banky's Journal: On file sharing and P2P

A long time ago, I used Napster for about 6 weeks (if that). This was slightly pre-peak for Napster. I downloaded a few songs.

I found the experience to be "so-so". There was little music available that I listened to. Many of the tracks were ripped by morons, and so were incomplete, or had skips, or were a different mix than what they said.

I attacked anyone who claimed to like Napster, and get good results. "Not possible" I would say. "Your download is dependant on the schmuck on the other end staying online long enough for you to get what you want, and it assumes he or she is competant in the first place."

Forget "artists rights", Napster was a joke. A neat idea, but a joke.

Enter Gnutella. It's the "big deal" now, or one of them. I am presently giving it a try. My reactions this far are worse than Napster. In fact I dislike it SO MUCH that I would seriously consider a DOS against Gnutella, or some other means with which to hamper and eventually destroy their network.

My problems are, of course, the same as Napster, only magnified. Since Gnutella can share more than MP3, I picked a modest sampling of files to look for: porn, MP3, pirated applications, and all the other things I hear live on the Gnutella network in some form or fashion (full-length pirated movies, for example).

Even the porn is bad. Actually, I am not sure, to be honest; I can barely get a download to complete in a reasonable time, or at all, therefore it's hard t make a fair assessment of the quality. Same goes for everything else.

I have a cable modem, and generally speaking, I have FAST AS FUCK connections. I connected looking for the serial number for an application. I found it; a 158kb file, hosted by someone who claimed to have a T3. Total time to download: 4 hours. I have never been able to download a file at greater than 10kbps. I have never had a file larger than a meg complete its download, even when I left it for HOURS. 99% of the time, I leave it at "Requery sent..." or "Busy, waiting..." for a few hours (go run errands or whatever) and come back, see that it hasn't changed, and quit. I'll check the queue and there will be a few bytes of the file there...

Maybe it's because I am using Limewire, for OSX. Perhaps I should switch to a more native client, and skip the Java. I dunno.

Maybe it's because I am using a cable modem, which somehow interferes with getting good performance.

OR maybe it's because this whole P2P thing is a FUCKING SHAM. It's a polished turd.

Tell me of your positive P2P experiences. Lemme know.

bclark gets good results

[slazlo]

When I hang with Brian on weekends we normally download 3 or 4 songs over the night. Each song normally takes about 5-8 minutes on his cable modem. He is using Bearshare on Win 2K. I heard
there may be spyware in that but have not investigated further. I havent installed anything
myself but Brian and I have never really had incomplete songs but sometimes quality aint perfect. Just a postive response but jury is still
out in my mind too.

Re:bclark gets good results

[banky]

Bearshare is spyware; there are about a million ways to prove it. I'd post the links but I'm lazy; I think /. has covered it before.

I am still convinced that it's shit.

YMMV

[gmhowell]

The guy 'on a T3' was full of shit. Plain and simple. The people on cable might be upload speed limited (like me, although I've never double-checked). When I used napster for a few months, I kept the upload speed throttled back. Hey, I'm paying for the line, why give it for free.

Your best bet is to find like minded souls who like the same music, and convince one of them to set up an FTP server. Or DIY.

wel...

[banky]

if I were to run it from work, I'd be on a DS-3, which is kinda faster than a T3. :) I don't, of course; I can't bring myself to do so. I consider /. enough of a sin, it's minimal bandwidth. P2P from here would be too much.

I did think about people with upstream-limited cable modems. I don't even know if ours is, I never upload anything, and apparently the only thing people are looking for is bangbus/jenna jameson mpegs. (She hasn't made a flick in forever, but christ, it's not like its hard to obtain one)

My next adventure in P2P will be Freenet, if I'm feeling brave.