• MuppetMaster on Yahoo Voice

  @Phil:

  I agree wholeheartedly. Once can not say that Yahoo will share and Skype never will as the original blog post seemed to speculate...

• Phil on Yahoo Voice

  @ Muppetmaster :
  I was referring to past actions or informations... but for future.. well I have no divination gift ;-)
  and if the law cited by the following news is in fact changed, well... they will have to stay legal..
  ( http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20060411-013136-5394r )
  Anyway, this is something we do not know, and there are enough other big players who will not be excited by such a revision and who will lobby against.

  Since I do not want to create a troll, I stop here with this issue. ciao for now.

• MuppetMaster on Yahoo Voice

  Sounds like Skype...

  Also, anyone who believes that Skype (eBay) will not be willing to submit to pressure by governments is deluding themselves.

• Kevin Delaney on Yahoo Voice

  @Aswath: Yes, I was referring to you.

  @Ted Wallingford: Yahoo has killed the community that previously surrounded Konfabulator and its widgets. Like most of these projects that start small, there's a real sense of togetherness and co-operation among the users. But when the buyout comes, this community generally fades.

  -kevin

• Phil on Yahoo Voice

  Well, Aswath, this article (titled "Skype use may make eavesdropping passe") is saying mostly the opposite... And this does not answer to my question about the official position of french authorities. BTW : Mr Sauer is not saying that he does surrender to Big Brother. There are plenty of legal requests which are sent daily to Telco operators, and which do not involve eavesdropping... at least in Europe (I do not know very well North American rules about this eavesdropping issue). They can be just providing some data related to billing issues (mostly SkypeOut then I guess). If you have worked in the Telco world, you know it. This is btw consistent with the statement of Bruce Schneier about trafic analysis, later in the cited article.
  It raises a second question about the unability of Skype to monitor p2p trafic between two clients... and this seems to have been a second point on which french authorities were unhappy about this communication tool... So, I would avoid to spread FUD and plot theories on the basis of an extract of USA Today (remember this ;-) http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2001-02-05-binladen.htm)

• MuppetMaster on Yahoo Voice

  Skype´s rapid adoption in various marketplaces is a testament to the very fact that things may change very quickly. The S(h)ype is over and Skype will struggle unless it begins to open. The problem there is of course that by opening they would give the RICO lawsuit ammunition...

• canrocks on Yahoo Voice

  For the record -

  Yahoo most certainly does not have Canada secured. Canada is MSN country through and through. It's the only member of the big three (four?) that will truly see considerable voip revenue from Canada, aside from Skype, and the usual voip players.
  Secondly, this is just hearsay but is AIM not dominant in the US?

  Also, i understand this is Skypejournal and everything, but, as far as the consumer is concerned, Skype has very few major advantages other than market share, which granted, is a big advantage, but can shift relatively easily. As far as sheer price goes, for pc to phone calling, Skype is 52nd for calls to Canada, according to Myvoipprovider.com. Even if I'm saving fractions of a cent per minute, i have no reason to use Skype. The difference in sound quality is negligible. (BTW, Skype is 32nd in an overall ranking of cost on the same site mentioned. Methodology leaves to be desired, but it gets the job done).

• Aswath on Yahoo Voice

  Phil:

  "Kurt Sauer, Skype's chief security officer, said there are no "back doors" that could let a government bypass the encryption on a call. At the same time, he said Skype "cooperates fully with all lawful requests from relevant authorities." He would not give particulars on the type of support provided." ( http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/computersecurity/2006-02-16-skype-wiretapping_x.htm )

  Kevin, I am not sure whether your comment "Never heard of that" refers to my previous comment or not. In that case, I hope this link interests you.

• Paul Livingstone on Yahoo Voice

  I fail to see how Yahoo has murdered Flickr in any way. Apart from merging the sign-on accounts to the yahoo standard, Flick is still an outstanding website/service.

• julian.bond on Yahoo Voice

  Every 6 months or so I have another look at YM! What I get is a big bloated program that wants to install a load of other things as well (toolbars), leaves icons all over my desktop without asking and is rather ugly and unpleasant to use. The last time was the BT-YM! joint venture "Communicator". Where is that now?

  SIP based you say. And is the IM Jabber based?

  But mostly, why is the Skype release schedule so much faster than it's competitors?

  ps. The Googletalk updater is very neat. I didn't have to do anything to get the latest release. Skype could learn something here.

• Phil on Yahoo Voice

  Hello Aswath !

  Well, could you pls give a link towards the document which says that Skype will submit to eavesdrop ?
  Here in France, the Ministry of Education has forbidden the use of Skype in Laboratories because of its unbreakable encryption, which consequently does not allow monitoring of communications coming out from sensitive laboratories.... So we would be glad to know that it is "tappable" then we could ask for being allowed to use it (since all the others are not forbidden, we presume that they are already "opened to police ears" - logical isn't it).
  :-)
  Thanks in advance for your answer.

• MuppetMaster on Yahoo Voice

  EBay, with PayPal, has a far more extensive (in fact it is required) track record of ´giving in to big brother´. Stop kidding yourself that EBay/Skype will not fork it over if asked, EBay is a publically listed NASDAQ company with a lucrative financial services arm.

  But this is not the only mis-information in the article. Where does one get the stat that Skype has ´far more IM users than Yahoo´?

  It is always interesting to see someone have to make an argument for something based on mis-information. Not enough verifiably good things to say?

• continued in the Skype Journal Comment River: 200 fresh comments

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