Slashdot Mirror

GiFT also looks promising, but it's unlikely to catch on any time soon.

I quit using Kazaa many months ago. There are a ton of alternatives out there. However, many of them suck. In my opinion, these are the best:

Blubster - This is what I use. Selection is good. Speed is excellent.
WinMX - Pretty good. Selection is excellent. Speed and availability are not good.
Xolox - Excellent Gnutella client with NO SPYWARE. Selection is excellent. Speed is excellent (it can download from multiple sources at once).

Another good one is WinMX

I get very good results with this. I have extensively subjected it to my "Matmos" test of file sharing programs, and shown it to be as good as kazaa/morpheus.

The main strength of the program is that it has its own p2p protocol, but also allows you to connect to multiple OpenNap servers at once (unlike napigator). If you are patient, you can log onto a sh*t load of servers and get excellent results.

However, there are some drawbacks. The interface is a little buggy (but a little more for the "power" user than morpheus). Also, getting a good list of OpenNap servers into the program can be a real bastard. I strongly advise looking here and here for solutions to this problem. Also, as the name suggests, there is no linux version :-(

Don't know it's not better known...Check it out here.

Every pc should be scanned with Ad-Aware. But make sure you get the latest REF file for it or you'll be scanning for OLD spy/adware. New spyware comes out all the time, you need to keep it upto date. Just like your antivirus program.

Search WinMX for "Vendetta_Part_2" and you will find me. (/.ers get priorety)

And by the way, for those that are modding this... I do not work for WinMX in any capacity, nor do I have any financial or personal stake in it. I'm just trying to help the people that looked at this article and thought, "Well, damn. What's left for me to go to now that doesn't suck?".

Try WinMX. It seems to be one of the last P2P programs left that doesn't put Spyware on your computer. It uses the OpenNap, Napster, WinMX, and other networks to search for files, and my experience with it has been pretty good. It's not as popular as the others, but it gets the job done and it does it without spyware.

I have them on WinMX. I wasn't able to get For the Birds, sorry, search for SLASHDOT_02-11-01 to find them. If someone eles wants to help out see my comment yesterday.

I was able to get the pictures off the website and I have put them in a .zip file and I am sharing them on WinMX. I also included this note along with the pictures.

Original story: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/01/135215
Pictures obtained from: http://www.vebjorn-sand.com/thebridge.htm
From: AnotherBrian

These files are probably copyrighted, I have made them avaible through other means in order to allow people who can not access the above web site due to the 'Slashdot Effect'. The files will be removed from my server 48 houres after the posting date of the artical above. Please do the same.

Find it by searching for: [SLASHDOT When I'm at my computer I will try to give this file 1st priority. It's hard (for me) to tell if a site will be /.'ed and if the pictures won't be avaible to others. I'm wondering what the rest of you think. It would be nice for the first posters to follow my example for sites that could go down quickly. How many of you would be willing to take some time to do the same? I think I have a nice template for setting up mirrors, (suggestions welcome).

I think we should set up temporary meriors for big files that will be /.'ed. Name it something like:
[SLASHDOT_the date_story]filename.

This is utterly typical behavior of someone who's convinced themselves they're "right".

This is the same extremism that took down the WTC. Will the RIAA ever crash a plane into my office building to stop my WinMX (works well with WINE) from sharing files? I wouldn't be too surprised...

On a side note, here's a quote from the WinMX site I just noticed while checking my link: WinMX respects your privacy and doesn't contain spyware.

WinMX is an excellent replacement for Napster.

You need to use it with an updated server list. The default list is pretty
useless.

Instructions

1. Get WinMX 2.6 at http://www.winmx.com
   
   
2. Install it and run it once
   
   
3. Replace the "nservers.dat" file with this file:
   
   http://www.trippynet.f2s.com/nservers25.dat.
   
   You'll have to rename it to nservers.dat
   
   
4. Run WinMX again. It will squeak about the sever list being out of date.
   Choose the final option, "ignore". It may prompt you for a default login
   and password. You can enter anything for these values.
   
   
5. Once you're done, select "connect all" on the high capacity networks
   section and start searching.
   

WinMX searches on several networks at once, so results tend to trickle in
rather than hitting you all at once like with Napster. This can get annoying
since it sorts new results on the fly which means that previous results will
jump around in the list. You may wish to let it go for a few seconds, or
until you get the results you want, and then hit the "stop" button to
prevent new results from coming in.

Also, set your defaults for screening files. I go with "cable or better" for
connection and a bitrate of 128 k (only). Some audiophiles find this
insufficient and go for a higher bitrate, but to most ears, the only
difference is the larger file size and download time of mp3's with high
bitrates.

WinMX will find everything you search on, much like Napster, but the
connections aren't quite as reliable. If you get "connection refused" or
most other errors in red text, forget it and move in. If it says "busy, but
may join queue", you can join the remote queue by right-clicking on it.
WinMX will update your status periodically to tell you your position in the
queue.

It also works for other file types, like pictures and videos. You can
probably guess which types of multimedia are most commonly traded :)

'speeding motorcycle' sung by what sounded to be a drunken retarded person into a radio statio via a long distance phone call from a pay phone - hard to find, but a great song - still can't get it, I know they played it on the radio station [williams.edu]

Well, having established that the Phantom Menace was a shitty movie targeted at easily-marketable 7-year-olds, I'd like to bring your attention to a release much worthier of your attention. The Phantom Edit, as it is called, is an underground 'remix' of this movie, a remix that attempts to bring a small level of respectability, plausibility, and intelligence to this poor film.

No-one knows quite where to find a copy (seeing as it is a massive copyright violation), but I'm sure that Direct Connect, Morpheus, and WinMX users will be able to dig up a copy, somewhere.

I'm an independent musician on mp3.com, and I want people to download my music and spread it on Napster (well I did, until Napster started to suck. OK, WinMx then.) It's all about exposure. Nobody will hear my music on the radio, mp3.com and Napster et al are my best venues to advertise.

MP3.com made compressed copies of about 900,000 songs, which it placed on its computer servers -- without obtaining the rights to do so.

I wish they gave more details, this makes no sense. mp3.com makes you click-sign an agreement saying that this is all OK.

Sorry to interrupt with a fact: You need DeCSS (or any other 'unauthorized' DVD decription scheme) to convert DVD movies to more easily distributable formats (like DiVX, the hacked Microsoft MPEG4 codec). DVD burners are still $$$ (at least the media is), but blank CD's are cheap.

DiVX movies ripped from DVDs are pirated by the truckload, check with any media sharing P2P program (e.g. WinMX).

- Andreas

Perhaps this can be considered a naive post, but why use Ogg Vorbis? I understand the ideological reasons behind using something completely free as opposed to patented, but does Ogg offer anything more than that? Where is the superior encoding? Where are the smaller files? This I don't see.

Let's face it. Most of us don't pay for ANYTHING related to MP3s. Napster (now WinMX -- free. Programs to rip MP3s from a CD -- free. Players -- free. Okay, so if we're not paying anything outrageous to do ANYTHING associated with MP3s, why are we so concerned about something that is ideologically free?

The thing that was great about the Napster era was that EVERYONE had it. You could find everything from the most obscure song to the latest Top 40 crap, all in one place and all in one format. All your friends were on Napster, so you could browse hard drives and download the songs you liked from them. This was as good as it got; the high times of music sharing... controversial, but it opened up so many avenues for hearing what really good music was, and instituted a revivial of sorts of older but great classic music.

Now the market has been split among different Napster "clones" -- WinMX, Audiogalaxy, BearShare, Gnutella, Morpheus, etc. Now you have to sign on to at least one of those to find what you want, and it's often low-quality. However, at least you don't have to download 15 different players to get it all.

Standard formats are part of the computer industry, like it or not. (Just try sending a StarOffice file to your coworkers; you'll get the idea quickly enough.) MP3 is the standard for audio, and honestly, 99.99999% of the people using it find nothing wrong with it. We're not paying for anything associated with MP3; the convenience is that everyone else also has it; and the quality is pretty good, especially at 192k or above. I'm sorry, but I just don't see any reason to switch to something more obscure that just puts up one more barrier to me trading great music with my friends. More to the point, I GUARANTEE you that almost every computer user feels the same way.

I tried Kazaa, Morpheus, Limewire, and a good number of other programmes which names I can't remember. I couldn't stand any of them. I can't stand spyware and I can't stand programmes that forcefully sit on my startup menu without giving me the chance to disable such feature.

However, around a month ago I found WinMX. It's by far the best one of its kind (at least for me). No popups, no compulsory startup, no spyware.

...but I've found that WinMX has not been blocked at all and I can find any MP3 I want, anytime... or any movie, or image, or zip file, or... Whatever whoever on the network happens to be sharing at the time. There is a problem with queues not being open or available, but at least you can see who has queue slots open on a search... Very nice little program, if you've never used it before. Give it a whirl before the RIAA attacks it too. (And forgive me if this comment leads to its attack.)

Why are the RIAA still hounding Napster when the game has clearly evolved on to the next level?

Napster is dead, long live OpenNap

I will miss Napster's feature of seeing what else a user has on their hard drive - If someone actually has Etta James' "Out of The Rain" or Gavin Bryars' "Jesus Blood Never Failed me Yet", I want to see what else they have. Probably stuff worth acquiring...

Try WinMx. Yeah, it only works on Windows, but it has all the features you wished Napster had ... hotlist, enqueueing in Winamp, etc. Plus, it has this really neat feature that auto-displays your speed as "14.4k" when two or more people are downloading from you. The UI is way too complicated, IMHO, but they have enough MP3s on their network for me not to care.

Now(or rather then; Napster is useless now)

Napster is only useless if you don't have WinMX, a Win32-based client that not only connects to unfiltered OpenNap servers but also has its own decentralized network. And there are always audiogalaxy, bearshare, and kazaa.

Damn straight! Download 2 CDs a month and the money you save is enough to pay for your High Speed connection.

Personaly I wouldn't recommend Morpheus but rather the superb WinMX.

who cares about Napster... just use WinMX and connect to several OpenNap-servers simultaneously. Mmm... ogg!

I like these, but as far as I know teknap is the only one that runs on an OS other than windoz.

Audiognome
Winmx
Teknap

puck

Why does everyone automatically point to Gnutella as a replacement for Napster? There are so many better file-sharing programs out there right now (for Windows at least, but I'm sure someone would love to port them ;-)
For instance, I stopped using Napster when they released Beta 8. Beta 8 is supposed to be an improvement, but Beta 8 crashed 10 times more often than my previous version. Instead I now use

WinMX

With WinMX you can share anything at all.. no restrictions. Also, it runs off of all of the rogue servers out there now (the Napster ones too) so it's not like you're missing anything from not using Napster. Check it out at WinMX.com

Good point; At least most Slashdotters know what OpenNap and Napigator are, but how many of them are familiar with e.g. WinMX ?

Most Napster users download much simply beacuse its free. And there's still no easy-to-use, secure and widely available technology for international electronic payments.

I can't remember where I found out about this program, but you can grab it here. From WinMX.com...
Features
Share and DOWNLOAD ANY FILE TYPE
-Full chat capabilities
-Connect to multiple networks simultaneously
-Multi-windowed interface perfect for high-
resolution / multi-monitor systems
-Tracks and resumes broken transfers
-Intelligent queuing options
-Works behind SOCKS4/5 and ICS based networks
We respect your privacy and don't collect any
personal information
As of now it only runs on Windows platforms, but I'm sure it won't be long before someone ports it to Linux/*BSD :-)