Build Date: Wed Feb 12 11:22:17 2025 UTC
Your meat is negative meat, not good meat.
-- Doctor Murdock
Yo!nk, and Away! *SMACK*
2000-03-24 13:00:24
Well, just when you think FREEDOM is on it's way in, there's a huge pig industrial backlash from the sleeping pork giants. Napster, MP3.com, gar gar gar are all getting slapped down by the MAN! Mother fuck. Well, let's see what happens with Yo!nk.
It's been a bad month for freedom, folks. I mean, real bad. There've been more lawyers searching the Web for "bad" programs and "wrong" files over the last 60 days than porndogs searching for double-anal penetration. What's HAPPENING with this goddamned Internet, ANYWAYS!? Fuck, I think I'm just going to give up and go back to FidoNet, man. At least they've still got some FREEDOM there. Who's with me?
Aw, who'm I kidding? I'm gonna stick with this crazy ol' Internet until it goes down in a disgusting mudpit of legal terminology, Congressional hearings and e-fuckwad.com startups.
So, given that, what're the options for people who just want to trade files, share information, swap recipes, etc.? You could use Napster, sure, but that damn thing only works for MP3s (stupid patented music protocol).
This wiggity Gnutella from Gnullsoft sure looked good for a while, but the captive Nullsoft's corporate overlord, AOL/Time-Warner, put the hurting on them within a few hours and Gnutella is gone for good. STUPIDLY, they forgot to release the source early, so now that Gnutella's kiboshed, nobody else can develop it. Good going, Gnullsoft! Man, what a bunch of whack-jobs. Just goes to show you that if you sell out, man, you're going to STAY sold out. You don't become Steve Case's beeyatch without paying the price. [Last I checked there was a mirror of Gnutella here, if you're so inclined.]
So what's that leave? Of course, there's FreeNet, but it's got practically ZERO client support right now. So it's primarily for wily European Javur hackers right now. Go check it out, if you can, by the way!
But what this article is about -- I know you were wondering, folks -- is this new little program, Yo!nk. Clever name, eh? Combining the power of InterCaps with excessive! exclamation! points!, Yo!nk is a file-exchange client put out by the good-karma krew at Download Community. It's for trading all sorts of files, like whatever you want to trade. The architecture is pretty interesting, too: it uses the venerable IRC protocol, and the hot-young-pup XML, to make announcements and share data.
The guys involved with Yo!nk are pretty coolio. They asked to remain anonymous when I talked to them, but trust me -- they have street cred in Internet freedom. Would I lie to you?
I have some reservations about Yo!nk right now, though. The source isn't available yet, which is kind of a problem. However, the DC folks say that it'll be opened up Real Soon Now. Also, there's only a Winders client, so I haven't been able to try it out. But apparently the protocol is quite simple, and once that gets published it should be relatively easy to port Yo!nk to Linux and Macs and what not. Hell, Napster only has an official Win32 client, after all.
Anyways, give Yo!nk a try, and let me know what you think. Run the client, let information run free, strike a blow for LIBERTY, and send yet another industry exec to the ER with a cardiac infarction. And hey: tell 'em Pigdog Journal sent you, eh?
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)
Poor Metallica. All they want is to continue to put out the same weak "Heavy Metal" they've been churning out since the "And Justice For All" days? and make gooey wads of cash in the process. The problem is, people aren't buying their bound for the heavy metal scrap heap, over-produced, uninspired, tired crap. And let's face it, their various commercial endorsements won't pay for the lifestyle they've become comfortably accustomed to. Resorting to lawsuits makes perfect sense, when you need spending money. But just one lawsuit isn't going to pay their bills. So, to aid Metallica, I've composed an open letter to the boys in the band, with suggestions as to whom else they might sic their lapdog lawyers on... (More...)
High Availability Guinness Stress Test
All too often we forget the incredible depth of technology behind the weekly ritual of TNiPN@*. We tend to only become aware of the strategy of High Available Guinness (HAG) when it rises to the forefront during a complete and utter venue failure. Yet we should all be super grateful that this system exists. (More...)
The Liquidation of Hobo Junction
Albany, CA's homeless hooverville by the Bay, "Hobo Junction," is going to be torn down by The Man. Entrances are already being blocked off, and it's now difficult and dangerous to get there. Worse, these obstacles are making it hard to get to the nearby HORSE TRACK on foot. Local historian, Pao Tzu, has an overview of situation. (More...)
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)