Locutus Preview Released
An anonymous reader writes "FreeNet's Ian Clarke has released the preview version of his latest P2P endeavor Locutus. Aimed at the corporate world, Locutus adds encryption to the mix - new for a P2P client - to secure files traded across the network as well as the ability to scan within text files to improve search results. Locutus Lite is the free version for those who are more concerned with trading movies and tunes. Locutus Enterprise is the pay version that Clarke hopes to lure corporations to shell out money for (for secure trading of research and other documents). Those interested in trying the preview can download it here."
Seriously, why would anyone buy another application when they already have http and ftp sites, e-mail, etc? Most "research" isn't widely in demand enough to warrant the distribution model of p2p.
Just like the ~20 megabytes you need if you download a Java application. Its called a runtime environment. It consists of the virtual machine that runs .NET code, plus all the APIs/libraries that go along with such. It is a one time download and then you can run any .NET application. Future versions of Windows will have the .NET framework pre-installed.
All in all you're making a whole lot of noise for nothing. This is absolutely no different than the "bloat" one has to endure to download Perl if one wants to run Perl scripts, Python for Python scripts, or the Java Runtime Environment for Java programs. As with all of those situations it either a one time download, or no worries at all if it is preinstalled in the OS (which will be the case for .NET moving forward). The only difference is this is Microsoft, so you're quick to bash them because you're an ignorant asshole.