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."

Comments

Re:Firestorm

[Melantha_Bacchae]

generic-man wrote:

> KaZaA is a program used exclusively to steal music, movies, and
> software.

I wouldn't know about that, having (thankfully) never used it. I get my mp3's off my extensive CD collection (Manilow, Mozart, Mothra, etc. -and that's just the M's ;).

> Windows XP is an operating system. It can be used for legitimate
> purposes.

Juno can be used for legitimate purposes. It started a distributed computing plan that required the user's computer to remain on at all times and connect to Juno regularly (at the user's expense if their access number was a toll number). That created a real storm of controversy.

Google can be used for legitimate purposes. Its toolbar is also a distributed computing application.

And please, do not think for a minute that Microsoft is far behind. Microsoft Research had a project called "Millenium" that called for distributed computing among other things. Millenium's marketing name appears to be ".Net". Ever heard of it?

If you have Windows XP, you have agreed to let Microsoft install any "upgrade" it wants to on your computer. That's all they need to sneak one of these applications on your computer and start harvesting CPU cycles, if they haven't already.

Ultimately, Millenium is to be a global super-cluster of all the Windows computers (if not all the computers period) in the world. Your data and applications will be stored where ever Millenium wants them to be stored (maybe even on one of your competitor's hard drives?!?). Both applications and multimedia content will run on a pay as you use basis (with digital rights management). The file system will be a universal data store based on SQL Server (say bye-bye to your favorite standard file formats). You will boot your new PC with the Millenium disk, and after a process similar to today's product activation, your computer will join (be assimilated by) the Millenium network. About the only thing different between .Net (the reality so far) and Millenium (the research project) is that Java (the Millenium Java VM was called "Borg") has been replaced by C#.

The above post is ***not*** an April Fools joke. It is based in part on documentation available on Microsoft's web site (http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/os/Mil lennium/mgoals.html and http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/sn/). The only "fool" is the person who sits by and lets Microsoft use this to gain control of the entire computing industry on this planet forever (or at least the thousand year kingdom that is what the word "Millenium" means).

What happens when you embrace and extend Godzilla? Nuclear heartburn!
See "Godzilla 2000" (released in Japan as "Godzilla 2000 Millenium") for details.

Some observations

[Rogerborg]

• Bermeister said the company had been testing the technology along with ad giants DoubleClick as a way to serve ordinary Web ads more quickly. Under this plan, an ad that a person sees on a Web site might be hosted by a nearby computer running Brilliant's Altnet instead of on a central ad server, as now typically happens with DoubleClick.

"Quickly" is mendatious. The majority of end users will have port 80 traffic cached by their ISP, and you can bet that cache will be juicy-full of DoubleClick stuff. My ISP routes all traffic via my local access point, even traffic to other people under that access point, and they run a cache at the access point. So even if I were to get ads from the guy next door, it would still be slower than getting them from the cache. All this would do would be to cut down DoubleClick's bills for uncached accesses, and (interestingly) stop me blocking DoubleClick using my hosts file. If this latter reason is actually material, then it's a sad indicator that the ad market has given up any pretence that ads are in any way connected to revenue. If I've gone out of my way to actively block your adverts, and you force them on me anyway, what exactly are your chances of gaining one red cent in revenue from me? Farcical.

• Bermeister said. "This will be an opt-in program..." [...] the software would show a pop-up box explaining the network's function and giving people a chance to turn it off

Hey, opt-in, opt-out, what's the difference, eh? To apply an equally muddled metaphor, they'll probably burn that bridge when they come to it.

• People who allow their computers to be used will be compensated somehow, possibly with gift certificates or free videos, the company's filing said.

Ah. Anybody with a typical residential DSL/cable connection should check their contracts. There will almost certainly be a clause in there that prohibits providing services to third parties, and especially selling services to third parties. Most ISP's have tolerated filesharing up to now because it's (generally) an active use thing. And CETI@home is low bandwidth, fully opt-in from the user side, and non-commercial. But this might be different. It's a commercial company using ISP bandwidth to make profit, and pass some of that (a very, very little) back to residential users, who have only agreed in general to provide services, not on an active case by case basis. This might be where ISP's start to draw the line.