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Distributed Computing Program Hidden in Kazaa
The_THOMAS writes: "A federal securities filing Monday revealed that the hugely downloaded Kazaa P2P (file sharing) software contains a piggyback program which will create a second, new, network controlled by Brilliant Digital. They plan to awaken the software, already on millions of computers, within the next four weeks. The program will be used to host and distribute other companies' content and may be used for distributed computing. Read the details here."
To rip, mix and burn their customers...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No file sharing software contains spyware!
P2P = good
Distributed computing = good
p2p + distributed computing = bad.
This reminds me of something my dad once told me regarding his school lunch as a boy. Just because kids like spaghetti, and kids like peanut butter, doesn't mean they'll like spaghetti and peanut butter.
...someone starts distributing a program that disables the distributed client and simply returns garbage to the 'master' server?
It'd be funny if such a program were created, and caught on.
I see great potential for fun here. Think about it, They rent out your hard drive to someone, who uses it host advertisment, or demoware or music. You, being the wiley Hacker guy, replace the content porno or pirated music/software and let the fun begin. Optionaly you can sue them for using your hardware and bandwidth for morally objectionable purposes.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power - Benito Mussoli
If this software utilized any cycles on my system, it will impact performance causing me expense which will rapidly increase to the $5000 threshold (a cumulative threshold). I granted no access nor privilage to use my systems, to any employee of Brilliant Digital Entertainment Inc. [slashdot.org] so as soon as any command is issued, affecting the behavior of any software installed on my computers, the employees and officers of Brilliant Digital Entertainment will imediately have become guilty of computer crimes under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as modified by the USA Patriot act.
Thank god you are helping us all in our noble fight against terrorism.
Let's Roll.
As an alternative to your idea, the article stated that the software will be automatically "updated" to allow new features... once the data starts flowing, I wonder how hard it would be to, ah, "submit a patch". :)
:)
I'll _finally_ have my beowulf cluster.
- Jester
"Everybody will get turned on in more or less a simultaneous fashion."
So they are launching a massive porno attack on the masses?
There's something tricky going on here that is not immediately apparent if all you do is look at and knee-jerk react to this story:
I download Kazaa. I download Kazaa because Napster doesn't work anymore. Napster doesn't work anymore because the music companies say it rips them off. I don't care about ripping off music companies. But that makes me think: I can see how I'm ripping off artists. Gawd I love Kazaa! But I feel bad about ripping off artists.
BDE through Kazaa wants to use my computer cycles? Well geez, I feel bad about getting all this great music for free... I owe somebody something... Oh alright, that's a fair exchange.
The power of guilt.
Mark my words, people will accept this barter, except for one small problem: the artists still aren't getting paid!
BDE is getting away with murder: benefiting off of artists by proxy, and benefiting off of consumers, through guilt.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
jeez, april fools day has turned all us slashdotters into a bunch of cranky, trust-no-one cynics.
oh wait..
Allow me to explain by example.
/* doSpyWare();
void main()
{
doDownloadFiles();
doUploadFiles();
doSpyWare();
doDistributedComputing();
}
becomes
void main()
{
doDownloadFiles();
doUploadFiles();
doDistributedComputing(); */
}
Sure, it takes a high-school CS student to figure out what to comment out, but once its re-compiled and distributed on KaZaa, the modified version will spread like wildfire.
If the license is truly open source, this wouldn't even be illegal (not that KaZaa users really worry about that anyways).
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
recipe using both peanut butter and spaghetti:
1 serving of spahgetti
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of peanut butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 half of a cucumber, chopped
pinch of green onions
pinch of cilantro
pinch of salt
pinch of pepper
pinch of garlic powder
pinch of powdered ginger
mix everything but the spaghetti together, and put in the fridge
boil the spaghetti, and when done, put in a colinder and keep moving it under cold water until the spaghetti is cold
thouroughly drain the water and mix it in with the peanut butter mixture
refrigerate for 15 minutes and serve!
cold sesame noodles, just like the chinese restaurant makes. garnish with sesame seeds and carrot shavings if you like.
I hate rebooting my machine (every few weeks). I get assigned a new and usually "dirty" IP address - it takes a number of days for the Kazombies to go away!
I'm tempted to learn enough of the Kazaa protocol to be able to unload a "death packet" on the most persistent of idiots.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.