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Morpheus DOS'd and Moving to Gnutella

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.

280 comments

  1. All I can say is... by Matrim9 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Good riddence to FastTrack. This makes me very happy.

    1. Re:All I can say is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      spyware! ack! glad they died a miserable death...

      now, about that "company" known as M$...

    2. Re:All I can say is... by tommyscholar · · Score: 1

      forget about m$, nothing is secure these days

  2. Sounds to me . . . by Anonynnous+Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    . . . more like a convenient way to claim a third party was threatening their existence than to admit that a central server based, closed authentication system was very vulnerable to legal attacks, as the *AA have demonstrated to them.

    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.

    1. Re:Sounds to me . . . by Jerry · · Score: 1
      Gnutella + bandwidth aggregation = good.


      Hardly.

      There was a recent story posted on /. that demonstrated mathematically that Gnutella type networks cannot achieve the numbers of clients or transfers they claim. Do do so would suck up all the internet bandwidth, rendering the internet useless to all.

      --

      Running with Linux for over 20 years!

    2. Re:Sounds to me . . . by alonsoac · · Score: 1

      I don't think they faked the attacks.
      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.

    3. Re:Sounds to me . . . by alonsoac · · Score: 1

      Ok so there is a new version of Morpheus now:
      download

    4. Re:Sounds to me . . . by Anonynnous+Coward · · Score: 1
      OK, I haven't read the paper yet, but it's easy to see that simple flooding doesn't scale. However, it seems like being able to aggregate a large file transfer with a little bit of bandwidth from multiple sources rather than all of it from one large source might benefit the network, and decrease the load on the core routers (yes, there are more connections, but the pipes don't have to be clogged).

      This feature also allows users with upstream caps and those on dialups to contribute _something_ to the network. And in this case, every little bit helps.

      eDonkey has the right idea in that direction--each user is at least required to share the parts he or she has downloaded thus far, and to give up an amount of upstream capacity to the network in return for a proportionally increasing download capacity.

    5. Re:Sounds to me . . . by Anonynnous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Looks also like there might have been a falling out between those running the Fastrack network and the people at Morpheus (from further reading at zeropaid). It looks more like a lockout of Morpheus by those controlling the servers than a DoS attack, but I might have tried to spin it that way, too.

    6. Re:Sounds to me . . . by linzeal · · Score: 1

      I wonder how much the RIAA paid the script kiddies for this one. What does a script kiddie go for nowadays about a vb programmer salary?

    7. Re:Sounds to me . . . by phyxeld · · Score: 1

      The article you're probably refering to (posted on /. here) was originally written in Feb 2001. I don't have any exact figures, but I'm quite certain the gnutella network has only grown since then, and it's still going strong. And napster (the p2p network the articles author was involved in creating), well, isn't. I think it's clear which network is stronger, both from a technical viewpoint and a legal one.

      --
      __
      Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
    8. Re:Sounds to me . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The whole thing is bullshit. I think it was planned from the get go. Funny how, if you go to kazaa.com, they have everything all ready for former Morpheus users. Using the kazaa client (which is *EXACTLY* like the Morpheus one), everything works fine. More users and more files than ever.

      Is anybody working on a "universal" p2p client? One basic framework with plugins for each format. New protocol, new plugin.

      Cpt_Kirks

    9. Re:Sounds to me . . . by alonsoac · · Score: 1

      abviously the two clients are not EXACTLY the same. If even the .exe file name changes you could attack one and not the other. Deeper changes exist probably.

    10. Re:Sounds to me . . . by TedCheshireAcad · · Score: 2

      Seriously...I wouldn't doubt that the RIAA is somehow behind this. Seems a bit too convenient that Morpheus takes a big hit, eh?

    11. Re:Sounds to me . . . by kiwipeso · · Score: 1

      Exactly like a napster style of serving, you're vunerable to lawyers and script kiddies. script kiddies wouldn't attack their source of mp3's.

      I'm doing a new filesharing protocol samizdat, which will be open source (yes, I'll even GPL it for all you slashdot geeks.)
      The method I will use is a distributed hierarchy: if you can handle local routing traffic and a local file database, you can be a local server. (this means you can provide search results and the URL anonymiser for local files)
      Basically, this is a semantic web protocol for P2P in places which is agile enough to get around censorship and network port bans.

      --
      - Kaos games and encryption systems developer
    12. Re:Sounds to me . . . by Anonynnous+Coward · · Score: 1
      I'm doing a new filesharing protocol samizdat . . .

      Love the name. Funny that a phenonemon that arose from a totalitarian government's oppression of speech is now a logical name for a tool to allow Americans to communicate.

      And the ideas sound cool. (Although the URL anonymizer concept would seem to fail with a hostile node offering services.) Any whitepapers, etc. yet?

    13. Re:Sounds to me . . . by kiwipeso · · Score: 1

      Why not? Although I'm not an american, the DMCA and the USA PATRIOT acts are clearly in violation of the first amendment.
      The UK RIP / RIPA acts are also violations of the universal declaration of human rights.

      The Russian constitution actually states that any russian citizen is allowed to have unbreakable encryption, but they have the FSB (KGB in soviet days) tapping all ISPs with a government blackbox to read all emails.
      France & Isreal operate systems similar to the echelon system.
      China has the most oppresive internet, not just screening for pornography like the muslim nations do. China takes a covert interest in political dissent with a national firewall made with Cisco routers and a ministry of truth.
      they employ tens of thousands of communist censors just to read email and can block any port they want.

      I think I said in that post or the one before it in this topic that users could vote out hostile nodes from services. This would self regulate the services from censors when enough people notice.
      I have yet to write the withepapers on Samizdat, I'm in a draft design until I have the last few books I need. I have just discovered kernel learning ai, so I want to throw that in when I know how.
      I am likely to state how it works exactly when I can be sure that places like China, the UK or the USA can't block it off.

      --
      - Kaos games and encryption systems developer
  3. morpheus and rebol? by zenzizi · · Score: 1

    what's up with this?

    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..

    --
    /// evilloop.com // la route est plus large que longue /
    1. Re:morpheus and rebol? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      rebol is a toy language, nothing more

  4. So let's help them out... by Scoria · · Score: 1, Funny

    ... by making it a DDoS! You know, because DDoS just *looks* better than DoS. :p

    --
    Do you like German cars?
  5. an icky framed page? by scamcdan · · Score: 5, Funny

    who writes like this?? was it gross and cootie-filled too?

    1. Re:an icky framed page? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >who writes like this?

      I think it must've been Piffany.

  6. What about the others? by Cirvam · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What about the other programs that use the FastTrack network? They all look the same, and aside from using a diffrent plugin for the ads, I would thing that the networking protocol would be similer so this could affect them also.

    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.

    1. Re:What about the others? by uebernewby · · Score: 3, Insightful

      According to the Morpheus press release, the DOS attack targeted their ad servers, not the FastTrack network itself.

      --

      News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
    2. Re:What about the others? by plasmd · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, for the others who mention that Kazaa perpetrated this attack to boost their ad revenues, take a look at the Kazaa website.

      The way they have a large graphic to welcome over Morpheus users makes it look rather suspicious at least...

    3. Re:What about the others? by Razor+Sex · · Score: 0

      As (perhaps) a small point of interest, I submitted an article about this whole thing, KaZaa graphic and all, a few days ago. It got rejected.

      But that's just background, not a complaint. Anyway, you're right that it does look rather suspicous. But the problem with the KaZaa theory is, why would KaZaa kill one of their own?

    4. Re:What about the others? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They were all affected. Old 1.3.x versions of both Grokster and Kazaa are also experiencing problems, forcing users to upgrade to their new 1.5 version.

    5. Re:What about the others? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Judging by the unreliability of KaZaA recently, and the sudden doubling in the number of people logged on at any one time, it may well be true.

    6. Re:What about the others? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ad revenue.

    7. Re:What about the others? by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 2

      My impression was that the company that runs the FastTrak network that Kazaa and Morpheus both share decided to cut out Morpheus. A few days ago when I tried to go on Morpheus, I couldn't connect, and there was this message along the lines of "some of our technology partners have made changes that disable current versions of Morpheus." Nothing about a hacker attack...

      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

      --
      Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
    8. Re:What about the others? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually the Kazaa client can also be defang the same way as described for Grokster.

      Priored to this point I had set my firewall to block all access to port 80 from the kazaa client to addresses other than kazaa.com domain and deleted the adcache directory. There was a significant amount of hd access and some net access which does happen in morpheus.

      The new morpheus has a habbit of crashing my old 486 which is a delicated FT client with firewall around it. :(

  7. Pointless vandalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This is just stupid. You would think that Morpheus is something hackers like, being a gateway to all kinds of illicit things. Instead, they are doing the equivalent of vandalizing their own house. Stupid kids.

    1. Re:Pointless vandalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ha.

      whatever.

      thanks.

    2. Re:Pointless vandalism by kz45 · · Score: 1

      You would think that Morpheus is something hackers like, being a gateway to all kinds of illicit things. Instead, they are doing the equivalent of vandalizing their own house. Stupid kids.

      it wasn't "kids" at all. The "virus" was kazaa taking back their revenue stream through a propagating back door.

  8. RIAA? by acrollet · · Score: 1

    So who thinks this was done by the RIAA? ;)

    1. Re:RIAA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apparently only you do.

      thanks.

    2. Re:RIAA? by TurboRoot · · Score: 1

      Actually, he/she isn't the only one.

      thanks.

    3. Re:RIAA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you, sir or madam, are *entirely* welcome.

      thanks again.

    4. Re:RIAA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Basically that is the truth behind all this crap!!! Any P2P software that you can advice out there? nahh.. :-

    5. Re:RIAA? by internic · · Score: 1

      Well, things like industrial espionage are apparently fairly common, and industrial sabotage is not un-heard of. Thought it may seem like a "conspiracy theory" it would not be without precedant for the RIAA to hire someone to sabotage Morpheus. They are not competing in the normal sense, but the RIAA certainly sees them as competing interests. Furthermore, it would be a very expediant way to avoid a long, expensive legal battle. Finally, it would seem that the RIAA and the MPAA are willing to use almost any means necessary to stop file sharing, mp3s, and the like, so it wouldn't seem entirely out of character. Besides, wasn't this the sort of thing they were trying to get legislation passed for? To have the right to hack into your computer to remedy infringements of their intellectual property rights.

      --
      "You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
    6. Re:RIAA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, fsck you all.

      Bastards...

    7. Re:RIAA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well they did hire college students to download "thousands" of illegal songs. *snicker

  9. Grokster w/o spyware by 3ryon · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the many people (myself included) who are now looking for a different FastTrack client check out this execellent page on how to install Grokster without spyware.

    1. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by Constrain_Me · · Score: 4, Informative

      Since you mentioned it... here's Clean LimeWire Limewire without Spyware.

      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.

    2. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by DrSkwid · · Score: 2

      GUI wimp

      you should be using gnut like a real geek!

      :)

      --
      There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
    3. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by kz45 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Since you mentioned it... here's Clean LimeWire [geocities.com] Limewire without Spyware

      Filenavigator 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

    4. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      here's a link to dlder-remove.exe, since none of the links provided worked:

      http://cad-school.ch/Support/Antiviren/antivirus .h tml

    5. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by Constrain_Me · · Score: 1, Interesting

      ahhh, but does it run on Linux???

    6. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damn. You must be REALLY NEW to Linux.

    7. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by juju2112 · · Score: 1, Redundant

      Has anyone mirrored this program onto a decent server? Looks like it's just a dead link now.

    8. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder if this sort of thing is allowed under the DCMA?

    9. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by DrSkwid · · Score: 1

      in fact I don't use it at all

      FreeBSD for 6 years & plan9 for 2

      --
      There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
    10. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't know about the DCMA, but the D-M-C-A prohibits "[circumvention of] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected [by copyright law]," and distributing devices to do the same. That's it. We're uninstalling spyware here, not circumventing technologic measures, and I am frankly sick of hearing this question every time Jack Valentini sneezes.

      Do you read me, pooky?

    11. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by slackvision · · Score: 1

      So, what's wrong with eDonkey? I don't have any problems with it--except for the increasing majority of non-English version Divx movies.

    12. Re:Grokster w/o spyware by ^ZuLu^ · · Score: 1

      I've tried this with KaZaA and it seems to work very well. Thanks for the link!

  10. silly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Such is life in this game of stupidity.

    You get what you pay for.

  11. well and good.. by vvikram · · 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

  12. Unframed by GSV+NegotiableEthics · · Score: 4, Informative

    Click here for the unframed version. After a very brief introduction, the main story is here.

  13. Gnucleus... by Canis · · Score: 5, Informative
    Morpheus Preview Edition is basically just Gnucleus, which is a GPL'd Gnutella client for Windows. So you might as well just use Gnucleus -- it's got all the same features (plus some Morpheus PE doesn't appear to have yet -- I guess they must've forked off an earlier version).

    Better still, Gnuclues doesn't have banner adverts, let alone (ick) popups.

    1. Re:Gnucleus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm glad everyone is bringing Gnucleus up, because it really is probably the best Gnutella client available that I've seen..very well polished, and a large feature set that I've yet to see implemented anywhere else. Added to that, Gnucleus also provides the option to allow your client to participate in the author's research of creating a distributed map of the Gnutella network (I believe he's the first to have done so), so if you'd like to help him out then by all means, leave that option on :>

    2. Re:Gnucleus... by inerte · · Score: 1

      And Morpheus is a company trying to make money on Gnucleus. Like Swabby (main Gnucleus developer) said, he sees no problem on this. It's GPL we are talking about.

      But, Morpheus now have to release their modifications at some point. I don't know which old version they got, but Gnucleus in the past was nasty. It crashed a lot under Win2k, didn't have multisource downloading, and a couple of other enhancements that were introduced in Gnucleus 1.6 BETA.

      They MUST release their modifications. And if they are based on such older client, there will be many. IF they release those 'hacks', Gnucleus will only get stronger, since already has an edge (earlier version), and it's free. No banners, pop-up's, nothing.

      IF they do not, I hope FSF or EFF can help Swabby like they are doing with some other people (Mysql, etc...).

      It is an interesting scenario, and Morpheus got to be really careful to not let the ads be an annoyance, or not get trouble with the GPL.

      PS: I have been using Gnucleus since version 1.1. GREAT software, if you don't have it, download now! ;-)

    3. Re:Gnucleus... by jamesbarlow · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The thing is, at any given moment, you have about 600,000 users connected to the Morpheus network. And they were averaging about a million downloads a week.

      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.

      --
      C'est pas apres qu'on a fait dans son pantalon qu'il faut serrer les fesses.
    4. Re:Gnucleus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Morpheus is violating the GPL, the author can get help from the FSF.

    5. Re:Gnucleus... by zaffir · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The Morpheus folks have just redone a few interface elements in Gnucleus and called it their own. They didn't even have the brains to change all the dialog boxes with "Gnucleus" in them. I was just playing around and got a message telling me to restart Gnucleus for the settings to take effect. Odd, i was in "Morpheus's" client. It also uses all the settings i had in Gnucleus proir to installing this "new" client.

      --
      "Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
    6. Re:Gnucleus... by CmdrStalin · · Score: 1

      Somewhat disturbing is the fact that MusicCity didn't even bother to contact the Gnucleus developers about this in advance. They just picked up the code, rebranded it, end of story. No credit beyond the "incorporates Gnucleus technology" in the About dialog. No source code as of yet, and frankly if it is released it will be an embarassement because all you will see if you diff it with the original code is a bunch of advertising crap thrown in, and s/Gnucleus/Morpheus

      MC's 'programmers' are of rather dubious merit. The original Morpheus took little or no programming effort on MC's part - they took the same FastTrack skeleton client that the others use and 'skinned' it. The only programming involved here was making the ad window and startup window point to MC's servers. That's it. The rest was all FT's work.

      And now, what is it their 'programmers' were 'working hard' to accomplish over the past few weeks? Take a GPL gnutella client and rebrand it. Wow. All that MusicCity is going to bring to the gnutella network is alot more traffic. I wouldn't expect 'programmers' who only know how to toss in ads and logos to help improve gnutellanet itself, or come up with original ideas about how to use the current infrastructure more effectively.

      It's great that MusicCity doesn't use spyware as a revenue stream like the Kazaa/Grokster slimeballs (Kazaa allows you to deselect about five different 'value-added' components on installation, but then goes ahead and silently installs cydoor anyhow. It also offers a nice Bonzi Buddy button in the client itself.. I don't know how much more polluted and ugly a p2p client could get) .. but that's about the only good thing you can say about them.

    7. Re:Gnucleus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ain't freedom grand?

    8. Re:Gnucleus... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd take the view that they were kinda taken by surprise at being cut off from FastTrack, and released the ugly version just to shut up the users who were screaming 'MAKE IT WORK! MAKE IT WORK!'.

    9. Re:Gnucleus... by kyhwana · · Score: 1

      Auctally, you can get the source from the "source" link in their navbar.
      It even includes the Changelog from Gnucleus 1.6
      http://www.musiccity.com/source/mpesrc1.zip

      --
      My email addy? should be easy enough.
  14. Gnutella is Toasting better every day by cameronk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a longtime Gnugella user, I will be happy to see Morpheus users join the network. Per Metcalfe's law, this should make our network much more valuable. The past few revisions of the Limewire client in particular have made the service much more responsive. Although the experience has not yet surpassed Napster's brightest hour, given a few more months there will be no reason for that original fileshareing service to return. The limewire folks have even opensourced their client. Now, if only half the people reading this comment could pitch in...

    --
    "...What is good for General Motors is good for America." -Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense and fmr President of GM
    1. Re:Gnutella is Toasting better every day by crc32 · · Score: 1

      While I certianlly do support more consolidation on the filesharing front (anything to stymie the RIAA/MPAA cartel), I think that a supporters of P2P conducting DOS attacks against each other is a little counterproductive. Yes, in this case it seems to have been effective at stimulating an increase in the network effects of the Gnutella system, but I worry that future attacks will only damage the usefulness of the system. We have enough to worry about what with the SSSCA.

      --
      "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
    2. Re:Gnutella is Toasting better every day by Jerp · · Score: 1

      Toasting better? You must be confusing gnutella with nutella, the chocolatey hazelnut spread.

  15. Not good for other FastTrack clients by Constrain_Me · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Stating the obvious Having the userbase from Morpheus off FastTrack will cut the ammout of files available to oter FastTrack clients like KaZaa, thus decreasing their popularity, and possibly forcing them to move to a new network. If Gnutella scales well, it would be a good thing, if it doesn't...

    1. Re:Not good for other FastTrack clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Gnutella scales well, it would be a good thing, if it doesn't...

      We've already seen in the past that it doesn't. That's why most of us stopped using Gnutella based clients and moved to Morpheus. Oh well. The RIAA/MPAA will win in the end because we're killing ourselves. They don't have to do a god damned thing but sit back and laugh.

    2. Re:Not good for other FastTrack clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sit back and laugh? I think it's more like fade out and dissapear into investment banking where they should have been from the beginning. These groups have been nothing but financeers since the death of the big movie studios in the early 20th century.
      This is hardly the tragic end of P2P. The end of money handlers dumbing down entertainment, perhaps.
      Besides, the previous /. article I read said that Gnutella would scale.

    3. Re:Not good for other FastTrack clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Besides, the previous /. article I read said that Gnutella would scale.

      Whew! Since /. said so, I guess I don't have to worry. Thanks.

  16. so wait a minute... by cetan · · Score: 1

    I'm a little confused. Are they saying that the morpheus client allowed a 3rd party access to my registry settings?

    --
    In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
    1. Re:so wait a minute... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those are the breaks with proprietary, closed-source, crap. Accept it, or use & back the alternatives.

    2. Re:so wait a minute... by cetan · · Score: 1

      God what a pathetic troll that was. You're not even trying.

      --
      In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
    3. Re:so wait a minute... by kz45 · · Score: 1

      Those are the breaks with proprietary, closed-source crap

      A little off topic, but open source != better security. take a look

    4. Re:so wait a minute... by Jeremi · · Score: 2
      A little off topic, but open source != better security


      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.

      --


      I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  17. watch your grammar by alec314159 · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Morpheus is moving to Gnutella? To DOS her too? Whomever thinks of article titles, please spend another 5 seconds READING them before thousands of people witness your illiteracy.

    This will probably get modded down for criticism, so be it.

    1. Re:watch your grammar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    2. Re:watch your grammar by prizzznecious · · Score: 0

      Whomever should never be used as the subject in a sentence. Whoever. Whoever. Whoever.

      Normally I doubt I would be moved to complaint, but accusations of illiteracy with such pretentious mistakes as improperly using "whomever" piss me off.

      --

      visit the hwky website for a lyrical genius infusion.
  18. How the hell is this good news by HanzoSan · · Score: 0, Troll


    Gnutella is horrible. The design just sucks and honestly i could have come up with a better design for a network.

    Gnutella is practically useless unless you have a broadband modem.

    The benifits to using gnutella vs fasttrack are what?

    Gnutella in order to be faster would have to be more centralized.

    Fast track is more centralized and is similar to gnutella.

    IF i were morpheus i'd use fast track until i can come up with a new peer to peer technology of my own.

    Gnutella is flawed by design, Fast track is / was flawed by design. The best designs so far have been the WinMX design which works very well, the audio galaxy design seems to work very well,

    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.

    Its slow as hell, the design makes it difficult if not impossible to scale.

    I'd rather connect to hundreds of small networks and search them all at once, than connect to one big gnutella style network.

    --
    If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
    1. Re:How the hell is this good news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is so true. It sorta works, but not very well.

      The problem is in the fundamental design of gnutella. There is no way around it. You can make little fixes here and there like Limewire does but nothing can fix the design of gnutella.

      It's damn slow, eats an incredible amount of bandwidth, and searches are not reliable. It just sucks all around.

    2. Re:How the hell is this good news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The design just sucks and honestly i could have come up with a better design for a network.

      Somebody already did, a long time ago. It's called the World Wide Web and Google. Or FTP and Archie.

      People use Gnutella anyway. Weird, huh?

    3. Re:How the hell is this good news by miguelitof · · Score: 1
      Gnutella is practically useless unless you have a broadband modem.

      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.

      The benifits to using gnutella vs fasttrack are what?

      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.

      audio galaxy design seems to work very well,

      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.

      --
      --- Biffster.org
      "Bite my shiny metal ass."
    4. Re:How the hell is this good news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet Morpheus just refused to pay some obscene licensing fee to KaZaa. Because their upper-execs thought, "Hmm.. we have a name now, if we pay some OS programmer a couple pizza's we can OWN a gnutella client as opposed to BEING owned by kazaa. And Gnutella is as good as KaZaa is! (wink wink wink)"

      It's ad-awared grokster for me until they go out of buisiness as well.

      ==

      Gnutella IS horrible. OS advocates deny and deny but its an obvious truth..

      Before Limewire did the "stuper" node I got tons of hits, though more than half were *always* bad. Now with the stuper-node I get far fewer hits, and more than half are *still always* bad.

      With the _old_ morpheus, lots of hits, and always good.

    5. Re:How the hell is this good news by Adam+Fisk · · Score: 1
      As usual, there's a great deal of misinformation floating around regarding the file sharing world. Saying that Gnutella can't scale is really ridiculous at this point. Gnutella is a protocol, and now really a set of protocols, that is evolving at an extremely rapid rate. It's scalability is continually improving, and the most advanced Gnutella clients are able to do just about everything the FastTrack clients do and more. Where FastTrack wins out now, the openness of the Gnutella standard will likely leave FastTrack behind fairly shortly. The two networks are extremely similar at this point. In short, if Gnutella doesn't scale, niether does FastTrack. This, of course, is to some extent true. No system can ever be fully searchable if it reaches, say, a trillion hosts.

      I assume that by design, you are referring to the underlying architecture of these systems? AudioGalaxy is basically Napster. It's a centralized system that avoids lawsuits by occasionally filtering their songs when things are looking ominous and with some people at its head that have connections with the record industry.

      As far as security goes, it is true that the Gnutella protocol does not include encryption, whereas FastTrack encrypts many of its packets. Just running netstat will show you everyone's IP on either network.

      I strongly encourage everyone to support Gnutella as an open standard. As Lawrence Lessig has eloquently argued in "The Future of Ideas," open standards are vital to encouraging innovation and for creating resources that can be enjoyed by all, not the few.

      Thanks.

      Adam Fisk LimeWire LLC

      --

      Adam Fisk

    6. Re:How the hell is this good news by lysurgon · · Score: 2

      Well, the flaimbait tag is there, and I don't want to start anything. But I have to respond to a little of the FUD...

      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.

    7. Re:How the hell is this good news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Anyone can see your IP"

      Are you stupid? Anyone can do exactly that with every other protocol I can think of. That includes Freenet, though it's a bit more difficult -- you need to be running a significant number of nodes to gain enough logged information.

      Just because the client doesn't neatly print it on the screen doesn't mean you can't be tracked down for violating copyright.

      The only reason so many people dislike Gnutella is because they read some (correct at the time) rather old research papers on its scalability. At one point, there were real issues in how well the protocol could scale. That is no longer an issue.

  19. Gnutella? by Evro · · Score: 5, Informative
    I wonder why they don't use the giFT network.
    What is giFT, you ask? giFT is an acronym which stands for the GNU Internet File Transfer project. This project is an initiative to attempt to unify the divided peer-to-peer community following Napster's demise. The basic underlying concept of giFT is that there should be no direct connection between the user interface preferred by the user, and the back-end protocol. This is tackled using a collection of several components together:

    src/
    The giFT daemon acts as a "bridge" between multiple backend file sharing protocols, exposing them to the end developer in an easy to understand XML-like interface protocol. Yes, I know what you're thinking "hey, that sounds a lot like Jabber!". Well, you're partly correct. Jabber worked by setting up a finite number of translation servers on the Internet, requiring the user to authenticate with one extra remote server in order to take advantage of this technology. We feel that the task would be better handled by a local daemon that acts transparently to the user, feeding the benefits solely to the developer. The giFT team believes that the best way to improve the state of file sharing on the Internet is to allow developers to take on the complex (and unique) tasks specific to their project, rather than re-inventing the wheel that each interface and network must have.

    OpenFT/
    OpenFT is a p2p network designed to exploit all the functionality giFT supports. Loosely based on FastTrack's design, OpenFT aims to become the new pseudo standard in file trading on the Internet, but we'll settle for Total World Domination.
    --
    rooooar
    1. Re:Gnutella? by Evro · · Score: 1

      Well that may be so, but if it's similar to their current protocol, I would think it makes more sense, from a capitalistic point of view, for them to use a FastTrack-like protocol than to rewrite their application to use Gnutella.

      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.

      --
      rooooar
    2. Re:Gnutella? by suwain_2 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I was looking at gift a while ago... I went into IRC to ask for some help with getting it working, only to be told by one of the developers that gift no longer works.

      So, the short answer to your question is that it's because gift doesn't work anymore. :(

      --
      ________________________________________________
      suwain_2 :: quality slashdot p
    3. Re:Gnutella? by cduffy · · Score: 4, Informative

      giFT no longer accesses the FastTrack network. It currently accesses the OpenFT network just fine.

    4. Re:Gnutella? by Robotech_Master · · Score: 3

      Yes, and after FastTrack's little stunt with Morpheus causes the Federal Government to look at it and go, "Uhm, yeah, right, you don't have any control over your network. That's real good, tell us another one" and pull a Napster on it, giFT will be what we have left. And it'll still be better than Gnutella, because despite Limewire's patching and fixing, the network just doesn't scale that well.

      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.

      --
      Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
    5. Re:Gnutella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The troll.

    6. Re:Gnutella? by RovingSlug · · Score: 1
      I wonder why they don't use the giFT network.

      You know the answer. The only thing Morpheus "value added" to the standard fast track client was their revenue model of displaying advertisements. The main reason for using it, of course, was the "value not-added": spyware. The rest of the client was apparently untouched.

      There's no evidence that they were/are adept enough with their old code base (if they ever even had the full code) to be able to deal with or even wrap in a trivially different protocol. If they were trying to do more than wrap advertisements around a prepackaged client, they'd recognize they had a superior protocol in FastTrack and try to stick with something very similar.

      Furthermore, I don't see any reason for their treatment of Gnucleus to be any different :/.

    7. Re:Gnutella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, giFT is a good program...it's just that the gnutellaNet is much, much larger. Be kinda cool to support both

    8. Re:Gnutella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy shit, I'm using giFT now, and it's *great*! There are a small number of users, but they're all sharing tons of files. Crash resume works just fine... It just seems so much more hoopy than gnutella, despite the totally beta quality of the client. I think I'm in love.

    9. Re:Gnutella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yeah, *sooner* or later.

      Guess what? Most people use Windows and Mac, and while I am a techno-savvy fellow, I have no desire to download a source package and compile it at 11:07AM on a Saturday morning.

      This whole business of "The binaries are out of date... Use CVS!" is utter bunk.

      You instantly destroy your userbase by denying access to anyone who doesn't use their machine for development (which is admittedly a small segment of the *NUX world). This is a HUGE segment of the Windows world.

      You want to supplant the big boys? Offer some real competition.

    10. Re:Gnutella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, if I were you, I would look again!

      Currently downloading at 45 kb/s with giFT-fe...

      My 2 cents.

    11. Re:Gnutella? by qwkbrnfox · · Score: 2, Informative

      I was following the development of giFT for a long time. There was a change of leadership recently, and quite a bit of turmoil. The new leaders are a little, er, touchy (check the sourceforge messages - some of them are pretty funny) However, there is now a totally usable (if not feature-rich) front end for giFT.I'm still using gnutella because of the bigger base, but I'm going to make a point of leaving a giFT daemon running. Give it a try - it looks like a good protocol, and it's dead easy to install (use the CVS, follow the instructions) and let run in the background.

    12. Re:Gnutella? by Robotech_Master · · Score: 2

      Well, it is still under development. They're still working the bugs out and adding in necessary features. I know I don't do any development on my machine, but I was able to install it by CVS following their instructions just fine.

      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.)

      --
      Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
    13. Re:Gnutella? by ncc74656 · · Score: 3
      You know the answer. The only thing Morpheus "value added" to the standard fast track client was their revenue model of displaying advertisements. The main reason for using it, of course, was the "value not-added": spyware. The rest of the client was apparently untouched.

      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 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.

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
    14. Re:Gnutella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OpenFT isn't quite ready for big time. I would bet OpenFT would also run into the same issues getting on the FT network.

      Given the time constraint (like they needed it last Tuesday), they had to pick something that works.

      I think Music City is the designated fall guy. On the other hand, they can still claim they have no knowledge how their client works if they use the right spin.

    15. Re:Gnutella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      giFT is alpha quality at best. Promising, but the lack of upload/download controls irritated me. Some guy kept attempting to upload 45 songs across my poor 56k connection all at once. I found the only quick solution to keep him from doing so was to stop the giFT daemon altogether.

    16. Re:Gnutella? by Greg+W. · · Score: 1

      Some guy kept attempting to upload 45 songs across my poor 56k connection all at once. I found the only quick solution to keep him from doing so was to stop the giFT daemon altogether.

      You could have used ipchains, iptables, packet filter or whatever your operating system uses for firewall controls to block his IP address.

  20. Great news for decentralized file-sharing by cafelatte · · Score: 1

    I'm a gnu/linux user that used to use windows. One thing I missed very much from windows was the ability to run Morpheus. I had to use my brothers windows pc to use Morpheus if what I wanted wasn't available to gnutella.
    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!

  21. a funny quote by C_nemo · · 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...

    1. Re:a funny quote by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where's all the free beer?

      In mah belleh!

  22. Doubting Thomases by bluninja · · Score: 2

    Stop being a bunch of doubting Thomases. Gnutella works. Those who don't contribute, doubt. Ritter's been discounted numerously, so don't bother bootstrapping from that.

    Gene

  23. Actually an agent based search feature would help by HanzoSan · · Score: 1, Troll

    Being able to type in an album and having the search find all the songs, download it automatically, organize them into folders and create a playlist.

    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

    --
    If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
  24. FastTrack looked nice... by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 1

    ...but I was never able to actually try it: it wouldn't work through my firewall, and I couldn't ever find any doc on just what holes to open up.

    --
    Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
    1. Re:FastTrack looked nice... by ncc74656 · · Score: 2
      ...but I was never able to actually try it: it wouldn't work through my firewall, and I couldn't ever find any doc on just what holes to open up.

      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.

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
    2. Re:FastTrack looked nice... by Jay+Maynard · · Score: 1

      That's what I was looking for...but I couldn't find the port number anywhere in the doc or the setup dialogs.

      --
      Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
    3. Re:FastTrack looked nice... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then use "lsof" for Windows and figure out what TCP port it's using.

  25. Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by miguelitof · · Score: 1

    I like gnutella, but the problem with gnutella is the relative lack of people actually using it. Compare the, what, 5,000? 7,000? hosts normally connected to gnutella to the 600,000 hosts normally connected to Morpheus/Kazaa/??. The much-lower number of users means a much lower number of files available.

    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!

    --
    --- Biffster.org
    "Bite my shiny metal ass."
    1. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by jilles · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's doing fine so far.

      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).

      --

      Jilles
    2. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My gnutella client responds to every query with Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits encoded @ 256 bit.

    3. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by ahfoo · · Score: 1

      You lucky bastard!

    4. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by BillTheKatt · · Score: 1

      IMHO searching the meta information is really critical, it's one of the reasons I loved Morpheus.
      Most people out there haven't learned how to use long file names, let along long file names that make sense. Trying to figure out which eposide you're downloading when the file is named "bundy.mpg" is a pain.
      The meta information is great, and really expands the number of results you get. Does anyone know of Gnutella clients that support meta info?

    5. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LimeWire has support for meta-information. Version 2.2.x and up allow you to mouse over a search result and any meta-info will be displayed. Also, you can customize what meta-info you want to see when results are returned (try right-clicking on the search columns).
      The 'Browse Host' feature is coming out soon.

    6. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by spinwards · · Score: 1

      I can feel the size difference in the network. I am getting 2-3 times the number of hits on a search for "Bad Religion" (great punk band, but not too popular out of its genre).

      i also got a few thousand hits for sublime in under 10 secconds. a week ago i only got around 500 in about 10 minutes.

    7. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
      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.

      Here's a direct link to the graph.

      What's amazing is since you posted about 12 hours ago, the network has increased to about 280,000 clients. And climbing -- I refreshed after 5 minutes and the green bar was a couple pixels higher.

      This didn't kill file sharing. And Neitzche was right -- what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

      Take away all the proprietary networks, please, RIAA. Throw us into that brier patch, br'er bear.

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    8. Re:Excellent, if the gnutella network can scale... by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
      What's amazing is since you posted about 12 hours ago, the network has increased to about 280,000 clients.

      I posted that two days ago, and the graph is now 500,000 clients!

      Interesting "bait and switch" tactic. On whose part -- Morpheus' or Sharmans'?

      obConspiracy: the Morpheus creators fully intended to release their code into the Gnutella framework one day. Just think of the mind of someone who would want to code a P2P application.

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  26. My Impressions by Master+Of+Ninja · · Score: 4, Informative

    I got the new Morpehus client and it does seem to be a less "polished" client (proabably as it is a knocked off version of Gnutella shipped out in a hurry). The system seems quite good (as I have not used Gnutella much) but I think it will take a few days for traffic to pick up to its usual levels. The UI needs to be changed a wee bit as it is slightly confusing. I'm sure multi-source downloads are in (although you can't tell what each source is doing like before) but I'm not sure if their supernode feature is still there. They need the quick filter system in where you can select what media to search for (e.g. music, video, documents).

    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.

  27. Split by BelDion · · Score: 1

    While I don`t know much about the Gnutella network, I`m certain of one thing; this will cause a content split. Ok, it won`t be the great cataclysm, but it`s sure to make things a bit harder to find.

    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 ;)

    --

    I am BelDion's .Sig; Who the hell is Jack?
    1. Re:Split by miguelitof · · Score: 1
      Spyware aside (you can disable all the Kazaa junk with a few dll wipes & registry play), I actually could not do this with the latest version of KaZaa. AdAware found the spyware DLL and registry settings, and nicely deleted them for me. But then, when I tried to start KaZaa, I received an error, "A required component of KaZaa has been removed. KaZaa will now exit so you can re-run KaZaa setup and fix this problem." OOPS!

      Sounds to me like KaZaa is now setting up their client so it won't run if you don't run the spyware version.

      I d/led and installed this on 2/27/02, btw.

      --
      --- Biffster.org
      "Bite my shiny metal ass."
    2. Re:Split by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      You need to install a spyware condom after you wipe out the spyware with AdAware.

      You can download it here: http://www.cexx.org/dummies.htm

      Once you have done that, your software will run fine without ads.

    3. Re:Split by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what giFT is supposed to address (if I understand correctly). Each of these networks can be accessed via a plug-in that deals with the individual protocols.

      Unfortunately you really need to know what you are doing to use giFT etc as the GUI of these program aren't quite at the same level as FT. This basically mean Kazaa would be the winner of this split for now. Last checked there are 1,020,933 users online in FT sharing 1623K files 26,870G worth of data.

      Based on what I have seen just now running the new Morpheus, I'll have to use Kazaa for now until something better comes along.

  28. Napster: thanks a BUNCH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Napster, thanks a bunch. Its because of you, that we are now losing our freedoms and civil liberties to laws such as the upcoming SSSCA.
    Selling a restrictive law such as the SSSCA to the politicians and senators, would normally be a tough task. The entertainment industry needs a reason; they need to show that without it, piracy will destroy their revenue and business. Napster has provided them with this reason.
    The fact that Napster may have increased record sales is irrelevant in this case (the law does NOT take this into account). The shear volume of traffic attributed to Napster during its operation provided the RIAA with all the evidence it could want in support its case.
    I am personally not sorry when I hear of P2P networks sufferring setbacks, although they do have legal uses. If all the P2P networks were taken down, the image of the internet (in the eyes of politicians and policy makers) could be redeemed, and we would have a chance of stopping these laws. I fear it is already too late.

    1. Re:Napster: thanks a BUNCH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      um... why, oh WHY does the word "convoluted" come to mind when reading your post?

      is that a bag full of Testor's you have in your hand?

      thanks ever so much.

  29. They've been planning this for a while now... by starvingartist12 · · Score: 1

    According to their previous press release back in December, they were planning to merge the FastTrack and Gnutella network somehow in their 2.0 release.

    1. Re:They've been planning this for a while now... by Anonynnous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Wasn't that after the legal troubles with Fastrack started? This looks more like a replacement than a merger, though I admit that was probably the plan all along.

  30. Morpheus on Linux now? by DrunkenPenguin · · Score: 0

    So, does this actually mean that we can now use Morpheus on Linux?

  31. Maybe an alternative by HanzoSan · · 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.

    --
    If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
    1. Re:Maybe an alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In the end though, you always can only connect to people who hate real live musicians (they as a hobby enjoy undermining the musician's employers) and who all pass around the same recordings of music (which is NOT music- music is made with musical instruments, not playback hardware or software).

    2. Re:Maybe an alternative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about not stealing intellectual property and just go buy it in the store like the rest of the law-abiding citizens do you cheap fucking facist slashfucks?

    3. Re:Maybe an alternative by HanzoSan · · Score: 1

      stealing what?

      To the coward who posted anonnymously.

      I never said what content is on the network,

      As far as stealing intellectual property, i dont believe thoughts have owners, what i dont believe in, i dont follow.

      Law has nothing to do with right and wrong..;

      Facism? the RIAA is fascism, freedom = open source, file sharing, peer to peer.

      IF you want facism, go to jail for listening to something without permission.
      Dont even have the right to listen to what you want, or share files which you own, yes YOU own it because its on your computer, you purchased the CD so you have the right to do anything you want with it as long as you dont use it to profit.

      profiting off of music someone else made is stealing money from the person who made it
      sharing music with people who wouldnt buy the CD if they never heard it, is not costing anyone any money.

      --
      If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
  32. What's the real story here? by Tom7 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't think that Morpheus is telling the whole story.

    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?

    1. Re:What's the real story here? by ckedge · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > I don't think that Morpheus is telling the whole story.

      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?

    2. Re:What's the real story here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      There could indeed be more to this story than meets the eye. Check out this interesting post to get an idea of some of the mysterious goings on that are allegedly behind the Morpheus switch.

    3. Re:What's the real story here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually I have been able to log in... all I had to do was make a new account(it updates the registry correcting what ever had been wrong)

      or at least it worked for me I'm still using Morpheus for the time being anyway

    4. Re:What's the real story here? by doofsmack · · Score: 1
      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.)
      Well, you could move those files over to the download directory of another official FastTrack client. It has worked for me (a couple of months ago) anyway.
    5. Re:What's the real story here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      when I got the message that I couldn't connect, I did a google search for "morpheus download mirror" and found this site:

      http://www.morpheus-download-morpheus.com/

      which claims to offer the latest upgrade to morpheus. I downloaded it, and the readme said I needed to pay $14.95 to unlock that latest upgrade.

      I didn't do it, but I wonder how many did??

    6. Re:What's the real story here? by rbeattie · · 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

      --
      Me
    7. Re:What's the real story here? by macsox · · Score: 1

      actually, the word is 'chagrined'.

    8. Re:What's the real story here? by los+furtive · · Score: 2

      Yep, I just installed Kazaa right over my Morpheus and all the files kept downloading like the should. Of course now I have to root out all the spyware, grumble grumble.

      --

      I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.

    9. Re:What's the real story here? by pimpinmonk · · Score: 1
      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.)

      You can install Grokster or KaZaA, remove the spyware, as some previous posts have links to websites that tell you how to do that. Then point KaZaA/Grokster's shared folder to your old morpheus one, and it will pick the unfinished downloads right up.

      After all my unfinished downloads complete, though, I'm ditching fastrack in lieu of some open source projects... every user counts in making those projects better, ya know...

    10. Re:What's the real story here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually Kazaa seems to recognize the partial downloaded files if you copy them into the shared directory. I have 2 files resumed this way.

      The only catch is that they won't be renamed after it is done. DO NOT clear download as until after you manually renamed the file, otherwise kazaa would remove these files. I lost my first file this way.

      If you have muiple files, use the file size to figure which is which. Anyone else have a better way of doing this ?

    11. Re:What's the real story here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > But now I've got 2-3 GB of partially downloaded files that are useless.

      Not true. Grokster will download the rest for you if you change the names of the partial downloads to fit the grokster scheme. then fire up grokster and they should be in the "Traffic" section. right-click on them and select "search for more sources."

      (do a download using grokster first to learn how it names it's partial downloads.)

      worked for me!!

  33. The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by Spazntwich · · Score: 1

    I've been message board hopping, and to tell you the truth, I'm not sure the Gnutella network needs to worry about a usage spike.

    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.

    1. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by Martin+Blank · · Score: 1

      What was the name of the third service that was using the Kazaa network? Is it still around and if so, is it packed with spyware like Kazaa is?

      --
      You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
    2. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the hell is a spyware ?

    3. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by Tadrith · · Score: 2, Informative

      I agree completely. I've attempted to use Gnutella before, with many other clients, and all I've ever met with was frustration with the network. I mean, really, my average download speed was about 3K/sec. Looks like I'll have to figure out a way to use KaZaa without them spying on me.

    4. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      > the Gnutella network appears to just be an all
      > 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.

    5. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by kraf · · Score: 2, Informative
      > What the hell is a spyware ?

      Try this page

    6. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by AsylumWraith · · Score: 1
    7. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by arafel · · Score: 1

      The problem is that when you're used to a client which functions far better than the Gnutella network allows - downloading from multiple sources, searching for artists, albums, etc, browsing user files - then trying to use Gnutella is just painful. And that's even before you get to the Gnutella-over-modem problem.

      Speaking for myself, I did try the new Morpheus client. I then ditched it, because it's basically lost all the good features I wanted from Morpheus instead of just using a basic Gnut client, and I now use Kazaa instead. Somewhat less people on there at present, but even then it's far preferable to the alternative IMO.

      (Haven't tried Grokster yet.)

    8. Re:The Morpheus users DON'T like this at all! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You get 3K/sec? Consider yourself lucky. All I get is "Remotely Queued". Well, that's not entirely true. I occasionally get a 800bps transfer.

      Is it just me, or is every Gnutella user using a 2400baud modem?

  34. Gnutella is non-proprietary by tunabomber · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The benifits to using gnutella vs fasttrack are what?
    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".

    --

    pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory71 ...
    1. Re:Gnutella is non-proprietary by kz45 · · Score: 1

      Gnutella is non-proprietary. That's it.

      This doesn't make it better (for p2p) it actually makes it worse. Here is why:

      When a client is proprietary, there aren't usually 20 different clients mucking up the network (IE: sending wrong requests, not searching properly).

    2. Re:Gnutella is non-proprietary by damiam · · Score: 1
      Gnutella is non-proprietary. That's it.

      So is FastTrack.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    3. Re:Gnutella is non-proprietary by kisielk · · Score: 1

      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".

      Too bad that according to this page Clip2 reflector seems to have mysteriously disappeared.

  35. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashdot has confirmed: Morpheus is dying.

  36. GPL Violation? by Majix · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just tried the new version... Morpheus Preview Edition is basically an old version of the GPL'ed program Gnucleus. When you install it even displays the GPL as the click-through license.

    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.

    1. Re:GPL Violation? by ari_j · · Score: 1

      Granted that the source needs to be disclosed; but Morpheus has no obligation under the GPL to tell the Gnucleus developers about what they're doing.

    2. Re:GPL Violation? by cemcnulty · · Score: 1

      It does provide the following in a file called legal.txt (in the install directory):

      You may receive a machine readable copy of the source code for this software
      from http://www.musiccity.com/ .
      This offer is valid for three years after the date on which you downloaded
      the binary version of this software.
      --

      Can someone please explain this to me? To me "machine readable copy of the source code" is another word for binary. If this is what they're trying to say, this is the most pathetic excuse to get out of the GPL that I've ever heard of. Does the GPL have a three year clause built in to it? And doesn't the source have to be included with the dist. not just made available?

      Either way, this is a win for GPL and open-source software, thanks to the software put out by Gnucleus (which still crashes my Win 2K box, as does the new Morpheus)

      -Charles

    3. Re:GPL Violation? by manly_15 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The source code is avalible here If you can't follow the link, go to musiccity.com and click on 'source code' in the bottom left frame.

    4. Re:GPL Violation? by elefantstn · · Score: 2

      Given that in the message they contrast "machine-readable" with "binary version," I think that "machine-readable" means the source code. I agree that machine-readable sounds like the non-source version, but I think this is just poor wording, not a GPL violation.

      --
      If it ain't broke, you need more software.
    5. Re:GPL Violation? by Scooby+Snacks · · Score: 1
      Can someone please explain this to me? To me "machine readable copy of the source code" is another word for binary. If this is what they're trying to say, this is the most pathetic excuse to get out of the GPL that I've ever heard of. Does the GPL have a three year clause built in to it? And doesn't the source have to be included with the dist. not just made available?

      You could always check the authoritative document itself:

      3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
      • a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
      • b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
      • c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

      Just so there's no misunderstandings, "machine-readable source code" means, for all intents and purposes, "an electronic copy of the source code". Would you prefer to have a nice tarball, or a version printed on paper? Also, "medium customarily used for software interchange" is to prevent things like offering the source code on an eighty-foot-high stack of punch cards or reel-to-reel tape (since those media are no longer "customarily" utilized for exchanging software). I presume they left the source out of the main package in order to make a smaller download. The GPL is okay with this.

      Might I suggest that you take a few minutes to read the GPL? I don't mean this as flamebait, but it's painfully obvious you haven't.

      --

      --
      Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
    6. Re:GPL Violation? by greenrd · · Score: 1
      To me "machine readable copy of the source code" is another word for binary.

      No, it doesn't. It's old-fashioned language from the GPL itself, meaning a computer file, as opposed to say a printout which is not so easy for a computer to read (OK, there's OCR software, but that's not the point).

      I think they are just plain lying.

  37. Sharman Networks by drwiii · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Based on the tone of what I've read from both sides, this seems to be more of a corporate fall-out between MusicCity/Morpheus and Sharman/Kazaa than anything else.

    MusicCity used Sharman's network and was recently locked out for some reason. One has to wonder why.

    1. Re:Sharman Networks by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
      MusicCity used Sharman's network and was recently locked out for some reason. One has to wonder why.

      MusicCity should send someone to Australia to squeeze them.

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  38. Some experiences with the "new" Morpheus Preview by isdnip · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Like most others here, I'm very curious about what really happened to Streamcast's Morpheus network. But in practical terms, I settled for trying for the new "Preview Edition". The Musiccity web site last night said that it would be available "in two hours" and indeed after that page was unchanged for more than two hours, the new edition was on Download.com. I had been thinking about rebooting into Linux but this gave me another reason to stay in Windows. That and my kids' wanting to play more Jimmy Neutron this morning.... The new client is really Gnucleus -- if you mouse over the "M" logo in the Tray, that's what it shows. The client is much more primitive than the old FastTrack one. It doesn't include an integral player, so you can't listen to files as they upload, unless maybe you have WinAmp or something running. It gives no clue about who the other end of a file is, so you can't choose one that's more likely to work, and it doesn't report the MP3 bit rate or ID3 info that you can usually see inside the FastTrack client. The failure rate is high -- most attempts to download just quit after ten seconds, though some wait and Retry and a few actually work. FastTrack was much more reliable in that regard. It also keeps popping up Internet Exploder windows. That's really annoying; I rarely use IE (only for "IE only" sites). It's mostly ads, I'm sure, but the current popups don't even work, causing another annoying distraction. Being Gnutella based, it probably has scaling problems. I'm on a broadband link, which helps, but I know about the basic math problem with Gnutella's original architecture and I don't know what has been done to fix it, in Gnucleus, Limewire or whatever. Again, FastTrack worked really well, and I hope they can merge its best concepts with Gnutella. I realize they had to get this out in a hurry. It's only a "Preview" so it shouldn't be viewed as a finished product. But it does weaken the competitive position of Morpheus.

  39. The Usual Suspects by Alien54 · · Score: 2
    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.

    Off had I would suspect chaos agents of the music industry, 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, and wonder if someone got an inside edge to fasttrack someplace.

    cloak and dagger operations indeed.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  40. I know that Kazaa is not performing as well by sam_handelman · · Score: 4, Informative

    I believe that Morpheus is telling the truth, since my personal experiences back them up. I will ramble now:

    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.

    --
    The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
    1. Re:I know that Kazaa is not performing as well by uebernewby · · Score: 3, Informative

      Might be something to your conspiracy theory - if you go to the kazaa website, they're specifically urging morpheus users to switch over.

      --

      News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
  41. Morpheus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From http://www.musiccity.com/home.htm :

    >These attacks have forced us to more quickly
    > deploy our new software product in order to
    > allow you to bring the largest p2p community >back together. 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. We
    >believe it to have the ability to access your >computer at will and change registry settings.
    >In addition, we remain committed to NOT >bundling
    >any spy ware with our product.

    A few days ago the start page stated that there was no security flaw in Morpheus.. If the "closed proprietary FastTrack-Kazaa software" is so closed, then how could they make such an assurance? And how can they keep making assurances that the software contains no spy-ware?

    >We are pleased to migrate to an open Protocol
    >product with the release of Morpheus Preview
    >Edition, which is based on the very large >network of Gnutella users.

    So, now it was discovered how miserable their
    security is and they decided to switch to
    Gnutella.

    First of all Gnutella has serious flaws. It just doesn't work very well, even with broadband. It has inherent problems with scalability, which is bound to get worse when a few million Morpheus users suddenly make the switch. It is also more vulnerable to tampering with the files, which we know is an option that was considered by the recording industry.

    Also, even if Gnutella worked flawlessly, what would be anyones motivation to use a more bloated, ad-infested client, from a company whose preceding product had seriously flawed security, and kept their users in the dark about it, with so many other Gnutella clients around?

    >Our Catalog City shopping allows you to purchase
    > virtually anything online. To learn more about >how to use and enjoy the new features of >Morpheus

    So, they will take the oportunity to infest the program with more ads and links, and make a few more dollars for them. How very convenient.

  42. Source Code Released by slardy · · Score: 1

    If you download Morpheus v3.3.3.1 (the new version) then you might notice that it now runs off the GPL license! Morpheus is now opensource! The doc legal.txt says that the source code is available from their site but there is no link up there yet, the only way to obtain the source code so far is to follow the little link that says sourcecode in the mainpage of morpheus when it boots up.

    --
    http://www.nu-vision.org
  43. Morpheus still works for me by SirNarfsALot · · Score: 1

    As I write this, I am connected using Morpheus v1.3.3 and am downloading a file from another MusicCity member. Anyone know why this is? I had no internet access for about the last week so I missed all this Morpheus madness, and now that I am back (albeit on dial-up) it seems slower (naturally) but otherwise it's all right. Even so, I'm downloading Gnucleus.

    1. Re:Morpheus still works for me by mozkill · · Score: 1

      for me, it seemed that the first few days after the Morpheus news hit slashdot, i could still get on Morpheus, but it just took longer to login to the network, like 2-10 minutes sometimes. about 2 days ago it completely stopped working for me.

      --

      -- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
  44. ALERT: Gnutella isn't indestructable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Until people start mixing up the port numbers a bit, then main isps can just block port 6443 or whatever it is. Every client should be randomly assigning port numbers(but sticking with them unless a situation occurs).

    Also I think gnutella uses a hosting system instead of a pure phonebook/lookup system. So its vulnerable there too.

  45. we left gnutella because it's bad, that's the poin by bigern · · Score: 1

    What no one seems to mention yet is that the new searching is bad. I left Bearshare and gnutella because I couldn't do searches on a specific type without having to manually filter them each time. As well, the fasttrack clients give a lot more information, per-user searching (for searching the high-bw users), it appears better shotgunning and restarting, etc. Everyone switched to morpheus for one reason - they hated gnutella! How is THAT going to change with this move? Someone should just make an installer to install a spyware-free version of grokster so that the masses can use it freely, then we'll see how many people flip. As well, dealing with all MC's outright lies about security - first there wasn't a prblem, now there is - and their ripoffs of clients in general makes me wonder about throwing support behind them.

  46. Morpheus v1.75 by Ark42 · · Score: 0

    On the upside, my morphing program's website has seen a 20x-increase in unique visitors within the last week!.


    www.morpheussoftware.net

  47. Re: The real story here by sam_handelman · · Score: 4, Redundant

    Moderate that post up!

    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 :). All credit due to the guy I'm responding to.

    Excellent journalism here.

    --
    The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
  48. No Spyware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would seem to me that a program such as morpheus that allows a third party to change my registry settings is very similar to spyware.

  49. Now I rember... by speedfreak_5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    from news.zdnet.co.uk, October 2001: "A copy of the legislation proposed by the RIAA last week would appear to have given the group broad latitude to attack file-swappers' computers without suffering any civil liability. No civil liability would result from "any impairment of the availability of data, a program, a system or information, resulting from measures taken by an owner of copyright," the proposed text read. " Speaking of hacking a computer's registry...

    --
    Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
    1. Re:Now I rember... by Dock · · Score: 1

      I think it's important to note here that this would only apply if the RIAA could prove their actions were related to a copyright inringement. Just because you have a P2P application installed is not indication that you are violating their specfic copyrights, and attacking such a broad group of users would virtuall gauruntee shutting out legitimate users (if such things exist).

      I think it would be much too risky to do on their own. Let's say I installed this software but never once used it in my life, and upon connecting to the network had my system modified without consent. I haven't viloated anyones copyright and they are now in serious legal trouble. I don't think it would take a genius among their group of law firms to put up a warning flag for this type of thing.

      --
      http://about.me/paultenny
    2. Re:Now I rember... by Alsee · · Score: 2

      October 2001: "A copy of the legislation proposed by the RIAA last week would appear to have given the group broad latitude to attack file-swappers' computers without suffering any civil liability.

      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.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  50. Aimster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aimster is still working. I fired it up after the morephus went down. tons and tons of folks on there. the interface isnt the best, but you can find what you're loooking for fast.

  51. Spyware by BeCre8iv · · Score: 1

    MCs denial of any security -however embarrassing denial may not be as synical as it seems. As I understand it, the hole was part of te spyware - not the morpheus client. Spyware by its very nature is the most commece driven and secretive section of the software industry. It is within reason to suggest that FastTrack left musiccity in the dark. I tried Gnuttella when napster died -It was lame on my Shitish Telecom 56k line - but frankly so was napster and morpheus. As networks and software advances, things can only get better - A decentralised GPL client is the only way to go, that was apparant after napster its the only model tha wont crack under legal pressure. PS -I think it was the RIAA

    --
    This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
  52. WinMX anyone.. by hrics · · Score: 1

    I've been using WinMX for a long time and personally prefer it over Morpheus, but it never seems to get mentioned as an alternative. I often am searching for semi-obscure stuff that Morpheus cant find. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, anyone?..

  53. Re:Actually an agent based search feature would he by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Could somebody please mod the parent TROLL down please.

  54. Morpheus by spankymonker · · Score: 1

    One thing that rankles me is MusicCity's absolute failure to give props to Swabby for developing the software they're using. It seems to me that they don't play well with others. On the bright side, the gnutella network has more than doubled in size so far today! (http://www.limewire.com/index.jsp/size) One point that has gone unnoticed in this discussion is that fasttrack had limited file transfers to 128kpbs MP3 files. Because gnutell does not supply metadata, files of greater quality will now be available, (although people should really be migrating to ogg's by now).

  55. well thats just great.. by pherthyl · · Score: 0

    what the hell is up with that?? The reason I use Morpheus is because FastTrack is a better way of doing things than gnutella.. At least for those with limited bandwidth. I can't find anything on gnutella cause searches take forever and a day and all my meager bandwidth is used up by other connections! GET THIS THROUGH YOUR HEADS: GNUTELLA ISNT DESIGNED TO SCALE TO THE SIZE IT IS NOW!

    rage! :)

  56. Kazza sucks too by Seves · · Score: 1

    I downloaded Kazaa during this whole fiasco. It feels the same as Morpheus, but doesn't seem to run as well. Searches take FOREVER and the results were pathetic. All this while it was reporting on average of 200k more users being connected to the network. I launched it 3 times and not once was I happy with it. Morpheus just seemed more polished than the Kazaa client.

    As for everyone crying about the pop up ads, stop crying because I have the solution!

    Simply load up IE, goto TOOLS -> INTERNET OPTIONS -> SECURITY -> RESTRICTED SITES and add http://ads.musiccity.com as a restricted site. You will no longer see ads or get pop ups in Morpheus.

    I'm not sure if I want to try the latest incarnation of Morpheus, it doesn't sound very appealing. I guess it's time to uninstall Morpheus and Kazaa and give WinMX or Audio Galaxy another shot :(

    --
    /. .\
  57. MusicCity's explanation is BS by Jhan · · Score: 1

    If this page is at all correct, MusicCity are lying through their teeth.

    Apparently the FastTrack protocol was upgraded a little more than two weeks ago. A grace period of two weeks was given, to allow users to upgrade their clients. Remember what the Morpheus requester said? "Your program is to old to connect the network."

    Grokster, the third (and smallest) FastTrack licensee upgraded their client, Morpheus for some unimaginable reason did not.

    Apparently this is a question of politics... Kazaa/FastTrack and Morpheus have had some sort of falling out. Morpheus have long been working on their 2.0 version. Gnucleus say that they have felt for some time that Morpheus is moving toward gnutella.

    <speculation>
    For some reason, Morpheus became pissed of with Kazaa, and to decided to devote a few man-years to constructing a new client + protocol upgrades which would let them move to the gnutella network without the users even noticing. Kazaa pulled a fast one and changed the protocol, without notifying (perhaps even keeping the docs from) Morpheus, and here we are...
    </speculation>

    For those of you who are interested in where those juicy 3.500.000 users are going, I have followed the IRC at MusicCity. At first, everyone was in a state of complete panic. Seriously, some of the reactions were quite unbelievable... My life is over! My life is over!!! or how about this one The FBI are at my door!!! Delete your files!!! Delete you files ***NOW***!!!!! :-) Then, about half defected to Kazaa/Grokster, while the other half waited for the new version.

    The new version arived, 1.500.000 persons installed it. Unfortunately, 95%+ thinked it utterly sucked and most of them are currently seeking desperately for a new system.

    Note: numbers are based on dl stats at download.com. Currently 1,998,910 downloads of Kazaa this week, and 1,394,331 for the new Morpheus.

    --

    I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.

    1. Re:MusicCity's explanation is BS by hkmwbz · · Score: 1
      > If this page [infoanarchy.org] is at all correct,
      > MusicCity are lying through their teeth.

      Excuse me, but that article doesn't say anything about MusicCity lying. It just says that Morpheus users were blocked from the FastTrack network. Nothing about why.

      Well, the following article might be of interest:

      "Morpheus is not the probem; KaZaA is the problem" (thanks to whoever posted the URL first)

      It looks like there is a bit of confusion about who is to blame here, but considering this article, I am starting to lean over towards those who blame Kazaa for the whole thing:

      "Zeropaid Rumor: Morpheus is Under Attack":
      "Sharman Networks, located in Australia, purchased Kazaa/FastTrack in January of 2002. Who is Sharman and why would they buy a company that is under major legal scrutiny?
      Sharmannetworks.com is registered by a guy named Phil Morle (he is out of Australia). The domain was registered about 1 month ago. He has his own website morle.com.. Within that website he proudly links to an article in a Sydney newspaper.. creations.morle.com He is interviewed and listed as a Senior web developer for Brilliant Digital Entertainment."

      BDE is actually an ad company, and they apparently own Kazaa/FastTrack?

      I have yet to see anyone argue that MusicCity is at fault here, and actually have any evidence of it being so - be it hard facts or speculation based on other facts.

      It looks more like BDE (Kazaa/FastTrack) is trying to make more users use their software so they can cash in on the ads. Just look at kazaa.com:

      "morpheus users
      come on over to our place...
      you'll feel quite at home."

      This is a very strange thing to do. It almost looks like Kazaa planned all this and tried to ruin MusicCity, in order to get more users over to Kazaa.

      I am usually one to laugh at conspiracy theories, but if you look at all the facts, a picture starts emerging: Look at how Kazaa does business. Look at how they infest your PC with spyware and install things like the "BDE player" without your consent. Look at how Kazaa is in reality owned by a company which sells ads. Look at how they smugly try to make users drop Morpheus to use Kazaa instead.

      The situation is chaotic, but to me, it looks like Kazaa have tried to pull several filthy tricks, and I don't think they should get away with it.

      --
      Clever signature text goes here.
  58. MusicCity's better change its FUD, then by EschewObfuscation · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From the technology section of the FAQ:

    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...

    --

    (email addr is at acm, not mca)
    We are Number One. All others are Number Two, or lower.
    --The Sphinx
    1. Re:MusicCity's better change its FUD, then by Magila · · Score: 2

      Ironicaly enough, Gnutella's search model does suck. If we've leaned anything about P2P it's that bandwidth is golden, yet gnutella wastes ungodly amounts of bandwidth routing searches. The fact that the amount of bandwidth used at every servlet for searches is directly proportional to the total servlets on the network means gnutella scales teribly.

      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.

  59. KaZaA is the one. Morpheus is dead. by jpzr · · Score: 1

    In 3rd part of the movie "Matrix" hero named "Morpheus" will die. But p2p software Morpheus died TODAY. I have installed new Morpheus and it SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKS!!! Then I installed KaZaA, uninstalled Morpheus, and everything works TOTALLY PERFECTLY, I have managed to download already that what I wanted!!! And search results I am getting from KaZaA are very very similar to this what Morpheus used to be. Shortly speaking: company from MusicCity.com commited suicide!!! I invite you to join KaZaA - I am there online as well as over 1 million other people... jpzr from http://WirelessSoftware.info - the super-portal for wireless software for cell phones and mobile computers.

    1. Re:KaZaA is the one. Morpheus is dead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So. Because Kazaa are using dirty tricks to block Morpheus and force everyone to use their software, MusicCity are committing suicide? I think the following links should be of interest:

      http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/03012 00 2b.php
      http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto /0228200 2c.php

  60. "Spyware aside" by martissimo · · 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)

    Just dismissing the spyware as a minor inconvenience seems wrong to me. I may be biased and a bit of a fanatic (i run ad-aware weekly on my win box at minimum, and after every software install)...

    but i certainly wouldnt consider it a minor inconvenience, how many *typical* kids who fire up Kazaa to grab music even worry about spyware, let alone are competent to use RegEdit to disable it without trashing their easily screwed up OS (ok, ok its allready screwed up when it runs right but thats another story)

    Spyware is one of the huge problems that theese P2P shareware/freeware progs have, and i wish more people would take that into consideration when choosing a client...the sooner theese people realize that the end users of their product dont approove of spyware, the better.

    1. Re:"Spyware aside" by ahfoo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but who cares. That data is all crap. I don't give a fuck who wants to watch me web surf. Jesus, I don't care if the neighbors are watching me fuck my cat! Who fucking cares? It's their problem. The real question is what makes you think anybody is interested in all this garbled data they might be collecting. I seriously doubt it's really of any value. That doesn't mean somebody might not pay for it, but people might pay you to let them fuck your cat. That doesn't prove your cat is a great fuck, it just proves people spend money on stupid shit.
      Spyware --hah! The very concept is only intriguing to people with an overinflated sense of importance. It could also be a reaction to porn --after consuming so many images of other people's intimacy, you begin to desire to be consumed intimately as an image yourself so you can consumate the sexual image relationship from which you are always distanced in reality. Perhaps that's a stretch, but I have a strong suspicion that most real spys like police detectives and FBI, CIA agents are so hung up on their own ego fantasies of being under constant surveilance that they aren't even very good at watching the people they're supposed to be watching because they're constantly off on these fantasy trips about being under surveillance themselves. This is a common theme in detective movies and may, in fact, be reflecting something that takes place in reality.
      Even if someone is planting a backdoor into your machine, the notion that they're planning on reading your personal files is totally a symptom or a gigantic sense of self importance. Who cares what you do? I think most people don't want to face this harsh reality because it's too real, too close to the reality that surrounds us, the reality which includes death itself.
      The vast homogenous herds of people are so concerned that somebody is watching them and let this become the motivation for all sorts of behaviors. I get the impression that it's a rather small minority who are willing to grow up and face the lonely fact that nobody really cares about other people that much.

    2. Re:"Spyware aside" by Von+Rex · · Score: 2

      There's more reasons to avoid spyware than the simple invasion of privacy.

      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).

    3. Re:"Spyware aside" by ahfoo · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's a good point.
      I was off on a rant, but you're right and in fact I noticed the same thing that some other posters mentioned about their settings getting altered to allow maximum shares. It happened to me too, but I simply changed it back to a reasonable level and it stayed that way, so I don't think it's a huge issue.
      But I think you're right that whether or not people are peeking at you, a person should be able to have a feeling of security. Having siad that though, I still think the paranoia thing gets a bit out of hand. You know, offense is not only a good defence, it's also the typical one.
      Not only that, but I know of several shrink wrap apps that take info right out of reg keys and try to send it back to home base. For those guys as long as it's in the EULA, they've got an out and that's been going on for a long time. Knowing that makes me feel that the uproar over this stuff is a both misplaced and uninformed as well as being rooted in an overrated sense of self importance probably antagonized by an unnecessary sense of guilt.

  61. READ THIS NOW by billybob · · Score: 5, Informative

    What's really happening (probably).

    I was one of the people who installed kazaa, and after readnig that, it is getting immediately uninstalled.

    --
    Joseph?
    1. Re:READ THIS NOW by GuNgA-DiN · · Score: 1

      MOD THIS PARENT UP !

      I am going to uninstall KaZaa when I get home tonight. Thanks for the pointer to this article. I had my suspicions, but this really confirms it for me. KaZaa has no intentions of supporting P2P or the file-sharing community. They just want to spy on us and sell the data to others.

    2. Re:READ THIS NOW by Alsee · · Score: 2

      They just want to spy on us and sell the data to others.

      unzip;HALT;strip;HALT;touch;BASH;finger;BASH;mou nt ;HALT;fsck;HELP;HELP;HELP;more;HALT;umount;sleep;Y ACC;YACC;YACC

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  62. Source Code for Morpheus Available by grishnav · · Score: 2, Informative

    The released it, here it is:
    http://start.musiccity.com/source/mpesrc1.zip

    1. Re:Source Code for Morpheus Available by Beatlebum · · Score: 1

      Won't compile. The Resource binaries are missing.

  63. what registry settings? by vitke · · Score: 1

    Morpheus didn't work, so I installed Kazaa. But their new client causes Internet Explorer 6, Windows Explorer (w2k) and Netscape 6.2 on my computer to crash as soon as I press any key (yes, I am sure that Kazaa is responsible for this), and I don't know what does Kazaa have to do with what I type in my browser except if they are spying my keystrokes. Then I installed fresh w2k, the freshest security patches and the old Morpheus (1.3.3), then I connected to the Internet and I could not connect to the Morpheus network, which shows that the story about hacking my registry settings does not hold. It seems that both Morpheus and Kazaa are fooling us from some (economical) reason. If Morpheus brings their users to Gnutella network, that's great. There can be no fooling on open source.

  64. Problems I had with KaZaa by GuNgA-DiN · · Score: 1

    I too used to use Morpheus. But, I kept getting the error that my client was outdated and I needed to download the new one. I did -- but, I still couldn't connect. So, I finally said "fuck it" and installed KaZaa instead.

    As you install KaZaa there is a wizard that asks which components you want to install. I keep hearing about "spyware" built into KaZaa. But, I don't believe it. All the programs that come BUNDLED with KaZaa are spyware (New.Net, Offer Companion, Gator, etc..). But, if you uncheck all the boxes for these programs they won't be installed on your computer! The only time these spyware programs get installed is if you're a lazy bastard who just clicks the "NEXT" and "OK" buttons all the way through the wizard.

    However.... after I installed KaZaa I ran Lavasoft's AdAware (www.lavasoft.de) to search for any remaining spyware. It did detect a software plugin which displayed KaZaa's ads. I used AdAware to remove it. But, then KaZaa stopped working and I had to reinstall it.

    For the most part -- I haven't been as happy with KaZaa. The search takes forever! In one case I was searching for a piece of software. I tried the search once with no results. I waited 2 minutes and tried again. This time I found some results (but, not what I was looking for). I think a majority of people are using KaZaa for MP3s which is fine. But, I always liked the selection of movies, apps, and other things available on Morpheus. It's a shame to see such a good tool go down the shitter.

    Speaking of good tools going down the shitter -- has anyone else notice that "MailExpire" disappeared? It used to be at www.mailexpire.com but they are gone now. It was a cool service run by an Irish company for creating expiring email addresses to avoid spam.

    1. Re:Problems I had with KaZaa by taernim · · Score: 1

      As you install KaZaa there is a wizard that asks which components you want to install. I keep hearing about "spyware" built into KaZaa. But, I don't believe it. All the programs that come BUNDLED with KaZaa are spyware (New.Net, Offer Companion, Gator, etc..). But, if you uncheck all the boxes for these programs they won't be installed on your computer! (snip)

      However.... after I installed KaZaa I ran Lavasoft's AdAware (www.lavasoft.de) to search for any remaining spyware. It did detect a software plugin which displayed KaZaa's ads. I used AdAware to remove it. But, then KaZaa stopped working and I had to reinstall it.


      It seems to me you don't quite understand what the controversy is.

      Yes, there is bundled spyware in KaZaA that you can choose not to install. But it also installs spyware that you don't have any choice about.

      There was a previous comment by someone who posted a link with information about this hidden spyware.

      But rest assured, spyware *is* included in KaZaA -- hence the cause of everyone's anger at their forcing Morpheus off their network.

      --
      "PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
  65. Proprietary Network.. by evilpaul13 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not sure it really bothers me that they were using a proprietary network protocol on Morpheus. Having used both Morpheus and Limewire I found Morpheus was significantly faster.

    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?

  66. Re:The Usual Suspects -RIAA stalking horse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well how about this little gem from CNet-

    StreamCast is scheduled to meet attorneys for the Record Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America in a Los Angeles federal court March 4, less than a week after Morpheus' shutdown.

    The closure of the network is likely to play a role in that case. The record companies and studios have long contended that the companies providing file-swapping services have the ability to control their networks to some degree.

    "We have been saying all along that they control the system, and this proves it," RIAA Senior Vice President Matt Oppenheim said in a statement Wednesday

    http://news.com.com/2100-1023-846944.html

    Bandwidth is golden but timing is everything ;-)

  67. Re:The Usual Suspects -RIAA stalking horse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not to mention-

    StreamCast, Grokster and Kazaa BV are being sued by the big record labels and Hollywood studios over copyright concerns in Los Angeles federal court. A hearing in that case is scheduled for March 4. Sharman Networks, which purchased the Kazaa Media Desktop from Dutch Kazaa BV, has not been sued.

    http://news.com.com/2100-1023-846944.html

  68. pron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now where am I going to get my PRon? Morpheus was the best. Does aimster still exist?

  69. Morpheus is not the probem; KaZaA is the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    posted by jaquer0 on March 01, 2002 @ 06:55pm

    The frustration of many of us who use Morpheus when, beginning Monday night, increasing numbers were unable to log in, has mostly been viewed as a mess-up by MusicCity/StreamCast Networks, the parent website/company of Morpheus. This is not the case.

    To understand what is going on, it is important to realize that there really aren't three different programs (Morpheus, KaZaA, Grokster) but one core program from a Dutch company. To this core, different "skins" and different pointers to ad servers and the home page of the sponsoring group have been added. Largely decorative elements not essential at all to core functionality is what differentiates one from the other.

    The original one was KaZaA, which was based on the technology of FastTrack, a small Dutch software house also known as Consumer Empowerment. FT/CE created KaZaA as its consumer arm. The same small group ran both.

    From the beginning FT/CE wanted to run a way-cooler-than-Napster file sharing service but one that would operate with a suitable legal framework, i.e., licenses. It repeatedly, and unavailingly sought agreements with the music mafia monopolies. As a gesture of good faith, it configured KaZaA to not present MP3 search results of files encoded at more than 128kbs.

    Hit by a lawsuit by something akin to a Dutch equivalent to the RIAA, FastTrack/KaZaA was ordered to shut down file sharing on its network at the end of November; the company explained that it was unable to do so due to the architecture of the network; and was then threatened with $30,000/day fines for every day it refused to do so.

    It was days away from a court hearing/day or reckoning when suddenly, over a weekend in January, the original founders of KaZaA announced they had sold most of its assets to Sharman Networks. The announcement was very short on details. ONE detail however that eventually did come out --it is placed very prominently on the home page of the KaZaA web site-- is that the original developers of the FastTrack technology no longer have anything to do with this project and the new owners now control the further development of the program.

    It is a highly unusual announcement, a monstrously successful technology platform goes out of its way to PROUDLY BOAST that the people that brought you this way cool breakthrough platform no longer have anything to do with it. Why would you BOAST that you have lost the development team of such a smashing success???

    My *suspicion* is that the original team INSISTED it be made clear they are in no way responsible for what THIS new outfit is doing, and Sharman networks is just trying to put a positive "spin" on what is essentially a statement disowning KaZaA.

    It is these new owners, and this new development team, that less than a month after the takeover of KaZaA announce THEY have a significant new upgrade to the program and begin distributing it publicly on Feb. 11.

    Like previous upgrades, this one is spread "virally," i.e., upon coming into contact with an upgraded supernode, a 1.3.3 version of the same "brand" of the program is asked to upgrade to the new version. The upgrade executable is kept on every upgraded user's computer, which makes it fast and easy to replicate a code change.

    There were no incompatibilities between the 1.5 client and the 1.3.3 versions reported for two weeks. The two different versions apparently interoperated well, even though the majority of the base of the network, people using Morpheus, weren't upgrading as there was no upgrade available for the Morpheus-branded product.

    Then the evening of the 25th, out of the blue, Morpheus users started to be locked out of the FastTrack network with the message about their software being too old. Go to the newsgroups and check out the posts. The first ones are Monday evening, and immediately there are "me too" replies. IT WAS A PLANNED, COORDINATED, AND SIMULTANEOUSLY EXECUTED ATTACK.

    It did not his EVERY Morpheus user at once because of the nature of the network, many Morpheus users were connected to the overall network through Morpheus supernodes. Over a couple of days, as fewer and fewer Morpheus supernodes survived, more and more Morpheus users were locked out.

    The existence of two auxiliary upgrade files offered by Grokster is damning evidence that this was a carefully planned purge of the morpheus client. One deletes Morpheus settings from your registry. The other deletes your old list of supernodes, replacing it with a new list. Upgrade instructions for Grokster, which seems to simply be a stalking horse for KaZaA/Sharman, tell users to uninstall the previous versions of the three programs AND run these two files.

    Why? For a long time I had ALL THREE installed. I did not see any issues. But it sure is an effective way of driving any Morpheus clients from the networks.

    Now, the grokster tech support people, who for once have been quite active, insist the fault lies with MusicCity/Morpheus for not going along with the upgrade.

    But MusicCity says it has no such upgrade available for a very good reason: it wasn't told about it, nor was it offered a software upgrade. As a licensee, it takes the fasttrack technology as is, in a black box, so to speak, and merely puts its own wrapper on it. The head of MusicCity says he isn't even sure who controls FastTrack technology now.

    Moreover, MusicCity confirms that the "you must upgrade" diktat isn't coming from them. That being the case, it MUST be coming from KaZaA through their new 1.5 client acting as supernodes. There is simply nowhere else for such a widespread message to originate: either it comes from the MusicCity logon server, or the supernodes.

    I tend to believe the statements by the head of Music City, if for no other reason than KaZaA/Sharman is not talking to the press. They won't answer emails, even from their special email address from press inquiries, even when the email came straight from the domain of one of the world's best-known and most prestigious news organizations. They have no phone or physical address that anyone can figure out. Their own website is nonexistent but the domain registered by some fairly low-level employee of this "brilliant digital" outfit.

    Given everything that's been going on this week, you'd think they would have said SOMETHING. If the purge had been accidental, or if they had a leg to stand on in blaming music city for the situation, they would have said something. Their silence condemns them. In the court of public opinion, on an issue like this, there is no fifth amendment.

    There's no Sharman statement because this wasn't an accidental, or even foreseen but unavoidable result of the advance of the technology. This was planned, premeditated, with malice aforethought.

    I stress that there is no inherent conflict in the two technologies, and if there were, we can assume by now KaZaA would have made it public to explain what is going on. And I do not believe there has been the slightest change in the core technology at all: you do not learn, as a programmer, how a complicated code base like KaZaA works in three weeks, and you CERTAINLY aren't ready to release to MILLIONS of users a change in the way the core of the program works in that short a time, and MORESO without the help of the original programmers.

    The capacity to lock out older clients was, unfortunately, already built into the FastTrack code base. It was used in the fall to do the upgrade to version 1.3, to fix the "security" issue, which, as not many people know, was simply that an independent team had reversed engineered the technology, what FastTrack used to call its "peer to peer stack," and was ready to go public with it. The 1.3 version of the technology was evidently done in a hurry, as it required a couple of 1.3.X revisions to fix bugs, and the truth is the PREVIOUS versions worked better.

    I'm willing to bet what the new development team changed in version 1.5 was the revision number and perhaps a typo or two and the copyright notice. I suspect they turned off the super nodes' capacity to log on clients directly, so that people MUST go through a central server that, it turn, unleashes some ad server on them. At least I suspect so, because I don't see any johndoe@?????, which, it is believed, is how users who bypassed the logon servers were identified. And whatever code already existed in the program to spread upgrades and eventually shut out previous versions was turned on. Those are all the changes.

    So the truth is that Morpheus users were locked out by supernodes running version 1.5 of the client software. They were locked out by decision, not by inherent interoperability problems, unexpected clashes, software bugs or anything else like that.

    That decision came from Sharman Networks, and if ever a corporation deserved the adjective "shadowy" this must be it. Another person here has detailed the results of an investigation into Sharman, and everything seems to point to is being a front for or associated with brilliant digital. And who is brilliant digital? Go to their web site and have a look around.

    Look closely, for example, at the biography of their executive team. Takeover. Buyout. Management buyout. Sale. Again and again and again. The CEO does not boast of the way cool products he shepherded to market, the insanely great companies he built, the technology awards his people garnered. The bio reads like the typical rap sheet of a vulture capitalist.

    Look at their products. What do they produce? Tools for adware, spyware, snitchware. Look at their "piracy" policy. In addition to making all sorts of outrageous claims that have no support in law, like the typical LIE that their product is "licensed" not "sold" (a lie because the law regulates these sorts of contracts; a purchase sale contract is what is involved in over-the-counter retail boxed software purchases, no number of statements by one side can change it); they also explicitly PROMISE to load your computer down with spyware and snitchware and cooperate with the Microsoft stooges from the Business Software Alliance in getting you reamed.

    And the question naturally arises: WHAT are people associated with such an outfit and such extreme views doing buying control over the leading p2p file-sharing network and its technology?

    And why are they doing EVERYTHING in their power to DRIVE OUT the largest of the companies associated with the network, even at the cost of losing MILLIONS of users?

    What is it that they have planned that requires that MusicCity be out of the picture?

    Given the silence of Sharman, the extreme and peculiar way they have approached the beginning of their ownership of KaZaA, the precarious state of the company given the legal threat hanging over it at the time of purchase, the statement conveying the message from KaZaA's founders dissociating themselves from this current outfit; the links to brilliant digital; the nature and character of brilliant digital management, products, and statements; I think the file sharing community must become extremely alarmed.

    I do not think it can be excluded at this point that KaZaA is being turned into, in effect, a trojan horse controlled by the corporate cartels and the monopoly mafias. Will future versions of the software report back to the RIAA and the Business Software Alliance what you're sharing and downloading? What is the relationship between sharman and brilliant digital? How much did they pay for KaZaA? And ... whatever did happen to the lawsuit that was potentially going to bankrupt KaZaA in a matter of days?

    I have, alas, no real answers, but answers are required. - jaquero

  70. Excuse me by khendron · · Score: 2

    Didn't Morpheus recently post that the reports of a security hole in their product were false? Now apparently they are admitting to a security hole of massive proporations. I mean, having anybody on the Internet change the *registry* settings on my computer is a huge flaw. Doesn't this concern anyone?

    --
    Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
  71. In the wording of the GPL by roie_m · · Score: 1
    From the text of the GPL:

    3. You may copy and distribute the Program... provided that you also do one of the following: ...

    b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code...

  72. RIAA, Kazaa, Morpheus, and Nikki Hemming by PSiZX29 · · Score: 1

    I've been doing some research, and I've been unable to find anything on the subject. With the lack of information available about Sharman Network and Nikki Hemming (CEO of Sharman), I think this looks like an attempt by the RIAA to purchase Kazaa and shut down Morpheus (the largest group of file sharing members). They then release a new version of Kazaa stating 'Morpheus members join the new Kazaa network', which also apparently has the ability to not only include spyware, but also snitchware (where it will know what you are downloading and possibly report back to those manufacturers or artists for legal procedings). I don't know what Kazaa originally included for spyware, adware, or snitchware, but I know that Morpheus only included adware. It evens appears that whoever (I have no proof of this being related to the RIAA, but I would think that they would be smart enough to cover their tracks and hire this one person, Nikki Hemming, to be their scapegoat) made the changes didn't think that StreamCast would change over to the Gneutella protocol. I think the RIAA has decided that legal battles are taking too long and going nowhere, so maybe they have decided to take matters into their own hands and are trying to shut down the P2P networks by buying out certain providers and then forcing other clients to be unable to connect. Sounds like something the slime at the RIAA would do.

  73. Grokster will complete Morpheus downloads by g8oz · · Score: 1

    It's true. There was a file that I hadn't finish downloading from Morpheus. When it shut down I installed Grokster and it finished if for me. I bet the same holds true for Kazaa

  74. HAH!!! Look at this, cracked software in Morpheus! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting


    So here I am, all inquisitive and stuff, and looking at a result of the "strings Morpheus.exe" command (v1.3.3 of Morpheus). Guess what I see?

    "PeX (c) by bart^CrackPl beta release"

    Naughty naughty Fastrack people.

    This page is the best info I can find on "PeX". The zip you can download looks like it's a cracked verison of something.

    Can anyone shed any light on this?

  75. The Move Called by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Kudos to MP3 Newswire who called this one three days ago.

  76. Re: Another interesting article by noizy · · Score: 1
    Another interesting article concerning the kazaa/morpheus mystery can be found in an article by the German mag telepolis (Run by the well-renowned folks from heise.de. (Beware, though, it's in German, you might want to try the fish, for an, albeit clumsy translation).

    They basicly appear to cite the zeropaid.com article mentioned earlier, but try offer a more neutral comment on what the facts are, and what is speculation.

  77. Gnuttella apps gulp bandwidth by DABANSHEE · · Score: 2

    Even when the computer's doing nothing.

    1. Re:Gnuttella apps gulp bandwidth by Ex-MislTech · · Score: 0

      Agreed,

      Thus I think a mail server/client based app
      that runs a Dbase local on that box that
      works off a subscibe based architecture
      would work great .

      The Dbase could propagate thru the network
      every 5 minutes to update other Dbases .

      The 5 min refresh, in a differential manner
      would save HHUUGGEE bandwidth .

      Ie. send a directory update based on the
      difference of last received , in other words
      you only receive new listings, and if old
      ones dropped off they get updated .

      Users that have a high rate off connectivity
      are marked as such and have a higher Dbase
      accuracy rating, a virtual tree topology
      could be negotiated automatically thru
      statistics . Top level trickling down
      to newer logons , as a users time on climbs
      they ascend the tree towards the trunk .
      if they just signed on they are way out on
      the limb so to speak .

      Make it VAGUELY similar to spanning tree prot.

      It could plug in PGP if it was mail based,
      it could plug in other mail features too
      if done right .

      Like adding band-x to ur band list, and it
      would auto propagate any band-x songs that
      show up out there that you do not have .

      This could be down with virtually any file
      sharing, it would be great .

      The big bandwidth shring could be negotiated
      by appointing and selecting certian connections
      to send out 100 copies of a highly requested
      MP3/file of whatever type similar to a CC
      attachment on a e-mail .

      In this manner it is sent onces, but reaches
      many ppl .

      lemme know what you think .

      Ex-MislTech

      --
      google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
  78. Xolox, still the best GNUtella client by Jagasian · · Score: 3, Informative

    I highly recommend Xolox to anyone that can run Windows applications and uses GNUtella (haven't tried using it with Wine yet, could work). Xolox supports swarming, segmented downloading, resuming, automatic mirror searching, etc...

    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. Check it out! It's free, and it's useful.

    1. Re:Xolox, still the best GNUtella client by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Yea, great and while you get your file, no one else can get anything cause you took up all the download slots available. Thanks.
      Greed will take down any network.
      Watch out for big changes Morph will force on gnutella without asking the community.
      Use open source clients only and help save the network.

  79. Re:Sounds to me, check this link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Catch this link. This article caught the possibility of all this a couple of days ago.

  80. 56k downloads on napster didn't take for ever by DABANSHEE · · Score: 2

    Lets face it, Gnutella is a bandwidth hog & its as slow as all buggery

    1. Re:56k downloads on napster didn't take for ever by Adam+Fisk · · Score: 1
      There's nothing that makes it inherently any slower than FastTrack. LimeWire's UltraPeers use compressed messages to communicate with leaves, meaning that 56K users probably devote less bandwidth to messaging traffic than they do on FastTrack, i.e. they have more bandwidth left over for downloads and uploads. Bearshare will also soon have this feature.

      Adam Fisk

      LimeWire LLC

      --

      Adam Fisk

  81. Yep openFT,giFT EXEs, MSIs, PKGs & RPMs are ne by DABANSHEE · · Score: 1

    Otherwise you'll never have more than 65 people using it.

  82. Yep openFT/giFT EXEs, MSIs, PKGs & RPMs are ne by DABANSHEE · · Score: 1

    Otherwise you'll never have more than 65 people using it.

    (now I got the title right)

  83. Strange... by I+Love+this+Company! · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The hacked-in ad server is "ads.riaa.org"

    --

    "All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
  84. Maybe we ought to boycott Kazaa by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 3, Interesting

    First off they have spyware anyway.

    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

    --
    Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
  85. E-Mail for Kazaa by TheOnlyCoolTim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    info@kazaa.net

    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.

    --
    Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
  86. New Morheus Preview Edition is under the GPL? by SashaM · · Score: 1

    The new Morpheus Preview edition makes you accept the following license:

    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
    Version 2, June 1991

    ..
    ..

  87. Gnutella Interfaces by salmo · · Score: 1

    What are the best Gnutella interfaces out there?

    I tinkered around with it in the early days, but haven't touched it since all these commercial projects have popped up. I'd use one that worked on either windows or linux, but it would have to be able to work from behind a NAT.

  88. Kazaa Wanted more $$ from morpheus to use client by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Basically kazaa gave morpheus ultimatum, pay more of get off.

    Morpheus got kicked off the fast track network.

    their story is total bullshit.

  89. Now what? by ImaLamer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now what do I do with these gig's of files that I was downloading before the network went offline.

    Seriously gigs of Bang Bus.

  90. GOOD news?!? by Wonko42 · · Score: 3, Informative
    The good news in all of this is that morpheus will be giving up the proprietary FastTrack network for a Gnutella based filsharing system.

    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.

  91. "... We *can't* be shut down!" by phallen · · Score: 1

    How dod they shut down the network, anyway? I listened to one of those C|net webcasts where the CEO stated (in so many words):

    "We can't be shut down because we have no central servers. Even if the comapny shuts down and dissapears, the software clients are still out there and will continue to connect to eachother. It's unstoppable!"

    So what the hell? If we all still have clients, how did they shut down the network that has "no central servers" ???

    --
    If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
    1. Re:"... We *can't* be shut down!" by JayAndSilentBob · · Score: 1

      read the articles linked to above on ZeroPaid. basically, the kazaa network allows for automatic upgrades propagated thru the network itself. A recent "upgrade" is what killed morpheus. It's a fatal flaw with kazaa. Read the ZeroPaid articles for a better explination.

      --


      Love,
      Jay and Silent Bob
    2. Re:"... We *can't* be shut down!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck JayAndSilentBob fuck them up their stupid asses!

    3. Re:"... We *can't* be shut down!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      42 ?

      thats how...

  92. bad news by sewagemaster · · Score: 1



    i liked the fasttrack network because all their clients have the support of searching MP3s according to bitrates. i hate 128kbps...

    once morpheus moves to gnutella network, i'll have to be stuck with kazaa.. fucked-up-spyware-shit. not that there arent any spyware removal programs out there, but it's such a hassle. it's like installing a virus but removing it with your virus scan.

    it's already bad enough that i have to reboot to windows to use any fasttrack client because there simply isnt one that 'works' under linux.

    the clients are already bad enough since people dont share on their networks. the search results show what you're looking for, but you can never seem to download from them.

    ... remember the good old napster days when you can search by album and download them without hitting that search button more than twice?

    i wonder what the status is for the giFT development...

  93. Slashdotting giFT! by Robotech_Master · · Score: 1

    Now there seem to be 188 users online, sharing 256,727 files, totalling 1.18 terabytes!

    Still small potatos compared to KaZaa, for sure, but it's heartening to see the numbers growing as people start tuning in and turning on. Yahoo!

    --
    Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
  94. Delete Morpheus and install Gnucleus by Von+Rex · · Score: 2

    I just tried Gnucleus and the new Morpheus. After that I spent about half an hour in the Morpheus channel fighting with the operators. I used to recommend Morpheus to everyone but I have totally turned against them now. Morpheus can fuck right off as far as I'm concerned.

    What they did is they took an open source program at http://www.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 and use their software. Delete Morpheus at once.

  95. Or you could try the new beta of winmx.... by magwa · · Score: 0

    Or you could try the new beta of winmx.... It looks like it could be pretty decent:

    http://www.winmx.com/beta300/

    --
    --- Sig test. 1...2...3...
  96. Re:Registry changes... answering my own question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    after posting this i discovered that all it does is delete the morpheus settings in your regestry which is not dangerouse and doesnt matter because morpheus isn't usable now anyways

  97. Will people stick with morpheus by cliche · · Score: 1

    now that morpheus is switching to gnutella which doesnt scale well, how long will it take before people start to flock to something else, and the real question is what will they flock to. kazaa has spyware, gnutella will be messed up soon due to morpheus, and in my experiance winmx and limewire never get a good connection

  98. Last Morpheus user?!? by jtjammer · · Score: 1

    Well, I got on The big 'M' tonight, and instead of the usual 4-500,000 people there were only 2,500. After an hour, it said ONE PERSON! ME!

    Do I get a prize for being the last Morpheus user?!?

    1. Re:Last Morpheus user?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just be sure to turn the light off on your way out.

  99. What Musiccity... by psych031337 · · Score: 2

    should do is rerelease a version of Morpheus that uses the technology that was state of the art when the engine was reversed by OpenFT. In exactly that period of time i got the best transfer rates, the fastest searches, the most results. That way they could take advantage of their protocol benefits (metadata and such), have an existing net to jump on and lure their followers into and a app that will whip Sharman all the wy to Tazmania and back.

    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, ...(list incomplete and some items probably redundant)

    --
    +++ath0
  100. working on universal P2P client, with plugins by kiwipeso · · Score: 1

    I'm working on the Samizdat protocol, which is an agile adaptive protocol capable of deceptive encryption of traffic.
    Samizdat is capable of filesharing, IM, email or even (anonymous) webserving. It works on a plugin system with API kernels for samizdat apps.

    I hope to have individual service apps for each kind of use, and a suite app like Mozilla that does the lot.
    Samizdat is planned to be a distributed tree network, fast localised servers provide the search results locally and the local database of files.
    It works by not revealing to you what the actual url resources come from, users can vote servers to be comprimised if they try to spread viruses or censorship on the network.
    Samizdat is going to be free, open and GPL. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm ready to listen and put them in the mix.

    --
    - Kaos games and encryption systems developer
  101. Good Riddance! by Snover · · Score: 1

    I'm glad they're getting rid of FastTrack. KaZaA had spyware, I could never get a Morpheus account, and I already use Gnutella a lot -- having more users can never hurt. :)

    --

    [insert witty comment here]
  102. Gnucleus is far better ... by Toy+G · · Score: 0

    ... than any Napster-like-protocols clients as morpheus or Kazaa... it's stable, easy, and on Gnutella protocol you can search anything...
    Download Gnucleus and happy downloading
    :)

    --
    -- Let's go Viridian.
  103. Re:Some experiences with the "new" Morpheus Previe by MobyTurbo · · Score: 1
    Like most others here, I'm very curious about what really happened to Streamcast's Morpheus network. But in practical terms, I settled for trying for the new "Preview Edition". The Musiccity web site last night said that it would be available "in two hours" and indeed after that page was unchanged for more than two hours, the new edition was on Download.com. I had been thinking about rebooting into Linux but this gave me another reason to stay in Windows.
    Why? There are many gnutella clients for Linux that will operate with the new preview edition, which uses the gnutella protocol. If anything, it'd give you another reason to run Linux; unless you really like gnucleus a lot better than the other Linux gnutella clients.
  104. hmmmm... by patchezzzz · · Score: 1

    I know this is really not "technically" related but I wonder if they pulled the rant off of their front page concerning the "alleged" security risk while using their software/network and the indignant stance that the allegations were false?

    --
    Patche says, "You will attract more flies with honey than vinegar... but who wants flies?
  105. New/Old File Sharing idea by Ex-MislTech · · Score: 0

    Has anyone entertained the idea of a file
    sharing app that works based off of a
    mail server/mail list/subscribe type
    architecture ???

    There are automated mailing lists out there
    that will distribute files even, has anyone
    thought about taking it a step further and
    make it to where everyone is running a mail
    server, and it each ones keeps a client list
    similar to a Dbase .

    A gui to allow searches of a locally stored
    Dbase index that receives updates via e-mail
    about once every 5 min . It could give
    approximation percentages for % of Dbase
    coverage, so you know when it is nearly
    full populated . It could store profiles
    of users that are on for long periods of
    time, similar to uptime .

    You serch the local Dbase(on ur drive)that gets
    a once every 5 min (random number, keep traffic low) refresh . The Id#'s are PGP keys ?!?!?

    using encrypted mail keeps everyone somewhat
    anonymous ....

    And then when you find what you want you select
    it and the software selects the source to
    send it based on traffic patterns .

    Ie. the guy that is already slammed does not
    get long listed on sedning out the same
    mp3 1,000 times a day .

    It won't be a walk in the park, but if 100
    users request the same file and a mail
    type architecture is used then it could
    be CC'd and the upstream bandwidth would
    be cut way back ???

    Any comments appreciated .

    I do not know enough to know if it is really
    possible, but e-mail is a huge load on the
    net now, and would offer lower network
    overhead thru a subscribe type design in
    my opinion .

    Just think you could subscribe to band-x, and
    it would chk the band-x Dbase of desired songs
    on your drive and get them all while you sleep,
    lol .

    Thanks,
    Ex-Misltech

    --
    google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
  106. Re:All I can say is...-what we need ... by Ex-MislTech · · Score: 0

    I think a mail server/client based app
    that runs a Dbase local on that box that
    works off a subscibe based architecture
    would work great .

    The Dbase could propagate thru the network
    every 5 minutes to update other Dbases .

    The 5 min refresh, in a differential manner
    would save HHUUGGEE bandwidth .

    Ie. send a directory update based on the
    difference of last received , in other words
    you only receive new listings, and if old
    ones dropped off they get updated .

    Users that have a high rate off connectivity
    are marked as such and have a higher Dbase
    accuracy rating, a virtual tree topology
    could be negotiated automatically thru
    statistics . Top level trickling down
    to newer logons , as a users time on climbs
    they ascend the tree towards the trunk .
    if they just signed on they are way out on
    the limb so to speak .

    Make it VAGUELY similar to spanning tree prot.

    It could plug in PGP if it was mail based,
    it could plug in other mail features too
    if done right .

    Like adding band-x to ur band list, and it
    would auto propagate any band-x songs that
    show up out there that you do not have .

    This could be down with virtually any file
    sharing, it would be great .

    The big bandwidth sharing could be negotiated
    by appointing and selecting certian connections
    to send out 100 copies of a highly requested
    MP3/file of whatever type similar to a CC
    attachment on a e-mail .

    In this manner it is sent once, but reaches
    many ppl .

    lemme know what you think .

    Ex-MislTech

    --
    google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
  107. My school blocks Gnutella/Morpheus/Kazaa, ADVICE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My school (Nova Southeastern Univ. in Florida) blocks Gnutella and Kazaa. Is there any way around it? They gave us this nice wireless LAN but block the good stuff. I have to connect to the LAN using Windows 2000. Thanks!

  108. Mismoderated by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey moderator, it's not Interesting. It's comically ironic. MusicCity's Morpheus used to use the FastTrack network, which was considered technically superior to Gnutella. The new client actually uses the Gnutella distributed network.

    They have since updated the FAQ.
    Sorry EschewObfuscation, I do agree that it was funny. Hopefully a less clueless moderator can spare you a point.

    -castlan