Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most versions of Skype use SQLite for local storage, if that is of any help!
whats the best front end program to read those databases, for non-db folks? (windows or linux / CLI or GUI)
SQLite Studio works great
ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
201–210 of 250 posts
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#202Did anyone else used to "hack" people on ICQ? If I recall correctly, ICQ would expose users IP address if they didn't intentionally hide it. My friend and I would get to chatting with strangers and then exchange photos... Only ours wasn't a photo, it was something that opened a backdoor into their computer that would allow us to take over their PC. We never did anything harmful but might have gotten a few people in t…
We used to send trojans to people around the same time. I got particularly consumed by it and started a file on a girl a couple of years older than us (we were around 10-11 at the time). Shit got too real and I ended up seeing a conversation she had with her friend about how she was pregnant and didn't dare tell her parents. It all got too personal, somehow, and I realized I had a window into too much of her life, so I nuked it and never looked back.
It was a bad thing to do from the beginning, but at least I learned something about life and after that I had an even bigger interest in computers and programming, as well as the idea of creating something instead of only doing bad things. Shortly after I had my first touch of programming (outside of copying a "Snake" game from a magazine) when I wrote macros for Ultima Online.
Thinking back to this time with ICQ and all of this is making me really nostalgic and I sort of wish I could sit in with my old self and talk about the future.
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#203I'm former ICQ backend developer (2010 - 2014). I started to work at Mail.Ru in 2010, when Mail.Ru bought ICQ from AOL. I was enjoyed working with ICQ backend code-base written by AOL (although to be honest not all code was high quality). Here are some quick facts about ICQ backend infrastructure: 1) ICQ servers has over 2'700'000 lines of code which is written in C and C++; 2) ICQ has its own TCP/IP implementation w…
>6) C core-code is written in old-school style and I liked that; How "old-school" are we talking? Like K&R-C style or what?
I forgot to mention an important fact about ICQ core code-base.
The core framework for ICQ was actually written by AOL long before ICQ was born. I.e. they developed general framework for scalable distributed systems.
So some comments in the code are dated as early as 1992.
I didn't mean formatting style but general flavor of how programs was written at these days. I can't put it into words, it's better to just see the code. Although, I'm not permitted to show the code.
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#204Since we're talking about old chat systems, I would like to add that I miss MSN Messenger a lot, and would really like to see it coming back.
Oh yes, I loved how they integrated some games in the chat client.
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#205I have some deaf relatives and was surprised to learn that ICQ is still very popular among deaf people (at least in the Netherlands). Think it was particularly due to the cross platform availability i.c.w. ease of videochat for sign language.
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#206surprised to learn it still exists, good memories.
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#207Around 2000 I got annoyed with the ads and crap in ICQ, so I wrote Miranda ICQ, now called Miranda IM ( http://www.miranda-im.org/ ) based on libicq. One of my main inspirations to write the app was I wanted to connect a chatbot to ICQ to harass my friends, but the standard API wouldn't allow sending messages. So I added a plugin API, connected the MegaHAL chatbot and good times ensued. I lost interest in Miranda sho…
ICQ was an ad ridden overbloated UI shitfest.
Miranda was so beautiful!
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#208Around 2000 I got annoyed with the ads and crap in ICQ, so I wrote Miranda ICQ, now called Miranda IM ( http://www.miranda-im.org/ ) based on libicq. One of my main inspirations to write the app was I wanted to connect a chatbot to ICQ to harass my friends, but the standard API wouldn't allow sending messages. So I added a plugin API, connected the MegaHAL chatbot and good times ensued. I lost interest in Miranda sho…
i loved miranda and the megahal plugin. one of my friends had a really good therapeutic session with the megahal plugin (thinking it was me) after his girlfriend broke up with him.
then some other friends discovered that it was a bot and that they could train it..... it didn't went well after that.
i still think about recoding megahal in pure JS and use it for the current hip chatbots.
thx for miranda (and the megahal plugin)
Re: ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit
#209>the forerunner of all messengers ...erm... IRC? write? talk? CBBS? No?
IRC did not have persistent user identities. (IRC+memoserv perhaps, but that "feels" more like email than like a messenger). The others weren't internet-wide were they?