Hamachi is a great app. So is VNC. Torrents are great, too. You see where I'm going. These are all great on their own - so when Remobo rolled them all in to one, tasty package, I was pretty excited.

Set it up, add your buddies, and you've got an instant, private P2P network. Click the My Shared Files link and create torrents of your folders and files with two clicks. When your buddies view your shares, they'll see a simple web page with links to the torrent downloads. It's simple, and it works quite well.

Clicking windows file sharing on a buddy will display their Windows file and printer shares (like Hamachi does). File access speeds (even over my sluggish DSL) are good, and at least on par with Hamachi's free offering.

Cabos doesn't support torrents, and it doesn't have a built in media player, but who needs that anyway? Most of us have favorite apps for handling those files anyways, and Limewire probably isn't either of them. It simply searches the Gnutella network, displays your results, lets you filter and sort them six ways from Sunday, and downloads them quickly. It even offers basic iTunes integration.

There's no lime green splashed around the UI, just a tranquil, muted gray, and 21 languages are supported. It's totally ad-free and there are no nags - Cabos just does what you want it to and doesn't get in the way.

Disruptions and unstableness aside, and hopefully never returning, Skype has released details as to what caused the massive outage on August 16 that some experienced for two days.

The peer to peer network has issued a statement as to what went down. It seems that an abnormally high number of restarts after standard software updates affected resources, this caused the network to suffer and become unstable. This resulted in a flood of log-in requests all at one time when network resources were already low. And we all know what happened then, a nice downtime that left many of us out for days.

Skype has said that they have a self healing system built into their network, but a software bug knocked that out and prevented a network resource algorithm from working. Not to worry however, Skype has said that all issues have been identified, fixed and no malicious or security threatening activities had occurred. Oh, and they thank their users for being supportive.

It seems like everything these days is some sort of threat to national security; Hair gel, shampoo, and now peer to peer networking.

That's right, a handful of politicians are up in arms, claiming that peer to peer networks and filesharing apps are invading deep within secure government computers and allowing access to classified information by rouge nations and actors. Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman is threatening to proffer new legislation to end this dangerous P2P scourge, although we think it would probably be easier just to lock down secure workstations and prevent the installation of filesharing tools.

So remember, the next time you fire up BitTorrent, you're not just putting yourself at risk, but risking the lives and liberty of your fellow US citizens. Now, if you'll excuse us, we're off to make a bunch of tin-foil hats.

Forget those crazy long search strings you've been using to snag Mp3s via the web using Google; G2P makes it an effortless transaction. Just point, click, type in the name of the band or song you're looking for and, presto, instant results.

A few quick tests with the G2P interface show that it does find files containing the artist name, and with an extension of "mp3". The trick uses a default behavior of the Apache webserver to identify pages that have been indexed in Google containing the standard Apache boilerplate that's generated when a published directory has no index file.

We realize we've just blown away any chance you had of getting some work done on Friday but, those are the breaks. For the less musical but more tech-geeky among our flock, G2P also searches for PDF eBooks.

Would you pay an additional tax on your internet connection in exchange for a world where it's illegal to wrap content with Digital Rights Management? What if that same world included the right to file-share to your hearts content with legal indemnification? TorrentFreak reports Dutch politicians are warming to the idea of abolishing DRM, taxing internet connections and distributing the proceeds to record companies. Initially it seems like a fantastic idea but, it's a paradise which, like most, is mired with its own challenges and detractions.

The problem I see; How do you decide who gets paid? Any system which rewards the major labels (such as Zune's $1 per unit royalty to Universal Music Group) in a disproportionate way to the compensation of indie musicians only further solidifies major label control of what's popular. Isn't this whole internet thingy supposed to be about leveling the playing field?

Part one of a documentary on the Swedish piracy movement has been released and it sheds interesting light on the attitude of the Swedish people and the pressure brought to bear by the US government upon them.

For anyone who hasn't been following the raid on The Pirate Bay, or the formation of The Pirate Party (a political party whose platform includes Piracy as its main point), part one of "Steal This Film" provides a worthy primer on the Swedish mindset surrounding copyright in the digital age.

The film's producers write, "Hopefully you'll enjoy the first part of Steal this Film ('Stockholm, summer 2006'). It achieves some, but by no means all, of our goals. To continue we need your help. this film is free for you to share, watch on your dvd player or on your ipod, or show in cinemas. But if you like the work we've done and want us to carry on, use our donate link to send us a couple of dollars or euros."

For the fashion conscious downloader, there are also T-shirts available to help fund the second installment.

[Via Boing Boing]

Lime Group LLC, the company behind peer to peer application LimeWire, sued today in federal court by the RIAA for damages including $150,000 per occurance of copyright infringing files. The complaint seeks damages on the grounds that LimeWire, and thus Lime Group LLC, facillitated the trade of copywritten music between users and profited as a result of LimeWire's failure to "block" copyright protected material.

Lime Group LLC has so far refused comment.

Lime Group was threatened last September, along with a host of other P2P application developers, with legal action if the company failed to comply with RIAA demands to either shut down, successfully filter all copyright protected material or drop the open peer to peer topology for a licensed content model approved by the RIAA.

KaZaa recently settled a similar case for $115 million, others such as WinMX and Bearshare have shut down. Qtrax, another less known but veteran name in peer to peer is preparing to offer a licensed peer to peer model that would comply with the RIAA's demands.

[Via Digg]

There are tons of threatening viruses, spyware, and other yucky things out there in the world wide web. They have the powers to potentially access your computer if it is not locked down with security software, ensuring there are no kinds of intrusions and any malicious hacking going on. Is your computer protected against the many potentially dangerous things floating around the internet? Do you know for sure? How can you know for sure? And how do you get started and stay on top of your computers security? AOL has made it easier. A whole lot easier at ensuring you know how your computer is doing, staying up to date with its security, and protecting against all things threatening. I recently installed AOL's Active Security Monitor to check out my systems vitals, and how I was doing at staying secure on the machines I connect to the internet with. I knew I was lacking in some areas, but not that much!

Disclosure: Download Squad is owned by AOL. Nonetheless, the following is a completely unbiased review of AOL's Active Security Monitor software by myself. I absolutely loved it, and think it does a very effective job at ensuring users know how secure their computer really is and aiding in increasing security when needed.