MUTE Grows In Popularity, Iterations

jcr13 writes "MUTE is a search-and-download file sharing network that uses ant-inspired routing to make both downloaders and uploaders anonymous. Version 0.2 was released today (change log). Since its mid-December 0.1 release, MUTE has risen from complete obscurity to one of the top-ten most active SourceForge projects. Several people have described MUTE as a "third-generation file sharing network," with the first two generations being Napster and Gnutella (and generation zero being the web---remember when MP3s were traded through web pages?). Each generation circumvents the tactics that the RIAA used to squash the previous generation. Alas, each generation is less and less efficient (though MUTE's dynamic routing works surprisingly well). MUTE was discussed in a previous Slashdot story. Oh, and if you are wondering, it's M.U.T.E., lady, an acronym, not "mute," and we had best not go into it any further."

Comments

0th gen. was web? what about gen. -1, -2, and -3?

[You're All Wrong]

IRC, FTP, and NNTP
File sharing on the web is pretty recent though there was some in the early 90s. IRC file trading was well established by then, and FTP goes way back. And of course NNTP would never have bloomed without the a.s.b hierarchy.

Every generation of kids thinks that they were the generation that invented sex. Every generation of computer users is equally naive too.

YAW.

Just tried it out

[Apreche]

So I played with it for about 15 minutes and I found out a few things. First of all, it is really anonymous. There is no freakin' way to find out who anyone is. All you know are the IP addresses of the people who are directly connected to you on the network. You don't know which files they have or anything. And when you download or upload something you have no idea who is at the other end.

Here are the problems. First off, it is slow and unstable. Not to be unexpected for a non mature project. Another problem is the lack of search results. Searching for led zeppelin, a common band, returned 2 results when I was connected to 20 nodes. That's kind of sad. Last problem is that there are so few features. This is a raw bare bones client. Someone needs to make another client that has more stuff, like DC++ did for direct connect. For now I'll stick to DC for everyday quick p2p and WinMX for those rare hard to find files.

Bah, these kids today!

[Anonymous Coward]

and generation zero being the web---remember when MP3s were traded through web pages?

Hell I remember when I actually traded *tapes* with *other people*! I mean I actually went out into the big blue place (eww, sunlight) and after a while I would like be in the same room with another person, or more than one!! And we would use instant messaging, only it was completely audio based and there was no computer or cell phone! The audio came out of my mouth and went straight into the other dude's ear! It was wild!

Sometimes when we wanted to express happiness, or anger, we would scrunch our faces up to look like emoticons, but turned sideways. It's pretty funny to think about it, lol.... :-) Oh yeah when something was funny we would lol not by typing "lol", but by making a "ha ha ha" sound!

Anyway then we would take our CDs and the ones we liked that we didn't own, we'd rip to cassette tape (an early encoding mechanism like MP3, but using particles on a plastic tape, really bizarre .. it didn't take any less space but it was still a lossy format). Man, if only the RIAA knew how to track *that* shit (I still have a few hundred tapes somewhere)...

Anyway I'm glad stuff like MUTE is being developed, because without it, there'd be NO way to listen to other people's music!