original audiogalaxy blew
by
j1mmy
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Anybody remember the original audiogalaxy? It was basically a glorified FTP search. For the sites it indexed, it also listed up/down ratios, access restrictions, etc. Both it and scour were the first ones out the door in terms of sharing beyond a P2P client. They both started hunting down windows shares, then indexing open windows shares (the owner of which would have no idea), then trying random logins to FTPs, etc. I had all this crap in my server logs as they tried to break into my Samba shares and FTP site to index my content. I had to ask to be removed more than a few times. Bastards.
Making me miss 1999 again
by
Skyshadow
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
His little sections about "corporate culture" made me realize what it was I really miss from the.com boom:
It wasn't the free soda, it wasn't the shitload of money thrown at everything (well, ok, I miss that, too), it wasn't the company buying beer on Fridays or paying for lunch...
What I miss is the "bright" and "young" aspect. The Silicon Valley of 2002 seems to have gotten a lot older. It makes sense -- most of the young people like myself moved out when they got laid off. Now, at 25, I'm still the youngest person in my office (and in many offices I interviewed in while I was job hunting). As such, many of the companies are lacking that energy that made working during the boom seem, well, special.
I miss that.
-- Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
-- Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Re:Good plan, though
by
ScumBiker
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
IAAM (I am a musician) and I know for a fact that most bands don't get shit for the CDs that are sold by the majors. We sell CDs at our live shows and we get all of the profit. Same with t-shirts and hats. The majors are in reality no different than the Mafia, except that they don't kill people (that I know about anyway). All they are in existence for is to rip off musicians and songwriters. I do both, I sell jingles to local radio stations and work (on the side) on background music. I make enough to (barely) pay for my equipment.
*The numbers in this rant were acquired from Sniffer Pro.*
Personally, I'm glad AG is down. At my university of choice AG was taking up, at any given time 50%-80% of the badnwidth. That is just ridiculous. It was the only (music) sharing software the campus hadn't blocked (aside from Good ol' Hotline, RIP). Of course, everyone knew how to use AG, 10 people used Hotline (myself included). Maybe.
It just got frustrating being taken down to 4K for legit downloads. My roommate started playing with Gentoo. That's a fun install if your bandwidth is castrated. When I was needing to do work, it was frustrating to know that I couldn't get decent connection rates because everyone else was getting their fix it Britney and N'Sync. Of course, I was also occasionally nabbing things from HL(got to test drive XP[thank you, but no]), but I didn't care what rates I got there. There was always a resume DL feature.
Though, honestly, it wouldn't have been as bad if they'd download and close the connection. I think 60-70% of the AG traffic was out-going.
If AG is truly dead, may they rest in peace. I, OTOH, enjoy my bandwidth.
Re:Very intresting
by
Scrameustache
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
oh man, the submission didn't provide much detail, so i did something i, and most other/.'ers don't do often, i read the article
Good lord! Its a good thing most/.ers don't read the article! Could you imagine the slashdot effect if they did! The whole internet would blow up!
Don't encourage them!
--
You can't take the sky from me...
Spyware in AG
by
MADCOWbeserk
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
While I agree that AG really did start shoving spyware down its users throats, you had many alternatives to the "official" AG satellite. The source was free, and there were several third-party satellites that didn't have spyware. I don't think they were really money grubbing as you suggest, but they needed to earn money somehow in order to support the servers and pay thier salaries. AG could have folded long ago due to bankrupcy.
AG was the best system for music, nothing else can match its organization and variety without having a central server. Decentralized P2P can never match centralized P2P.
While I agree that Audiogalaxy was, by far, the best p2p system (if you were looking for mp3s, that is), this story depicts it in a pretty flattering way.
I'll take it step by step (disregarding whatever views I have about RIAA and it's business model): RIAA sells music. They have the rights to the music (this may not be entirely correct, but I'm over-simplifying. Walk with me). AG lets people share that music - that is, they help someone get the music, who have not paid for rights to it. AG is a company, who wants to make money. They charge other companies money, so they can ship programs with the Satellite. AG is now, effectively, making money off of RIAA's property, without them getting a dime.
This is not strange, people. RIAA needs to protect it's own backyard. They may, or may not, make a whole lot of money, but they can't just stand beside and watch this.
Now, I agree that RIAA's (or rather, the companies whose interests they protect) business model is flawed, outdated and unfair. Unfair to both the artists, who create what RIAA sells, and the consumers who buy what the artists create. Compare RIAA to an estate agent. They take, what, 10% from the seller? RIAA takes more like 90%, leaving the artist with the crumbs. They can do this because no one else is providing the artist with an advance, with studio time, engineers, directors, etc. But all of this costs, and guess who's paying the bill? The artist, that's who. So a record company is more like a mix of an agent and a bank, with really, REALLY high interest charge.
All of this is about to change, fortunately - and it's not gonna be because companies like Napster, Audiogalaxy and Kazaa tries to make money off of anyone elses back. It's because, finally, some of the artists are staring to wake up, and smell the coffee. I'm not talking about "Really Small Garage Band" or "Joe Troubadour" here either, but BIG artists like Courtney Love, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Bono and Bruce Springsteen. Rapper Mos Def recently likened his deal with MCA to slavery (he ended up in that deal when MCA bought Rawkus), Michael Jackson claims the Big Five record companies are treating everyone bad, and black artists even worse, Courtney Love sewed Universal, claiming that record deals are unfair. Things are really about to happen, and when they do, we will see different distribution channels, new means of running radio stations, music television networks, concert promotions, everything.
One more thing though - one of RIAA's biggest concerns with Audiogalaxy, I think, was not that everyone and their brother was getting the new Britney track for free, but that new, unestablished artists saw this as a new way out. They could hire cheap studio time, get their music out there, do live performances, selling their own CDs, and become successful without the "help" of RIAA's world encompassing music monopoly. And that, my friends, scares the fsck out of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Anybody remember the original audiogalaxy? It was basically a glorified FTP search. For the sites it indexed, it also listed up/down ratios, access restrictions, etc. Both it and scour were the first ones out the door in terms of sharing beyond a P2P client. They both started hunting down windows shares, then indexing open windows shares (the owner of which would have no idea), then trying random logins to FTPs, etc. I had all this crap in my server logs as they tried to break into my Samba shares and FTP site to index my content. I had to ask to be removed more than a few times. Bastards.
It wasn't the free soda, it wasn't the shitload of money thrown at everything (well, ok, I miss that, too), it wasn't the company buying beer on Fridays or paying for lunch...
What I miss is the "bright" and "young" aspect. The Silicon Valley of 2002 seems to have gotten a lot older. It makes sense -- most of the young people like myself moved out when they got laid off. Now, at 25, I'm still the youngest person in my office (and in many offices I interviewed in while I was job hunting). As such, many of the companies are lacking that energy that made working during the boom seem, well, special.
I miss that.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Then you need to get a copy of The Usenet Binary Harvester. Works perfectly on my Mac OS X system.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
IAAM (I am a musician) and I know for a fact that most bands don't get shit for the CDs that are sold by the majors. We sell CDs at our live shows and we get all of the profit. Same with t-shirts and hats. The majors are in reality no different than the Mafia, except that they don't kill people (that I know about anyway). All they are in existence for is to rip off musicians and songwriters. I do both, I sell jingles to local radio stations and work (on the side) on background music. I make enough to (barely) pay for my equipment.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
*The numbers in this rant were acquired from Sniffer Pro.*
Personally, I'm glad AG is down. At my university of choice AG was taking up, at any given time 50%-80% of the badnwidth. That is just ridiculous. It was the only (music) sharing software the campus hadn't blocked (aside from Good ol' Hotline, RIP). Of course, everyone knew how to use AG, 10 people used Hotline (myself included). Maybe.
It just got frustrating being taken down to 4K for legit downloads. My roommate started playing with Gentoo. That's a fun install if your bandwidth is castrated. When I was needing to do work, it was frustrating to know that I couldn't get decent connection rates because everyone else was getting their fix it Britney and N'Sync. Of course, I was also occasionally nabbing things from HL(got to test drive XP[thank you, but no]), but I didn't care what rates I got there. There was always a resume DL feature.
Though, honestly, it wouldn't have been as bad if they'd download and close the connection. I think 60-70% of the AG traffic was out-going.
If AG is truly dead, may they rest in peace. I, OTOH, enjoy my bandwidth.
oh man, the submission didn't provide much detail, so i did something i, and most other /.'ers don't do often, i read the article
/.ers don't read the article! Could you imagine the slashdot effect if they did! The whole internet would blow up!
Good lord! Its a good thing most
Don't encourage them!
You can't take the sky from me...
While I agree that AG really did start shoving spyware down its users throats, you had many alternatives to the "official" AG satellite. The source was free, and there were several third-party satellites that didn't have spyware. I don't think they were really money grubbing as you suggest, but they needed to earn money somehow in order to support the servers and pay thier salaries. AG could have folded long ago due to bankrupcy.
AG was the best system for music, nothing else can match its organization and variety without having a central server. Decentralized P2P can never match centralized P2P.
While I agree that Audiogalaxy was, by far, the best p2p system (if you were looking for mp3s, that is), this story depicts it in a pretty flattering way.
I'll take it step by step (disregarding whatever views I have about RIAA and it's business model):
RIAA sells music. They have the rights to the music (this may not be entirely correct, but I'm over-simplifying. Walk with me).
AG lets people share that music - that is, they help someone get the music, who have not paid for rights to it.
AG is a company, who wants to make money. They charge other companies money, so they can ship programs with the Satellite.
AG is now, effectively, making money off of RIAA's property, without them getting a dime.
This is not strange, people. RIAA needs to protect it's own backyard. They may, or may not, make a whole lot of money, but they can't just stand beside and watch this.
Now, I agree that RIAA's (or rather, the companies whose interests they protect) business model is flawed, outdated and unfair. Unfair to both the artists, who create what RIAA sells, and the consumers who buy what the artists create.
Compare RIAA to an estate agent. They take, what, 10% from the seller? RIAA takes more like 90%, leaving the artist with the crumbs. They can do this because no one else is providing the artist with an advance, with studio time, engineers, directors, etc. But all of this costs, and guess who's paying the bill? The artist, that's who. So a record company is more like a mix of an agent and a bank, with really, REALLY high interest charge.
All of this is about to change, fortunately - and it's not gonna be because companies like Napster, Audiogalaxy and Kazaa tries to make money off of anyone elses back. It's because, finally, some of the artists are staring to wake up, and smell the coffee. I'm not talking about "Really Small Garage Band" or "Joe Troubadour" here either, but BIG artists like Courtney Love, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Bono and Bruce Springsteen.
Rapper Mos Def recently likened his deal with MCA to slavery (he ended up in that deal when MCA bought Rawkus), Michael Jackson claims the Big Five record companies are treating everyone bad, and black artists even worse, Courtney Love sewed Universal, claiming that record deals are unfair. Things are really about to happen, and when they do, we will see different distribution channels, new means of running radio stations, music television networks, concert promotions, everything.
One more thing though - one of RIAA's biggest concerns with Audiogalaxy, I think, was not that everyone and their brother was getting the new Britney track for free, but that new, unestablished artists saw this as a new way out. They could hire cheap studio time, get their music out there, do live performances, selling their own CDs, and become successful without the "help" of RIAA's world encompassing music monopoly. And that, my friends, scares the fsck out of them.
:wq!