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"The real question to be asking is, are there any WiMAX SIP or Skype handsets?"

Actually the real question is why didn't the poster spend 1 minute on Google. Just search skype wimax phone. Fourth link down is a page about the N810 WiMax edition with instructions on how to install Skype. Searched ebay and found two n810 WiMax's for a bit over $200.

I imagine a n810 running Skype would work better than carrying around a netbook everywhere. It's also easier to hold to your ear than a netbook....

It depends. I live in Portland, Oregon and tried this with Clear, Skype, and call-forwarding.

For me personally (and I assume at least multiple other people reading this website), I primarily use my cell phone at home and at work. It works reasonably well in this situation assuming you have good coverage at both ends. The battery life is a non-issue because it is primarily plugged in. I don't answer my phone when driving anyway, so most of my friends will leave a voicemail.

The biggest issue is network latency. It is like having a conversation over (forgive me) NAT-blocked Xbox Live. There is a very noticeable lag in the conversation.

When going out, I used my cell phone for texts. You can have Skype transcribe your voicemails and SMS you with their contents. Then you can respond via email/SMS.

All in all it worked decently, although it was fairly involved to set up. I stopped using it in the end because of the lag, the fact that Clear wouldn't support the Nokia n810, and finally I got tired of lugging the netbook around. It was an interesting experiment and you could probably make do with it, but it is not very practical just yet.

Skype is one, if not the biggest users of PostgreSQL and has released some tools that they use to manage their PostgreSQL cluster that are probably worth looking into.

With postgresql, you also have the option of scaling vertically instead of just horizontally. It seems that Postgresql scales better than MySQL across multiple cpus/cores and handles heavy load better.

Another interesting benchmark shows that both Postgresql and MySQL handle load better on Solaris instead of Linux.

Only two-bit operations that are run out of their mothers basement use PostgreSQL.

Operations like Skype

I don't normally post advert links to slashdot, but if cellular adoption trends stay the same then you should have deals like this in the US in 2-3 years. That 10/month top-up they require, is just enough to pay for 1GB/30 days, or if you want more bandwidth it's 25/month for 10GB. Just to let you drool a bit...

And whats in it for skype? Lots of talk about "billions of dollars" in the article, which at 2 cents billable per minute, would only take something like 95000 call-years to gross a single billion.

Assuming all calls are to the US or a landline. Have you tried calling an EU mobile phone? A quarter a minute.

http://www.skype.com/prices/callrates/#allRatesTab
United Kingdom - Mobile - Vodafone $ 0.253
Germany - Mobile Tmobil $ 0.246

Let's do some math!

Estimate of about 14 million concurrent users on Skype: http://glimfeather.com/borderless/OnlineNow.htm

If 1% of those active people are talking to an EU mobile phone, that's 14 million x $0.25 x 1440 minutes/day x 1% = $50.4 million per day. So in other words, $1.5 billion a month.

Alternatively, if 10% are talking to a US phone (at $0.02/minute), that's 14 million x $0.02 x 1440 minutes/day x 10% = $40.3 million per day, or $1.2 billion a month.

Go ahead and divide my estimates by 10 (so 0.1% calling an EU mobile phone, OR 1% calling a US phone) and that's still $1.2 - $1.5 billion every 10 months. Alternatively - 0.05% calling an EU mobile phone AND 0.5% calling a US phone phone also gives you $1.2 - $1.5 billion every 10 months.

This doesn't count calls to weird expensive places (Solomon Islands $ 1.153), SkypeIn ($60/year plus per-minute fees from the calling telco), SMSes, or any other wacky stuff they can dream up.

So yeah, billions. Ebay bought Skype for $2.6 billion or so FYI. They're not stupid.

Last year at AstriCon a Skype to Asterisk channel driver was unveiled so I don't think it's a jaw dropping announcement that Skype is implementing SIP in a more general fashion. Based on that pricing however their going to be competing with Vitelity, Gafachi, and a few other wholesale VoIP termination/origination providers. Could get interesting.

A bit like Skype https://extras.skype.com/577/view

Slony is also incredibly complicated. That complication presents a real problem for busy administrators when Slony fails (which it does, often).

Hopefully the Pg devs will also use a straightforward (and reliable) replication model.

In the meantime, we use SkyTools - simple to get going, it fails less often, and when it does, it's a snap to get going again.

Thanks to Linux, one day I will have a DVD Recorder/Player on steroids and watch almost all my TV and movies via the Internet, that is the future and the ISPs know it.

All I want from my ISP is reliable available bandwidth (equivalent to what they have in other parts of the world... say 100MB / 100MB or 1Gbps / 1Gpbs for around $50 per month) with Net Neutrality, no throttling, censoring or forging of RST packets to stop my communications. Give me bandwidth or give me some other ISP.

In fact when it hiccups, I check the bandwidth logs via my DD-WRT software enabled router / firewall and I see that my ISP has throttled me back more severely than normal. In many cases lower than 200Kbps.

My ISP throttles every communication, every time, all day, 24/7...it is getting so old. Prior to them throttling, my Quality of Service (QoS) settings ALWAYS prevented my Skype VoIP software from being interrupted. Since they have started throttling, my Skype calls get interrupted a few times each month...about the same rate as my cell phones use to drop calls back in the day. For the last three - four years I have been cell phone and monthly fee to cellular companies FREE.

So even if Skype drops, which it never did in the past, pre throttle days, I will NOT switch from them. Rather I will look for a more reliable ISP and churn.

Thanks to Linux, one day I will have a DVD Recorder/Player on steroids and watch almost all my TV and movies via the Internet, that is the future and the ISPs know it.

All I want from my ISP is reliable available bandwidth (equivalent to what they have in other parts of the world... say 100MB / 100MB or 1Gbps / 1Gpbs for around $50 per month) with Net Neutrality, no throttling, censoring or forging of RST packets to stop my communications. Give me bandwidth or give me some other ISP.

In fact when it hiccups, I check the bandwidth logs via my DD-WRT software enabled router / firewall and I see that my ISP has throttled me back more severely than normal. In many cases lower than 200Kbps.

My ISP throttles every communication, every time, all day, 24/7...it is getting so old. Prior to them throttling, my Quality of Service (QoS) settings ALWAYS prevented my Skype VoIP software from being interrupted. Since they have started throttling, my Skype calls get interrupted a few times each month...about the same rate as my cell phones use to drop calls back in the day. For the last three - four years I have been cell phone and monthly fee to cellular companies FREE.

So even if Skype drops, which it never did in the past, pre throttle days, I will NOT switch from them. Rather I will look for a more reliable ISP and churn.

Thanks to Linux, one day I will have a DVD Recorder/Player on steroids and watch almost all my TV and movies via the Internet, that is the future and the ISPs know it.

All I want from my ISP is reliable available bandwidth (equivalent to what they have in other parts of the world... say 100MB / 100MB or 1Gbps / 1Gpbs for around $50 per month) with Net Neutrality, no throttling, censoring or forging of RST packets to stop my communications. Give me bandwidth or give me some other ISP.

In fact when it hiccups, I check the bandwidth logs via my DD-WRT software enabled router / firewall and I see that my ISP has throttled me back more severely than normal. In many cases lower than 200Kbps.

My ISP throttles every communication, every time, all day, 24/7...it is getting so old. Prior to them throttling, my Quality of Service (QoS) settings ALWAYS prevented my Skype VoIP software from being interrupted. Since they have started throttling, my Skype calls get interrupted a few times each month...about the same rate as my cell phones use to drop calls back in the day. For the last three - four years I have been cell phone and monthly fee to cellular companies FREE.

So even if Skype drops, which it never did in the past, pre throttle days, I will NOT switch from them. Rather I will look for a more reliable ISP and churn.

Skype for Linux has had video calls since the beta last year.

Skype for Linux has had video calls since the beta last year.

While Skype is a cross platform IM tool, the one shortcoming I find with it is the Linux client does not support Video.

Is there a solution for cross platform video conferencing?

Yeah, it would be great if they would eventually support video for Linux. Did it take a year for your post to show up? ;)

http://www.t-mobile.com/International/LongDistanceOverview.aspx

Skype rates are about the same (also with a small per-month fee): http://www.skype.com/intl/en/prices/callrates/

Youre joking right? PostgreSQL supports several replication engines which works fantastic great and it has been doing that for years!

You have:
PGCluster
Slony-I
DBBalancer
pgpool
PostgreSQL table comparator
SkyTools
Sequoia

You can read about what Skype use replication for PostgreSQL here:
https://developer.skype.com/SkypeGarage/DbProjects/SkypePostgresqlWhitepaper

And Slony for example is developed by Jan Weick, a PostgreSQL core team member.

Maybe I'm missing something, but is this necessarily evidence that the Skype client and transmission are not themselves secure? The third link indicates that TOM-Skype uses TOM-specific client software that does the filtering (which Skype knew about). Isn't it likely that that software is also what's squealing to the monitoring system (which Skype apparently didn't know about) despite the supposed end-to-end security of the actual transmission over the Skype protocol? Is there any evidence that the monitoring is going on during the transmission, rather than this being a case of the TOM software phoning home separately?

I'm not suggesting that the Skype client should be trusted even outside of China—if it's closed-source, it might as well not encrypt anything at all—and this story certainly seems to cast additional doubt on it. But nonetheless, couldn't the foul play here be limited to the "TOM" side of TOM-Skype?

According to the Skype Blog, this is a text filter that only applies to TOM-Skype. If you use regular Skype, or if you use Skype or TOM-Skype for voice (rather than text) communication, you are still secure.

Yeah, I know... I don't trust them either. But even the NYT article didn't uncover any snooping of the actual voice calls (although the phone numbers and names of those involved in the call [b]were[/b] being recorded.)

I tried using Zfone with Gizmo a year or two ago, since I trusted the inventor of PGP to provide a better security solution than Skype's proprietary secret encryption. Unfortunately (at least at that time), the voice quality and ability to handle NAT wasn't as good in Gizmo as it was in Skype. Wonder if they've improved it yet?

You can buy an official Skype app today from the iPhone App Store (WiFi only).

No, you can't. TruPhone is available though.

With these.

And these.

Or maybe there are folks who live there and have

this.

FYI you may want to look at xmeeting type things. xmeeting is for windows and os x, but it's h.323, and is compatible with other h.323 video systems. It works great with polycoms for example. (ichat I hear is also h.323 but isn't cross-compatible for god-knows-what-reason) There's gotta be an h.323 compatible something for linux.

Note that you will lose some of the frills like buddy lists, text chat, etc, but you do sometimes get new toys... with xmeeting for example, you can aim/zoom the remote polycom. I don't know of any other video chat cross platform anything that lets you do that sort of thing.

Still don't understand why you're writing off skype though. Works spectacularly well on windows and mac, and I thought there was skype for linux also?

It's been my experience that ichat is more reliable and smoother / better quality for video chats, whereas skype does voice much better. Both seem pretty good at automatically working through NAT on both ends, which I'm sure if I saw all the shenanigans they had to do to pull that off, I'd pass out.

It seems it's new.

Add âoecontrib non-freeâ at the end of each repository line. Also, add the following two repo lines to the file: deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ lenny main deb, http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free

So yeah, the guy has taken a lot of private parts from people who don't have his best interest at heart. This is something Debian Developers don't think you should do, even if you call your laptop the Black Tower.

For all of that, I did not see him add decss, which is actually free software, and his desktop looks like shit when he's finished. He's probably so afraid of a DMCA action that he skips mentioning decss. It is sad that laws can keep US citizens from free software and shove some into the hands of people who say, "suck my dick." The ugliness of his desktop is a matter of personal taste. Free desktops look better than an ugly Win 2000 knock off. I can't stand icons on my desktop.

Is Skype secure?
Yes. When you call another Skype user your call is encrypted with strong encryption algorithms ensuring you privacy. In some cases your Skype communication may be routed via other users in the peer-to-peer network. Skype encryption protects you from potential eavesdropping from malicious users.

Why are Skype calls encrypted?
Skype is encrypted end-to-end because it uses the public internet to transport your voice calls and text messages and sometimes these calls are routed through other peers. Skype encryption ensures that no other party can eavesdrop on your call or read your instant messages.

What type of encryption is used?
Skype uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) also known as Rijndael which is also used by US Government organizations to protect sensitive information. Skype uses 256-bit encryption, which has a total of 1.1 x 1077 possible keys, in order to actively encrypt the data in each Skype call or instant message. Skype uses 1024 bit RSA to negotiate symmetric AES keys. User public keys are certified by the Skype server at login using 1536 or 2048-bit RSA certificates.

So if there is a backdoor, there site is lying, and i can smell a classaction.

Why would you want to run Skype under Wine?

Skype for Linux is available as a native app, prepackaged for all the popular desktop distributions, as well as in a Maemo/ARM version for the Nokia Internet Tablet.

It's not unstable. It works fine. I've used it to call home while traveling all over the world.

I run Skype because I can reach the people I want to talk with. Ekiga is useless to me. I can't track down everybody I know and force them to switch, even if I wanted to dig through the bad documentation and figure out how to get it working with a SIP provider. The whole "free SIP" landscape is a real mess. Skype just works.

... couldn't you do this anywhere in the world with a phone running Skype for Mobile or practically any VoIP provider of your choice using a PocketPC? Either that summary is way too summarized or there really isn't anything exciting here other than saying this is now possible on an iPhone too...

You can do that today. I didn't see anything about Linux, though.

I doubt it will be used to look for people breaking copyright.

In other news, here's some way to solve the issue:
* http://www.gnupg.org/
* http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/
* I feel bad for linking this but atleast they know their encryption: http://www.skype.com/

Well, there are also official repositories from skype
deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free
Google
deb http://dl.google.com/linux/deb/ stable non-free
And Canon printer drivers
deb http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/debian ./

Now, looking at this iPhone SDK, the VoIP over Cellular is totally understandable, because if they allow that, then it'll totally undermine the revenue stream of the cell phone carriers. The iPhone, afterall, is first and foremost a phone.

Yeah, God knows you can't get Skype for a mobile phone. (Admittedly, they do say "In order to use Skype for Windows Mobile, your device must have a high speed wireless Internet connection over WiFi or 3G"; Skype over EDGE might not be good enough.)

Regarding Java, Apple might claim a legitimate concern that having a VM-based language will prevent programs from reaching guaranteed performance levels that native iPhone apps can achieve, thus "downgrading the user experience".

...which certainly explains why they haven't promoted the notion of Web apps on the iPhone. :-)

Regarding Firefox and Opera, I think the same argument can be used for game developers against XBox360 or PS3 or Wii consoles. As a hardware manufacturer, they have more rights to control what software goes onto their system (or what games).

And the argument against the consoles might be legitimate, too. Yes, the hardware manufacturer, if they also do the device firmware and software, has the technical capability to restrict the software that can be run, but the mere fact that they can do it doesn't oblige people to think it's OK for them to do so.

And looking at the chaotic state of Linux and GUIs (too much customizations means no standard to identify with), maybe Apple would like a firmer grip at the user experience.

Gee, I think Apple makes some equipment whose software isn't nearly so restrictive but still manage to keep from having anything as "chaotic" as the UNIX+X11 desktop.

For Macs there is aMSN for video chat for MSN, but no other 3rd party clients come to mind for video on any of the major proprietary chat protocols.

What about http://www.skype.com/?

You say that, and yet there are plenty of proprietary binaries available for Linux. Many distros have huge repositories of "non-free" stuff. Plenty of proprietary vendors make Linux binaries available (e.g. nVidia binary driver, Opera, Skype, etc. See also this list, much of which is distributed in binary-only form).

Yes, the vendor will probably only pre-compile binaries for the most popular architectures (32-bit x86 being the main one), and only for the most popular packaging formats (deb and rpm). But really that covers the vast majority of Linux users anyway.

Yes, it's a pain for the vendor to compile/package 2-8 versions instead of just one, but it's hardly the insurmountable obstacle you make it out to be.

Linux is Linux is Linux

While that is the case superficially, every release of every distro comes with different versions of the various shared libraries. That leaves the following possibilities:

1. Ship software as source and expect customers to compile it
2. Provide source and get popular enough so that the distros do the compilation for you
3. Provide the software yourself, and pick some subset of all Linux distros/versions to support

Note that for Windows you can provide a single setup.exe and it will run on everything from Windows 98 through Vista.

Here are some examples of Linux applications:

• Opera where they pick a sizable number and versions of distros
• pidgin CentOS/RHEL/Fedora
• skype where they have 8 variations
• Oracle supports RHEL, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Asianux

Basically a closed source vendor has to pick a limited number of distros and versions for logistical reasons. You'll also notice that they typically only support x86 processors, but it is rare indeed to see something like PowerPC Linux support. The Linux Standards Base was supposed to address this, but for example they said RPM is the standard packaging mechanism. That annoys anyone using Debian, Slackware etc. If they had picked Deb as the standard then it would have annoyed Redhat/Fedora/Suse etc instead.

So in summary, Linux is only Linux is only Linux if you provide your software as source. Even then, if the distros don't package you then you'll still end up supporting a subset of all versions of all distros of all processors.

I would have to take issue with your statement.

According to this: http://www.ossir.org/windows/supports/2005/2005-11-07/EADS-CCR_Fabrice_Skype.pdf

Skype seems to use AES for the VOIP payload, and RC4 for signaling packets.

Naturally, although AES is an excellent algorithm, it will fail if the implementation is weak, especially in the key handling.

I agree that the code is largely obfuscated, and without open source, it would be a nightmare to expect to rely on its security.

However, there was an "independent" review of Skype, which I understand was able to review the source code.

See: http://www.skype.com/security/files/2005-031%20security%20evaluation.pdf for what appears to be the definitie analysis (as of 2005.)

Maybe things have changed since then? I would be surprised if the German government and its subcontractors have seriously been able to compromise Skype through man-in-the-middle attacks, but would not be surprised if a single end-point were compromised.

clunk (sound of a large penny dropping)

I suddenly realised Skype video on linux! quick google and heres the debian package which works on ubuntu
http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu.

This blog page may help out with some of the details
http://www.blog.arun-prabha.com/tag/skype/

how did i miss this before

I've been a Vodafone customer in the UK for eleven years now. I use a phone they didn't sell me, and have applications on it that I wrote as well as various others

Even on the phones Vodafone do sell you, features are not normally disabled; the last phone I got from them (Sony Ericsson P910i) has a ringtone downloaded direct to it from the net for free, and various applications I installed from places around the net. I don't think you could survive with a 'lock the users in' policy in Europe - there's too much competition.

So last year we heard that mysterious 'German Officials' were

So, who pwns who?

According to this PDF document, Skype encryption is based on open standard (such as AES, SHA-1, etc).

According to this article, our good friends at the NSA "may" have put backdoors in some of the technologies that could be used by Skype.

And, then, according to this other article, it does not matter what technologies you use, if your CPU is wide open to analysis and crypto attacks.

And, of course, there is the question of using a 'secure' communication system on a completely insecure operating system, such as Windows. Why do you think they talk of intercepting the communication before it becomes encrypted? Probably because the vast majority of suspects use Windows. Using Linux, or MacOS, would not be much of an improvement either.

Conclusion? Well, the Bundespolizei (that's German police to you) may not have the means to decipher your skype communications right now. But it's getting there, thank yo uvery much. And there are agencies out there who certainly can, and will.

And what happened to free german crypto? I thought Germany had the only sane policy about crypto in the industrial world?

I had to re-download and install Skype, and now I have to run it with the firewall switched off. Pending a fixed Skype in 'a few weeks'. Aaaargh...

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/ipfw.8.html
http://www.skype.com/help/guides/firewall.html

A rather entertaining issue - if you have the firewall enabled and run Skype then quit it, then Skype gets horribly broken, and doesn't start again. Nobody can decide if it's Leopard cryptographically signing (and modifying) the Skype executable and tripping up Skype's own excessive intrusion detection, or Skype modifying its own executable and tripping up Leopard's checks that it's the same application being allowed access to the interweb. I suspect it's the former - as older installations of Skype got killed on my two recently upgraded machines in that way.

I had to re-download and install Skype, and now I have to run it with the firewall switched off. Pending a fixed Skype in 'a few weeks'. Aaaargh...

Time Machine doesn't work on my old-fashioned partitioned external hard disk (half is an NTFS partition for Windows backups...), the Leopard installer initially wouldn't detect my MacBook Pro's own hard disk, and my iMac got nearly deaded by the upgrade (fortunately I had SSH enabled, and was able to get in and run Software Update from the command line, and thus could install the important iMac updates). Oh, and it's all a little bit crashy. It's nearly fantastic - apart from those issues... ;-)

I'm surprised at a couple of issues that don't seem to have been mentioned here.

Firstly, Skype isn't compatible with Leopard's firewall. This is a problem with the Skype software, but there's a workaround for now, until a new version comes out with that problem fixed.

Secondly, when I upgraded, it didn't upgrade XCode to 3.0. I still have 2.4.1, which crashes when I try to run it. Looks like I'll have to update that separately. (If anyone knows whether you can just install over the top or whether you have to remove the old one first, let me know - I haven't tried this yet.)

I like the interface, but I wish I were able to tweak more of it. Let me set the opacity of the menu bar. Let me set the contrast of the Dock, so I can see the application lights more clearly. Let me determine whether a Stack has an icon or not (using the contents of a Stack as the icon works for Downloads but not for Applications). Minor annoyances, really, and some of them can be fixed easily enough already.

Pretty much everything else (that I've tried) has "just worked". It's only been a day for me, and one not entirely without frustration, but I'm reasonably happy with it so far.

I wouldn't call either of those 'VOIP' by definition.

And why would that be?

I want to use the telephone, not PC based chat.

Not an applicable reason. After a minute of searching, I found this. I am sure you can find similar items that are cheaper and/or better and/or work with services other than skype.

So say Vonage goes belly up in a few months... does anyone know of similair VOIP solutions? There's no way I'm going back to a telco land line.

I recommend trying gizmo. The most popular VOIP solution, at least in my crowd, is skype. And there is wengo, who has a GPL'd client.

I'm 99% sure that Ubuntu or Debian people can do similar things with DEBs. Of course, the downside with the package approach is you have to have one package per distro (take a look at Skype; skype isn't in any linux repositories, but it supplies 4-5 RPMs and a binary tarball).

1) lack of media support.

2) ease of installing software.

I'd bet my bottom dollar that most people pop in a CD and autorun takes over

Most users know how to search the web for software, so that's not a problem.

Now, I do like synaptic and apt-get. But they are not easier than double clicking an icon on your desktop.

It's easier to search the web than some program that suffers from what I like to call "yellow pages syndrome", where stuff is placed into arbitrary categories.

I don't know why you would pay to have skype as it's already well supported. But those others I can see.

Well, why would AT&T allow other platforms to run Skype, then? Sorry, but none of the "oh, it's not Apple, it's AT&T" explanations work at all. And the really funny thing is that this propaganda doesn't even come from Apple, it's all creative excuses from the fanboys. Which means it's more than likely wrong, by the way.

One way I can think of to make money would be to offer SIP access to your skype account for a fee.

I almost put this exact recommendation in my post. Then I found it already exists:

• Skip2PBX (Skype Extras #138)
• Skystone: the ultimate Software IP Skype Gateway (Skype Extras #722)
• SiSky Enterprise Edition (Skype Extras #924)