Slashdot Mirror
Limewire Gets Ads, And Accusations of Spyware
Gerard J. Pinzone writes: "Limewire 1.8 now comes with mandatory banner ads. The reasons given by one of their developers, Christopher Rohrs, for the new ads are that
'Bandwidth alone from www.limewire.com,
www.limewire.org, and router.limewire.com is around $10,000 month! And we need to pay developer's salaries--like mine--to keep driving innovation on the Gnutella network.' On top of all this, the banner ad software Limewire is using is
"Cydoor". Many users are complaining that this is
spyware. Here is a link to the message in the Gnutella forums where this topic is being
discussed"
Bandwidth alone ... is around $10,000 month!
That's the pre-SlashdotEffect figure, right?/p.
...and we lose another free service to the megacorporations.
Well I installed LimeWire 1.8 a few days ago and it ASKS you if you want to install Gator and/or cydoor. I said no and LimeWire is essentially the same as 1.7 (but with a banner)
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
...use gnut like the real men. There's no way in hell it's going to get banner ads.
They install adware to help offset the costs of bandwidth so what do you do but drive 10,000 lemmings to their site to jack the prices of bandwidth up even higher. Wonderful.
Not that including spyware (if it is) in their product is much more salubrious, but still.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Non-story. Limewire is open source. Go download it and remove any ads if you want, whiny bitches:
m e
http://limewire.limewire.org/servlets/ProjectHo
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Spyware is an ethical concern, with impediments to privacy and entailing much.
.this is merely opinion
But what is also of note is the lousy java coding, notably the lax java installer. Even compiling it from source is a time. Segmentation faults (fixed with ulimit) is still not enough.
As a minor suggestion, try gtk-gnutella.
(http://gtk-gnutella.sourceforge.net)
Works great, open development: a better sort of karma.
. .
I thought this was common knowledge? Kazaa, Morpheus, Limewire, most of them install spyware. I think Aimster is an exception, but its software is a piece of utter cockshit, and its company is run by the queen douchebag of them all.
... all the more reason to use the open-sourced version... remember?
I notice that limewire.org still advertises 1.7 as the most recent version.
AHHHHHHH! I'm burning with goodness again!
- Reakk, Sluggy Freelance
I have absolutely no hard feelings against using banner ads, they may be a nuisance, but you know, these people have families, and they need to eat, but spyware is the most insidious, dispicable, underhanded way of making a profit, and any company who uses such "utilities" should be sued for theft of our bandwidth, in my humble opinion, i wonder how much money in bandwidth has been stolen from Joe Consumer by these numerous programs that employ spyware, i would like to see that statistic.
I hate sigs.
Bearshare pops up to an immediate ad, and also usually spawns a browser window to show an ad. Pretty annoying, but it's not a big deal to just close the spawned window and get on with your business... not really a big deal if limewire does it... besides, if it helps keep them in business, then i say go for it!
Yeah, "mandatory" unless I filter them out the way I filter out Grokster's banners and eDonkey 2000's banners and the banners of every single web page I visit.
As for spyware, that's bad mojo. While I don't doubt that initially my kung-fu would best it, how do I know that it doesn't detect that the spyware is missing and redownload it in the background? Sure, I could scan my system regularly with OptOut but that would mean trusting Steve Gibson...
I remember sniffing my connection with Gator running and noticed that it was sending lots of statistics back to the Gator collective. Bad, Bad, Bad. I don't know if it is still like that, but I for one won't touch it or any app that includes it with a ten foot pole.
--------- Matt
...it wasn't slow enough.
Damn Java.
SIGFEH
Well at least we didn't get a Slashdot editor adding a witty comment about how terrible advertising is.
---
http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml
it won't be long before spyware is considered an act of terrorism, unless it's the government's spyware!
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Regardless of server costs -- or whatever ... Spyware is wrong -- it should be illegal. I also dont trust the "wolf" here submitting a story about their being no wolves in sheeps clothing.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Shut up, fake Wesley!
Peer to Peer programs seem to be developed for no reason at all but to hide the fact that usenet is still the best way to get all of this stuff that the MPAA and RIAA don't want us to have. Just wait long enough and you're fav. p2p program will be sued, then along comes another one and they have to sue them too, hopefully this cycle will continue on and on into the future and they'll never notice my 24/7 leeching off of alt.binaries.movies.divx......... btw, Monsters Inc. anyone?
is linking them on the frontpage supposed to be some sort of punishment? it definatly not going to keep the bandwidth budget down.
Who's still using Gnutella? GiFT just had a breakthrough with the development of ShadowFT
Download it. Give it a try...
I haven't used LimeWire since I discovered the KaZaa family of networks. LimeWire seems to have the same problem Gnutella did about two years ago - the network is *SO* huge that it fragments and you can't find anything. Most things >100MB (i.e. DivX movie trailers, etc...) are either interrupted due to dropped routing, or killed by the other host. The only thing I get in the "search monitor" is:
(this is a snippit of my LimeWire 1.07 search monitor I fired up just for this post. 5 seconds generated these queries):
xxx
kiddy f*ck
*.mp3
"Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" [vv].avi
nudist
Windows XP Professional.iso
how to hack
*.mp3
porn.jpg
l33t warez
ts.wasco*.avi
12 year old
*.mp3
GOD DAMNIT PEOPLE USE THIS AS A CHAT CLIENT
a.gif
kazaa
and it continues.
Conclusion: There's nothing good ON the Gnutella network. (!= The Gnutella Network is not good.)
we're not really helping their bandwidth cost situation by slashdotting them now are we! :P
www.httpads.com
Basically he allows other people to do impulse buying of ads on his website. Very Interesting, and useful
And yes, he is making money on this angle.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I said no and had crap on my desktop. I believe it installed something besides limewire as well. I quickly uninstalled it and went back to 1.7.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Playboy.com was the biggest ad. "Get a subscription for $1."
Too bad they didn't integrate their ads with their software for people that filter out adult content.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Looking at the dslreports ads, a T1 costs about $500/month. A T1 has about 200kB/s bandwidth, and $10,000 should get around 20 T1s, so they should be using around 4MB/s. Why do they need that much bandwidth for one-time 5MB downloads? Why don't they just ask people to mirror the files?
Anyone know where i could get old LimeWire versions for the Macintosh?
It seems like "everyone" these days is paranoid about spyware lurking in their software, programs designed to monitor your precious packets as they bounce around the internet.
..
:)
Either don't install these add-ons (most installers ask these days) or set up your firewall to deny outgoing connections to them (you do have a firewall, right?). Failing that, run a filtering proxy like Proxomitron (Windows only, Linux equivalents exist). If you're not to scared to compile the source yourself, get the latest build of LimeWire's source and customize it the way you like, as was mentioned in a previous post.
When you send and receive e-mail messages through your ISP, they could easily figure out what times of day you get the most mail, when you send the most mail, your average file attachment size, etc. just by doing a statistical analysis of the mail server's log files; but no one talks about how SendMail could be spyware!
What's wrong with a little data mining? A lot, most would say. Every time you purchase something with your debit card or use coupons at the grocery store, you're telling some large corporation about your habits (this is old news to most). What's the difference if a piece of spyware watches what you do in Internet Explorer? You lose a little privacy? You lose your sanity? You lose your favourite box of rusty nails?
Seems pretty silly to me to worry about things like that when you could just uninstall the software, kill the spyware with Ad-Aware (or your axe of choice) and try a different product. Even better, write your own client and be done with it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You'd think that just maybe that would be an incentive to USE the distributed network itself to distribute your digitally signed app in order to cut costs.
Anyway, I recall that BearShare eventually got around to forcing various kinds of "adware" (spyware) down your throat, but after the bitching got to be too much, Vinnie grew half a conscience and instead begged you to Opt-In to the scheme.
Of course, there's a big difference between LimeWire (open but SLOW as snot), and BearShare (closed but the fastest).
Power to the Peaceful
It eventually turned out that Cydoor was causing urlParse errors on some users' machines, and there followed a big to-do about whether it was possible to remove Cydoor without having to remove InVircible. Wotta mess. The Cydoor people really ought to go back to honest work, like developing those porn-site popup windows that keep reappearing
Is it me or are a lot of pod-people posting lately?
Are the pods actually disguised as XP boxes or as X-Boxes? Will I wake up tomorrow, and feel the uncontrollable urge to load XP?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Umm, you people are aware that humans are subjected to like 10000 ads per day right? What the hell does 4 or 5 repeating ads mean? NOTHING!!!!!!!!!! Here is a solution for you complainers. Go to the back of your computer, pull out the little square headed big phone cable, turn off your computer, and go to bed!
Sending personal data isn't bad, it's the means of collection.
I strongly believe that if most people were given an option to send data back to companies to offest their costs.. they would! Providing they new exactly what they were sending and had options/selections to choose from. In other words.. I would allow it if I had a menu that I could grant permission to send my physical address, and what type of OS I am using, but not my phone number or email address or my reg codes of my software (looking for piracy.) I have no problem indentifing my gender, age, HS, height, weight, interests ect..
While some poeple may not want to offer as much as I do, at least it would give everyone an opt in/out and cause the spy-ware to become offer-ware
And have a much better reputation in the process!
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
Why was this comment modded down? It is TRUE and ONTOPIC. Looks like abuse to me. Someone should suspend the moderator.
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
There is an economic reality to these free software packages. First, it is a program that allows the sharing of files; files which you may have to pay for in any other circumstance. Second, it is only a banner ad.
Now, the company they chose to use for adverts may be using some sort of spyware applet. So why isn't someone coming out with a program to prevent these applets from sending accurate information? So what if the company advertising knows that a white male btw. the ages of 25-30 in the pacific northwest is viewing the ad?
Blargh.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I heard Linux is spyware. Why, with a simple one letter command
$ w
....
I can see what anybody on a system is doing, in REAL TIME! Imagine what this would mean for marketroids who got ahold of this information!
The only solution is to delete Linux from your systems now. Here's how:
$ DELETE LINUX.EXE
bash: DELETE: command not found
It's even nice enough to tell you that it's not found anymore. Hope this helps everyone rid their systems of spyware!
And we need to pay developer's salaries--like mine--to keep driving innovation on the Gnutella network.
Gnutella and peer networks in general are going to continue evolving and innovating regardless of whether you specifically are involved.
If there is one thing I hate about all these projects it is the lame excuses for significant and broad invasions of privacy by people who cannot build a decent business model.
Instead they take a short cut, sell privacy invasion for a quick fix, and say that it is all for the good of the user.
Just because it makes money does not mean spyware is a proper or even tolerable method of funding work on your project or business, regardless of what it is.
Peer networks are about empowering and utilizing individuals communicating at the edge of the network. Invading their privacy like this defeats the purpose and sells everyone short.
The biggest problem is that it was all PORN ads!
Dude, what are YOU searching for on gnutella? Those ads arn't a problem for some of us - they're an apitizer!
So, I can see why a lot of people want to use limewire...but if this spyware thing rules it out for you, give kazaa a shot.
This is good timing. I was looking for a good Win32 based Gnutella client to use at work and so started looking around at what was available. I was pretty much unimpressed with everything that I tried. It was either addware, spyware, or just bad.
Limewire did not really impress me. It is Java based. On Windows, that means slow, unresponsive, and buggy. For functionality, I was unimpressed.
What is the Winamp/xmms of Win32 for Gnutella?
A lot of people at work seem to use Kazza, but from the NT logs that I see I can tell that it crashes -- a LOT. I do not know much about Morphus.
kazaa is loaded with spyware too. Install ad-aware (from www.lavasoftusa.com) and do a scan, You'll find Spyware all over the place from Kazaa.
Thats why i use winmx (www.winmx.com). No spyware, and it works pretty good.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
The installation of Cydoor and Gator is optional, but one thing it doesn't ask you about is whether or not you want tons of crap about casinos and big purple ape spyware on your desktop. I installed LimeWire yesterday, and before I even opened the program, I became so annoyed with what it does to my comp that I immediately uninstalled it and used AdAware to make absolutely sure the damn thing was gone.
Of course, if they charged for their software, then there would be no need for ads or spyware.
-
In the old days you worried about viruses. Now, the companies themselves try to take control of your desktop in order to shove ads down your throat. It's a shame you can't trust software developers anymore but at least there's programs like Ad Aware, ZoneAlarm, Popup Stopper, etc that help you fight back. (And negative ratings on download.com help punish spyware-pushing companies too.)
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.
Quit being such a fucking fag.
Porn rules.
After downloading and installing 1.7c a while back, I noticed that there was a BonziBUDDY icon in the Limeware directory on my win 98 machine. I can't remember what the extension type the file was, the file just had that dumb purple ape's image for its icon and the description said something to the effect of "download/install BonziBUDDY". I ran the latest spyware checker and it did not detect anything, so I just deleted the file and kept on using Limeware with no problems.
At the time I figured that this was a sign of things to come, soon Limeware would be using spyware and ads. Oh well, I was planing on looking for a better client anyway.
I havent run LimeWire in a long time but I've gotta say that if this article bothers you please stop using LimeWire. They have every right to make money, if you don't like it simply stop using the service. However to even hint that their new marketing strategies are unethical is the height of ignorance. You have choice, exercise it.
Not all of us need porn. Some of us have the real thing.
I use OS 10.1 and the latest LimeWire (1.8)... NO banners and no spyware... as usual. Just another reason to use the best there is. Thanks.
A while back it was posted that LimeWire was converted to the GPL . . . if yer worried about gettin spied on, go check the source yourself . .
I use Gnucleus 1.4.5
quite faster than limewire, no spyware/banners, and GPL'd.
Kazza and Morpheus are on a different network than Gnutella.
Brian
I see people saying try Kazaa instead, but on my system it was Kazaa that installed Cydoor. When I used Ad-aware to remove Cydoor, Kazaa refused to run and told me I had removed files it needed and should reinstall.
And on a regular basis send out an ad for themselves, through the software perhaps, asking for donations. If the donations don't come, or they aren't enough, take the server(s) down once a week, or twice a week, or permanently, whatever, until the donations reach the necessary level.
Anything but ads! Ads on the computer are just like white noise to me now, my brain has somehow learned to half-ignore them, not registering what they are about, but being annoyed by their presence.
If they die off because of lack of funds, then, well, natural selection in full effect. Something better will come along.
See the subject, but as an aside:
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Stupid lameness filter...There wasn't a single cap letter in the first version of this post????????
Limewire is GPLed. Is this not a reason to fork the damn thing, or at least maintain a set of patches (and of binaries compiled with these patches)?
Poor guy wants to get paid for all his hard work. Soon my favourite muscians will have to include ads in their next CD just to make a few bucks.
"This CD brought to you by Gator!"
I installed the Linux version of 1.8 and there are no banner ads here either. Maybe you all shouldn't be using Windows. As far as Java being slow, it runs just as fast as any of the others such as Kazaa or Napster( R.I.P.) did in Winslows.
I know this is gona sound like an advertisement. But here goes...
I've toyed around with all sorts of Gnutella clients ever since it was created. And despite some fancy tricks, none of them could compare with a good centralized file sharing program. The most recent one i tried is called XoloX(MSWin only, sorry). And i havent used a different program since. I know it sound crazy, but you really cant tell your using a gnutella client, and you get good search results and reasonably consistent downloads. I found it really annoying at first that they hide everything about the gnutella network from you, but the creators seem to know what they're doing. Give it a shot if you dont believe me.
There may be hope for gnutella's future after all.
my other penis is a vagina
Christopher mentions three domains which have bandwidth costs of $10,000/mo. Seems to me like this is a good time to start mirrors of www.limewire.com and www.limewire.org. Not sure how router.limewire.com is used (I haven't read up on the Gnutella network's behavior), but couldn't that be distributed as well?
Limewire: a company that expects us to sympathize and allow them to makes profits because they enable people to gain the fruits of musicians work for free.
WHAT HYPOCRISY! pirating is one thing
We are expected to believe that starving limewire developers deserve compensaation for their hard work. If music should be free
Limewire wants to make money? Why should they make money if they feel musicians shouldnt make money? Sorry but not all musicians want to make money by concerts, why cant this choice be respected?
If limewire doesnt care about ethics
To hell with limewire's ads. Boycott products advertised on there.
Switch to musiccity.
that's why i don't use gnutella..i use edonkey =)
The program is Ad-Aware. It's a freeware program available at www.lavasoftusa.com Ad aware looks for spyware on your computer and then allows you to (selectively) delete it. You'll be amazed how much can be there. The first time I ran it it found over 200 (!) files on my computer. Needless to say, the computer not only was a lot faster once I deleted all these trojans, but more stable as well. Try it, you'll like it.
just because gpl'd stuff wants to be free yada yada, doesn't mean that copyrighted stuff in general wants to be free.. if you are going to use p2p warez programs, don't bitch when they bite you in the ass.
Sorry. Just had to get that out.
"On the Internet, everyone is an equal until they prove themselves to be a moron." - Emmanuel Goldstein
Hmm... A large group of people who know how to get what they want for free and who have enough time to sit through dozens of failed and / or remotely disconnected transfers in order to watch a movie without just paying the $1.50 rental fee. That sounds like the perfect target market for my product... Where does my company sign up for one of those banner ads?
I can't seriously see anyone jumping at the potential to advertise to this group of people. Don't get me wrong... I've limed a few episodes of Tenchi Muyo in my day. But quite frankly I wouldn't bother pitching to me either.
The spyware should steal the user's address, e-mail, and telephone number and send it straight to the "don't bother" list. That alone could save companies hundreds of thousands in telemarketer fees.
-Chris
"An ad for the Shrek DVD? I should go download that."
The ______ Agenda
In this situation, you luck out, because there are many clients to browse the Gnutella network to choose from. And if you don't think Limewire's features are enough reason to pay (or lend eyespace to a banner add), head on over to the Gnutella homepage, one of them, at least, and track down a new client. I use Qtella, myself, a handy little client written in Qt (because I didn't want to install Java at the time), which handles all the needs I have: connecting, searching for music, and downloading music. Do you really need more? (Qtella has more built in, actually, but I've used BearShare, LimeWire and Qtella, and they're all pretty much the exact-same-thing, so no need to be picky when one starts needing that revenue thing.)
It's nothing to fret over. Just choose a different client if you don't like it.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
Yes, Fastrack has better features and content right now. Still, gnutella will always be around, and it's going to get better soon. Check out this writeup of the gnutella developer meeting at last week's O'Reilly P2P conference and also this one. With the addition of hash searches/results (which can enable swarm downloads) and supernodes, gnutella will be competitive with KaZaa and its Fasttrack cohorts.
GPL, for linux and QT/KDE. Has everything I need and looks prettier. Faster too.
/. who whine about the spyware on their Windows machines. GO AWAY!
A new version (0.3) was released two days ago.
I have no sympathy for all the losers on
Here is the URL: http://www.qtella.net/
Description:
Qtella is a new Gnutella client for Linux written in C++ using the Qt libraries. It should be no problem to use Qtella on any platforms where Qt with thread support (library qt-mt must exists) is installed.
The following features are part of Qtella 0.2.1:
multiple search
continue interrupted downloads
uploads
limit number of downloads and uploads
limit upload bandwidth
separate unfinished downloads from finished ones
download of several files at once
test whether file allready exists
identification of download server
automatic retry if error, busy, closed
auto connect list
KDE integration
save host list
handle extended gnutella protocol
status lines and statistics
accecpt incoming connections
download from firewalled hosts
pong cache to reduce network traffic
Moritz
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 216.34.209.10 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 209.10.17.134 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 209.73.225.8 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 209.73.225.9 -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -s 207.69.194.219 -j DROP
At least that worked for Opera, it may well work
for LimeWire too.
ok, i am a luser...i use win2k and winXp (but at least i dont give uncle bill money for it, so dont flame me too much :) ). Winmx, from www.winmx.com is great for getting mp3's and its also spyware free, as determined by ad-aware. Most of the other p2p programs on the win32 platform are infested with trojans like Kazaa is. Now i only why Norton AV, Mcafee, etc dont scream MURDER when spyware tries to get on your machine...only seems fair.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
The best results i have is with the fasttrack network (Kazaa,Morpheus,Grokster) for files under 100 Mb and with eDonkey2000 for bigger files and iso.
I think a spyware or a banner isnt that bad for all the free software and free music that is available...
Really, it shouldn't be that hard. Reverse-engineer the protocol used by that damned stuff, and then make it send completely bogus statistics to the main server (i-hate-spyware.net, you-are-an-idiot.com, i-reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally-love-using-space-in-your-d atabase).
:-)
If they somehow complain, just explain that you didn't ask the stuff to be installed in your computer, and therefore you're just using your right to 'shoot' it, as you could do with intruders in your house.
If we send enough bogus information their databases could suddenly stop being valuable. It's almost like registration forms. For all those companies that want to know my info so much, I'm a 165 year old woman living in Afghanistan who works as a doctor and is really interested in the internet
> If there is one thing I hate about all these projects it is the lame excuses for significant and broad invasions of privacy by people who cannot build a decent business model.
Their business model is selling the privacy of their users to ad-companies.
You might not like this (hell, I don't either) but you have to accept that it is a pretty decent one, certainly superior to other ideas like pure banner ads or asking for voluntary contributions.
If you don't like spyware, simply don't use any program that deploys it. Your inane ranting however will do nothing about the mindset of the common Internet user, which is that they accept every oh so damned advertisment scheme as long as they don't have to pay for site content or program licensing.
And since you have been taking the decision to play the "holier-than-thou" side of this discussion, I invite you to either try to make up a better business plan, or to educate an average 15 years old that paying $5 per month for a service they like isn't so bad...
Or, U.S. 'government'/BiG 'business' use war powers act to extinguish/ASPhyxiate good GNUs/pardon felons/rescue the 'bull'
Now lemming sea, what WAS the 'net supposed to be about? A weigh for billy to get more money? A big stock fraud/kode heist scam for va larry et al? sheesh!@#$% .
Don't forget to check out our web address giveaway. Includes a year's free hosting. Somewhere to hang your hack, Just in case FraUD doesn't prevail.
Warning: Your sites may become unreachable by users of XP/IEaaaggghhh, if your content is not acceptable to the kingdumb's softwar gangsters.
The bottom line is now the ONLY line, gaud help us.
since Kazza changed their protocol to a server-centric model (go read the link you just posted). Besides, QTella kicks Limewire's butt anays.
Quite new but it i havent found a bug.
Works faster,better than LimeWire by a leap.
Really LimeWire is and should be out
There are better,free and bannerless,spyware
less software replacing it.
Since Limewire is Java, can't the .class files be found and decompiled back to source and modified to remove banner ads and anything else you find annoying?
Its a pretty simple concept, we have a program that allows us to edit all .html/.php/.jsp/etc files on any of our web servers with a web based interface.
/developers/file.php HTTP /1.0" 302 0
If one of these "stastical" programs captured my entire POST when I updated lets say... a PHP or JSP page, they would have source code to one of my other web based porgrams.
And furthermore, there are servers that access files on my web server that are DEFIENTLY not linked from ANYWHERE on the WWW or my index.html.
216.35.116.58 - - [11/Nov/2001:16:43:33-0600] "GET
Which resolves to
j3018.inktomi.com
Curiously, I found a few spyware programs on my computer that I got from using Gamespy (ironic huh?). Lavasoft is cool, and helped me get rid of all those programs.
Fortuantly, that has a password on it, and it won't even let you in unless you access via HTTPS. BUT, what if I was using security through obscurity?
What if one of these spyware programs searches for username/password combinations and sends them encrypted with what "looks" to be statistical data?
The fact of the matter is, this is crap, and no one should try to even defend these people.
Does it have ads?
The Mac version may not install any spyware, per se, but, ever since I installed 1.8--though I don't use it because 1.7 gets more results on the same searches (why?)--my firewall's blocked four or five mystery outgoing connection attempts on various ports in the Limewire range (between 6352 and 6421, thus far) while 1.7 has been running. So, watch your connections; it's trying to do *something* without asking.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
So, if you got a free car, you wouldn't mind if it had equipment sophisticated enough to record, visually and audibly, everything that you did in yor house?
Do you develop spyware or something?
>Who the fuck feels they have the right to complain when they use software they downloaded FOR FREE to download music/software/videos, FOR FREE, while the developers spend their own time to write this software and distribute it FOR FREE????
(Ahem... Clearing throat... Need to speak LOUDLY because we're in a SHOUTING match)
Maybe the reason why people feel they have the right to complain about free stuff is because (in most free countries) you have the right to:
- Sue for false advertising
- Sue for wasted computing resources
- Sue for privacy invasion
- And many, many, many more rights
No matter what fee a company charges.
If you got a box of corn flakes in the mail (FOR FREE) and they turned out to contain, oh I dunno, a secret spy camera that tracked your every move, would you not feel entitled to a LARGE CASH SETTLEMENT?
Spyware is no more acceptable if it is free or not.
And you should know better than that by now. The whole idea that the level of your ethics depends on the price you pay for something is damn low.
BTW: I just sent you a free copy of Windows XP. Included (secretly) is every single piece of spyware ever made, all wrapped up (secretly) on the CD in a tight little package. When you install it (FOR FREE!) don't be a whiny asshole ("LIKE THEM!").
[Ok, so I didn't really do the above, but think about it for a tiny little moment]
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
and set up a site for download?
:P
There are other semi-computer illiterate people here, such as lawyers
You presume too much. Peer networks will continue to evolve because there are people who don't NEED income from software. They will continue to work as their reward is the product. "Services" that use adverts will die as they are replaced by free versions. When the greed heads try to impose tolls, freedom loving people will leave them behind everytime.
There never was a need for adverts and spyware.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Ah, but the beauty of Ad-Aware is that you have the choice to remove those cookies or not. Check the box beside the cookie it and it will remove it. If you don't check it then it remains. Simple, easy and fast. After all we don't want to have to identify ourselves everytime we visit Mike's World Wide Web of Barfbags?
Ad-Aware is from Lavasoft and can be found here.
MS may have forced OEM's to preinstall windoze on your pc (clue in Dept. of Justice), but thereafter, the choice is yours.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
It's important to point the about out. Not having any M$ junk, I'm oblivious to the new stupid tricks. When someone asks, now I know. Sure, the conversations can be tiresome. Trolls post all sorts of stupid thing along the lines of, "you have no choice", "see, even open source is greedy", blah blah blah. Hopefully, the M$ and music articles will keep them all busy. To compensate for them, the whiners come back to tell us that other software plays the same game. Sometimes someone even mentions something useful like QTella, and that's what this place is all about. Hell, they might even recomend an OS built on the concept of free software like Debian. Thanks! but be kind.
I don't want to build a server to share comercial junk. I want to share my own work.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Use v.1.7. I'm still using it, no prawblems here.
All they have on their is a bunch of mislabelled porn and a few crappy mp3s. Mainly its the midlabeled porn that pisses me off. They'll have normal pictures that I want to look at labelled as "TEEN FUCKED UPNTHE ASS BY HER 12 YEAR OLD BROTHER PEDOPHILE RAMA INCEST WHILE HER DAD WATCHES AND TAKES NOTES.jpg" and all it is is chasey lain and a dildo. Or say "16 year old takes it up the ass slut sex sexy fucking incest.jpg". You know, all I want is some pics, not some bullshit.
And the mp3s suck too.
Morpheus (which is the same thing) is not.
Im impressed... limewhat?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Believe me, I know the difference between a spyware file and a cookie! I MEANT 200 spyware trojans!! Believe me, no one was more surprised then I!
The new face to face network involves talking to real people, is kind of scarey and unintuitive at first and yes there are some ppl that could be considered "spyware".
However we have figured it is a simple as a two click (boom) uninstall.
The transfer rates are fast! Get cd's from your "network of friends" and as your cd-burner can go you'll have whatever you're looking for.
And best of all, nobody is excluded from joining unless you don't want them to! FTP and IRC protocols allow you to deny/allow whomever you wish. No banners, no ads and you (w)get whatever you deserve.
One cavet in all of this is you will have to upgrade your wetware to better versions of commonsense.libs, intelligence.exe conversations.dll's.
Thank you.
Visits us at www.internet dinosaurs r us.com
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
But in this day and age of all the content providers going down fast, it is pretty evident that the people who sale the bandwidth have just got to be rolling in the cash...I am always seeing stories like "THis site cost $$ K per month in bandwidth fees to operate"...The people who sale bandwith have to be saying: "What do you mean this economy sucks -- we are soooo rich"
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Let me get this straight...
You're going to sue a company for false advertising and privacy invasion, a company that writes a software product with the (implied) purpose of allowing you to download pirated music/videos/software for free?
Isn't that kinda like suing your drug dealer for not providing you with a high enough grade of coke for your tastes? Or suing your hitman for poor customer service?
C'mon...
A great website about all this is ThiefWare.
They have comprehensive descriptions of all the companies and the spyware they install.
I discovered this site after being called by a "representative" wanting to sell our company keywords for $30,000! My boss was psyched about it until I impressed upon him that we did not want to be associated with such scum. The bizarro thing was that this salesman didn't even work for Cydoor Networks...they seemed to be parasites of the parasites.
"The bandwidth is too expensive" is what the posting says. Now I assume that the outgoing traffic is much higher for Limewire than the incoming, since their main traffic are downloads of the client and people connecting to the router. On the other hand, there are (still?) a number of broadband providers who typically have ample of outgoing bandwidth left (I'm working for one, we have a few 100Mbps left). They are spending a lot of money on buying incoming bandwidth and would (among other things) be interested in establishing new peerings with other providers but sometimes get refused by them just because the traffic is too asymmetrical (meaning they are pulling too much).
So you try very hard to get folks that generate a lot of outgoing traffic as your customer in order to level things a bit. That's where Limewire would come in: Why not change the location of their servers to (or add additional ones at) a broadband providers location?
To give you an example: We did install a Quake Arena Server for two purposes: The one mentioned above and to raise customer satisfaction (Low ping round trip time to server = happy Quake gamer = happy customer).
Just my two cents of opinion of course.
The normal download does not provide source code. You can get it using CVS, or through the developer section.
My server
I played bumdarts with Christopher Rohrs. He's a good "shooter."
Just so ya know... I downloaded Limewire 1.8 this weekend and installed it on OS X 10.1 - no ad software, no banners, just like 1.7 only with different tabs/widgets. :-)
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
That was a great post!!!
Napster makes money off distribution of copyright information. Napster gets sued and shut down. Fasttrack makes money off distribution of copyright information. Fasttrack gets sued. LimeWire makes money off distibution of copyright information. At least Gnutella isn't a sueable entity.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
Recently i installed Limewire 1.8 on my redhat 7.2 box. Before this i never had used any file sharing program. I can use Limewire fine as a root, but as normal user i cannot download anything, eventhough i could search and connect. I thought it must be be some security issue. Anyway until i figure out what is wrong i am not going to use this program as a root.
Exactly how does it benefit them by adding more strain to their bandwith (with resulting increased costs) with adverts? Will the income from the ads really offset the additional costs of the extra bandwidth requirements?
What I'd like is something that will log all net access on a Win98 box, and will note the program doing the accessing. I chased a phantom on my box for 3 days last week. Every 8-10 minutes, it woke up the router with a DNS query but I could never catch the offender on netstat. Went away on a reboot, but I'd sure like to be prepared the next time something decides to lurk like that.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
For me, the problem is not the spyware itself, or the spyware being included with other software. The problem is software not telling me that it is installing extra crap on my system.
If the webpage, or installation instructions, tell me that the software includes spyware, I have the choice to not install the ads/spy programs by not using the software. My choice. Fan-fucking-tastic. I don't want the extra crap, so I don't use their software. That is the way it should be. I'll even have a degree of respect for the company for being honest, which means I'm more likely to register the software/make a donation/recommend them to others.
If they don't tell me that they are installing spycrap, it's instant download a crack time once I find out. They've sneaked shit onto my system without my consent. They won't get a penny for the software, and they won't get a penny from the spyware they tried to hide on my computer either. And I'll use their bandwidth. Fuck them.
I just browsed the limewire developer website. The next version (1.9) will include cool new download technology and meta search technology (XML based). This stuff just missed the 1.8 release but is expected to be released soon.
:-). Internet time is just passing too soon for them I guess. Next thing you know, you're irrelevant and your business model blows up in your face.
In addition, the major gnutella problem (scalability)is going to be addressed in a beta release shortly after that. Historically, Limewire has releases every few weeks so I suspect a 2.0 could be here before the end of this year. With the introduction of supernodes, gnutella will be as scalable as fasttrack (essentially supernodes are the key difference between the fasttrack protocol and the gnutella protocol). Only it will be open (both the protocol and the implementations). This is very good news.
I'm increasingly annoyed with the crappy/buggy morpheus interface (kazaa is exactly the same but includes spyware). I experience random crashes and the UI seems to be assembled by a couple of morons. My little sister could do a better job given a 3 day course in VB for dummies.
I always liked the limewire interface, with the improved search ability it will be a worthy competitor to kazaa/morpheus and with the supernodes in place it will be as scalable as the fasttrack network.
I really like the way this is evolving. Just as the RIAA is starting to sue Fastrack licensees, something else they deemed irrelevant before is given a new chance. It must drive them nuts. Gnutella must have at least a dozen different clients. No one owns the protocol and most clients are open-source. The only way to ban it is to start sueing on the client side. Luckily, freenet is still improving too
Jilles
So this is yet another reason to use a Mac or Linux machine.
These ads are only for Windoze..
Your Technology General Contractor http://www.birddogdigital.com
The Linux Client doesn't seem to include either the banners or (quite obviously) the nasty windows spyware. I think overall, LimeWire's done some pretty impressive work. It's a pretty nice client, and a vast improvement over some of the early Gnutella clients. Granted - the content has gone to hell - but lets face it - it's a distributed network and we, as users provide the content.
Get it? If you're sharing garbage - it's your fault that gnutella has gone to hell.
\Drew National Data Director, John Edwards for President
Gnucleus works great for me under win32.
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
You installed it a year ago? I installed if 2-3 monthes ago, and installing the 'spyware' or ad software was completely optional. I just downloaded the newest version off their site and installed it. Again, it was optional. So what your saying may have been true a year ago, but it no longer is.
puck
And you're right, Freenet is slowly improving (as is Mojonation). I'd estimate they're both a year or two from being ready for prime time, but that's not a terribly long time for innovative software to evolve.
In addition, robust and/or secure and/or anonymous P2P networks are a hot topic in academia now, which should translate into much improved systems (new ones and existing ones) in the next few years.
The future is very bright for gnutella and for open and hard to attack P2P protocols in general. I'm excited! :)
In the limewire FAQ's a while ago, it said lime wire would Never include this feature.
I even shared i file called 'bearshare contains spyware, use limewire instead, share this file.txt' but its not the ads that get me annoyed. ITS THE FUCKING BASTARD SOFTWARE GATOR! GATOR IS NOT NEEDED AS I USE OPERA AND I DON'T HAVE IE! NETSCAPE 6/MOZILLA NOW HAS ITS OWN PASSWORD SYSTEM SO FUCK THE GATOR! Uninstall gator now!
In order to get rid of fucking spyware do the following
Use a tweaking tool to distable spyware (by the system configuration editor, just uncheck stuff like web3000.exe advert.exe etc,
Lavasoft has developed a comprehencive spyware removal utillity, and i am running spyware apps *without ads*. Which is good.
Send death threats to the software developers
Have any of you not tried XoloX, its my favorite. Grab it here http://www.zeropaid.com/xolox/
It works just like Kazaa and on the Kazaa network, but does not hasve spyware.
right along with limewire's new 1.8 version, they are also promoting their supernode alpha which contains no ads, no popups, and enables you to monitor all supernode connections. I tried both and dropped 1.8 after the first 3 minutes in favor of the other.