Kazaa Lite Gone Win98 End Of Life

This may be old news for some of you -- but, the Kazaa Lite web site has been shut down. I haphazardly stumbled across this fact over the weekend when I visited the main Kazaa Lite web site.

The official word from about.com is that the Kazaa Lite project "has apparently been shut down under pressure from the company [Sharman Networks, which] manages the official Kazaa Media Desktop. [All 'hacked' versions of Kazaa Lite] have been removed from the primary download location [http://kazaalite.tk] and many mirror sites. For now, pre-installations of Kazaa Lite remain functional." (Source: about.com)

Side note: The term "hacked" above implies "reverse engineering". That is to say, the original version of Kazaa was created with source code (or a programming language), compiled, and then converted into an executable file (I.E.: setup.exe). To create Kazaa Lite, the executable was decrypted and the source code was unveiled. This eventually lead to a new breed of Kazaa, called Kazaa Lite.

Ironically, the latest version of Kazaa Lite (v2.4.3) is still available through other file sharing programs, including the Kazaa network itself.

RE: Windows 98 reaches End of Life

Onto other news: starting January 16, 2004, Windows 98 will no longer be supported by Microsoft. The Boston Herald reports that Win98 security patches may still be posted online (if a serious enough issue arises) -- but technical assistance is no longer be offered via Microsoft's help line after the January deadline. (Source: bostonherald.com)