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Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

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Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#291

Post by cookiecaper »

verbify wrote: post #258
ElijahLynn wrote: post #161

Stop using Skype. The NSA allegedly collects all Skype traffic anyways. Do you really want that? "The full capture of voice traffic began in February of 2011 for “Skype in” and “Skype out” calls—calls between a Skype user and a land line or cellphone through a gateway to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), captured through warranted taps into Microsoft’s gateways. But in July of 2011, the NSA added the capa…

I've given up on the NSA not reading my stuff. The NSA collects pretty much anything they can get their hands on. It's a losing battle. If there's something I don't want the NSA to know about, I use Tails.

>If there's something I don't want the NSA to know about, I use Tails.

This is a nice thought, but probably not realistic for a variety of reasons. Perhaps most relevantly, I would expect that a large quantity of major Tor exit nodes are tapped by the NSA.

I would also expect that most servers you talk to are either already tapped by NSA in one way or another or can be tapped by the NSA trivially if they decide they want to see what's happening.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#293

Post by kuschku »

bad_user wrote: post #287
balabaster wrote: post #275

There are viable alternatives to Skype. I've been using Slack ( https://slack.com/ ) for a while too... it does everything useful that you could ask of a chat application and works very much like IRC worked back in the day. Everything it doesn't do natively, there's an integration for, just like with IRC bots. You can do: - Private chat with one or more parties - Open Group chat via channels (both private and public…

> It's free(ish) The free tier has a very limited history, which defeats the point of using Slack, since you lose your history. And there's really no point in using Slack if you don't have a history you can rely on, might as well use IRC. And once you start paying, $7-$15 per user/month is not what I'd call cheap. It's cheap compared to a salary, but such costs pile up. > Voice/Video via numerous integrations includi…

> might as well use IRC.

Worse: For IRC you can use quassel (self-hosted) or IRCCloud (4$/month).

So with IRC you get more, but even cheaper.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#294

Post by untog »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #185
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #31

Skype worked far, far better 10 years ago than it does today. From all indications I've seen, Skype is getting dramatically worse all the time. From a personal standpoint, it crashes for me multiple times a day and I can rarely get group calls working on the first try. Often Skype requires a force-quit and then it crashes twice more when it is being restarted. This is on Mac and Android. Fun fact: I have a friend who…

Most things worked far, far better 10 years ago than today. Apparently this is progress. Social everything means we can't visit a website today without calls to a billion external domains. Phones are doing the same as they're mini-tablets that suck at actual phone calls. Operating systems have taken on mobile centric (and the hideous flatten everything) design that is broken paradigm for a 15" laptop or 24" desktop s…

> Most things worked far, far better 10 years ago than today. Apparently this is progress.

Sigh. If you wanted to look up a business on your phone you'd have to call directory enquiries - did that "work better" than your smartphone? Did you prefer RealPlayer over HTML video? Was WAP better than LTE? Was Windows XP the pinnacle of OS design?

Yeah, sometimes progress is a double-edged sword that outdates some things we used to do. Yes, it's worth the price.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#295

Post by mtgx »

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #31

Skype worked far, far better 10 years ago than it does today. From all indications I've seen, Skype is getting dramatically worse all the time. From a personal standpoint, it crashes for me multiple times a day and I can rarely get group calls working on the first try. Often Skype requires a force-quit and then it crashes twice more when it is being restarted. This is on Mac and Android. Fun fact: I have a friend who…

Which is ironic, because the whole point of moving Skype from the un-interceptable P2P infrastructure to a centralized/interceptable one was to "make Skype work better".

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#296

Post by criddell »

verbify wrote: post #254
criddell wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once when I was interviewing for a job, I was given and offer and I accepted it conditionally. I asked to sit with a senior developer for 30 minutes and browse the code. Turns out it was in great shape and the person that gave me the walkthrough was one of the greatest programmers I've ever had the pleasure to work with.

Do you do this for every job you apply to?

No. This company's main product (the one I would be working on) had been around for a long time so I was concerned about what kind of shape the code was in.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#297

Post by balabaster »

bad_user wrote: post #287
balabaster wrote: post #275

There are viable alternatives to Skype. I've been using Slack ( https://slack.com/ ) for a while too... it does everything useful that you could ask of a chat application and works very much like IRC worked back in the day. Everything it doesn't do natively, there's an integration for, just like with IRC bots. You can do: - Private chat with one or more parties - Open Group chat via channels (both private and public…

> It's free(ish) The free tier has a very limited history, which defeats the point of using Slack, since you lose your history. And there's really no point in using Slack if you don't have a history you can rely on, might as well use IRC. And once you start paying, $7-$15 per user/month is not what I'd call cheap. It's cheap compared to a salary, but such costs pile up. > Voice/Video via numerous integrations includi…

For most people, the limited history isn't really an issue. For most enterprise tools you're looking at paying thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In comparison, the cost to get the enterprise features out of Slack is a drop in the ocean.

The joy of adhoc plugins is that you don't need any specific one to get the benefits. It's like a directory of alternatives to Skype that all do an appropriate job. It's more discoverable than say trying to find an alternative to Skype via a Google search. New apps/integrations are added daily, giving you visibility to alternatives every day.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#298

Post by fweespeech »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #137
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #31

Skype worked far, far better 10 years ago than it does today. From all indications I've seen, Skype is getting dramatically worse all the time. From a personal standpoint, it crashes for me multiple times a day and I can rarely get group calls working on the first try. Often Skype requires a force-quit and then it crashes twice more when it is being restarted. This is on Mac and Android. Fun fact: I have a friend who…

>Fun fact: I have a friend who worked for Skype in Prague. He said the codebase is a true horror, an extreme mess, and that soon it would "reach a singularity" Being a developer, I read this and think, what developer thinks any existing codebase is NOT a mess. It's the number one developer complaint ever. They (we?) all think we know a better way.

I think I know a better way because I run a 7 figure a year project and the codebase isn't a mess. :/

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#299

Post by untog »

theinternetman wrote: post #193
xiaoma wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google talk circa 2008 was a lot nicer than Hangouts is now, too. The resource usage was lower, the UI was nicer and it was more responsive. It's really a shame they killed it.

Not to mention Google Talk was a chat system first and foremost. Hangouts is a funnel to get you to use their browser (still don't understand why it ships as a plugin) and social network first, chat application second.

> still don't understand why it ships as a plugin

I always assumed it was because it would be cross-platform by default. Making native apps for Hangouts on Windows, OS X and Linux would be pretty time consuming.

Also not sure what you mean by "social network", it looks a lot like a chat app to me.

Re: Dear Skype/Microsoft: Problems with Linux client

#300

Post by untog »

balabaster wrote: post #275

There are viable alternatives to Skype. I've been using Slack ( https://slack.com/ ) for a while too... it does everything useful that you could ask of a chat application and works very much like IRC worked back in the day. Everything it doesn't do natively, there's an integration for, just like with IRC bots. You can do: - Private chat with one or more parties - Open Group chat via channels (both private and public…

I don't know about anyone else, but 90% of my use of Skype is for voice or video calls. There's a lot of competition out there for chat apps, but sadly very little for voice/video (network effect rules all, of course)
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