Users of Kazaa please follow this link and read.

Tree

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Oct 2, 2001
Messages
1,384
Location
Louisiana, USA, Earth
Users of Kazaa please follow this link and read.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-873181.html

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>A California company has quietly attached its software to millions of downloads of the popular Kazaa file-trading program and plans to remotely "turn on" people's PCs, welding them into a new network of its own. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Better safe than sorry.
 

lightlover

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Feb 28, 2001
Messages
1,901
Location
London, UK (Parallel Universe)
Thanks Tree,
a timely warning of this dubious practice.

If anyone is feeling generous, there are a number of charities with a "distributed computing" concept.
Same kind of thing, except that you download a screensaver or "work in background" program, and send your results in every now and then.

SETI is one, and Cambridge University has a similar concept, except that you're testing drugs via computer models.

lightlover
 

Brock

Flashaholic
Joined
Aug 6, 2000
Messages
6,346
Location
Green Bay, WI USA
I've got seti running on my three computers. I like the "seti driver" so it can cache the units when the seti server is down or busy. And I am not wasting my CPU while surfing CPF
smile.gif
 

JollyRoger

Enlightened
Joined
Aug 21, 2001
Messages
875
Location
Berkeley, CA
Google is coming up with one as well.

About the Kazaa thing. I am pretty sure the company will notify you and *ask* you for permission when they "turn on" this mechanism. If you don't want your computer part of it, it won't happen.
 

Spork

Enlightened
Joined
May 25, 2001
Messages
594
Location
USA
I use zone alarm. you wouldn't believe all the programs that try to access the internet or act as a server without you knowing. that and a pop up stopper is all I let run on my pc 24/7
 

PhilAlex

Enlightened
Joined
Feb 9, 2002
Messages
228
Location
Hamilton, Ontario
I use WinMX to download those snazzy educational movies...

No Spyware.

Something else I learned that was neat was go to your RUN menu in START (Win95/8) and type MSCONFIG

Go to startup and see what's been installed! Incredible!
 
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