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1.6 Million PCs Track Popular P2P Clients
Hodejo1 writes "'Big announcements' are often backed up by a dubiously small data set or not backed up at all. Big Champagne, PC Pitstop and Digital Music News joined forces to analyze 1,661,688 PCs to track 152 unique P2P clients quarterly from September 2006 to September 2007. The result is a definitive list of the most popular P2P software in use. Topping the list by a healthy margin is LimeWire. 'In September of 2007 LimeWire was found on 17.8% of all the PCs polled that month. With regards to market share — counting only those users with at least one P2P application on their systems — LimeWire held a 36.4% share, meaning one out of three P2P users has LimeWire on their system. These numbers are up slightly from September 2006 when LimeWire held a market share of 34.1%'. Meanwhile, uTorrent has made huge gains during this period soaring into second place and posing a genuine challenge to LimeWire."
from the article:
"this technology is so easy a grandmother could use it"
As a 48 yo grandmother, and C programmer, I find that offensive.
As a recent college grad (read: pirate), I'm amazed by the percentage of people still using crap like LimeWire and eMule. I would've guessed most people have evolved to uTorrent at this point. But, when you need to download a copy of "Achy Breaky Heart", I guess LimeWire is, sadly, your best option.
Well now we know that 36.40% of the polled PCs are infected with a real ecosystem of viruses.
For one, these p2p clients tend to be breeding grounds for bad things. Aside from the RIAA and everything going on with the music industry as it is, the clients themselves are (if i am not mistaken) data miners, resource whores, and virus huggers (not to be confused with tree huggers).
Google (for me anyway) has been far more useful:
-inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "Your Title Here"
There are many more search parameters you could use, but that does the trick.
Something witty.
The huge gains are going to be in RIAA lawsuits. Do your part to keep uTorrent under he radar - install limewire today.
I'm amazed anyone is still using the Gnutella network. Have there been any improvements to it recently? Last I used it, probably 5 years ago, it was awfully slow. Both in searching and downloading, even edonkey was faster. Plus, it didn't seem useful for much other than individual mp3s. Again, on edonkey you could still find rars of full albums.
Of course, private trackers that focus on a certain niche of content (full albums, classic games, textbooks, etc) with quality control and ratios to ensure seeding are far and away the best. There's not a P2P app anywhere that can compare with what Oink offered. But torrents seem really underrepresented on this list. Limewire is on 36% of PCs surveyed, but only 28% of PCs surveyed had any bittorrent client at all? What gives?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
FTS: "'Big announcements' are often backed up by a dubiously small data set or not backed up at all."
In this case, the data set is very large, but still of dubious relevance.
The data was collected from the 1.6 million computers by an anti-malware software product I've never heard of, using techniques that would get it itself labeled malware by more reputable anti-malware products. A product that rates only 3 out of 5 stars at Download.com. From a company that rolled over when Gator sued them for calling their spyware "spyware".
Unless there is data to support the assumption that the rubes who blindly install and run PC Pitstop software on their Windows boxes are a representative sampling of the computer user community as a whole, I don't see how this announcement contains any meaningful findings at all.
I've never been able to find solutions manuals, reliably, anywhere other than on eMule.
PCPitstop.com recorded this information by offereing free malware scans. The very first lines at their web site are "Is your PC acting sluggish? Are strange windows inexplicably popping up on your screen?" If you have Limewire installed you probably fit that category dead on. Of course they're going to use their free services to try and remedy it. People with uTorrent don't necessarily have that problem so no point to going there.. besides they already run anti-malware apps they got via torrents anyway.
Those 1.6million PCs are only those that suffered problems that wanted that free scan. It basically just tells me that 17.8% of all PCs with problems had Limewire installed.
The best news is to find out that your own P2P app isn't even listed. That might put you below the litigation radar threshold.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Sept-07:
40.5% Gnutella
28.5% Bittorent
04.6% Ares
04.0% eDonkey
01.5% FastTrack
00.9% Pando
Thirded.
Furthermore, I can't see any useful comparison between bittorrent and sharing apps like LimeWire and eMule. Torrents are for specific content targets, sharing bandwidth between peers for what people *are getting now*, while traditional P2P apps create what could be described as a communal library of what people *already have*.
The two P2P models are totally incomparable, and other than the fact that they both evoke "It gets used to pirate our hard forged artwork!" cries, they have nothing in common.
I hate printers.
You are comparing apples and oranges. Limewire isn't a bittorrent client. Limewire can be the most widely used P2P client in use, and Azureus can still be the most widely used by those who are downloading torrents.
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
Fourthed. It's like having a library full of all the world's media at your fingertips. Any book. Any song. Any movie. Anything, from anywhen. It's there. A couple of years ago I found old BBC episodes of "The Tripods". Totally camp. Aired in the '80's!!
I didn't download anything, and I never have, however. Because that's wrong and will destroy civilization as we know it.
.there is enough of everything for everyone.
Dont talk about Usenet...
my associative arrays can kick your hash - TCL
Ok, Azureus is the most widely used Bittorrent client that is exclusively Bittorrent and begins with the letter "A".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"...don't use IE to look at porn or download illigal stuff/cracks/ etc, and youll genrally be fine."
Yeah, tell that to my wife's 83 year old mother who is constantly getting her laptop infected, and she'll kick you ass all over town.
By the way, what dream world do you live in where you actually believe the foolish statement you made?
And I really think your silly question should have been, "Why am I under the impression that Firefox users think that "their" browser is the best".
I've used Firefox since it's original name (been so long, can't recall), and I've never touted it as the best browser, but it certainly has many useful extensions that the others lack.
If it don't GO... chrome it. ~ Frank Banks
LimeWire is certainly the most-often-seen P2P client in police investigations.
I'm saying the foundation of the poisoning would be that the clients would be purposefully trying to successfully identify themselves as azureus or utorrent. If they identified themselves as 'Crappy Selfish Client .23b' Its already a completely fixed problem.
Clients even have filters in them to try and find when a client is trying to fake their identity. But there has to be a way to fake is successfully, without that then yes, there would be no harm done.
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