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Psi will run on Windows 9x as well as Linux, OSX, etc

The best Jabber client (IMHO) is PSI.. http://psi.affinix.com
It works for Windows, Linux & Mac OS X, and uses QT.
It's under very active development, although there has not been a release for a while.

Version 0.9test1 has full support for encrypted messaging. On a system with GnuPG installed and setup it works pretty much out of the box. There is no automatic exchange of keys though, you can use something like GPG Agent to do that for you.

As to working over port 80, you can always setup a server yourself with port 80 open. But if you meant working over an http proxy, I don't think so.

Hope that helps... Happy Jabbering! =)

The Jabber protocol has supported PGP for a while, and quite a few clients support it. It's used both for end-to-end encryption and for signing both your presence and messages. I'm running a development version of Psi with GPG currently.

Definitely look into Jabber. The IETF recently got involved with it, and the official protocol name will be "XMPP". See the Jabber Software Foundation's website for more information and the full protocol specification (plus over 70 enhancement proposals).

As for a client, you should find one to your liking in the Jabber community. I am the author of Psi, which was recommended to you by another person in the thread. Though the program is incomplete, it is quite stable, and the requirements you list in your post are my thoughts exactly. Email me if you want to get involved ;-)

Btw, I noticed you marked yourself as a fan of me. What was the reason?

I have first-hand experience here, working on Infinity for Gameboy Color. Sure, GBC is obsolete, and we really should nuke that web site right now, since it isn't going anywhere, but a few years ago it was hot stuff.

The GBC glaringly lacked RPGs. At the time, I could safely say that the best RPG for the platform was Final Fantasy Legend 3, and that was for the monochrome GB! Infinity was going to change that. It was a game SquareSoft would have made, had they stayed around to make GBC games. Our game played a little like something between FF2 and FF3, with a full 25,000 word story. No real innovation here (except for maybe the battle system), we were simply trying to fill a nitch on the platform. For that reason, we got so many emails from gamers wondering when this thing would be released. After all, their only other choice was Pokemon. Many of them wondered if we would face a similar fate as Mythri, another GBC title that you never saw (both games were highlighed on RPGamer).

Unfortunately, Infinity never saw the light of day because we couldn't land a publisher. We sent a letter out to nearly all publishers, but in only three cases did they contact us back: EA, Nintendo, Crave. I actually flew to Washington to meet a guy at Nintendo (pretty cool place, looks just like the stuff in the pictures), only to be denied an offer. He did, however, show me a GBA prototype with Mario Kart. Sure, Mario Kart is a cool game, but I wanted to play an RPG. On the first day we met with Crave, the guy asked if we could substitute the characters with some from a movie. We tried to get them to go along with the game as-is, and we had a long negotiation period, but they ended up just stringing us along with no result. At one point, their plan was to show the game at E3 2001, but we were denied that also (I even have the 1 poster of the game we had made for the occasion, hanging on the wall behind me right now).

What I learned from all this is that publishers generally only want to take safe bets. Why go for a risky RPG when you can just make Men in Black 2? It pained me to walk down the GBC isle at stores and see something featuring the Olsen twins. How on earth do these games get published, but ours not? It is the sad state of the game industry.

For some good examples of crossplatform apps that use Qt, see Opera and Psi. I'm the author of the latter (yes, shameless plug).

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After using Qt for a couple of years, for both open source and commercial software, I can say it does the job admirably. It is easy to pick up, and using it is fun :)

Qt is not necessarily only for GUI. There are lots of convenience classes available to make your life easier doing cross-platform work: Text/Unicode handling, image, containers, networking, database, XML, etc. Many of these classes are highly optimized. I use Qt even when I'm writing a console app.

Though I have not used Java, I am told the API is very similar in style (to Swing?). The upside to Qt is that it is compiled and uses C++, so it is fast and you can mix and match system code. A common myth about cross-platform software is that you must cater to the lowest common denominator, which is absolutely not true with Qt.

Even if you are doing development for a single platform, you may still want to use Qt. It is generally easier to use than whatever is native (though I have heard very good things about Cocoa/ObjC), and it secures you that 'out' in case you want to port later.

For some examples of cross-platform projects using Qt, see Opera and Psi.

I guess I made the false assumption that everyone already knows what Jabber is, yet aren't using it. That was actually very stupid of me, considering what I was arguing :)

Jabber is an open IM system, which uses an XML-based protocol for interconnecting servers and clients. Your Jabber ID (or JID) is in the form "user@host", obviously following in the footsteps of other common internet protocols (most notably email, but also ftp, http, etc). Jabber also supports SSL in the core protocol.

Because the protocol is open, there are numerous server and client implementations, all designed to interoperate. Anyone can run a server, and there is no such thing as an "official client" (that would be as absurd as an official email client). The world of Jabber is much more friendly than that of closed IM, as the Jabber Software Foundation encourages developer participation.

Let the linking commence!

Jabber Software Foundation - The "JSF" handles all of the core protocol decision-making. There are members, council, and an enhancement proposal system. The website is also a nice hub for information, as there are links to guides, programming info, client software, server software, public server lists, etc. Start here.

Some nice clients:
Psi* - powerful and minimal cross-platform Jabber client (Windows/Mac/Unix), looking like Licq.
Gabber - a full featured GNOME Jabber client.
Exodus - a very featureful Windows client. Has a strange UI in my opinion, but lots of people like it.
Gaim - mentioned 100 times already in the comments area. This program is nice because it natively supports AIM (and other protocols), which can make your transition to Jabber easier.

Other areas of interest:
User guide - a good read for newbies.
jabberd - home of the popular open source jabber server.
Jabberd Admin guide - Read this if you want to run your own server.
Jogger - a Jabber-based blog.

*Note - I am the author of Psi. Please forgive the plug :)

I hear that Gaim speaks jabber - but jabber speaks AIM as well as a bunch of other protocols. I've got a jabber server running, I use ICQv7 protocol, MSN and Jabber - I had Yahoo and AIM installed too but none of my (few) users used it, so I disabled it - less to maintain ;)
Anyway I haven't used anything else in more than a year!
Oh yeah and a nice feature of Jabber/ICQv7 is that you can add any mobile phone to your buddy list - and send SMS messages from the IM :) (I know it's ICQ but this is simpler!)

For the client side I use Psi - A VERY cool client - available for BOTH Linux and Windows! It's really nice IM client - granted it does miss a few Jabber features such as chatrooms etc... But I never use that - I only use normal IM chat messages...

The fact that there are so many clients, none of which is polished, is jabber's biggest weakness.

Yes, Jabber suffers SourceForge Syndrome but two clients in particular stand out: Gabber and my personal favourite, Psi. Both are highly polished and robust clients. Psi's even multiplatform.

Trillian is a good idea done the wrong way. Why put all that code in one application which needs to be constantly updated as the big two (especially AOL) shift their protocol around and block non-sanctioned servers? It's the wrong approach. The smaller Jabber servers don't get blocked since they're well below AOL's radar and the end user gets a much smaller application with far less code to worry about keeping updated.

Maybe your TI-85 is just a graphing calculator. Some of us, though, have modified ours slightly.

All you need is a TI calc, an acoustic coupler, a modem, a cell phone, and one of these babies, and you're good to run lynx remotely from your TI!

Join us, Damian. You cannot resist the l33tness of the cell phone terminal emulator. It draws your inherent geek-nature like a mighty electromagnet.

Gaim? No thank you, I've got Psi - WAY better. I can actually get messages instead of chats, it's slim, trim and Jabber-oriented. Themable, too.

Available for Linux, Win32 and MacOS-X. The developer is really cool too; he's integrated a couple of my ideas and accepts bugfixes.

I'd mod you as flamebait, but it looks like someone else already did. Quit spewing FUD.

I've set up a Jabber server over 6 months ago and I'm using a client called Psi. I regularly connect to the MSN and ICQ networks through my server. I have not experienced one problem, much less the disaster you predict.

I prefer Jabber to the mess of carrying a cellphone, pager, checking email and the office phone. Yes I have them all but I only carry the cel/pager when necessary. I tell people to use Jabber or email if the need to get in touch with me, since telco charges are expensive and I'm not likely to be at the office anyway. My email client isn't always open but my IM is. Jabber is excellent for tying things together.

In a similar vein, if someone were to suggest to me firing anyone who suggested Jabber I'd end up firing them for being so small-minded. I've far less use for a person who won't consider new technologies than someone who is constantly on the lookout for the next best thing. Then again I'm the network admin for this company, so what do I know?

For the record, most of the clients there suck.

I agree wholeheartedly. When I went from Windows (ICQ99b) to Linux, I grabbed LICQ. Then when v5 ICQ protocol was being refused by the servers I went to Jabber and tried locating a client I could use that didn't pop up windows and didn't just have huge chat windows. In short, I wanted something light and fast and unobtrusive, like LICQ or the OLD Mirabilis client for Win32. I settled on Psi.

Psi is small, fast, cross-platform, simple and clean. I LOVE this client. I would strongly urge everyone who is using this client to send Justin a few dollars through his PayPal account to keep him actively developing his client. He responds to bug reports, accepts patches and tries to include feature requests. Open Source done right, I tell you.

YMMV, but it's working for me, plus the cross platform nature means that I'll start recommending it to people who have been using Trillian in the past. It's at the "almost there, but not quite finished" level, with two major bits missing - a total lack of documentation (which can get gotten around), and lack of support for group chat - which means the IRC service won't connect (not to mention AIM group chats). I just discovered it, so I can't say how fast work progresses on the project, but it's very much usable for my needs right now. Sounds like it might work for you, too.

My Jabber ID is JabberWokky@charente.de, and that server supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, YIM, Jabber and IRC.

--
Evan

Lack of MSN Messenger is solved by grabbing Psi, a kick-ass jabber client. (Best I've used on Win32 or Linux).

I've never had trouble with my X Server bombing, but then again I've compiled my own XFree86 4.1.0 from source (not sure why I did it originally). Your CD Creator is a problematic one though, but it is coming.

As far as file sharing goes, I just use LimeWire's Java client. It's actually not too bad with the IBM Java compiler. You're right on when it comes to media though, although this too is coming.

KDE3 from CVS simply rocks, and if you don't want to compile it all yourself just grab the latest 3.0 beta; it's not far off from the CVS right now. I've been running Slack on my notebook for almost two years now, trying both Win4Lin and VMWare for the Windows things I need. If Win4Lin's support didn't suck so hard I'd have stuck with them but now that I only use Windows for the P&E Micro flash tools and some in-house Win32-only software, I hardly need to look at the Start button anymore. WindowMaker with KDE is a very nice combination; there are only two things weird. Klipper must be running or you get some very strange clipboard operation, and Java windows do not sit in the Konqueror "page" -- they are created as new toplevel windows.

All in all I tend to agree with you that Linux is almost ready. Almost. KDE has come a LONG way; it *is* ready for corporate offices but not for home users; I can deploy OpenOffice and KDE on anyone's workstation here and almost not have them notice. :-)

But seriously...

AOL should be *irrelevant* to our IM needs. (the "we" here being /.'ers) Why should we be beholden to AOL, MSN, or any of the others when there's already a great alternative out there in Jabber? There are plenty of good clients out there. For Windows, there's Psi Messenger, for Linux/*BSD, there's the excellent Gabber, and for OSX, there's JabberFox, and Mac OS uh... "<X" has Jabbernaut*.

And, for the uber-geeks among us, you can even run your own Jabber *server*, too.

Also, contrary to popular belief, it's really not very hard to get all your current ICQ/AOL/MSN addicted friends to try out Jabber. I thought it would be difficult when I first started trying to convince my friends and family to use Jabber to talk to me, but they were actually happy to try it. People are so accustomed to running 2 or 3 IM programs (thank you, proprietary networks and protocols!) that they don't seem to mind one more. I've even gotten a few compliments on Jabber's lack of IM spam or ads. Plus, Psi for windows is pretty damn stable, so no worries about recommending a broken client. (how embarassing!)

So before you bitch about AOL, DO something about it instead. Support an already open, and far *superior* IM standard. Because it is AOL's right to say who does and doesn't get to use their networks and IM servers - after all, it's their stuff. But conversely, it's OUR right to say "FSCK YOU AOL!" and use and promote something BETTER.

*(for the sake of fairness, Jabbernaut really sucked hard last time I saw it, so Mac users not running OS X have my sympathy. Perhaps you should try one of the Java clients, like Shaolo...)

Now, many of those formerly compelling reasons have evaporated:

IM - is a world of divided standards, so you can only talk to AOL users if you're an AOL user, MSN if your an MSN user, etc.

email - is a world where you need to sift through 20 spam messages to find your one message. Also the monoculture of email clients created a nightmare reality of viruses.

nntp - spam is certainly a problem, as is the bulk of news services no longer carrying binaries.

Search - pay per search, or commercially-supported search (ie - paid-for results placement).

Stock Trading - find me a stock worth investing in today. It was half a function of cheap trading, but also half a function of stocks where you could actually make money.

Nobody can afford to host anymore, so people's websites are either overrun with popups or they're very small, and hosted on very slow hardware, and anyone posting material of any worth has been shut down due to copyright concerns.

Anything interesting or non-mainstream is either impossible to find now, or shut down.

I recently went through my bookmarks.html list, of 500k, accumulated over the past 8 years or so - and a good 70% of the URLs were dead. Making me regret not saving the content to my local hard drive. (and I have saved a great deal anyway).

Free Music - the age of napster is finished.

Free Software - I'm not talking about Free Software, I'm talking about that which the BSA is making extinct. Warez. Right or wrong, it was one major compelling reason people got onto the internet.

The only compelling things left I can see are: email/im - despite the fact that they're not what they used to be, they're still very useful, but there's no need for broadband here.

Corporate Software websites - where you can usually get up to date drivers and updates. Most of the time, broadband isn't required.

Free Software - If you're a Linux-head - you still need broadband for downloading those isos.

Marketing - ah yes. If you're an advertiser, the internet is your friend, and a very compelling reason to get broadband, or even a T1. That is, until everyone who has signed up for the internet in the past 3 years finally realizes that there's nothing out there for them but advertising and crap, and drop the service.

If you think you have a better solution to these problems, how about proposing them, and actually DO something about it. Complaining here on Slashdot is not a guarantee that things will change.

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Parsing XML isn't as bad as you think, especially with the availability of libraries. Understanding the protocol is loads easier when everything you get is plaintext XML. I think this is one of the positive sides to Jabber.

As an open source project, you should understand why it has taken them so long. Developing a client is one thing, but developing an IM system takes much more work. Compare it to writing the first mail server.

Anyway, it's much more mature today than ever. The main faults are: lack of good clients (which I am trying to fix), and transport instability. The instability generally comes from IP blocks by AOL to the jabber.org server. This can be solved by simply running your own server, which is the whole point of Jabber anyway.

At this point in time, my day-to-day IM consists of a private Jabber server, the AIM and ICQ transports, and the client I wrote. It's a proven system at this point. I say we run with it, rather than try to create something new again.

-Justin

Looks like there are SOME interesting uses for these old Metricom modems in Linux. STRIP looks pretty interesting. Still, I'm seeing articles like this that make me think that the newer, faster modems are going to be useless.

Anybody have any more info relating to using these new GS models in peer-to-peer? I just bought a GS model, and I'm looking to get another. I'm seeing people posting on here that the modems are trash now-- but I'm not so sure that's the case.

They sucked anyway.

'course, if they are truly going to pack up and go home, maybe it's time to head to Fry's and stock up?

5 bucks? That's not much. Remember you are paying for content, not for the price of the media. Of course it's cheap to make the actual CDs, but what about the music? Manufacturing is not the only cost, my friend. Some artists may take a year (or more!) to make an album. Granted, that's not all hardcore 40 hours a week work.

At my company, we just finished an RPG for Gameboy Color. It will probably sell for $30. I wish we could sell it for more though, considering the amount of time/work/energy it took to make. As is, we'll probably break even on expenses. Did you know the cost of producing a cartridge is less than $1? That's just the manufacturing cost. When you start piling on the expenses (employees, outsources, publishers, middlemen) it gets out of control.

You never know, some of these CDs you speak of may actually be worth much more than 17 dollars. Our game is worth well over $30, I can tell you that much.

-Justin

I used to be an avid follower of the gnokii project, which was/is an attempt to create open source drivers for various Nokia digital phones. I even wrote a completely portable driver for the 51xx/61xx phones by using gnokii as a reference. As I remember, Nokia would never help the team out with any technical information. The company showed promise at one point, but then never delivered. For the years that the project has been going, not once has Nokia given them any help. And now they are embracing Linux with this set-top box?

This is just wrong.

-Justin

I started a small company last year (Affinix Software) and we're working with GameBoy Color. The good thing about making a game for a low-end system like this is that it is actually possible to create a good game with a small team on limited funds. Once we get "our foot in the door", we should have no problem expanding to other platforms (our next target is GameBoy Advance).

This is all without any CS degrees in the company, however we all are extremely experienced in our respective areas. The two programmers, Hideaki and I, got quite a bit of experience from our days with the TI scene/community. Because these calculators use a very similar processor to the GameBoy, we were able to walk right into development. It is actually quite common for TI folks to move over to the GameBoy world (see Icarus Productions).

Unfortunately, the GBC is about to be phased out for the GBA, so it's a little late in the game for you to begin a GBC project. However, a GBA game still does not take quite a large team as the powerhouse systems (PS2, XBox, GameCube, PC) do. So if you want to enter the market, I say enter from there. Of course, this advice is really only useful if you plan to start your own company.

-Justin

Old NES games by Nintendo always had a habit of containing extras after you win like that.

Super Mario Bros let you play again with all "Goombas" turned into those beetle things. Metriod let you play again without your suit. To get the best ending to Kid Icarus, you had to play more than once (but you kept all of your items). There are probably more things like this.

Zelda, however, took the cake. It included an *entirely new* game. I mean, some games add a secret dungeon, or a secret this or a secret that. But to be given an entirely new game? Now that's cool.

Nowadays, games are generally more complex such that making another full quest would add significant time to the development. I mean, if I had to add another quest to (warning: shameless plug) Infinity, I'd probably jump off of a bridge.

Oh well, can't forget the good old days!

-Justin