81–90 of 107 posts
Everything Skype does will soon be replaced by WebRTC anyway.
How soon? I presume you mean this - http://www.webrtc.org/ . Is it just a more simple way of setting up chatroulette style sites only using browser native programming rather than relying on Flash?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or instead of engaging in conspiracy theores with zero proof we should look at whats going on here rationally. Skype is really unacceptable in any corporate environment. I don't want a random PC on my network to be a superpeer and suddenly use my 50mbps connection routing calls to the world. Run skype for a couple of mins, fire up tcpview, and watch calls come in and out. Not only is this a waste of my resources it a…
He phrased it like a conspiracy theorist, but it's a little naive to think that intercept capability wasn't a factor in this decision. As far as I know skype was the biggest player in communications that wasn't being completely monitored.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would this fall under wiretapping? Other IM services have blanket statements on monitoring all and any communication in their TOS, this just takes it to voice and video. I guess what I was thinking of was something akin to Google AdWords, not the "they want to control the world" conspiracy theory edge.
Sorry, "wiretapping" was probably not a well chosen word. Serving ads to unpaid users is a good example of something that people probably wouldn't find too creepy (not too different from seeing ads on gmail). The problem is that since MS controls the client software, it's not something that they would need to do at the supernode level. They could just run the voice recognition / keyword selection on the client and th…
MS using Linux to run their business. That says it all. A company with more money than it knows what to do with, acting desperately to save itself from obsolescence. Skype was flawed from the outset, being non-transparent (about how the network is set up, turning machines into supernodes withtout permission, and the encryption they use). It's all closed. Why? You can't verify it's well-designed. Now it's worse. Do I…
>Skype was flawed from the outset, being non-transparent (about how the network is set up, turning machines into supernodes withtout permission, and the encryption they use). It's all closed. Why? You can't verify it's well-designed.
My biggest complaint with Skype is its inability to persist chat messages when one client is disconnected. If this addresses that it would be great. That said, we're using HipChat now and love it. If you use Skype for group chat and don't use the phone a lot, I recommend the switch wholeheartedly.
I've logged in more than once to have a metric ton of IM's waiting for me.
Something not mentioned by Ars is that the difference in cost between datacenter bandwidth and broadband has changed significantly in the last 10 years. Datacenter resources are now so cheap that P2P has little advantage. (I think the rise of cyberlockers are another manifestation of this trend.)
Also, P2P generally delivers smallest connection latency as compared to all other setups.
Also, P2P makes it harder for the service provider to snoop on the traffic, and this might be just the reason why Microsoft is shifting towards supernodes. Skype is just too big of a communication infrastructure piece to let it go "unsupervised."
So while the bandwidth might be getting cheaper, there's still plenty of reasons to do things in P2P way.
MS using Linux to run their business. That says it all. A company with more money than it knows what to do with, acting desperately to save itself from obsolescence. Skype was flawed from the outset, being non-transparent (about how the network is set up, turning machines into supernodes withtout permission, and the encryption they use). It's all closed. Why? You can't verify it's well-designed. Now it's worse. Do I…
>Skype was flawed from the outset, being non-transparent (about how the network is set up, turning machines into supernodes withtout permission, and the encryption they use). It's all closed. Why? You can't verify it's well-designed. Perhaps relevant for a FOSS zealot (and I really don't mean that in a derogatory way here, there's a time and a place), but the average user doesn't care about the infrastructure - they…
re: Skype I simply see no reason that something so essential, and so simple, as a P2P application (note the P2P application does not have to be tied to the VOIP application, or whatever applications you want to run over the P2P connection) needs to be a proprietary product.
It does need to work and work well. The P2P element does that. It will consistently work. It's the audio/video element that is difficult to get right across all connections in all environments.
Perhaps that's why you read some people saying Skype works great for them and other saying it doesn't work so great. Consider that in every case, the connection gets set up just fine. People can connect very easily. P2P is the easy part. It's the audio/video quality that varies. Because everyone's bandwidth situation is different.
Unfortunately there's a lot of chatter about NAT, IPv6, crytography, and other non-issues, which distracts people from focusing the real issue: codecs; making the audio/video element work smoothly over a variety of bandwidth scenarios. That's what everyone wants: clear sound and video.
If you do not fear the command line and want to see a proof of concept of how easy P2P is to set up, leave some way for me to contact you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Skype was flawed from the outset, being non-transparent (about how the network is set up, turning machines into supernodes withtout permission, and the encryption they use). It's all closed. Why? You can't verify it's well-designed. Perhaps relevant for a FOSS zealot (and I really don't mean that in a derogatory way here, there's a time and a place), but the average user doesn't care about the infrastructure - they…
I'm definitely not a FOSS zealot. However I might be a zealot for simplicity, lucidity, keeping code small, unclever and boring, making compilation quick and easy, not tolerating many of the annoyances so many folks routinely accept. I do not like "black boxes". Even if they work. re: Skype I simply see no reason that something so essential, and so simple, as a P2P application (note the P2P application does not have…
I just put Twitter on my profile - toss me a DM on there whenever you get a chance.
Let me just make this very clear: you don't go from zero operating cost to multiple millions of hardware and colo space to do the very same thing, in a move so transparent that it needs security researchers to dig into your program to find out it has happened at all. I guess Skype (by extension, Microsoft) is growing interested in what people are speaking about. To get hold of that data you need to route it through y…
Or instead of engaging in conspiracy theores with zero proof we should look at whats going on here rationally. Skype is really unacceptable in any corporate environment. I don't want a random PC on my network to be a superpeer and suddenly use my 50mbps connection routing calls to the world. Run skype for a couple of mins, fire up tcpview, and watch calls come in and out. Not only is this a waste of my resources it a…
Do those clients accept incoming connections? The only reason as far as I know for the supernodes is to break through firewalls.
If there is no firewall the skype connections are direct from client to client and they don't go through any other peer, microsoft or not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He phrased it like a conspiracy theorist, but it's a little naive to think that intercept capability wasn't a factor in this decision. As far as I know skype was the biggest player in communications that wasn't being completely monitored.
Skype went down for a couple days about a year or two ago, as did a few other voip services at around the same time. I suspect this is more than just a single company that is behind it, rather the US government.