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Morpheus Infiltrates Other P2P Networks
An anonymous reader writes "Morpheus was the number one post-Napster P2P app until Sharman Networks took over KaZaa and got them bumped off the FastTrack network. Now Morpheus is back on FastTrack, according to MP3NewsWire, tapping into it and the other leading networks through a beta of the NEOnet technology in the just-released version 4. Thomas Mennecke over at Slyck speaks more about it with Michael Weiss, CEO of StreamCast Networks." prostoalex also points to a ZDNet article discussing this new version of Morpheus, and notes the Download.com warning that: "Third-party applications bundled with this download may record your surfing habits, deliver advertising, collect private information, or modify your system settings."
Who cares?
Hate me!
TFA starts:
Morpheus 4 is Here and Legal
Morpheus 4 is here and legal - "the only American file-sharing software ruled legal by a U.S. federal court," its owner StreamCast Networks boasts.
But never says why and how, further more, how is it legal and supports FastTrack network at the same time?
Anyway, FastTrack isn't the network it used to be, the quality of its files is getting worse and worse, many times you'll download something to find out that it was something else but renamed, I've switched to eDonkey long time ago, much better file quality, yes it's slower, but that is just fine with me as long as the file quality is OK.
It's much harder to share fake files in eDonkey anyway, because of the file hashing and voting system.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
January 21 MUTE 0.2.1 was released.
http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
Jan 7 slashdot posting about MUTE 0.2
Changes includes mention of a time out problem in win32 version fixed. I hope that also reduces the tendency for MUTE to abort downloads.
It may be a bit wobbley in these early stages, but it's anonymous and doesn't install spyware and crap. Worth supporting if only by running it so there are more active nodes.
The user comments at download.com have more mention of the apparent spyware - to quote one comment:'The claim by the program vendor that this software is free of Spyware is utterly ridiculus. I installed it on a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. It installed "Websavings by Ebates" without the option to opt out.' But then, maybe that's just intrusive adware and not technically spyware - not being familiar with this ebates doobrey I wouldn't know.
On the RIAA comment, the download.com blurb states that 'Morpheus protects your privacy with integrated access to public proxy networks.' But I'm a bit skeptical about that myself.
Hrmm... if only such a thing existed and was compatable with another major client's network.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
No, it's not. and it's been shut down by the makers of Kazaa using the evil DMCA.
The old kza will not work because it does not have the new encryption layers. Instead you can use giFT, giFT-FastTrack and giFTcurs.
It looks alot better than kza and it's guaranteed to be free of spyware (it's free software). It's all in Debian, except for gift-fasttrack which you can get here:
deb ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/gift-fasttrack unstable main
eDonkey has everything you'll ever need, especially if you go browsing at ShareReactor
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Discussion is already up on the MLdonkey Lists about possible infringement of the MLDonkey GPL License.
:-)
MLdonkey connects to all kinds of Networks, as Edonkey, Overnet , Bittorrent , Gnutella, Gnutella2 and Fasttrack and that seems where the Morpheus NEOWhateverTech (insert your favourite marketing-droid-speak here) code comes from.
BTW, apart from being GPL and from being written for linux originally, MLdonkey gives you a nifty web-interface which lets you search and download (at home) all sorts of stuff while hanging out at the office
i actually dled and installed it cause access to a bunch of nws sounded good and i figured i could just remove any spyware. plus here is an actual quote from the beginning of the licence agreement: "Morpheus values your anonymity and privacy. Morpheus does not contain or bundle malicious spyware." THE FUCK IT DOES. In addition to the My Search bar, Ebates, and BroadcastPC it admits to installing it has 3 or 4 other progs plus an ad window and popup ad thingy built into the gui. most of this shit runs in the backround and doesn't show up in the processes or services lists. thank god for adaware and spybot sd and fuck morheus. i'm sticking with Azureus (a BT client)
If you have the md5 or sha1 hash of the file/iso from the original source (validated by a gpg signature) that's perfectly save and helpes saving bandwidth on the original servers.
MLdonkey is open source and supports not only donkey but fasttrack, bittorent, soulseek, dc, gnutella, gnutella2, overnet, opennap networks too. u can use it with many guis and from console.
giFT, I think. Consists of a server (can connect to OpenFT, Gnutella, Fasttrack, Soulseek, etc, at varying success rate) that does the downloading, and a client that can be on remote host as well if desired. The best client for it just happens to be giFTcurs, a console app...
I had installed it in my desktop two days ago and I can't say that I was impressed. ----I know that it is still beta----, put it has a lot of way to go! -It uses the mldonkey fasttrack plugin in order to connect to the kazaa network... Hmmm... doesn't this mean that they should provide source or something? Correct me if I am wrong -User interface is awful!! Big ugly graphic buttons and I have the impression that I didn't see any proper menu bar. Of course, there is a ad-box in an uncomortable position taking up a whole strip of the screen just in order to display an ad in the middle. At least kazaa ads to not take up a whole row (There are the play-stop-etc buttons next to them) - There is no way to see the peers you are connecting to (At least that was my impression after the 20min. period that it had the honour of being installed in my machine) -UI was slow on my P4 3ghz, 1gb ram (!) -It crashed.
...I found IRC.
IRC has been around much longer than any modern p2p network. IRC was ancient when I started using it in 1999, when napster came out. IRC was what people used to suppliment their ftp downloading.
Of course now that many of the IRC operators have banned file xfers, it's a lot harder to find the things I liked
IRC ops can't ban file transfers, as far as I know. File transfers with clients such as mirc are direct client to client (DCC, also could be called p2p). That's why all the kiddie pr0n stuff is on IRC - it's sick, but no one stops it because no files ever actually transfer across an IRC network. The only thing IRC networks transfer is text.
Now, I know you're trolling, but at least be more subtle about it.
~Will
sig?
In all this talk about a "open" protocol and client that doesn't have spyware, Im suprised that I never hear /.'ers talk about OpenFT/giFT client. I had been using it regularly but constant changes to the protocol and server updates made me look else where. Even though this was a problem I'm supprised there isn't a bigger community pushing giFT and there efforts to help make it a solid product. I noticed they have more clients and one that works with windows now (cross plat is good). Like I said its been awhile since I used it but at the time I loved it. After reading this post I revisted their site and it looks like they are making progress so Im assuming that they have a some what more stable protocol that doesn't get changed all the time. I think ./'ers should either take a look at it or give it another try like I AM!
But if you check ftp.kernel.org -- or any mirror you happen to trust -- you will find .sign files corresponding to each tarball. If you want to pull a tarball from a potentially untrusted source one needs to simply get that .sign file, and then run
gpg --verify [signature] [tarball]
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
to use giFT.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.