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I guess you haven't heard about b3d Projector. They would install it with Kazaa & then Brilliant Digital would sell you processor time. (This was back in 2001-2003 AFAIK. They may have cleaned up their act since then, but I doubt it.)

I quick look at their site & they make no mention of doing this in the past. I don't know if they still do that. I had to use a coral cache to even pull it up because I have blocked the brilliantdigital.com domain in my router. I made sure I didn't download any of the software they have as I still don't trust them.

Another option although I don't know if they would hijack your processor time was new.net. I don't trust them either. I had to use a coral cache to even pull it up because I have blocked the new.net domain in my router. I made sure I didn't download any of the software they have as I still don't trust them.

Doesn't the original KaZaA client have it's own spyware? I don't see a reason to cry over someone robbing a company of spyware revenue in favor of their own spyware revenue. Now, if someone robs the client to remove the spyware altogether (like KaZaA Lite supposedly did), I'm all for that.

Kazaa came bundled with a client for BDE which was used to sell your spare cpu cycles to someone else. Basically like a huge distributed computing project, that the end user had absolutely no idea about.. I believe this single act kick-started the whole anti-adware/spyware movement.

I'd recommend using KazaaLite K++, which has removed all of the extra FUD. Although, good luck finding a legitimate download. 98% of the files on Kazaa are fakes, planted by the RIAA to dissuade you from downloading music. In the end, it is not going to matter what client you use, if all of the files on the network are bogus.

They're getting a little old, but nothing beats these interactive xena machinima

See here. The evildoers were Brilliant Digital Entertainment.

This time around its Honest Theif.

When will the naming of companies with oxymorons end?!

Stemming from the idea of multi-path books that were available decades ago, a company called Brilliant Digital Entertainment created Multi-Path Movies in the hope of hybridizing the media of games and movies.

Since they were designing at a time when the market consisted primarily of telephone modem users, their work relies heavily on polygon representations of scenes, so that the storage requirements are small and richly rendered graphics can then be sent rapidly over low bandwidth channels.

They produced quite a large body of work with popular characters such as Superman, Ace Ventura, Xena, Pop Eye. The remnants of the work can be seen at the BDE site.

The idea never really caught the public's interest, though, despite free versions being available on the web. Similarly, earlier attempts by media conglomerates never were able to draw consumers into interactive TV. It remains to be seen if there is a sustainable market or whether passive entertainment remains popular. After all, it serves as a means to immerse one's self in a distraction from a divorced universe, where one can remain separate and non-participatory out of choice, a mode where the most relaxation may be achieved for some.

Our little buddies at Brilliant Digital Entertainment have been doing this for years with their 3d web products. Basically, they have a browser plugin that installs on your computer that is a 3d engine. When you view one of their cartoons instead of streaming audio and video data they send over the audio data + models and character movement. Its ultra low bandwidth. Its kind of like the old Quake movies. Pretty cool stuff, though low quality. mspykerm

These links were posted today in Kazaa.com, but shortly after they were deleted. They were in a page where you could read:

"We are proud to announce our partnership with Altnet. As our relationship evolves you will see an evolution in p2p software, taking KaZaA to a completely new dimension without sacrificing any of the things you enjoy in the software."

Yada, Yada

"With Altnet, consumers will be able to opt in to making certain parts of their computing power available to businesses. This may include disk space, processing power or bandwidth. You will know exactly how a business would like to use your resources at the time of use. You choose what jobs can use your machine and which ones cannot. You earn redeemable points for sharing your resource."

Kazaa.com was so "proud" of this partnership that the page was removed from their server in the same day!

These links were posted today in Kazaa.com, but shortly after they were deleted. They were in a page where you could read:

"We are proud to announce our partnership with Altnet. As our relationship evolves you will see an evolution in p2p software, taking KaZaA to a completely new dimension without sacrificing any of the things you enjoy in the software."

Yada, Yada

"With Altnet, consumers will be able to opt in to making certain parts of their computing power available to businesses. This may include disk space, processing power or bandwidth. You will know exactly how a business would like to use your resources at the time of use. You choose what jobs can use your machine and which ones cannot. You earn redeemable points for sharing your resource."

Kazaa.com was so "proud" of this partnership that the page was removed from their server in the same day!

> April Fools?

I've already fallen for sevearal of the /. april fools articles, but this one is interesting. Most of the article checks out ok, including the timing of february when they upgraded kazaa to run with the updated fastTrack protocol. Ignoring the descrepancies in the supposed user agreement, there was one statement that is non-hype:

The Brilliant network is based on a piece of software called "Altnet Secureinstall," which is bundled with the Kazaa software. That technology can connect to other peer-to-peer networks, ad servers or file servers independently of the Kazaa software and can be automatically updated to add new features, according to Brilliant's filing.

I'm not a kazaa user, but from other slashdot responses, people are reporting lots of "b3d" dll's, registry entries, and other crap that comes with the new kazaa, but has anyone ever found this "Altnet secureinstall" program bundled with it? Of course, I found no mention of this piece of software on Brilliant Digital's website, or kazza's website (unless you count the statements in the user agreement), or google.

However, if the altnet network is really an elaborate joke by cnet, then why is there a whois entry for altnet.net registered to Brilliant Digital?
Domain Name: ALTNET.NET
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Network Operations Center
(NO2028-ORG) noc@BDE3D.COM
Brilliant Digital Entertainment

I guess we'll find out soon.

Well, maybe not, but it's still annoying. In Windows, when you download the latest version of the client from kazaa.com you'll be forced to install the bde 'stream' thing, which gives you, wait for it, a talking woman on the front page of the application. Yipeee.

This isn't spyware unless they've added something new. Its just a browser plugin that streams live 3d and audio, like a 3d flash player.

BDE3d started as a way to play multipath movies (like choose your own adventure) from cd-rom, but then they changed it into a web based movie thing, and now it's for banner ads. The site mentioned in the article, brilliantdigital.com explains it all.

It seems as though a Kevin Burmeister is involved in all this.

Read his bio here.

He had big success running Sierra's game distribution in Australia.

But then there is Sega World, a recently failed game theme park in downtown Sydney. And look, Nikki Hemming was CEO there. They were being sued by their tenants, too, for failing to deliver business.

While I'm searching, here is a Sydney article about the Kazaa/Sharman connection.

Then there is BDE, their failed 3d techology that started as a multipath-movie game idea that failed many times. Check their stock price. It failed at retail, even when it had Wal-Mart distribution, it failed online, even when it was on warner bros site, and it is making a last ditch effort as a banner technology. This is when they first started bundling their player with morpheus. Last year the morpheus download name changed to have a "-b3d" at the end.

It will be interesting if these shadowy folk will make a success after their failures.