IS THIS RIGHT

[ANTS]

How I understand it is that some IDIOT is sitting at home with his pc on and connected to winmx with the sole intent on destroying winmx if so then why?

I just cant get my head around it. 

[cuttingedge]

I think there is more than one who wants to do away with WinMx.....As A matter of fact this whole attack, as I seen it, is'nt even all that bad.....Atleast the files are real files LOL! Back in the day, some years ago, we battled a fake file war that was much worse.
Who cares whos doing it or done it, it's all about what ya gonna do about it! And it looks like the people who really care have built a new weapon for the battle! 

[harold]

No.

[Jehosephat]

Right or wrong, depending from who's pespective you look at it from and depending upon all the issues that are involved that we people who have never actually worked on winmx will never know for sure, I believe that the hackers have won atleast a tactical victory over the winmx network. You may still get some postitive results for the "basic" stuff you are looking for, but the people who had the real gems for files that your were looking for are gone. The winmx network itself is a ghost town or usually just jibberish coming back as results. Not all the time, as even the hackers can get tired of trying to tie up the network all day and all night with their hacks, but a fair amount of the time. Winmx will never be like it once was and that is a real shame. But that fight is between the owner and the people who once worked for him. You would think that seeing the demise of the network, after all the time and effort put into creating it, that they would find some way of coming together amicably, but that is out of everyones hands except those involved.

[reef]

I believe that the hackers have won atleast a tactical victory over the winmx network

A good number of users have left, but a good number of us are still hanging on awaiting a fix. It's been a year since all this started so my opinion is that a good number of us still being here proves that the attackers have not accomplished what they set out to do.

Winmx will never be like it once was and that is a real shame. But that fight is between the owner and the people who once worked for him

The owner left winmx in 2005 and hasn't had anything to do with it since, and nobody that uses winmx worked for him at any point in time.

As you said theres several different perspectives you can look at it from. In my opinion what the attackers have done is a total waste of time and massive fail. When the network is rid of these idiots i believe it will once again grow and become popular. Try and have some faith and think positive, we could all use some positive thinking rather than doomsday attitudes

[wonderer]

It will grow again but WinMx will not become popular because it stil IS popular.
Proof of WinMx popularity is the rather big number of user that keep patiently waiting for the solution in the form of a new client that will make our network as good as it has been before and if possible even better.

Please be patient

[GhostShip]

Excellent words of advice Wonderer 

The client project is still live and each day comes closer to reaching you all, the developer group know of the enourmnous frustration many of you have and that keeps them working each day to get more of it done, they know you are all relying on them and take that responsibility seriously, thank you all for your continued patience, the wheel is nearly reinvented 

[Bluey_412]

And please dont denigrate Hackers by using that term for the Attackers

Hackers and Geeks are both badges of honour in the world of IT...

[achilles]

Bluey, hackers are not always badges of honor in the world of IT. Some are only in it for personal gain or just to do evil. You have ethical hackers that work for a company directly or are contracted out to do jobs such as penetration testing on networks etc.. You have hackers that's hearts are in the right place that hack for information to expose those that are doing wrong to others.  Sometimes these hackers unfortunately crash networks or servers causing big damage to unintended targets since the targets are not the only one that have services that reside on the target domain in many cases.  Its up to the hacker to evaluate the benefit vs the risk. Then you have hackers that mask their own personnel agendas acting to be doing us all a good dead when they really only have mal intentions.  IMO, i have seen one such group in the media recently.  I'm sure many hackers fit into some other category as well, but my point is that not all hackers are Cyber Robin Hoods.  They are nothing more that cyber terrorist. It's good to make note also that all hackers are not created equally.  There are a lot of those that call themselves hackers, but my definition of someone qualified to call themselves a good hacker is much different than that fantasy they have created in their mind of themselves.

[achilles]

No disrespect intended to you bluey!

[Bluey_412]

Sure, but I'm glad you explained about the 'good hackers', even the the results of some of their efforts sometimes seem bad cos they had unintended outcomes. S'pose you could put yourself into that category: Hack until you find a weakness that needs fix.... Most of the 'Security Risk Flaws' that we hear about with O/S updates are usually found that way

Me? I be a hardware Geek, mainly

[White Stripes]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_hat_(computer_security)

the historical 'hacker' has had to be re-categorized when the term died with the 8bit micros and was further warped by hollywood fiction... the term 'cracker' was used for the 'bad guy'...

a good example of a 'hack' (in old terms) would be whats called a fastloader ... a (tiny) program written by someone to push the disk controller/hardware to its limits in speed so that a program that would normally take 10minutes to load could take as little as 30seconds... ...there were also cassette tape equivalents (many older computers including the first ibm pc used regular audio tapes to store data) to load data faster/store more on tape than the system normally allowed...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_loader

another nifty hack would be the covox speech thing... cant afford a soundcard?... make one..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covox_Speech_Thing

the key was that all this information was shared among friends and the computer hobbyist community at large... nothing hidden.. nothing sneaky... of course sharing info ment that that others built on it... that covox speech thing? theres an elaborate variant of it that allowed for 4-channel 'surround sound' long before 'real' soundcards supported 'surround sound' ...

[Bluey_412]

Interesting, nicely Geeky...