Do you guys remember Meebo? They had web based interface built on top of libpurple which powers Pidgin too. Google bought them and shut them down.
> Google bought them and shut them down.
This is the way.
Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
311–320 of 461 posts
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#312My company uses Skype for business(Lync) for internal communication. Unfortunately the official software is not available for Linux which prevents me from switching to Linux on my corporate machine. I know there is a plugin for Pidgin to use Lync. I wonder if anybody tried to use it long enough to tell if it is good enough. I know that the official Mac client is much less stable then the Windows one.
I am pretty much the only Linux user in my company. Pidgin works ok with Lync (need to install pidgin-sipe on Ubuntu). Video and audio calls do not work, but text chats, sending/receiving files and screen sharing works fine. (I have not tried to share my screen though but I see their screens fine).
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand the logic where releasing something under GPL + a restrictive license is considered worse than releasing under GPL only. What is lost when they make Pidgin available on the App Store (under the restrictive App Store license) + under GPL (on their website) as opposed to not having an App Store version in the first place and releasing under the GPL only? I don't see how the presence of a second, more…
GPL doesn't allow anyone to put too much restrictions on the software. This is the point - it protects users' interests.
But my point is that if the code itself remains under the GPL, how does publishing an alternate version of it "undo" the GPL considering all the rights restricted by the second license would still be available under the GPL?
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
a completely different story: when steam engines were replaced with the otto motor and cars became available to the general population, people were able to repair and understand the engines themselves. they had an understanding of mechanical principles. a few generations later, and only car nerds understand cars. everyone else has to go to a mechanic to understand why their car's engine won't start or why it sounds s…
> when a technology becomes convenient enough so we don't have to think about it while it fulfills it's purpose, Is a tragically limited view of what computers are. Programmable computers are fundamentally different from steam engines. A steam engine will never be anything except a steam engine. Most of the manufactured objects we encounter in everyday life are similar: single- (or occasionally multi-) purpose goods…
Nope. A computer can only do what the apps installed on it let you do, unless you're an IT person.
The things is that you don't need to be an IT person to use applications, as it used to be. So fewer people learn IT skills just so they can play a game or layout a document.
I know very little about cars but drive one daily. I can see how other people don't bother learning about computers just so they can write up a report for their job or order stuff on Amazon.
I like your poetic description of general-purpose computers. But I'm wondering why you think less of general-purpose machinery.
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does not everyone still use it? I and most of my friends do. They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever: https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890
Oh damn, Pidgin. I LOVED that app. 15 years ago I had ONE messaging app that logged me into MSN, ICQ, QQ, Zephyr, Gtalk, Yahoo, AIM, Facebook, and Renren. On that one messaging app I had either written or downloaded plugins for: * End-to-end encryption (receiver needed the plugin as well) * Automatic two-way human language translation via online translation APIs so I could have a conversation with someone who didn't…
But now we have stickers! And gifs! And audio messages!
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#316Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.
Does not everyone still use it? I and most of my friends do. They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever: https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890
gold
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...
"She reevaluated her categorisation of me. Rather than being some faceless, keyboard tapping, socially inept, sexually inexperienced network monkey, she now saw me as a colleague. To people like her, technicians are a necessary annoyance. She'd be quite happy to ignore them all, joke about them behind their backs and snigger at them to their faces, but she knows that when she can't display her PowerPoint on the IWB s…
What's up with this modern trend of quoting stuff and adding an unrelated but currently in vogue ad-hominem?
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...
a completely different story: when steam engines were replaced with the otto motor and cars became available to the general population, people were able to repair and understand the engines themselves. they had an understanding of mechanical principles. a few generations later, and only car nerds understand cars. everyone else has to go to a mechanic to understand why their car's engine won't start or why it sounds s…
I don't think the point of that "Kids can't use computers" article is that everyone should be technically proficient with computers. Rather, it's an argument against the common misconception that kids have a natural technical proficiency with computers because they grew up with them.
The author makes his point pretty clear here:
> Not really knowing how to use a computer is deemed acceptable if you're twenty-five or over. It's something that some people are even perversely proud of, but the prevailing wisdom is that all under eighteens are technical wizards, and this is simply not true.
He then offers some suggestions for how to help kids become more technically proficient with computers because he thinks it's a useful skill to have.
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a general purpose computer under there but most people don't interact with it like that. The fact that it can does not mean that it will. A lot of this has to do with the ecosystem and how a device is presented and what the UX is like. Manufacturers increasingly want to lock things down and hide them away. I agree that this trend should be fought.
That's been true since 1984 (and whenever Windows caught up ;) ). The enthusiast/hobbyist sector has long been a small minority of the computer buying public.
Windows wasn't really that bad until recently. Sure, it didn't go out of its way to give you tools to command your computer, but it didn't get in the way either.
The true dumbification of computers started with smartphones. iOS and Android are the primary drivers of this change, of treating computers as appliances. Microsoft unfortunately embraced this trend in recent years, they quite openly say Windows is an OS-as-a-Service now[0]. Still leaves plenty of control points to exploit[1], but it starts getting in the way.
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[0] - https://mastodon.technology/@temporal/105385475519240956 - I almost spit my tea on my keyboard when I saw this popping up the other day.
[1] - That's why I'm using a Windows 2-in-1 instead of an Android tablet.
Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't be surprised that is how they lost the majority of their user base. Everyone I know was on it, myself included, but once support was hampered around the time the AIM protocol died, most people around me left for Telegram and Signal.
I dunno.. I guess I just follow what people use... IRC ICQ MSN Yahoo messenger for some people in japan Whatsapp, but noboday was there haha Whastapp, some people there FB Messenger iMessage, but bugs with normals SMS, so disabled it Google talk.. used by some, but I like to de-google a bit. Back to whatsapp kakaotalk, line, and wechat for research / gaming Telegram. don't like it at all Signal. kind of buggy So in t…
I followed the same path. Also used
Jabber a bit,
AOL Messenger,
Blackberry messenger,
Bloomberg Messenger (bank paid 2k per month for it!),
Skype for messaging,
Keybase (kind of cool but too heavy),
Slack,
and now Element Matrix.
Its one place sometimes I think regulation might be good to force standardization (like electricity or phone standards).
Oh and when I go to asia I use the ones there - viber, line, wechat etc.