadband users can get my files in reasonable time. Personally, I suspect that Kazaa installed some "upgrades" for itself without prompting me (or I clicked through the prompt without noticing, always a possibility); I should probably check timestamps and see. I have it set to prompt before auto-updates, but since it's ignoring some of my preferences I don't know how much I trust that.
Out of curiosity, I start Morpheus; and I get the message about being unable to connect to the network. So, Morpheus' failure to connect seems to coincide with Kazaa's service collapse - which is exactly what I'd expect given that 90% of the users within four hops of me (New York City) use Morpheus instead of Kazaa.
Now, I don't know about these DOS attacks / advertisement hacks. I tried to connect to Morpheus several times during this period, and none of my regsitry keys have been fiddled with, at least as far as I can tell. Ad-aware doesn't find anything wrong.
Okay, back to the conspiracy theory. I assume that the Aussie company that bought Kazaa is trying to crowd Morpheus out. While you and I know this is stupid, to them this must make sense; they think they can get all of Morpheus' old users to switch to Kazaa, boosting their add revenues.
Given this sort of despicable behavior on their part, I am willing to give Morpheus' the benefit of the doubt: the implication of Morpheus' comments is that someone involved in the Kazaa stack - that is to say, this Australian company that bought Kazaa - is behind whatever attacks occured.
Personally, I want to see the contract that Morpheus entered into with Kazaa for use of their network/software.
Re:I know that Kazaa is not performing as well (Score:3, Informative)
The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! (Score:1)
Almost all of the messages I saw posted were complaints about the new Morpheus ranging from "All of my downloads are ass slow!" and "I can't connect to any servers? What's a node?" to "This piece of shit won't even install".
Most people on almost every message board I saw had a negative comment for the new Morpheus. Hell, I didn't see a single positive one. Most people were planning on migrating to Kazaa, and this was a group of tech-savvy people who know about the spyware in Kazaa.
It's too bad this had to happen to Morpheus, because the Gnutella network appears to just be an all around poor method of sharing files. Sure, flame me. The ideology behind it is fine, but it's execution is less than stellar.
Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! (Score:1)
Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! (Score:1)
Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! (Score:1, Informative)
> around poor method of sharing files
One thing I don't think people understand is that gnutella is basically just a search mechanism with a P2P transfer afterward. Once your search is complete and you begin your download, the transfer rate depends on the upload bandwidth of other person's computer. Download speed has LITTLE to do with the program you are running.
Also, I think trying to use gnutella over a modem is relatively painful, because of the lack of bandwidth. When using a 56K modem, downloads go about half the speed because the gnutella protocol takes 1 or 2 kbps. When using DSL, the bandwidth used by the gnutella protocol is almost negligable.
As of a month or two ago, I've now downloaded more material from the gnutella network than I ever did from Napster. Napster functioned better, I agree, but Bearshare/Limewire/etc. all get the job done quite well.
Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! (Score:2, Informative)
Try this page [spychecker.com]
Gnutella accessability. (Score:2)
Woo-hoo! This means I won't have to build a Windows box just to get those Family Guy episodes I wanted.
Assuming, of course, that its _the_ Gnutella network and not something running a similar protocol.
--saint
Morpheus. DOS'd. (Score:1)
GPL Violation? (Score:4, Informative)
They're however not providing the source, not yet at least. The Gnucleus developers claim that Morpheus didn't even bother contacting them before doing this.
Re:GPL Violation? (Score:1)
Re:GPL Violation? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:GPL Violation? (Score:2)
Sharman Networks (Score:3, Interesting)
MusicCity used Sharman's network and was recently locked out for some reason. One has to wonder why.
Some experiences with the "new" Morpheus Preview (Score:5, Interesting)
The Usual Suspects (Score:2)
Off had I would suspect chaos agents of the music industry [foxnews.com], who have been doing things the wrong way for a long time.
But this is just idle, unfounded speculation
Right.
Since it appears that the attack on your computers came from the closed proprietary FastTrack-Kazaa software, we have opted not to continue with this p2p kernel.
Which is just as well. I do note this article in newsbytes [newsbytes.com], and wonder if someone got an inside edge to fasttrack someplace.
cloak and dagger operations indeed.
Source Code Released (Score:1)
Morpheus still works for me (Score:1)
we left gnutella because it's bad, that's the poin (Score:1)
Now I rember... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Now I rember... (Score:2)
Old news, and was reported on slashdot. Fortunatly there was a general uproar over that clause and it was never actually included in any legislation.
-
MusicCity's better change its FUD, then (Score:3, Interesting)
Q: Why is it better than other distributed networks such as Gnutella?
A: With Gnutella and similar networks, all connected computers acts as search servers on the networks. When a search query is initiated, it is sent to 2 to 4 other computers, which in turn passes the query to more computers, and so on. Effectively, each search query traverses the entire network. This creates a huge amount of traffic. Clients on slower connections (such as modem dial-ups) cannot keep up with this amount of traffic, which slows down the entire search process.
Seriously, I'm a fan of Morpheus, I just thought this was kinda finny...
Re:MusicCity's better change its FUD, then (Score:2)
Fasttrack has the right idea for searches, idealy you have some servlets which are dedicated to chaching share lists and routing searches. Once you get a small(er) number of servlets handling searches, each of which handles a few hundered of the sharing servlet's share lists, and routing them between each other you get much more efficient use of bandwidth since each time the search is passed over the net it gets searched against several hundered users' share lists instead of just one.
READ THIS NOW (Score:5, Informative)
I was one of the people who installed kazaa, and after readnig that, it is getting immediately uninstalled.
Re:READ THIS NOW (Score:2)
unzip;HALT;strip;HALT;touch;BASH;finger;BASH;mo
-
Source Code for Morpheus Available (Score:2, Informative)
http://start.musiccity.com/source/mpesrc1.zip [musiccity.com]
Proprietary Network.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not some Anti-Java Troll either, I believe the difference was in the network protocol and search efficiency.
This isn't to say Limewire was bad though, and with the Sun JVM 1.4 the mousewheel works right on Win32 systems (at last). So farewell Morpheus, I guess?
Excuse me (Score:2)
Xolox, still the best GNUtella client (Score:3, Informative)
Xolox makes GNUtella useful! Trust me, you will find what you are looking for with Xolox, and you will be able to download it very quickly. Other clients lack swarming, which causes downloads to be a slow unreliable gamble, but with swarming, when you select to download a file, Xolox automatically searches for other peers that are sharing the same file - then Xolox downloads parts of the file concurrently from several peers. This allows for you to get maximum use of your broadband net connection. Furthermore, if you are downloading a file, and for some reason all of the peers that you were downloading from disconnect, Xolox searches for new peers with the file and resume the download were it left off. All of this is automatic, transparent, and very user-friendly.
While the company that made Xolox went under due to legal issues, a cracked version is available from the popular P2P site Zeropaid [zeropaid.com]. Check it out! It's free, and it's useful.
Strange... (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe we ought to boycott Kazaa (Score:3, Interesting)
Second off it seems that they utilized the nature of the fasttrack network to basically kick all Morpheus users off and try and make them switch to Kazaa. Rat bastards.
Personally I think instead of switching to Gnutella Morpheus should have come out with a new version that isn't affected by the attack from Kazaa, and fucks over Kazaa clients too.
They could have got into a war coming out with new versions that would screw over the other company's client.
But I guess they didn't want a fight so they're leaving the FastTrack network.
Personally I wonder what the creators of the FastTrack network have to do with this...
Anyway, don't use Kazaa. Spyware, and DOS attack.
Tim
E-Mail for Kazaa (Score:3, Insightful)
press@kazaa.net
If you haven't read any other comments or articles, Kazaa is responsible for taking Morpheus off the network they shared through some sort of semi-viral attack. Let them know how you feel.
Now what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously gigs of Bang Bus.
GOOD news?!? (Score:3, Informative)
How exactly is this good news? Have you used the Gnutella network recently? The larger it gets, the more it sucks. It does not scale well at all. Gnutella often sucks down more of my bandwidth just dealing with other peoples' searches than it does downloading the files I want. And finding the files I want is another matter altogether -- even if I do find a file named "Funk Soul Brother.mp3", I have absolutely no way of knowing whether it's really Fatboy Slim or just some renamed Enya track.
I love the FastTrack network, proprietary or not. It's got all the good bits of Gnutella without most of the bad bits. My bandwidth isn't sucked up by searches, and I can almost always find exactly what I want with one search. Furthermore, the amount of information it gives me on each file enables me to be pretty certain that I'm getting what I want before I start downloading it.
I think this is sad. I liked Morpheus. Now I'll be switching to Kazaa. Oh well.
Delete Morpheus and install Gnucleus (Score:2)
What they did is they took an open source program at http://www.gnucleus.com [gnucleus.com] and basically "stole" it, though it's legal to do so under the license it was released. They took the source code for the program, without even informing the gnucleus guys, put their own branding info on it, added popup ads, and released it as the "new" Morpheus. They added NOTHING, they just made it worse with ads, There is not a single reason to run the new Morpheus. Go with Gnucleus -- it's precisely the same program, but with the ads removed.
Also, since the people that did Gnucleus actually are able to write their own software, Gnucleus will be the source of improvements and updates, not Morpheus.
The channel operators on Music City are very afraid of people learning this fact. They kicked me several times for mentioning Gnucleus. Somehow they think they can supress the fact that they entirely ripped off other people's work. It's not going to happen, though, you can't hide lameness of this magnitude.
Morpheus has discredited themselves forever as far as I'm concerned.
Once again: go to http://www.gnucleus.com [gnucleus.com] and use their software. Delete Morpheus at once.
What Musiccity... (Score:2)
Well... it was fun while it lasted. Let's see what's next. I am still waiting for the client that incorporates them all - OpenFT, gnutella, limewire, edonkey,
Gnutella is non-proprietary (Score:5, Interesting)
Gnutella is non-proprietary. That's it.
Gnutella in order to be faster would have to be more centralized.
This can easily be done, you just have to make sure that more people use software like Clip2 Reflector that makes Gnutella more scaleable. I could easily see Morpheus creating there own version of Reflector that's bolted onto a Gnutella client so that unsuspecting broadband users will turn their computers into "superpeers".
I dont know, i like decentralized technology but Gnutella is horrible, theres no security (or maybe they finally fixed this?) meaning anyone can see your IP.
If you're worried about this, use FreeNet.
Its slow as hell, the design makes it difficult if not impossible to scale.
Much of the scalability problems of gnutella have been solved- it's just that not enough people are running gnutella software with these improvements. Since Morpheus has such a large user base, they could easily dump software with more advanced capabilities onto the unbathed masses, making the gnutellanet bigger and faster. Better yet, if their using GPL'd software as their initial codebase, the improvements that they implement will be given back to the community so that an intrepid group of coders can remove any adware or spyware "features".
Re:How the hell is this good news (Score:1)
I have a broadband connection; with one, gnutella rocks! [grin] But without one, gnutella is still usable. I had to go a month without DSL after FirstWorld shut down their home DSL service. I still used gnutella, and was still able to get the files I wanted. True, downloads took FOREVER. But that is the price one pays for connecting via dialup.
Gnutella is an open standard; numerous clients exist for the network, including a number of native Linux clients. This provides a more diverse network and, theoretically, a larger amount of shared data.
I do agree that AudioGalaxy's design rocks. I would love to see a p2p network using AG's architecture. One that didn't limit people to only sharing MP3 files.
56k downloads on napster didn't take for ever (Score:2)
Re:How the hell is this good news (Score:2)
Gnutella is horrible. The design just sucks and honestly i could have come up with a better design for a network.
That's classic negative argumentation for you there, and I for one am tired of hearing that kind of comments from everyone (this extends out of the tech realm and into all walks of life, BTW). "Product XXX is bad. I could do better in my garage." I encourage you to do so then. Join a development list and contribute your comments on better network design. These efforts need all the help they can get.
Gnutella is horrible, theres no security (or maybe they finally fixed this?) meaning anyone can see your IP.
That's not really a "security hole" in my estimation. Anyone serving you a webpage can see your IP. That information is out there. Remember the mantra: "Security through obscruity is no security at all." Rather than trying to hide your IP address, it's incumbent on you not to leave that IP wide open to exploitation. That's security. Just my $0.02.