Can't we just get along, without kings, without bosses? I know it may be hard to believe, but it used to be that way..
see:
New Worlds for Old - Reports from the New World and Their Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe, 1500-1800 by William Brandon [1986] Ohio University Press
Now, as to blocking flooders...
1] I think there is a general consensus that this is important, for users who connect as PRIMARY hubs.
2] I believe that BOTH the DLL and PG with access to the same flooder block list can perform this function equally well.
3] Users who connect as secondaries have blocking built [no one can connect to them as secondaries to flood - duh!]
4] Therefore, claiming all who use the hosts list fix, irrespective of whether primary or secondary, are damaging the net is a lie.
So I would recommend that the overreaching claims be more objective and more truthful.
My advice would be:
If a user connects as a
SECONDARY, neither the flooder blocking function of the DLL or with PG for hosts list users is relevant. Since no one can connect to a secondary user, flooders can't!
So as to blocking fake file flooders, secondary users don't have to choose the DLL over the hosts list, as it is totally irrelevant. One is as good as the other. Whichever one finds works for them makes no difference to the WPN function. Claims that it does are false and should stop.
If a user connects as a
PRIMARY hub, then certainly thought should be given to blocking flooders, either with the DLL or with PG and the related block list. Either method produces relatively equal results. Neither is significantly superior to the other
for this function. The user is free to choose either and should not be chastised for their choice.
My understanding that the newer 'piepatchupdater' now has some built in automation to update the block list for use in PG, so functions not too differently that the DLL as to this. And all due credit goes to those that suggested this and developed methods to efficiently identify and black list offending chaff flooder IPs.
As to filtering fake files from search results:
This appears to be a boon for many users, but it is unclear to me at this point what effects providing this 'pleasant user experience' may have on the WPN infrastructure. I will await some further specifics as to exactly how this filtering is done and where the CPUsage loads for this task are distributed, whether they remain on the searching users computer or are dumped onto the primaries hub computers. Some behavioral modifications may be in order to protect the WPN.
If after an objective cost-benefit analysis of this function it is thought to produce an overall net advantage, great.
At this point, assuming that this result-filtering process is a win-win situation.. why not share it? for the good of the WPN community? That is what community is all about, communalism, mutualism, yes, communism! Sharing freely with all.
The comments about "OUR [proprietary] blocklist" and "OUR [proprietary] DLL is best" are repugnant to the concept of an egalitarian community. Such miserly hoarding of ideas and information ["intellectual property"] originate with the "selfishness that is the foundation of civilization" [Dawes] and are contrary to the spirit of P2P.
In the spirit of Benjamin Franklin who, after he 'perfected' his famous Franklin stove was offered a patent on the same, rejected it out of principle, saying:
"That as we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously." [ Who woulda thunk the most intellectual "founding father" of the USA was such a socialist/communist? - they never taught me THAT in school! ]
THAT is the spirit of P2P, of the opensource, free software movement! Move over Al Gore! Ben Franklin was a conceptual forefather of the Internet and P2P!!
Ben later noted that some greedy curmudgeon in London England took his detailed stove plans, modified them with detriment to function and applied for a patent there, from which he made a small fortune.. and so it goes with the ugly propertied class.
My brainfart...
Why not make a stripped down DLL with settable options for both blocking and filtering but without any WPN connection control. IOW, a DLL that would augment use of hosts lists? Wouldn't that be of 'net' benefit? [pun noted]
I despise being told I can use only 1 group of peer cache servers and not the other, or being forced to use patches that enforce this political divisiveness. That is why I still choose roll my own hosts list and incorporate the IPs from both 'warring' groups. 11 peer cache servers is better than 4 and better than 7.
[Caveat is that some current peer cache servers appear to be operating on dynamic or frequently changing IPs, which makes maintaining a custom hosts list burdensome to the user - but until either the DLL team is willing to add all known public peer cache servers into the DLL code or until the open source patch is released to make it possible for others to do this, such unstable IPs will be problematic for users of composite hosts lists.]
