re: I thought a Freeloader ban would be a good option until I read the post from this moron. Now I think a better option would be the ability to ban people who set their LimeWare freeloader ban to over 10 files.

The only problem is that's difficult to do, after I read that, I tried to see if it's possible. Limewire doesn't broadcast it's limit, only the client itself knows what it's own limit is set to, there's no way I can "request" his client send mine specs about his quota settings. Bearshare, however, broadcasts the fact that it's "freeloading" and can be banned. I still think that the ability of the client to discriminate requests is a bad thing regardless of circumstance. As a matter of fact, if I had set the protocol up, I would have set up NO provision for broadcasting how many files the client is sharing, so clients would then have no basis for any discrimination in the first place based on file count.

I'd like to see Gnutella evolve into what pre-internet BBS's offered, anonymity, privacy, decenralized yet synchronized peer-to-peer sharing with no restrictions from anyone other than /what/ they want to share. The old bbs's didn't know how many files you had, and couldn't/didnt restrict your downloads. (untill the paysites and AOL showed up).

I spent hours since my last post roughing out code for a makeshift client that can connect and search. No GUI yet, at this point it's just shelled out to console. (anyone reccommend a good windowing library for windows that makes skinnable GUI's?)
I've borrowed some GPL'ed code for the search heuristics, right now the searching function is the only useable function so far. Looks like I can't share yet though (because of the GPL license) but when it's done I'll follow through and release it under the GPL.

One minor slight about the Gnutella protocol, it's very WASTEFULL! I noticed around 1/3 of the searches were for mostly the same thing, yet the searches are done over and over relentlessly by everyone, this is highly innefficient, and the reason why 50% of the gnutella network is flooded with "search spamming". we need a search cache provision to cut this wastefull flood of useless redundant searches, so next I'm working on a client side cache for common searches, so instead of relaying a redundant search when requested, I just send my cache of that same search the last time it was done (with a timeout of maybe 1/2 hour before the cache expires). This should increase the Gnutella bandwidth around 10% (assuming EVERYONE used clients that are capable of this) It's a start.


RE: Pick up the clue phone young people. As person who has been online since the beginning of the widely distributed internet in the early 1990s, I can tell you that file sharing among peers is what the web was designed to do. Counting files and denying people access to your stuff is fine -- if you're an *******.

I agree 100%. The attitude of people toward the technology seems to be changing though. Back in the day we /shared/ files, but nowdays people think of their internet connection as an entertainment service not unlike cable TV, one way.

In the dawn of the age, we left our pc's on overnight running underground BBS's (unless we had a dedicated line) just to be a part of the community, providing forums like this one, and a place to share files. Those of you who let your PC's share overnight, not just firing up gnutella clients when you download, are the ones that will make this work. In light of that, I'm trying to think of some incentive to make someone leave this client on all the time, without punishing someone who doesn't, any idea's anyone?