MUTE Grows In Popularity, Iterations 50
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."
Re:0th gen. was web? what about gen. -1, -2, and - (Score:3, Funny)
You better watch out old man... or we young punks will invent a new generation of computers that are harder to use than a VCR remote control.
Bah, these kids today! (Score:5, Funny)
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!