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WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

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41–50 of 93 posts

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#41

Look, you're kidding yourself if you think that WebRTC is going to liberate you from the prying eyes of government surveillance. As a developer, I'm very excited about the possibilities that WebRTC enables (websockets just can't cut it in many instances), but computer science is not a panacea for political apathy. P2P is nothing new, and anybody who cares to secure their online communications can already do so with e…

Please explain how I can have a secure online conversation with my mother easily. (Easy for me, easy for her). Is it going to involve setting up my own trusted server somewhere? Is it going to involve downloading some large undocumented project and have to build myself (on my box and her box)? Is it going to require troubleshooting arcane protocols, firewalls, and xml files? I haven't seen an easy way to have secure…

> Please explain how I can have a secure online conversation with my mother easily. (Easy for me, easy for her).

Pidgin with OTR -- configure and verify keys once, use whatever protocol you want. It is doable and not very difficult right now, the problem really is that no one cares.

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#42
post #22
post #11

Yet another HTML5 "Game Changer" which has already been available as part of the Adobe Flash Platform[1] for the best part of three years. Just saying :) For those down-voting me; I find this attitude very strange. If the tools were present in another widely deployed runtime, but were heavily under utilised then why are people getting so excited about them this time around? I guess some people just love to hate Flash…

I guess some people just love to hate Flash. Yes. Flash has performance and implementation issues. And developers can't do anything to improve the situation.

"issues"

That is being far too polite for what in all likelihood is the most insecure piece of software in history. Not joking. The frequency of security updates over the last decade is a disgrace. And that is without even talking about the appalling state of affairs on the Mac platform where it is still ridiculously buggy. I mean why has it taken this long to be self-updating ?

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#43

which should make it about 2016 when we can use it in IE

Actually you can use it in IE right now using Chrome Frame. Read this for more detailed info - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/discuss-webrtc/tKoh1wr... .

But when Windows 8 comes out, Chrome Frame will stop being a valid solution, at least for IE's "[Metro|Windows 8|Modern]-style UI" version.

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how I can have a secure online conversation with my mother easily. (Easy for me, easy for her). Is it going to involve setting up my own trusted server somewhere? Is it going to involve downloading some large undocumented project and have to build myself (on my box and her box)? Is it going to require troubleshooting arcane protocols, firewalls, and xml files? I haven't seen an easy way to have secure…

No offence but I don't think the government could possibly care less about you or the conversation with your mother. There is a long list of far more important and interesting people for them to worry about. How about using whatever is the easiest, most enjoyable and trouble free setup for her to use.

I didn't downvote you. And I agree they aren't interested in my conversations with my mother. However I think they are very much interested in listening in to conversations involving foreign relatives, military relatives, rich relatives, criminal relatives, etc.

But none of that is my motivation. My motivation is purely technological. I want secure services as a matter of principle. Since I have yet to find such a thing, I use whatever is easiest, just like everyone else.

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#45

which should make it about 2016 when we can use it in IE

Actually you can use it in IE right now using Chrome Frame. Read this for more detailed info - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/discuss-webrtc/tKoh1wr... .

sigh

Okay 2016 when we can use it in Trident.

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#46
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess some people just love to hate Flash. Yes. Flash has performance and implementation issues. And developers can't do anything to improve the situation.

"issues" That is being far too polite for what in all likelihood is the most insecure piece of software in history. Not joking. The frequency of security updates over the last decade is a disgrace. And that is without even talking about the appalling state of affairs on the Mac platform where it is still ridiculously buggy. I mean why has it taken this long to be self-updating ?

> The frequency of security updates over the last decade is a disgrace.

Would you have preferred they only released security updates once a year?

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#47
post #12

Since Skype is moving to fully centralized service that can be even more easily wiretapped by Governments around the world (not just US), I'm very excited about the "revolutionary" (literally) capabilities of this protocol, as people will be able to speak 1-on-1 without interference, if the communication is also encrypted. Does being encrypted or not depend on that specific WebRTC client, or does it come encrypted by…

Encryption is mandatory. Currently, the implementation uses SRTP, but the proposal is eventually to use SCTP over DTLS over UDP. [http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-data-channel-00...]

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#48
post #12

Since Skype is moving to fully centralized service that can be even more easily wiretapped by Governments around the world (not just US), I'm very excited about the "revolutionary" (literally) capabilities of this protocol, as people will be able to speak 1-on-1 without interference, if the communication is also encrypted. Does being encrypted or not depend on that specific WebRTC client, or does it come encrypted by…

Don't make the mistake of thinking that because the communication channel is "encrypted", it is secure. SSL can already be compromised (so much for trusting encrypted transport) and the WebRTC client code could be compromised (always a problem).

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#49
post #4
post #3

>This is the most significant step forward in web browser connectivity since 2004, when Google launched Gmail and AJAX was coined That's not quite right. Microsoft invented XMLHTTP, the interface which XHR is based on, in '98 or '99 for Outlook Web Access.

Notice that he said "AJAX was coined" in 2004 not that the technology was invented.

Indeed, myself and others were doing [A]VBAX apps in IE before the term "AJAX" hit the mainstream. Not always async, and using VBScript in the browser instead of Javascript, but loading XML from the server and doing XSLT to build the DOM. It actually was pretty nice, at the time. IE5. You couldn't do things like that in any other browser for years.

Re: WebRTC is almost here, and it will change the web

#50

Look, you're kidding yourself if you think that WebRTC is going to liberate you from the prying eyes of government surveillance. As a developer, I'm very excited about the possibilities that WebRTC enables (websockets just can't cut it in many instances), but computer science is not a panacea for political apathy. P2P is nothing new, and anybody who cares to secure their online communications can already do so with e…

Please explain how I can have a secure online conversation with my mother easily. (Easy for me, easy for her). Is it going to involve setting up my own trusted server somewhere? Is it going to involve downloading some large undocumented project and have to build myself (on my box and her box)? Is it going to require troubleshooting arcane protocols, firewalls, and xml files? I haven't seen an easy way to have secure…

https://crypto.cat/
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