I worked at aimster for a few months before deciding they weren't going anywhere (read: yes, i know why it's named what it's named). The reason for "AIM"ster is that you were "AIM"ing for only your buddies. Any semblance to AOL's product offering is entirely coincidental. The fact that aimster (supposedly) integrates with IM products is a happy side note as well.
In the case that you weren't aware, aimster is a p2p app that was supposedly designed to integrate well with IM infrastructure (i say supposedly because, well, i know how the previous version worked =), and allow you to only share files with your buddies. The versions i worked on were rather lackluster, and the file sharing didn't work for most people most of the time. I can't speak for the new version, as it was released after i left the company.
Much as i dislike aimster, i think johnny had a good idea, and he was willing to support me to do the reverse engineering of AIM's OFT (AIM File Transfer) in an open manner. We have a partial implementation of it in libfaim, but nobody really cares enough to finish it up.
In the original version of this story(hopefully fixed by now), Timothy had a link to the Ontario Swine Improvement site, instead of the Open Source Initiative's site.
At first I thought this was just a simple acronym mix-up, but upon further analysis, I realized it was much d eeper than that. If you check out the FAQ, the OSI is commited to helping improve Ontario's pigs in an open manner. For example, they're all about sharing source material, as especially noted in their pricing strategy -- they charge you extra if you're not sharing your source material!
In fact, they even provide some how-to in their FAQs
Of course, this project is merely Open, since the material can never be truly Free. They would like to be Free, but apparently their product relies on IP from an external source, and they just can't get their vendor to agree to the terms of the GPL. Something about "thou shalt not lie with a beast" or some such.
someone writes a GoldenEye or, better yet, Pong bot? Or perhaps they just use a pre-encrypted format to help discourage such blantant abuse of the protocol;^)
Too bad the source doesn't appear to be available, i'd be curious to see exactly how they did it (my guess is just passing button press events back and forth). I suppose that could be gleaned from the SDK, but still.
(yes, i realize how difficult it would be to write a bot for these games, considering the fact that you don't really have a Good Way to extract the other user's position, etc)
Re:journaling is nice, but how about a better RAID
on
XFS 1.0 is Released
·
· Score: 1
perhaps i'm just shining with ignorance here, but does DiVX not stream?
personally, i'm planning on using MPEG2 over 100Mb as a stream, if/when i bother to build a set-top box. on my sony dvd player, it has a nice "bandwidth monitor", which tops out at about 10Mbps.
we haven't looked into the 1/1f thing with icq2kb (we're all currently busy enough with just keeping on AIM.).
you couldn't send IMs back and forth between icq and aim, but they did have the same chat namespace (you would be redirected to teh same chat servers. i forget if you were redirected to the same BOS servers, or if those were seperated.)
nope. they're not wrong. it's just that we're not wrong for getting back in, either.
i don't recall all the technical details wrt the MS problems. we've had a few blockages. if i recall correctly, that one was with flap nops. if you really care, email me about it. i'll see if anyone remembers and then i'll poke around in mail archives. or, god forbid, you could do your own research.
the oscar server doesn't overload, as far as we can tell. it's a very well-designed, very well-thought-out, distributed architecture.
also, consider the number of users aol has, versus operating cost. each libfaim user is costing them a couple of dollars a year, max.
not to mention that icq now runs on oscar as well (icq2kb runs on aim. you used to be able to join aim buddychats from icq when using libfaim.. it was amusing).
the long and short of it is that we don't mind costing aol a little money for this. they can block us technically, and we can get back in technically. when they block us legally, well, we'll see what happens.
and that's the last i'm going to reply to you on/. this discussion strikes me as pointless, especially when i have better things to do with my time than rationalize my actions to a random person.
i admit my ignorance here, but i'm used to dealing with wussy servers (k6-2 300 is my server... we'll leave the workstations out of this;^)
also, keep in mind how many users you're going to have hitting this server (gaim is actually relatively well-deployed).
in any case, we don't like the concept of doing it for a host of other reasons. thank you for replying with good content, i wish i could mod you up for people to better understand the situation.
on the business side: we're not here to make AOL happy. we're using AIM because our friends use AIM. we respect that they pay for the servers, but they also pay for the netscape servers, yet don't restrict how we use Netscape (this is a bit orthogonal, i know. they don't advertise in NS. last i checked though, the only ads in AIM were AOL-internal. admittedly, i haven't used winaim in a long long time, except under wine, which manages to hose the adverts).
on technical issues: i would agree with you, but, well, you're wrong =)
this is a wholly different issue. libfaim has been around for something like 3 years now, predating the Microsoft incident. We remember the microsoft problems rather well. We got around that simply; all we had to do was be careful what data we sent to the server. libfaim was blocked for a couple of days then as well, and thanks to adam's insight and hard work we got back on.
(PS: as far as the buffer overflow theory, i have yet to see real proof of it -- my opinion is that it's someone misinterpreting the protocol.)
-jbm, following proud/. tradition and hardly proofreading
(my qualifications: Hi, my name is Josh Myer. I have been working with Adam (mid) on libfaim for a couple of years now. Adam's the big guy for it, but i'm one of the people that knows the library best)
first and foremost, eric did a great job of describing the problem on the page referenced. we're being blocked by aol because we don't have the official aim client to checksum.
personally, i think this is a great move by aol, but it is a pain in our butt as developers. we cannot ship aim.exe legally, but adam already added a function to do the requisite checksums based on a copy of aim.exe that you specify. adding support to gaim for this, if not already done, will probably be done in the next couple of days).
note that when you log in to oscar, you send a bunch of gory detail about your client (major, minor, and build number). the checksum you send in your 0001/00020 reply has to be correct for the string you passed, we assume. fortunately, they haven't actually hit unique checksums yet (they're still at the beginning of WinMain() ).
we have talked about several options:
1.) ship with aim.exe the file
2.) ship with aim.exe the very-large-array
3.) add support for aim.exe-sniffing.
4.) add support for a server that you request bytes of aim.exe from.
here's our findings on all of the above:
1.) not legal, not to mention annoying for us
2.) also not legal, and even more annoying
3.) adam added this today, but we have to worry about the cases where users don't have the same version of aim.exe as their clientstring advertises. therefore we have to fingerprint the aim.exe you supply us, in order to base the client string we send on that.
4.) this is a bit more interesting, but a lot of overhead we don't like to add. you would send a request for a byte range as well as the client string you specified, and the server would know which bytes (or the hash) to send you. you would then use this.
we have problems with that due to latency, and server load. md5 isn't exactly cheap, and doing it a lot would be noticable. if you don't reply to the 0001/001f quickly enough, you get the boot. so if the server gets bogged down, nobody can log in, so everyone starts trying harder, bogging the server down further... ad nauseum.
it's also questionably legal.
we try our damnedest to keep libfaim legal -- it's basically the only way to get on AIM without using an AOL client. and don't tell me TOC is an alternative, it's not. TOC has _lost_ features since AOL stopped officially supporting it. TOC also doesn't support full rendezvous (file transfer, directim, etc), which libfaim at least partially implements (I have done a partial implementation in libfaim; faimtest can request and serve up getfiles. sendfile still needs done; directim has been around for awhile now).
i'll keep up with the threads here, and i can be reached for comment at josh at joshisanerd.com. make sure you mention "AIM" in the subject.
i'll shut up now and let the other guys involved post some =)
Wow. I was duly impressed -- there's a giant shockwave, animated ad in the middle of the page. I thought Ziff-Davis was horrible before, but they have managed to hit a new low!
Anyone on modems should just avoid the page
Let's hear it for zd!! Personally, I'm never going to look at ZD content again, at least not until i can filter out those ads.
(Dammit. Enter should not simply submit from the subject line.)
There were a few cases where it came out _very_ nice. overall it did suck, though. I think the source of the "problem" is the use of digital video. like it or not, digital video sucks, always has sucked, and will continue to suck for awhile. This is why i'm curious how CNN's supposed switch to field editing will work out.
Anyway, my suggestion is to make a hemisphere over the field of sorts, so instead of switching camera angles, you simply "camera hop" to the new angle, much much smoother than just the jump. And not use digital cameras =)
My Best Teacher was Mr. Velasquez, hands down. In 5th grade he took the smartest kid in the class, the guy that knew everything, and showed him just how little he really knew. From that point on, I've always known that somewhere out there, there's somebody that knows a helluva lot more than me. Humility is a wonderful trait to have.
The teacher that taught me the most was Mr. Herrington. The guy was a bastard, very set in his ways, very big on having power -- HS Calc teacher that ran the department. Apparently nobody ever bothered to teach him the lesson above. But he did force me to learn how to sit back, shut up, and do things somebody else's way. Which has served me wonderfully in the working world.
Oh, and Mr. Curry, my AP Physics teacher -- when you don't know the answer, don't be afraid to BS around for a bit before giving up. That BS counts for something!
Slashdot Mirror
I worked at aimster for a few months before deciding they weren't going anywhere (read: yes, i know why it's named what it's named). The reason for "AIM"ster is that you were "AIM"ing for only your buddies. Any semblance to AOL's product offering is entirely coincidental. The fact that aimster (supposedly) integrates with IM products is a happy side note as well.
In the case that you weren't aware, aimster is a p2p app that was supposedly designed to integrate well with IM infrastructure (i say supposedly because, well, i know how the previous version worked =), and allow you to only share files with your buddies. The versions i worked on were rather lackluster, and the file sharing didn't work for most people most of the time. I can't speak for the new version, as it was released after i left the company.
Much as i dislike aimster, i think johnny had a good idea, and he was willing to support me to do the reverse engineering of AIM's OFT (AIM File Transfer) in an open manner. We have a partial implementation of it in libfaim, but nobody really cares enough to finish it up.
At first I thought this was just a simple acronym mix-up, but upon further analysis, I realized it was much d eeper than that. If you check out the FAQ, the OSI is commited to helping improve Ontario's pigs in an open manner. For example, they're all about sharing source material, as especially noted in their pricing strategy -- they charge you extra if you're not sharing your source material!
In fact, they even provide some how-to in their FAQs
Of course, this project is merely Open, since the material can never be truly Free. They would like to be Free, but apparently their product relies on IP from an external source, and they just can't get their vendor to agree to the terms of the GPL. Something about "thou shalt not lie with a beast" or some such.
There are rumors He's open to petitions though.
I keep meaning to go and get a 2bit-with-carry adder schematic tattooed on my chest. Using the ANSI logic symbols, of course.
Anybody have favorite schematics they'd get tattooed?
would you like that in small unmarked bills, or do you prefer foreign notes?
someone writes a GoldenEye or, better yet, Pong bot? Or perhaps they just use a pre-encrypted format to help discourage such blantant abuse of the protocol ;^)
Too bad the source doesn't appear to be available, i'd be curious to see exactly how they did it (my guess is just passing button press events back and forth). I suppose that could be gleaned from the SDK, but still.
(yes, i realize how difficult it would be to write a bot for these games, considering the fact that you don't really have a Good Way to extract the other user's position, etc)
perhaps i'm just shining with ignorance here, but does DiVX not stream?
personally, i'm planning on using MPEG2 over 100Mb as a stream, if/when i bother to build a set-top box. on my sony dvd player, it has a nice "bandwidth monitor", which tops out at about 10Mbps.
we haven't looked into the 1/1f thing with icq2kb (we're all currently busy enough with just keeping on AIM.).
you couldn't send IMs back and forth between icq and aim, but they did have the same chat namespace (you would be redirected to teh same chat servers. i forget if you were redirected to the same BOS servers, or if those were seperated.)
back to playing cat and mouse.
nope. they're not wrong. it's just that we're not wrong for getting back in, either.
/. this discussion strikes me as pointless, especially when i have better things to do with my time than rationalize my actions to a random person.
i don't recall all the technical details wrt the MS problems. we've had a few blockages. if i recall correctly, that one was with flap nops. if you really care, email me about it. i'll see if anyone remembers and then i'll poke around in mail archives. or, god forbid, you could do your own research.
the oscar server doesn't overload, as far as we can tell. it's a very well-designed, very well-thought-out, distributed architecture.
also, consider the number of users aol has, versus operating cost. each libfaim user is costing them a couple of dollars a year, max.
not to mention that icq now runs on oscar as well (icq2kb runs on aim. you used to be able to join aim buddychats from icq when using libfaim.. it was amusing).
the long and short of it is that we don't mind costing aol a little money for this. they can block us technically, and we can get back in technically. when they block us legally, well, we'll see what happens.
and that's the last i'm going to reply to you on
-jbm, back to code.
i admit my ignorance here, but i'm used to dealing with wussy servers (k6-2 300 is my server... we'll leave the workstations out of this ;^)
also, keep in mind how many users you're going to have hitting this server (gaim is actually relatively well-deployed).
in any case, we don't like the concept of doing it for a host of other reasons. thank you for replying with good content, i wish i could mod you up for people to better understand the situation.
-jbm, who is now giving up one the preview button
on the business side: we're not here to make AOL happy. we're using AIM because our friends use AIM. we respect that they pay for the servers, but they also pay for the netscape servers, yet don't restrict how we use Netscape (this is a bit orthogonal, i know. they don't advertise in NS. last i checked though, the only ads in AIM were AOL-internal. admittedly, i haven't used winaim in a long long time, except under wine, which manages to hose the adverts).
/. tradition and hardly proofreading
on technical issues: i would agree with you, but, well, you're wrong =)
this is a wholly different issue. libfaim has been around for something like 3 years now, predating the Microsoft incident. We remember the microsoft problems rather well. We got around that simply; all we had to do was be careful what data we sent to the server. libfaim was blocked for a couple of days then as well, and thanks to adam's insight and hard work we got back on.
(PS: as far as the buffer overflow theory, i have yet to see real proof of it -- my opinion is that it's someone misinterpreting the protocol.)
-jbm, following proud
(my qualifications: Hi, my name is Josh Myer. I have been working with Adam (mid) on libfaim for a couple of years now. Adam's the big guy for it, but i'm one of the people that knows the library best)
first and foremost, eric did a great job of describing the problem on the page referenced. we're being blocked by aol because we don't have the official aim client to checksum.
personally, i think this is a great move by aol, but it is a pain in our butt as developers. we cannot ship aim.exe legally, but adam already added a function to do the requisite checksums based on a copy of aim.exe that you specify. adding support to gaim for this, if not already done, will probably be done in the next couple of days).
note that when you log in to oscar, you send a bunch of gory detail about your client (major, minor, and build number). the checksum you send in your 0001/00020 reply has to be correct for the string you passed, we assume. fortunately, they haven't actually hit unique checksums yet (they're still at the beginning of WinMain() ).
we have talked about several options:
1.) ship with aim.exe the file
2.) ship with aim.exe the very-large-array
3.) add support for aim.exe-sniffing.
4.) add support for a server that you request bytes of aim.exe from.
here's our findings on all of the above:
1.) not legal, not to mention annoying for us
2.) also not legal, and even more annoying
3.) adam added this today, but we have to worry about the cases where users don't have the same version of aim.exe as their clientstring advertises. therefore we have to fingerprint the aim.exe you supply us, in order to base the client string we send on that.
4.) this is a bit more interesting, but a lot of overhead we don't like to add. you would send a request for a byte range as well as the client string you specified, and the server would know which bytes (or the hash) to send you. you would then use this.
we have problems with that due to latency, and server load. md5 isn't exactly cheap, and doing it a lot would be noticable. if you don't reply to the 0001/001f quickly enough, you get the boot. so if the server gets bogged down, nobody can log in, so everyone starts trying harder, bogging the server down further... ad nauseum.
it's also questionably legal.
we try our damnedest to keep libfaim legal -- it's basically the only way to get on AIM without using an AOL client. and don't tell me TOC is an alternative, it's not. TOC has _lost_ features since AOL stopped officially supporting it. TOC also doesn't support full rendezvous (file transfer, directim, etc), which libfaim at least partially implements (I have done a partial implementation in libfaim; faimtest can request and serve up getfiles. sendfile still needs done; directim has been around for awhile now).
i'll keep up with the threads here, and i can be reached for comment at josh at joshisanerd.com. make sure you mention "AIM" in the subject.
i'll shut up now and let the other guys involved post some =)
-josh
Wow. I was duly impressed -- there's a giant shockwave, animated ad in the middle of the page. I thought Ziff-Davis was horrible before, but they have managed to hit a new low!
Anyone on modems should just avoid the page
Let's hear it for zd!! Personally, I'm never going to look at ZD content again, at least not until i can filter out those ads.
(Dammit. Enter should not simply submit from the subject line.)
There were a few cases where it came out _very_ nice. overall it did suck, though. I think the source of the "problem" is the use of digital video. like it or not, digital video sucks, always has sucked, and will continue to suck for awhile. This is why i'm curious how CNN's supposed switch to field editing will work out.
Anyway, my suggestion is to make a hemisphere over the field of sorts, so instead of switching camera angles, you simply "camera hop" to the new angle, much much smoother than just the jump. And not use digital cameras =)
My Best Teacher was Mr. Velasquez, hands down. In 5th grade he took the smartest kid in the class, the guy that knew everything, and showed him just how little he really knew. From that point on, I've always known that somewhere out there, there's somebody that knows a helluva lot more than me. Humility is a wonderful trait to have.
The teacher that taught me the most was Mr. Herrington. The guy was a bastard, very set in his ways, very big on having power -- HS Calc teacher that ran the department. Apparently nobody ever bothered to teach him the lesson above. But he did force me to learn how to sit back, shut up, and do things somebody else's way. Which has served me wonderfully in the working world.
Oh, and Mr. Curry, my AP Physics teacher -- when you don't know the answer, don't be afraid to BS around for a bit before giving up. That BS counts for something!