Waste Justin Frankel, creator of WinAmp, Gnutella & Shoutcast, quietly posted the code for a new piece of software on Nullsoft's website last month. A few hours later, it was quickly yanked from the site by parent company AOL, and replaced with a warning that everyone who downloaded the code is to destroy it immediately. The same thing happened two years ago when Frankel posted the code of Gnutella. What is Waste? Waste is a decentralized, encrypted chat program that allows specified folders on a users computer to be shared. While the code is still in beta, enough coders now have their hands on it, and enough mirror sites are up distributing the code. Waste is about to evolve. Where will it go next? As for Frankel ... while he's a respected programmer, his antics and bad boy image (read: he cares about programming, not protecting media giants or skirting the law) have apparently pushed AOL too far. Looks like he's either going to quit, or they're going to fire his ass.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The first chef

First came fire ... and then, as the camera shifts to the soon to be late-village idiot, you're left wondering -- just what was going through that mind -- and food is put on the fire, for the first time, and cooking is accidentally discovered by humanity. The first chef is ridiculed by grunts, then the local thug tries a sample of the burnt carcass, and soon, everybody gets queued at the McDonalds drive-thru. What happened? Richard Wrangham of Harvard believes there's more to cooking than evolutionary history would have you believe. Wrangham points out that there is no way homo sapiens could survive on just raw food. Raw food just doesn't give up calories as easily as cooked food -- and raw food makes the digestive system expend more energy to get at those calories. Cooking on the other hand breaks complex molecules down, allowing the digestive system to make easy work of them -- and cooking also softens food, allowing the body to get to the calories with less effort...
Read more

Inner Cow

Image
This has got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. Researchers cut holes into the sides of cows and insert an cannula, which allows access to a live animals stomach. These holes are so big, you can actually see what's going on inside -- literally, reach into the stomach of a cow. Cows stomach have millions microbes that aid in digestion, and surprisingly, cannulated cows are usually the healthiest of the herd. You would think that walking around with a hole in your stomach would be bad for you, but apparently not. Some farmers apparently keep cannulated cows in their herd so they can serve as microbe donors to sick cows. Just bizarre. [Source: Oddity Central ]
Read more

Blogs of Note

Who Would Jesus Hate? -- described as providing "anecdotal evidence of how religion is on the wrong side of every social issue." Fugetaboutit! -- hilarious site from a "48-year-old shrinking Italian comedian ." Take the tagline for instance: "I saw the face of Jesus in my lasagna ... briefly."
Read more