WASTE is a peer-to-peer and friend-to-friend protocol and software application developed by Justin Frankel at Nullsoft in 2003 that features instant messaging, chat rooms and file browsing/sharing capabilities. The name WASTE is a reference to Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49. In the novel, W.A.S.T.E. is (among other things) an underground postal service.
After its release, WASTE was removed from distribution by AOL, Nullsoft's parent company. The original page was replaced with a statement claiming that the posting of the software was unauthorized and that no lawful rights to it were held by anyone who had downloaded it, in spite of the original claim that the software was released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Several developers have modified and upgraded the WASTE client and protocol. The SourceForge edition is considered by many to be the "official" development branch, but there are several forks.
Read more about WASTE: Description, WASTE Networks, Nullnets, Strengths, Shortcomings, Versions
Famous quotes containing the word waste:
“Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion—
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tempestuous ocean.
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
And waste of shoes and floors.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“It may be romantic to search for the salves of society’s ills in slow-moving rustic surroundings, or among innocent, unspoiled provincials, if such exist, but it is a waste of time.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)