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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| WinMX | |
|---|---|
 | |
Screenshot  | |
| Developer | Kevin Hearn (Frontcode Technologies) |
| Release | 4 December 2000 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Platform | Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10 |
| Type | File sharing |
| License | Freeware |
| Website | Winmx.com (archive) |
| Part of a series on |
| File sharing and online piracy |
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WinMX (Windows Music Exchange) is a freeware peer-to-peer file sharing program authored in 2000 by Kevin Hearn (president of Frontcode Technologies) in Windsor, Ontario (Canada).[1][2][3][4] According to one study, it was the number one source for online music in 2005 with an estimated 2.1 million users.[5] Frontcode Technologies itself abandoned development of WinMX in September 2005, but developers brought the service back online within a few days by releasing patches. WinMX continues to be used by a community of enthusiasts.[6]
WinMX began its life as an OpenNap client capable of connecting to several servers simultaneously.
Frontcode Technologies later created a proprietary protocol, termed WinMX Peer Network Protocol (WPNP), which was used starting with WinMX 2 in May 2001. Frontcode Technologies had operated several peer cache servers to aid WPNP network operation.
Downloads can be very fast for popular songs since the user can run a "multi-point download" that simultaneously downloads the same file in small pieces from several users. The WinMX program houses a few built-in features such as bandwidth monitoring, short messaging, and hosting chatrooms and functions as an OpenNap client. Users could negotiate an exchange of their files with the help of the short messaging system or chat. After the transfers start, each has the option of selecting bandwidth for the other to make sure both transfers end more or less at the same time.
On September 13, 2005, Frontcode Technologies received a cease and desist letter from the Recording Industry Association of America demanding that they either implement filters to make it impossible for users to download copyrighted material from WinMX, or shut down. On September 21, 2005, the WinMX homepage and Frontcode Technologies' peer cache servers (central servers essential for the WinMX Peer Network) went offline.
By September 23, 2005, users were able to download two unofficial patches for WinMX from two unrelated websites. These patches worked by modifying the DNS lookup WinMX uses to find peer caches.[7] When WinMX tries to find the Frontcode Technologies' peer caches, it is instead directed to look up one of the new peer caches set up by the WinMX communities.
In 2008 a new patch was released to coincide with the third anniversary of the two previous patches' release date.[8] Known as the "WinMX Community Patch", it was created through the joint effort of an independent, third-party programmer and the cooperative input and testing from the two communities. Supported and available for download by both groups, it is intended to replace the previous patches being used, allowing all users to once again connect to a single set of peer caches, unifying all users for the first time since the official closure of WinMX in 2005.[6]
In May 2011, the WinMX network experienced a protocol level attack from a disgruntled community developer (program hacker) who disagreed with those operating the network support infrastructure (user support forums & peer cache operators). As a result of those attacks the WPNP network searches would return random query results (alongside relevant results) that were unrelated to the specific term searched for, and also users were unable to receive a full chat room list.[9] A web based WinMX Chat Room List[10] was set up for users to retrieve a full room list, and also offered the ability to manually add chat rooms to the web list. In addition to offering a live list of chat rooms, it also offered a one click solution for joining chat rooms in WinMX via the web page itself with the WinMX Link Handler.[10]
There is an upper limit to the size of files that can be shared : 2 GB. This design decision was to maintain Windows 98 support. The program runs also on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10, as long as the relevant Microsoft C++ runtime libraries are present. It runs on Linux under Wine.
To get started, users connect to the WinMX Peer Network (WPN) either as a primary or secondary user. A majority of the functions on the WPN are available to both users, but primary users need to spend more bandwidth, tend to have better connections, and have the ability to host chat rooms. Secondary users use very little idle bandwidth, but their prolonged connection to the network is not always stable.
WinMX users can share nearly every type of file using the network. The most common file types such as audio, video, images, and archive files are available by default, and all others could be configured in the program's settings. WinMX has a file-size restriction limiting shared files to 2GB in size. A user can also only share 5,000 visible files for a Primary connection (unknown if other files would be shared but not listed), and 3,000 files (maximum sent to the primary) for a Secondary connection. These limitations do not apply on OpenNap servers.
Users can search for almost any file in WinMX. When a user sends out a search, the search is spread throughout the network. If a file is found, the hash of the file along with IP address and Primary node details of the user with the file is sent to the user who made the search. Searches can also be made with hashes instead of words and numbers.
WinMX allows a person to host chatrooms with its built-in Chat function. There are some rooms reserved for chat, some for trading files, and some which allow both. At its height WinMX typically had around 1,500 to 2,000 chatrooms at any given time in a multitude of languages. WinMX also allows its users to message each other using its Private Message function regardless of whether or not they were in the same chat room or are downloading from/uploading to each other. However, settings allow any user to block messages from users if they choose. It is also possible to host chatrooms in languages other than English, such as Japanese, German, French and Italian.
WinMX started out as a Peer-to-Peer program that connected to OpenNap servers. It can still connect to many OpenNap servers. These servers enable users to connect to a wider userbase and also receive many more search results. Two advantages of running OpenNap is the ability to have a permanent list of friends called a hotlist and the ability to display an unlimited number of files for sharing.
WinMX is natively English, but language files can be installed to translate menus into the following languages: Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Sardinian, Spanish and Swedish. A fair number of the chat rooms are in German, Dutch or Italian.
In 2002, the Recording Industry Association of Japan releases a report finding 84% of Japanese who had used file sharing software reported using WinMX, mainly to share J-pop mp3's.[11] WinMX continued to be the main file sharing client in Japan until it was overtaken by Winny and LimeWire in 2007.[11] Even as late as 2013, Palo Alto Networks was finding that WinMX was the 6th most popular network in Japan.[12]
In addition to the program and patches, developers and WinMX users created third-party programs to either enhance the chat room function or to control uploading by other peers.
Most of the software was made by third-party developers for use in the WinMX chat rooms. They include bots, servers to host rooms, and plugins. Bots were used in the chat rooms to either make it more lively, introduce games, or to moderate users, maintain lists of the files a user in a chat room has, and more. Other plugins performed automatic functions including displaying music files currently playing on the user's computer and aid in posting colored ASCII pictures in rooms.
Third-party chat servers were used primarily to host chat rooms on the network. This is because of the improved administration systems in third-party servers as well as the ability to host a chat room without having to use the WinMX client. Some third-party chat clients also contained useful shortcuts or menus to make administrating a channel easier. For normal users, chat clients or the WinMX client itself could be used to view rooms independently of the server. Web listings of the chat room were also available.
Upload managers (MxMonitor and Leechhammer) can be used to control the upload rate of peers and can block certain kinds of peers from downloading, including those who do not share any files.
An initial project called WinPY attempted to make a replacement open source WinMX client. The WinPY project[13] was the most successful replacement client project as a preview alpha version with limited basic functionality was released; however, it quickly stalled due to lack of interest. There have also been several attempts to start new projects to create replacement clients however most have stalled before releasing anything fully completed. One project announced on a major WinMX community site was initially scheduled to be released in November 2012, however there were many published delays due to lack of skilled programming support. The project was finally released to public testers as a beta version on September 22, 2013, and under a new name (OurMx) and further releases will continue to be made prior to a formal client release. Historical information regarding the OurMX client progress can be viewed by following the link below.[14]
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
WinMX (Windows Music Exchange) is a freeware peer-to-peer file sharing program authored in 2000 by Kevin Hearn (president of Frontcode Technologies) in Windsor, Ontario (Canada). According to one study, it was the number one source for online music in 2005 with an estimated 2.1 million users. Frontcode Technologies itself abandoned development of WinMX in September 2005, but developers brought the service back online within a few days by releasing patches. WinMX continues to be used by a community of enthusiasts.
Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program that searches for other connected computers on a P2P network to locate the desired content. The nodes (peers) of such networks are end-user computers and distribution servers (not required). In the early days of file-sharing, transfers occurred predominantly via client-server downloads from web pages, FTP, and IRC before Napster popularised a Windows application that allowed users to upload and download with a freemium-style service. Record companies and artists called for its shutdown and FBI raids followed. Napster had been incredibly popular at its peak, spawning a grass-roots movement following from the mixtape scene of the 80's and left a significant gap in music availability with its followers. After much discussion on forums and in chat rooms, it was decided that Napster had been vulnerable due to its reliance on centralised servers and their physical location and thus competing groups raced to build a decentralised peer-to-peer system. Peer-to-peer file sharing technology has evolved through several design stages from the early networks like Gnutella, which popularized the technology in several iterations that used various front ends such as Kazaa, LimeWire and WinMX before Edonkey then on to later models like the BitTorrent protocol. Microsoft uses it for Update distribution (Windows 10) and online video games use it as their content distribution network for downloading large amounts of data without incurring the dramatic costs for bandwidth inherent when providing just a single source. Several factors contributed to the widespread adoption and facilitation of peer-to-peer file sharing. These included increasing Internet bandwidth, the widespread digitization of physical media, and the increasing capabilities of residential personal computers. Users are able to transfer one or more files from one computer to another across the Internet through various file transfer systems and other file-sharing networks.
File sharing in Japan is notable for both its size and sophistication. The Recording Industry Association of Japan has used a 2010 study to suggest that illegal downloads (which have been illegal since 2010) outnumber legal ones 10:1. In 2012, a law was passed that would invoke penalties for accessing pirated music or movies. In 2020, the National Diet passed a law expanding the penalties to the download of manga, academic texts, and magazines, as well as banning "leech websites" that provide users hyperlinks to download torrent files of pirated materials, pasting hyperlinks of illegal websites on an anonymous message board, or providing "leech apps" for similar purposes. The part on the expansion of penalties took effect on 1 January 2021, and the part on regulation of leech websites and apps took effect on 1 October 2021. The new legislation exempts "minor offenses" and "special instances" (such as unintentional instances in screenshots, parodies and derivative works, and other small instances, such as downloading only a few frames from a comic book of several dozen pages, or a couple of pages from a novel containing several hundred pages) from being categorized as illicit due to concerns it would clash with the right to freedom of speech. Penalties for operating or establishing leech sites will be set at up to five years in jail or a maximum fine of 5 million yen. The law focuses mainly on content downloaded to devices, so a loophole may exist in terms of livestreaming such content. Unlike most other countries, filesharing copyrighted content is not just a civil offense, but a criminal one, with penalties of up to ten years for uploading and penalties of up to two years for downloading. There is also a high level of Internet service provider cooperation. This may be one of the reasons that anonymous networks such as Winny, Perfect Dark and Share are thought to be popular compared to public networks such as BitTorrent, WinMX, Gnutella (Cabos) and OpenNap (Utatane).
Vanuatu, officially the Republic of Vanuatu (French: République de Vanuatu; Bislama: Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an archipelagic country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is 1,750 km (1,090 mi) east of northern Australia, 540 km (340 mi) northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji. Vanuatu was first inhabited by Melanesian people. The first Europeans to visit the islands were a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Fernandes de Queirós, who arrived on the largest island, Espíritu Santo, in 1606. Queirós claimed the archipelago for Spain, as part of the colonial Spanish East Indies and named it La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo. In the 1880s, France and the United Kingdom claimed parts of the archipelago, and in 1906, they agreed on a framework for jointly managing the archipelago as the New Hebrides – through an Anglo-French condominium. In the 1970s, an independence movement arose, and the Republic of Vanuatu was founded in 1980. Since its independence, the country has become a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, and the Pacific Islands Forum.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
