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AOL May Be Forced To Open AIM
bearclaw writes: "Apparently, AOL might have to open up their IM protocal, according to a CNN article. The FCC seems to be concerned about their 90% IM dominance. Imagine that." This has been rumored several times before, with no action from the government. Meanwhile, AIM continues to dominate the scene.
All communications over the internet intended for the general public should be free and open standards even if the exact source code of a given program isn't free. This goes for RealPlayer and Winblows Media Player as well as AIM and their ilk.
Just because the FCC, etc. has refused to require open communications standards in the past doesn't mean that they won't require it in the future. I think this is long overdue.
Today AIM, tomorrow WMP and RealPlayer!
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
Sig protection fault, restart to display sig
/.'s 10 Millionth
Someone already pointed out that the FCC looks at communications/media deals and has nothing to do with Microsoft.
But just as important is that the US gov't has much more leverage over a merger deal than over a non-merging company. Special laws give federal agencies abilities to challenge mergers in court. To avoid the costly court challenge, the companies (here AOL/Time) will negotiate with the Feds to come to terms on a deal.
I'm also on the download.com mail list which gives out the top 10 downloads each week. ICQ has been in the top few each week for well over a year - AIM just doesn't feature. There's no way AIM is the most common.
yer.. I'll buy that conspiracy.
How we know is more important than what we know.
look at everybuddy (http://www.everybuddy.com) for an IM program that can chat on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ. You need an acocunt on each, but you have one program that does all four.
Unless AOL has done this, then the DoJ has no power here.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
You know what's even funnier? The list of rivals behind the Microsoft case. Netscape or Sun, anyone? It seems that the new trend in Silicon Valley is just to whine, bitch, and complain to government if you get beat in the competitive market.
I think the way AOL is detecting unproper use of their servers is by exploiting a bug in their own clients. I use GAIM a lot, and I liked the Oscar protocol support, so when it was shutdown, my roommate and I fired up the old packet sniffer... AOL sends out some very odd looking large packets right before it IMs you and kicks you off the network. We beleive that the Win32 client has a bug where those large packets result in a buffer overflow, and the client ignores the garbage packets, while in the reverse engineered version, the client response is basically, "huh? what in the world was that??" and when AOL sees that, it kicks you off.. probably a few more weeks of packet sniffing...we might have a patch ready :)
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I post links to stuff here
Ever heard of IRC? Not quite the IM-stle of today, but A LOT more useful and functional. TALK was a part of UNIX back in the 70's and 80's. I say let AOLers rot. I've been converting my friends to the benefits of IRC, even those who aren't computer literate. All it takes is a little initiative and more than 2 brain cells to understand it. I'm hoping to leave the whole modern IM world behind and get back to real discussions.
Some people take their .sig way too seriously
Exactly how much control is the government supposed to have when it comes to regulating software? So lets say for example I have a website thats getting 3 million visits/day can the government step in and tell me to give other websites my traffic? I think not, so why should AIM be any different?
Does that make any sense? IF you don't like them and they suck and they should drop off the face of the planet and their software is aweful and people who use AOL are too dumb to breathe, which is the overwhelming sentiment around here, why is anyone at all irked that they don't like 3rd parties using their services?
:)
Seems like they invented it (just AIM, not the idea of messaging), they bankroll it, the promote, and they support it... and most everyone here hates them, so why not just steer the two trains away from each others paths? Or what happens if AOL is forced to open AIM to all comers, so they decide to "retaliate" by giving AOLer's push button access to IRC?
Won't you all just love AOL even more then?
Because most people are too stupid to know how to use IRC.
By the very nature a corporation is a result of government regulation on a free market. A corporation is an artificial entity created by the government, through regulations and laws.
A business that goes crying to the government, "Whaa! The *real* free market is too scary to compete in! Let me incorporate! Protect me!" has little business complaining to the self-same government about being regulated for using the advantages of incorporation that are government regulated and government enforced and otherwise are government meddling in the balance of the market place.
I do not see how a free market should involve the idea of government-created artificial entities competing against individuals.
A couple of comments here ...
This would not prevent such things as secure eCommerce or on-line banking - things that require secure protocols. But these things are private, not for the public at large.
Secret protocols != secure protocols
Secret protocols == protocols of UNKNOWN security.
There are many secure protocols that are completely publicly documented. ssl for one.
Ok well if we convert to that reference frame, and agree that AOL's servers won't be 'opened', just the protocol, the issue now becomes whether it's fair to require AOL to open the protocol considering they invested the resources to develop the protocol and so on. THIS IS a debatable open source question which I would and do agree to see both sides on, of course. As with everything in the open source movement, it's a very complex issue if you are truly unbiased and not over-zealous or selfish, thus not solvable in a message board thread. Let's all put this into our 'backpack' of issues to consider through time.
I don't think they did invent it, though. Wasn't ICQ around before AIM? Even though AOL owns ICQ now, Mirabilis created it...
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So all those icq people count towards the AOL numbers.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Gaim may be open source but the protocol that it uses isn't. We know everything about the toc protocol but it is very limited to what it can do. The windows clients use the oscar protocol and it is a lot better but aol never released how oscar works. It has been reverse engineered to a degree and mostly works now with gaim but now aol has blocked clients other than its own using oscar so we really haven't gotten anywhere. My point is that we could gain a lot from having this opened up.
-Stype
Bus error -- driver executed.
Maby this way I could have one less anoying IM program runing on my computer because MS IM can use AOL IM Like they did in the first place.
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
demand that the condom dominance by Trojan come to a halt?
No pun intended there I'm sure.
Whatever happened to ICQ? It's what I use, it's what my friends use. I know there's well over 70,000,000 numbers issued, however many are active is anyone's guess, but still, 90% of the market is AOLIM? That's sickening among other things considering the worthlessness of AIM.
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www.stallman.org is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on FreeBSD
Huh. It all makes sense now. That's why ya ask questions. :-)
As for the questions you raise, I'm stumped. I can't imagine why AOL wouldn't want to integrate those two products.
What next? are they going to demand that the condom dominance by Trojan come to a halt?
Oh, wait a minute...
Anyway, I see what you're getting at. But I don't see any difference between mandating interoperability of IM protocols and mandating interoperability of telephone networks.
I think you're afraid of allowing the FCC to put any restrictions on the contents of a pipe for fear that they'll start saying things like "you can't send THOSE bits over those wires". I see forced-IM-interoperability as different:
- Motive: force interopability
- Number of people that benefit: tons
- Terms: narrow and concrete (THIS protocol, THIS environment, etc...)
- Complexity: simple terms
- Length of time until FCC will have to make another similar mandate: 2 years
Because of all this, each such mandate will be very public and can easily be understood, and can be debated in public. If the FCC starts making vague mandates against small companies and it only benefits 5 people in unpredictiable ways, then you can start getting worried that they might pull some funny stuff. Right now, each mandate is too visible for a long period of time to let anything happen without it being glaringly obvious to a lot of people.--
I think everyone should be left alone. AOL has brought people to the Internet. Face it. Most of you (myself included) would be out of a job, had AOL not brought millions of people to the Internet using their AOL Chat programs and ideas. Hell, take it another step forward, and watch me get marked down to flaimbait / offtopic / whatever, but had Microsoft not created a OS for stupid idiots, then AOL would not have created a system to allow them to communicate, which would bring hundreds of thousands of businesses to the Internet, looking for any extra money.
Some say porn built the current Internet, but I think AOL had a bigger hand: they provided an easy way for people to chat.
/. is a commercial entity. goto slashdot.com
Think about this - every ephemeral instant message transits Northern Virginia.
Actually, in the case of ICQ, only offline messages are sent via the server.
If a user is online, messages are sent directly peer-peer (assuming the client/clone supports it).
As well, there is a degree of encryption on the newer protocols, but of course this is pretty limited and already cracked.
AOL did release interoperability specs, which is a start. I wouldn't expect them to give out all the secrets. That'd be bad business.
Why did AOL buy ICQ anyway?
Maybe they bought them just to make sure Microsoft didn't
While I dont care for AOL (though i DO use AIM), I hae the government again putting their nose where it doesnt belong... in the business world. I hate M$, hope they evaporate/disappear soon (however unlikely) but the gov't still doesnt belong in their face... let the market shoot them down (nothing lasts forever). The people that support the DoJ in their persecution of M$ are like the religeous in-your-face people that are insecure about their beliefes, in this case insecure that they dont REALLY believe Linux or what not CAN defeat M$. I have faith it will, soon enough... I am an American and I vote Libertarian.
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"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Question 1:
How is it that the FCC or the DoJ or anyone else for that matter can use the Merger of AOL/TW to require the release/breakup of the AOL dominance? AOL's dominance in IM has _nothing_ to do with TW, nor will it become more or less dominant as the result of the merger. So how can they use the merger as the springboard for this campaign?
Question 2:Does the FCC have any rights to regulate IM? I would only expect the FCC To become involved in merger proposals when communications assets (such as radio/tv stations, etc) are involved.
-- "I will never let my schooling get in the way of my education." --Mark Twain
AOL is one of 66 Smart corporations which donated over $50k to both the Bush and Gore campaigns. So don't expect any serious constraints on AOL/Time Warner from either of these two would-be prez's.
Sue your competition for some sort of "infringement" or other bullshit...
IIRC, the problem with "Big tobacco" is that they claimed that dangers of smoking (ooooohhh sounds scary) were not proven, even though they knew it was. thus, they were misleading their consumers.
btw: this settlement helped to secure the "Big tobacco" monopoly by establishing a fund of some sort that ALL tobacco companies (even those who never claimed smoking was all good for you, or who didn't exist then, or who don't exist now) have to pay a big (IIRC, fixed for all) amount of money to. so, smaller companies have to go out of business, because at their level of sales, it drives the cost too high.
z.
disclaimer: I might be right.
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Who the FUCK moderated this as a troll? I think this post makes a really good point: it's natural, almost unavoidable, for one IM system to have nearly all the market share because the point of IM is to communicate with other people, and you can only do that if everyone is using the same system. I don't know much about economics, but wouldn't this be the kind of thing economists refer to as a "natural monopoly"? Like utility companies? And haven't these companies historically been subject to heavy government regulation?
Just trying to open someone's head! I mean "mind!" Open someone's mind, um, to the possibilities! With explosives!
I think you can import your user list from AIM with a script that comes in the root directory of the tarball.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
I hate being shut out of the teen chat rooms.
Now, if only we could find a way to verify someone's age in a chatroom, I'd be much happer.
P. Naughton
[SNIP]
What's the difference in freatures between TOC and the closed protocol, anyway? Does anyone know? I've never seen the two compared. . . though I guess I haven't looked too hard, either . . .
viewing the away message is a function of the Oscar protocol, not the TOC protocol. Oscar also had support for buddy icons, and numerous other features found lacking in TOC clients. GAIM has experimental support the Oscar in the last few releases, but it is unusable at the moment due to unauthorized clients being blocked so we are stuck with the TOC protocol--for now.
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I post links to stuff here
Use GAIM instead! It's Open Source and works great!
So what if AIM has 90% of the market. There are plenty of good competitors available if people really wanted to use them. It's not like AOL is now going to crank up the price of AIM and milk all their customers.
The only valid argument I could see is if they gave away AIM just to drive a competitor out of business. Maybe my memory is going, but I don't recall anyone charging for instant messaging software, even ICQ.
One thing I think AOL should do is offer clients for other OSs, just to finally cut off that criticism. Heck, they could even just agree to distribute one of the open ones.
It's their damn program, and they should be able to do what they want with it. Jesus H. Christ.
The government should have NO BUSINESS in this.
(and as a note -- I would like to see all chat programs using 1 protocol, but still -- the government forcing people to open it is WRONG. It is their program.)
BilldaCat
You just need to download the AIM applet of the AOL site and decompile the java classes. They haven't even used a confuscator on the code ;-)
:http://toc.oscar.aol.com/tic.html
If someone wrote a server to go with it, you could set up your local AIM network (I intend to do that, but haven't the time right now)
The applet can be found at
Microsoft, AT&T, Prodigy, Excite, etc. The people that have the most to lose/gain by this hubub...
I think it's the whole "chat" mentality that the Internet is still trying to outgrow. Once people start using the net for communication instead of "Hi" "Hi" "How are you?" "Fine. You?" "Great." "Well....see ya!", the world will start to change.
Got Rhinos?
Sorry, I'm with AOL.
I hate it when my soup cans don't interoperate.
Don't dismiss IM so quickly. Have you ever seen kids and preteens using a computer with an Internet connection? The "Hi-Hi-How are you-Fine dialog" you describe is typical kidspeak.
The kids I have seen using computers LIVE for IM. That ICQ "Uh-Oh" goes off dozens times per evening! If IM had been around way back when, I wouldn't have spent my evenings on the phone, driving my parents crazy.
Now I use IM as a work tool on a daily basis, communicating with geographically distant colleagues. It's very handy to know who's available to answer a quick question. Email and the phone can't give me that functionality
The huge prevalence of IM won't wax and wane with the net's maturity. As the kids will eventually grow out of this communications phase, they will be followed by the next wave of soon-to-be pre-teens.
IMO, IM (eesh - acronymity!) is here to stay, for both societal and practical reasons.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy.
I agree with what he said.
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Is ICQ in such a bad situation??? Nearly all people I know who use instant messenging at all use ICQ. Are we all living in an alternate universe or something? Someone swapped the sugar I put in my coffe with another similar-looking substance?
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Though this is off the orignal topic (and moderators are often overly sensitive about that), it certainly is on topic about this. On the other hand, I will point out that the post above certainly is NOT informative about this issue.
That said, GAIM has some serious shortfalls, though it also has some very nice features.
Positives first. I love the auto-logging feature. I like the fact that it allows you to customize your html instead of having everything forcibly converted for you like AIM does (however, it isn't even close to wysiwyg as you type it all in using the tags--I love it, but certainly not everyone does). No space reserved for annoying adverts.
Negatives. While it does support saving/loading your buddy list to/from a file (necessary, because the list you store on AOL's servers mysteriously disappear quite often), it is unable to import AIM lists (yes, very minor problem, but it makes migrating over harder initially . . .). Furthermore, you can't see a person's away message by using 'Get Info' or similar means (AIM will make it viewable above a person's profile . . .).
Some of this may have changed recently, but I know that these are some problems I initially had with it. I know that my buddy list that was being stored on AOL's server disappeared a day or two ago. I also know that there hasn't been an exploitable, intentional overflow discovered in GAIM.
What's the difference in freatures between TOC and the closed protocol, anyway? Does anyone know? I've never seen the two compared. . . though I guess I haven't looked too hard, either . . .
Everyone I know uses ICQ.
Everyone they know uses ICQ.
Almost everyone I meet (online games) use ICQ.
I see a trend there!
And if there are so many using AIM, it is obviously centered in America!
I get REALLY sick of when companies release statistics that ONLY COUNT AMERICANS!
Maybe the reason they do that is because here (Australia) AOL is a lame joke, and we laughed so hard when they began advertising earlier this year (after the 5 CDs they sent me all got thrown in the bin!)
Or were these stats just made up by someone at the FCC who thought, "Maybe if AOL had a monopoly, we'd be able to do it!"
"The FCC is concerned about AOL's dominance in the Instant Messaging arena, in which it controls 90 percent of the market, and allows only registered users to communicate over its network."
Forcing someone to release thier protocol is just not fair!
I don't like AOL (Not at all!) but I really do have to side with them on this one!
- There is no work, there is no work...
- Damn, it worked for Neo!
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When I can see a protocol on a giant wooden spool, I'll agree with you.
-B
And if there are so many using AIM, it is obviously centered in America!
What you obviously have no idea of is that AOL is a major presence in Europe, with a very large market share, and is even gaining foothold in Russia. I should know, it's in my stockholder's annual and quarterly reports. Nice revenue growth, too.
But, as you correctly point out, this is not the case in Oz. Well, of course, all the Aussies are hackers and buy their tech stuff cheap from neighboring countries. So, Oz is the last place you want to be promoting secure communication methods, as they'll steal all your protocols or give them away.
I should know, a bunch of my friends from SF and Gaming days were in Oz and Kiwi land, and cheap and cracked software and hardware was and is cheap and plentiful.
And, since it's a Yank company, we can force them to do whatever we want to do, just as we can slap Bill G upside the face, when the Oz protesters aren't busy messing with him.
Will in Seattle
Since when? ICQ still has 10's of millions more users than AIM. I prefer ICQ over AIM anyday. Not only does it have more features, it doesn't have animated banner ads in the client :-p.
The problem with MS being involved in this is that they are in a unique position as far as delivery of their product. Their software will already be installed on most PCs, which means zero delivery effort (except that the price will be built into the price of the OS). Mr & Mrs Smith do not need to drive to the store, or download for an hour or more to get the product.
AOL gets around this by mailing their disks to everyone.
What are Tribal Voice and the others going to do that can possibly compete? Get OEMs like Dell and Gateway to preinstall? Mail their software to everyone? I don't think so.
AOL and MS will dominate this market unless/until linux gains alot more market share (another situation where the delivery will be zero, because the OS will include it ).
Only people who are actually interested in a particular brand or features will bother with the hassle of getting different IM software.
As far as this being an open standard so MS cannot embrace and extend it, just try to visit a majority of the web pages without IE and tell me that there are no problems. And as far as email being 'standard', think again. Outlook email messages look like gibberish to a text only email system, its the software that decyphers Microsoft's 'rich text format'
This sounds just like browsers, doesn't it?
Contact AOL and find out what ports need to be blocked at your firewall to prevent all of the IM functions except Chat. I think there might even be a way to lock down AIM from within the Windows Registry to prevent all functions but chat, but don't quote me on that.
Why not use the IRC protocol for instant messaging and instead of ICQ? It's a free and open protocol. And as a bonus, it's decentralized for easy legal bullet dodging (unlike Napster).
The advantage AIM has is that it is established and known and used. Any new message service has to either interoperate with the existing service(s) or be so attractive that AIM (or ICQ) users would want to switch and try to get their contacts to switch.
The idea of using IRC protocol is attractive but has its own problems. Which IRC network or server will be used? Make that selectable? That's an added hassle for current messenger service users. Who maintains it? An existing network or a new one? These are not insurmountable -- regular IRC has managed to get by, after all -- but for a messaging service they need to be considered.
As for decentralized 'bullet dodging', it really isn't the issue with message services (is it? Yet?) but something needs to play server unless things are extended the Gnutella way with each client also playing server.
While using IRC protocols for messenger services seems a possibility, I do not foresee it being done AND catching on in general. Nevermind the technical details, they're trivial. How do you get "Aunt Maude" to switch from AIM? There's the difficult part.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Someone probobly already mentioned this, but why can a guy go out and patent a web page design, but AOL hass FCC looking at them for pattening software or something.
Didn't answer that part 'cause I never said it. Despite the tone of my remarks, I agree with the principle of AOL being able to control their own database. As far as being forced to license to you, or be forced to help you? I never asked for someone to be "forced" to do anything. My original point was that the tech involved has mushroomed to the point where it is becoming a critical need in some areas and AOL is just being a dick. They have put all their effort into closing off other services instead of working with them in SOME way. It seems an irational decision when you consider the merits, to them, of a strategic partnership with Microsoft and the others. basicaly, a bunch of my users got started using this and now it's MY problem to KEEP it working somehow. Anyone hiring?
Dirty Pirate Hooker
You saved the URL but apparently you didn't read it.
Their "draft" wasn't a protocol specification and not even an informal one: there were no port numbers, no packet formats, nothing specific about their implementation.
In fact, it was a just a list of design issues that needed to be considered: security, scalability, finding members on other services, etc.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
At the moment, they aren't doing horrendously nasty things with AIM but what would you say if the following happened: AOL installs filters on IM (since they controll it) to block all messages that criticize every movie released by Warner Bros.? How many people would notice if they did that? Now you could argue that it's their service, they should be able to block whatever they want, but if there is no other service and no way for anyone to see how IM worked, what would prevent the censorship? Things like this are why the FCC gets involved.
Go Badgers! -- #include "std/disclaimer.h"
Don't like it? Use ICQ, or create your own. Or use IRC- it's an open protocol for Gods sake.
What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?
Still not dead.
It's pretty simple. You use IM to get an "instant" response to a short question, while e-mail is better for long letters not needing quite so immediate a response.
I'd rather the kids us IM than the phone. It's quieter. ;)
(Note: I use Yahoo-- they keep a list of my friends/buddys on their server so I don't have to set up a bunch of crap every time I change clients. My whole family is on Yahoo now and it's great!)
Doesn't it make sense that some instant messenger has to be dominant? Think about it this way...
I don't want to have to use ICQ to talk to Bob, Yahoo Messenger to talk to Frank, and AOL's IM to talk to Sally. It's a pain in the ass. It eats more system resources than necessary and generates too many little icons in my tray.
What happens is this: I tell Bob and Frank that the AOL messenger is way better than ICQ and Yahoo. Plus, it can sneak around corporate firewalls by allowing you to specify a port, unlike Yahoo's IM. They try it out and like it. They start moving their friends over and pretty soon I uninstall ICQ and Yahoo, because I've got everyone I chat with on the superior IM system.
Somebody has to have the dominant IM. The fact that AOL is winning this one has nothing to do with the merger. It's just a better IM.
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
Oh your *capitalistic* firm relies on this app now and is bothered by their inability to tweak it to their liking? Well since it's a commercial organisation using this thing, all the more fucking reason to realise that commercial organisations are out there to make money, not open up their stuff *at their cost* (bandwidth, et cetera) so your firm can profit more. Don't be hypocritical, should your firm be expected to give free products/services to other firms to profit from? Uhu.
Easy solution to that: 'Simply' rewrite the protocol to use a Gnutella-like system of non-centralized relaying. At that point, AOL is only using development resources, not physical resources.
Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop...
For better or worse what you want will never happen. IM is a gigantic trend that will not die. Besides, for many email is not real-time enough and irc doesn't fit the bill.
Is the whole pager things silly? Or cell phones? Or PDAs? No, they each have their own places. For some even email is too much. Certainly many people either misuse these things or are overwhelmed, but that's no different than overeating, drinking, or procrstinating.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
I remember using the equivalent on an IBM mainframe in the 80's in college.
Of course, there were a lot fewer 13f's online.
This bears a striking resemblence to the scene in Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" where Hank Rearden is forced to open up the method of making Rearden Metal because he is achieving dominance of the market. The powers that be felt that it was "not fair" to let Rearden alone reap the benefits of his own work.
Similarly, AOL has created something easy to use and the FCC is concerned that it is "not fair" to the likes of competitors Microsoft, AT&T and Yahoo! that AOL alone be rewarded for its own work.
While I'd love to see IM technology converge to a point where the user has the greatest flexibility, I don't see a 90% market share in the instant messaging market as a reason to force AOL to open their system.
I'd be happy seeing AOL voluntarily open up their protocol but I cannot agree with the FCC enacting any policy requiring AOL to open up their service or network to outside IM users.
If Microsoft, Yahoo!, or anyone else wants to run the AIM protocol, let them flip the infrastructure/bandwidth bill to do so for their users, just as it is today for an email service.
(This is coming from a guy who runs a dedicated messaging machine with ICQ, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger running.)
Basically, AOL (which I have shares in) has a choice: either use an open protocol or open up AIM. MSFT (which I also have shares in) chose the closed API route, and this caused a world of hurt, and a great buying opportunity for me.
If AOL has its thinking cap on, they'll choose the open protocol route, since they're also trying to get the FCC and Congress to yank open AT&T and Cox Cable (yes, I own thousands of shares in both of those) to allow AOL to be the ISP for all the people with Cable Modems.
If they choose to fight it, lots of lawyers will get rich, like my brother and my uncle. This is very typically American, so I'm going to bet on lots of lawyers raking in the billable hours.
Oh, you thought this had something to do with privacy and open standards? Guess again - it's money, politics, and power.
Will in Seattle
What about the precedent this sets if this goes against AOL?
;-)
I mean, it seems to me that AOL has got a similar market share with IM as MS has with Windows.
Just a thought.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
There are many open standards for document writing (the main one HTML) but many people and institutions require the documents to be written in M$ Word. I hope they release the specifications.
It is almost as if this IM business is a diversion from the real issue that you have the largest ISP in the USA (AOL in the USA has as many customers as all other USA ISP's combined) joining one of the largest mass-media forces in the USA. AOL is a content provider... Liars meet liars!! And don't get me started on all the problems with mass media. I don't see how this provides ANY advantage to users, consumers. The more this type of power is collected into smaller administrative spaces, the more control and power these people assume.
Also, keep in mind that the data is sent through AOL's servers. Should the data be confidential? Has anyone read the AIM Terms of Agreement? Does anyone trust a company that gives a product away?
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I guess that it's a bit unfortunate you do not work in a workgroup environment that is switched on enough to use it properly.
I love not having to pickup the phone, launch an email client or run up to the the second or third floor of the building to speak to a coligue.
As an American living in Europe I am quite happy that IMing brings me closer to my friends and family almost on a daily basis w/out shelling out money to the telcos for international phone charges.
I have not explored 'public' chat rooms w/AOL or ICQ
I am excited about any product that brings a bit more humanity and warmth to something traditionally in terms of rich human interaction. For better or worse, IM is here to stay. Be happy you don't have to have Win/* to use it.
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EFNET May Be Forced To Open IRC
The Internet | Posted by Hobart on 3:15 PM September 13th, 2000
from the script-kiddies-dream dept.
IRCop writes: "Apparently, EFNET might have to open up their IRC protocal, according to a IRCNews article. The FCC seems to be concerned about their IRC dominance. Imagine that." This has been rumored several times before, with no action from the government. Meanwhile, EFNET continues to dominate the scene.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Sounds to me like BeOS is doing us a favor.
Im sure it could be used to generate revenue by some means. I haven't used AIM or the official ICQ application in a year or so.
;)
I bet there are some advertisements poking somewhere in this whole mess. With such masses of people using the official applications, I wouldn't doubt that these companies couldn't turn a dime for selling a little bit of their markets eyes.
(Eyeballs are money...)
Thank goodness gICQ doesn't hassle me
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I use AOL and have turned off Instant Messaging. It's ok if you're just screwing around and someone suddenly wants to chat, but it's a damned nuisance if you're in the middle of something. It's like getting a phone call in the middle of a TV show. I've never installed any IM clients outside of AOL for this very reason. The attraction for anyone besides kids who want to gab with their friends escapes me. Send me an email if you need something. If I'm there, I'll see it; if I'm not, you won't have wasted your time. I guess this means that I don't particularly give a bleep if AOL dominates this arena.
...
Ok, I feel better now
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Media being the press? Then the government has no business in there anyway. Here, let me quote from the US Constitution: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/bor.html
"Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
However, this looks more like the FCC ordering AOL to open up their SERVERS, not their protocol. In which case it still is none of the government's business, even if it is a merger case.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Don't forget the FCC deals with communications issues, not OS issues. Now I would see the FCC intervene if IE gets >90% browser share, as browsers fall into communications.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Be a karma whore, baby! Get your point across with "(Score: 15, Awesome)" powers!
There's also the general crappiness of the AIM client.. If ICQ is not included in the 90%, AOL must be judging their market penetration based on the number of Signup Now! 50,000 FREE HOURS! CDs they have ever sent out.
It seems to me that if you're on the hunt for monopolies Real Networks can't be too far behind. Much as I dislike it (quicktime works much better for me but I know there are linux issues there) a precedent like this would jeapordise any future takeover of Real.
The money from the tools to create real streams must be their biggest asset. Its all very well tring to be free and open, but someone somewhere has to make money somehow if us engineers are gonna get paid.
So AIM is AOL's, who cares? It's just another protocol (and it's their), and not so great either. Wonder if Napster will get sued for dominating Napster protocol?
---------------------------
---------------------------
I got lost in space.
When you support real Open Source and/or Free Software, then maybe I'll have sympathy for you as you are stuck with a single vendor and difficult transitions. As it is, there are several free/open solutions to the chat question. IRC being the first one that comes to mind. This would also allow the company to set up approved channels on the server, set bots on the channels, monitor activity, have departmental channels which can be logged and checked for trends/FAQ-making, etc etc-- based on your needs. As it is you are likely sending business-sensitive data out to AOL's server and then back inside the company firewall (unless I've totally got it wrong how AIM works). Your network people are right to eliminate this client. The sooner the better, imho. And I don't see what's wrong with using any peer-to-peer file sharing at work, it's bound to save on the e-mail server, which has to store, log, and hold all those attachments.
I do not have a signature
Yes absolutely!
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I posted this in a smaller thread but I think it deserves a little more visibilty. Sorry for the duplicant info.
Hello, Rob Flynn here, Gaim Author/Maintainer.
Personally, I think that the FCC should mind their own business. True, I would love to have the protocol opened to me but I would rather it be on AOL's on free will. If the FCC starts forcing other companies to open their protocols then what? AOL does not force AIM on us. If you do not like it, you have many other choices. I do not see an monoply issue here. I believe that if the FCC is going to force AOL to release their protocol information then we should be given access to private government communications information. That's just my opinion, though. And now, to answer some questions.
Importing AIM lists: The latest version, 0.10.0 (released two days ago), supports importing of gaim, Aim2 and Aim4 buddy lists This should solve the problem of migrating from Windows to Linux.
As for the issue of not being able to see a persons away message: There's not really much any of us can do here. It's an OSCAR only thing. However, if you run gaim with our currently experimental OSCAR support, it does have the ability to view other's away messages without the need of sending them a message.
There are a few differences in features between the two protocols. The OSCAR server provides us with many more fun things:
The ability to rvous request. These requests can be any type of direct connectiong ranging from: file transfering, direct IM, talk, etc. It also allows us to view other user's away messages and allows us to send messages of 8k in size while TOC only supports messages of 2k in size. DirectIM allows messages of unlimited size (I think the limit is like 2gb if you do the math :-P). Oscar also has support for buddy icons. I do not like these but I know many people that do and know that many people have requested this feature.
Anyways, we do, however, have the ability to receive files from windows users and we can ACCEPT requests from oscar clients. For example, if you are in windows and click 'Get File' on my name, I will receive that request and then can send you a file. Having full oscar support would open up full functionality to us.
Anywyas, I hope this has cleared up any questions you may have. Take care!
---
Rob Flynn
---
Rob Flynn
Pidgin
Most, if not all, of the discussion seems to focus on the interoperability at the networking level and the openness/lack thereof of the AIM servers. This is obviously crucial to being able to communicate between services, but I think an important point is being ignored.
What happens to the interoperability of features and it's effects on innovation once the networks are interconnected? What happens if I'm on ICQ and want to chat with someone on AIM using the IRC-style (where text appears as soon as typed)? What happens when my AIM client wants to send one of these little user-set identifying icons to a friend on ICQ? And how is my AIM going to distinguish between an N/A message and a DND message from ICQ? How about when Company X decides to add a completely original feature to get a niche in the market? How will ICQ handle AIM's talk feature? Sure, we can have something such as W3C establishing standards as with HTML, but do we really want a repeat of the IE and Netscape bungled implementations/proprietary standards/lack of support? Think before you leap.
AOL bought Mirabilis a while ago, and as far as I can tell, haven't had any impact on ICQ (which I see as good). But someone I know posed a question I couldn't answer: Why doesn't AOL allow ICQ and IM users to communicate through their respective programs? If Microsoft can find a way to get their program to work with AOL's IM network, surely AOL could do it. After a while, I hit on the reason: AOL doesn't want people to use ICQ. They don't want to deal with the flack from killing it, either, so they just let it run along as it may. Allowing compatibility would be akin to encouraging use of ICQ.
in a company of over 100,000 people and I-dont- know-how-many departments, developing and roling out a new service with no inter-operability with curently used systems is imposible, politicaly and phisicaly
Dirty Pirate Hooker
use TOC
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
this is total bullshit.
in this country monopolies are not illegal. anti-competitive actions (like MS was doing) are. AOL has not done anything to prevent anyone from using competitors' products.
is this where the world is going? DeCSS, which opens the DVD format is illegal, but AOL can't keep it's proprietary format for IMs? fucking bullshit. Free (as in speech) stuff is cool, but double standards aren't.
-Justin
--Justin
HTTP is an open protocol, but that doesn't mean I can't deny anyone I want from accessing my web server. Judging by the CNN article, they're talking about making AOL open their servers to access by their competitors, not just making the protocol an open standard.
Of course, the fact that they need to "open access to their servers" in the first place just shows that the system is a hack, not a design, in the first place.
Are there really so few people who realize how stupid a centralized IM system with a flat namespace is in the first place? Can you imagine if every email on the internet went through some huge central cluster at email.com before getting to you? Why exactly should I need to be identified by ICQ 5551234 (shades of Compuserve) or roystgnr (flashbacks to Prodigy), rather than roystgnr@jabber.com, or (once my employer/university starts running Jabber) by an existing email address?
It's great when you want to send a url to a coworker to see what they think of something you're working on, or sending bits of code you want someone to look at right away.
Sometimes waiting 3 minutes for a coworker's email program to check their mail is a PITA.
The "Hi, how you doing" and "Here, check this out ASAP, I think I fucked up the web server" aspect of IMing is what makes it useful. Email lacks that, because it's not as close to real time communication.
All tools have their places.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The first response will be "But, why would a company let people utilize their servers if they can't put their ads on the clients and make any money?" The answer is the same reason people use IM in the first place: They don't know any better. There is already a much better communication solution out there; IRC. You get real time chat, messaging, file transfer etc. But the people who don't use IRC and flock to IM as their first choice do so because either A, they don't know about it, B, all their friends already use IM, or C, IRC is too hard. Even mind boggleingly easy software like mIRC is too much a challenge for many computer novices (What's all these servers? Why do I have to type a # for a channel? What's with this '/' before every command?).
If we can reach a point where all IM messaging operates over one simple standard, we can put together something like this: User installs IM client from big company, which is preconfigured to use big company's server. User logs on, his/her client sends his information to big company's server, which then goes about updating all the servers running under the IM standard. User types in his/her buddy's name into the client, which queries big company's servers database and find's the buddy on another big company's server, all seamless on the client end. Or, make it simpler. Think of the way the multitude of IRC servers on a particular network all work together (this may prove difficult to do with the huge mass of people using a unified IM standard all logged on at the same time. . . leave it up to the coding folks to figure it out).
What a company can do, however, is restrict access to their expensive, reliable server to only the clients they produce. This lets AOL say 'It costs us a great deal of money to provide a server, so only people using AIM can use it', but it does not restrict users not using AIM to talk to AIM users. Someone out there could produce a very nice IM client, but they would have to connect to server of more questionable quality.
This creates three advantages for consumers: 1., everyone using IM could talk with anyone else, regardless of what client they use. 2., More choices for users, and 3., It encourages more competition among the larger players on the bases of quality and reliability, instead of user base. The winners will be those who put together the best server/client combination, instead of who has market share.
The Internet is generally stupid
Think about this - every ephemeral instant message transits Northern Virginia.
Law enforcement and intel concerns are driving this one, folks. The last thing the feds want is another decentralized communication protocol - it forces them to lean on too many people to get easy access (*cough*carnivore*cough). "Competition" is a decoy, as should be obvious - opening AOL's servers is only going to guarantee an AOL monopoly on the server/protocol side.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Wow.. take a pill.
Use Napster recently?
I will respond as this is the politest of the negative responses.
Anyhow, I never said I wanted something for free, just that I (We in the support department) have had the door slamed in our face in terms of ANY interoperability between something we might develop and AIM. We would, I'm certain, be happy to pay licencing fees for the privelage of connecting to the database. If you had been paying attention, it's dificult to squeese ANY kind of a licence out of them, even if you offer to pay. They want AIM and only AIM to use this database. thats it. period. You will also note that the users at our company in question have done this behind our backs and now stuck us with the problem. The weight limit on my ass has now been exceded. please get off.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
Why would you want to run servers if anyone can use them?
Put yourself in AOL's shoes. Suddenly you have to let people use your servers and get nothing in return. Will you (a) happily carry on paying for those servers or (b) wait for Microsoft, etc. to produce their own AOL compatible messaging servers and then stop paying for your own now that MS are carrying the load?
You have to allow people to make money, or they won't play the game.
_____
My Journal
First off, if anyone here has followed my posts (I'm laughing at the thought), then you might know I am big opponent of corporate america. You might think my posts today would be weighted against such entitities...but that would be wrong.
What I fail to understand is the significance of having a dominant share in the IM arena. Exactly what impact on technology or commerce can this little bugger really affect.
It doesn't quite mirror the problems with the browser market...as with IM everyone created their own standard and modified the client and server portions to reflect changes in the protocal. ie. AOL changing their client/server applications didn't play havoc with ICQ client/server applications.
So someone make it clear to me why it is important that someone elses IM client be an open standard. If we need standards...we should make them ourselves.
If this really becomes a problem...people will move away from proprietary applications and move to more open ones. Perhaps even make the switch because of enhancements or advantages of another protocal. (Very familiar feeling of the jump from talkers to irc based chatting software).
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
If possible the gov. should mandate an open standard for instant messaging, but that's a separate issue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The FCC should have *NO* business here, whatsoever. There is nothing that needs regulating.
We aren't talking about some kind of monoploy.. or some kind of limited medium. There's room for thousands of IM type things out there.
This isn't even telco, where there is sort of a public-land issue, when it comes to IM, it's a limitless resource.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
log onto aim with your icq # and password.
then you can tell me icq and aim are two different clients.
then you can also hazard a guess as to how much longer that'll remain true.
then everyone will wake their goddamned asses up and realize that aim's protocol, toc, has been open for as long as aim's been around and stop beating up aol about it.
if the government forces aol to open their protocol, i'd imagine aim closing toc and oscar servers... i mean, if they're letting other people use it for free, and it's trivial to shut off aim ads, how much money can they be making?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Oh, wait, AOL owns ICQ also.
Would ANYONE care about being able/not able to be messaged at any time by people on AOL?????
"I jist bot this computar - and I figuerd out how to maek lots of money with it. Jst send $1 to me and ad yoru naem to th botom of the list"
"WHAT'S THIS PROGRAM DO TEST TEST TEST TEST HELLO"
"Hey? Where's all the porn?"
etc
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
The FCC is opening a dangerous door if they think they have authority over a protocol or applications-layer operation, such as AIM. They regulate raw pipes, not applications or for that matter IP (which is technically "information service", not "telecommunications").
If AOL's behavior is in some way "anticompetitive", there are other agencies (DoJ, for instance) who do have general say over that matter. And mergers do invite scrutiny. So if there's some specific DoJ question to be answered around their IM networks, then fine. The FCC does have some authority over cable systems, which AOL is trying to buy. But the FCC should NOT consider IM to be theirs to regulate.
Well, here's my take on the issue: the AIM network is infrastructure, whereas eBay's listings aren't.
If you want to run an auction site that competes with eBay, then you can, and eBay can't stop you.
If you want to provide a competing IM service, on the other hand, you have to use the AIM protocols, because there are already millions of users of the AIM protocols, and they're not likely to switch systems. You're stuck, unless you can access the protocols.
Protocols in specific, and infrastructure in general, must be made public, or you end up with monopolies that can't be unseated, because you can't compete with them. Example: the number of people who can't change operating systems because they have to edit Microsoft Word files.
Teach your kids: "C++ made baby Jesus cry."
Is it just me, or is anyone else really annoyed by the way in every AOL press release or article that results from some information gleaned from AOL press releases always says that AOL has 90% marketshare with their AIM *and* ICQ message clients? I have no problem with the technical fact that they now have market dominance because they bought the market leader (heck, MS does this all the time), but the ratio of AIM to ICQ users is so out of whack that it's hardly fair for AOL to buy out ICQ then try to clump the ICQ userbase into the same numbers as the AIM one.... Darn marketing types....
--
NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
Seen in that light, it's a little different -- it's not "You have to do this", but "If you're going to become an even larger company with your fingers in this many more pies, you're going to have to open up a little more on the monopolies you've got currently."
Sounds a lot more reasonable that way. If AOL doesn't want to open up IM, they can just not merge with Time-Warner.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Yes, for the most part. Ohhh I absolutly MUST have the football results NOW. Whoopty-fucking-do.
> Or cell phones?
Yes. Stupid fucking devices. "Hi honey, I'm on the train. Yes. I'll be home in 5 minutes." Whats the fucking point> You'll be home in five minutes! Can't it wait?
Inflated sense of self importance. Egoboo.
Yeah some people nead them (doctors for example), but most don't.
> Or PDAs?
Compleatly unconnected. Yeah, PDA are hella useful, I can't remember shit without them.
(Ohhh
Thad
Thad
This gives a pretty good description of the protocol AIM uses.
IM dominance? The gov cares about IM dominance!? What about MEDIA dominance?? That is a lot more important than IM dominance.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"Does anyone trust a company that gives a product away?
No, and thus the reason we wanted to tap into the user database instead of rolling out AIM itself. Rock--me--hard place
Dirty Pirate Hooker
As other posters noted, AOL owns both AIM and ICQ. Yet ICQ is the most wildly popular. Why? I say it's because Mirabilis, even under AOL ownership, has had the good sense not to block third-party clients out of the ICQ servers.
This dates back to June 15th at least... When AOL was considering opening up their IM access.
just reverse engineer the protocol and write your own. it's allowed. at least in europe, no matter how hard aol whines.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
From the article:
FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth told reporters later Wednesday that he would find it difficult to impose conditions on the companies regarding IM and cable services.
"To the extent we don't regulate them in the first instance, it would be very peculiar, in my view, to begin regulating them as part of the license transfer," FCC Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth told reporters
So the FCC does realize that it is a bit weird for them to be setting down rules regarding AIM. However the FCC was petitioned by AOL competitors to use their license transfer jurisdiction to put the brakes on the merger unless AOL plays nice.
This would otherwise be a total non-issue, and the FCC wouldn't give a damn about application level protocols. This is all about Microsoft et al. doing whatever they can to break into a lucrative market that AOL for the most part established or bought when nobody thought it was worth anything.
As much as I would like to see an open AIM protocol, I don't want to see that happen as a result of competitors whining to the government to help them break a company that had a bit more foresight in this arena.
Let the FCC worry more about open access to cable systems than application protocols.
AOL May Be Forced To Open AIM
Newsflash! This just in! After a decision by the courts last week to force America Online to open READY, experts say the same will be done with AIM.
One expert, Mr. Frank Furter, was quoted as saying, "They're holding a monopoly over all this IM business. We got them to open READY, AIM looks to be next... and we won't stop until we get them to open FIRE as well."
AOL employees were seen nearby loading their rifles and snickering evilly.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
To go along with that. I am working on the kaim client team (An TOC client for the record). There is currently a $50 reward for who ever can find this leak that continously eats away at the app. You can go here for me info:
/ kaim/
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/benjamin/works
The reward has been up for a week and so far no one has been able to find it.
-Benjamin Meyer
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
It may actually be a GOOD thing that AOL is keeping their protocol closed. If they open up now, they may become the internet standard (I guess they are now, but one company isn't really a standard). If they don't open up, then the IETF standard for Instant Messaging will finally be settled on, which was openly designed, and better than AOL's protocol. Most major players have commited to using the IETF's standard when it is out.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
And the fact that America Online owns ICQ means that by extention (embrace and extend?) they were the first, yes?
Also, America Onlines' internal communication system, and the AIM system, are totally seperate, joined by some snazzy gateway software. So when they spew numbers, they, in theory, are just spewing their AIM connects, not their paying memberbase.
I'd be very dissapointed if they did block out 3rd party clients, but it wouldn't be the end of the world. If all esle fails, there is IRC. Let me clarify this for my own understanding.. because there is an option, there is no monopoly.
The sheer existance of Linux on the i386 platform invalidates the DoJ case against Microsoft? (There is an alternative, so no monopoly)
AIM stands in the same position as Microsoft.. a full scale revolt is needed, else there will be someone who won't switch to another client, and can't afford the system resources to run two clients. I'm a little tired of loosing "instant communication" ability with people, because of this. My option? Run AIM. Doesn't give me much *choice*, does it?
--- Do YOU own a domain? You thought NSI was bad? Think again.
with repulicrats in office, the gov't of the 20th century has become large and bloated, the social security farce has made trouble for millions and millions to come. Maybe the government should GET THE HELL OUT OF MY BUSINESS. STOP telling me what to buy and how to think. All i need the gov't to do is keep my liberty from being violated...something it does daily anyway (taxes: they tell me where I should spend my money. Social security: they think they can save for my future bette than I can...fat fucking chance!) .... rant over
vote libertarian, the only party that actually wants YOU to decide how to live.
---
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Have a look at Jabber.org for the project's home, JabberCentral for info on clients, and Jabber.com if your company needs custom client or server programming done, or commercial-grade support for your Jabber needs. (Disclaimer: The latter entity pays my salary...)
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
So the government DOJ prosecutors are a bunch of heroes when they try to regulate Microsoft and try to tell Microsoft what they can and cannot bundle with their own operating system.
But the majority of the posts I read here are by people complaining that the government has "no business telling AOL what they can do with their protocol!!!!111"
Does anyone else sense a DOUBLE STANDARD here by some of the left-wing close-minded slashdot crowd?
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OH, hell. I thought it was supposed to be "Hi, I'm hot and horny" "what's your breast size?" "I love hot grits and Natalie Portman petrified with a side of open source while a violin is played in the background by RMS!"
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
"The FCC seems to be concerned about their 90% IM dominance."
Is that true?! Around here (sweden) almost everyone uses ICQ (or some variant like LICQ or whatever).
Intressting...
Did you read the article yesterday about the scalability limit of the Gnutella network (at this point, determined largely by the modem links in the network)? If not, you should. It was pretty interesting. Matter of fact, there was some other interesting stuff on that dss.clip2.com. Anyway, the gyst (sp?) of it was that there is a certain overhead in just operating the network, the PING/PONG packets, the transmission of queries, the transmission of responses of queries, etc., that has nothing to do with the music data being transferred from machine to machine. What happens is at some point the amount of traffic it takes to just make the network work, in other words, carry the simple functional data of PING/PONG and query/response, at a given node eventually exceeds the bandwidth of the average modem connection. Now, chat may be a very light data stream, but for the network to be distributed, the packets would have to be carried over many nodes, once in and once out on each node, taking a bite of that node's bandwidth. In a large network (aren't there like 10 gazillion AIM users) that traffic would quickly outstrip the modem's bandwidth.
Further, another reason that Gnutella works so well is that the data-reliability factor is not paramount. Britney Spears' "Oops I did it again" is probably very heavily mirrored throughout the network. You don't really care which node responds to your request. You'd prefer the one that is most networkologically close to you. So it doesn't really matter if your packets can reliably get across the full diameter of the network away from you, that is, it doesn't matter if your packets don't make it to the node which is separated from you by the most other nodes when only the shortest paths between nodes (in number of edges traversed) are considered. Does that make sense? It's a very intuitive concept but I can't explain it right. Anyway, the point is, that this would be a lot harder to work with chat, since that does matter. You need to be able to reach people that are 50 nodes away from you. You can't make everyone closer(fewer hops) because that would overstress the pipes (more data because the degree of the average node would be higher). To reach these far off nodes, you'd have to increase what the Gnutella people call the Time-To-Live of a message, which in gnutella, is capped at seven. Every time you increase this, the amount of data that must be carried by the network increases exponentially.
I imagine it would also be a lot harder to authenticate users, which is a serious issue for a chat system. I don't really know much about this, but I have an intuition that it would be more tractable than the other problems. Still something to deal with though.
jeb.
Over here it's rare to find anyone who's even heard of AIM... they all use ICQ (despite it being a haven for porn merchants it's still useful). Loads of people put their ICQ numbers on their websites - ever seen a website with an AIM number on it? I never have.
If any protocol needs opening I reckon it's the ICQ one (actually it needs sorting out first - it's a bloody awful protocol to run through a firewall).
It could be cultural I guess.. In the US everyone uses AOL because it's the 'local' product*. In the UK very few people use it, since there are better and cheaper alternatives (I think freeserve still has something like 80% of the market).
The way it's going, though, it's all irrelevant,
as java chatrooms are becoming more popular and
people are just chatting through their browsers. We won't be using separate clients in a couple of years.
Tony
* Original AOL was launched over here as EOL, which proved to be even *more* unpopular, so they gave up just used AOL.
Speaking from a corporate enviorment...
We have been trying to lock down the workstations configuration so people stop f***ing them up with screensavers and whatnot. Recently we released the list of "approved" aplications and recieved a ship storm that AIM was not on there. it seems that several folks have taken to using this as their primary form of interstate comunication between departments/facilities. This forced our upper management to look into creating our own "chat thingie" without the file transfer (this is buisness after all). AOL is a closed standard, preventing us from acomplishing that. The point is, management was taken compleetly by suprise by the fact that this "toy" had sudenly become a buisness critical aplication and the failure of AOL to open it's standard has actualy impacted our buisness. Go DOJ go DOJ!!
Dirty Pirate Hooker
I run AIM yahoo and msn on my desktop and they dont interfere with one another. Im on AIM because I want to be, not because AOL forces me to be.
Also, the only problem with a monopoly is when someone tries to leverage that monopoly to unfairly exclude others (eg- MSFT). However, AOL has done nothing of the sort.
I SERIOUSLY doubt AOL has even close to 90% of the messaging market. ICQ, Yahoo, and MSN may not have the same userbase AIM does, but there's no way they constitute a mere 10% of the market.
Perhaps they're forgetting that people can use more than one messenger at a time? I know I do, having friends on different messaging systems.
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The issue here is not AIM it's the FCC saying to AOL we can regulate you to do what we want you to do. Eventually that will filter down to individual liberties of individual net users. With a company you have dollar votes. Also, if you do not like what there doing, get together with like minded people then buy voting stock and change the policy. A corporation doesn't force you do anything. They do not send armed thugs to your door. But, the government can.(and has on occasion as an agent for corporations which shows the problem of government power not corporate power) What we as a community are doing is equivalent of asking Satan to get Beazealbub of our backs. But it's a Faustian deal. What we get in the end will be far worst.
We may all prefer 1 'open IM network' but this isn't right. Why the bloody hell should AOL be forced to allow other firms to use THEIR service resources? Isn't this conflicting with the court's ruling that the meta-auction site (Cannot remember the name.) cannot index eBay's site because it robs eBay of the ability to use it's own resources? Hm, courts [may] force AOL to allow other firms to use their resources, but courts also disallow firms to use the resources of other firms. I think the WORLD's court systems are really out of touch with fucking reality.
What is to prevent AOL from starting a new, tiny company outside of the US, lets say, called AIM Inc., and then sell the copyrights/trademarks used in AIM, as well as the ownership of the patents or whatever of the Oscar protocol, and ownership of the AIM network to this dummy company? All for, lets say, $2? Is there something illegal about this? Then this company would not be forced by the Fascist US Government (FUG) to open up its own network to other companies at no expense to the "competitors". I am just curious, as it seems the only way to avoid the US Government's total lack of understanding of the internet and its global scale, as well as its fascist grip on controlling anything within reach.
Yeah, and Campbells has a monopoly on chicken soup. So fucking what?
Don't you know it's better when we share?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is all just a load of crap being shoved into the publics eye by companies like microsoft and yahoo who don't think its fair for anyone but them to have market dominance.
Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.
Do you have any idea what might come out of AIM if we open it up? *SHUDDER* Scarier than a bratwurst left under the heatlamp at 7-11 for a month.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I know people have said it before me, and still more will say it. It's their service. Their protocols have pretty much been reversed engineered, opening the protocols themselves won't do much. Whatever happened to capitalism? This isn't like the Microsoft trial, AOL does nothing to stop competitors. People actually LIKE aim and their friends use it, that's why people use it. Noone is forced to use it like you're almost forced to use Windows. AOL pays money for bandwidth to provide the service, another company shouldn't be able to go on AOL's servers without their permission. Anyone can write an IM protocol anyway.
IRC has no authentication scheme...or is that IDENT ? Still, there is no graphical GUI client that is in a Instant Messaging form.
>>2. The FCC governs public or quazi-public mediums. The internet is not public. It is a private tool. It was developed by the US government but now is not a tool of the US government. It belongs to no one and at the same time the people who own the hardware that make it go.
Which is it? A private tool or one that belongs to no one, therefore owned by the public? I believe you're right on the latter. The government turned it over to the private sector in 1990 or so. But, while the internet backbone is privately owned - like telephone lines, it is also a public resource, like telephone lines.
The telephone industry is highly regulated by the FCC as far as technical standards are concerned, but not as far as what you can say over the phone. This alone I believe is a precedent for the FCC to be able to regulate technical standards on the internet if they wish to (right now they don't).
I really do believe that it would be a Good Thing(TM) for the FCC to assure that all communications protocols intended for the general public (ie, IM, Streaming Media, and the like) be open standards. There can be many open standards, but all content intended for public consumption should be available to all (for example, Winblows Media Player content should be available for Linux users). This would not prevent such things as secure eCommerce or on-line banking - things that require secure protocols. But these things are private, not for the public at large.
The bottom line, in my view, is that if content is intended for the general public, be it web-pages (NO M$ "extensions" should be allowed), streaming media (Anyone should be able to write a RealPlayer or WMP clone), or IM (either AIM or GAIM should work), the standards and protocols must be made public. Even if there is no FCC rule requiring a certain standard, it is the job of the FCC to assure that all public content is available to all.
Microsoft's VP of Customer Service is Helen Waite. If you are having problems with their products go to Helen Waite.
I started to use jabber the other day. I was amazed on how much it had grown since I the first time i tried it a couple months ago.
It is wonderful for all those fools(like me) who have multile chat account (aim, icq, yahoo, msn, etc).
Try it out. You might like it!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
-Elendale (sorry, tech support is getting to me... *rant, scream, moan in agony*)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
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In a sense I am very much open to the idea of having AOL have to open up IM but honestly if they do it the monopoly simply will move from being AOL's to being M$'s. Look at what hapenned with Netscape. All M$ has to do it bunddle their IM with the OS (or with office --which they are doing already). Most people will then use M$ instant messager since it is o so conviniently on their desktop already insatalled and all. At most the market will be fragmented between AOL (since it is alredy inside the horrible AOL software), M$, and maybe in the fringe Apple will then bunddle some sort of IM with Mac OS. Either way it makes me not give a fuck about the whole thing. This whole mess is simply a bunch of greedy companies trying to get the billions involved in the banners on the IM prompt. Honestly it is also not a very interesting issue since no company will be able to charge for its use all the money will be ad generated. If they do then people will switch to something else.
Why would it have to be? Not to gloat or anything, but us Licq 0.85+ users have enjoyed OpenSSL encrypted client to client messaging for weeks now :-).
"People are stupid."
I personally feel that they shouldn't have to open up their standard. People of course can hack into it and piggy back likethey have been. There was a group that got together to make their own standard. Why hasn't this progressed any further? Is it not hot enough news for slashdot?
Catch me on AIM: SigningiS
I prefer a void in conversation to a vacuous one.
Would be nice to have it completely open, but aren't we only a few short steps already? How many versions of the protocol can AOL go through before they throw their hands up and give it all up?
And what about TOC? It's open, correct?
Seems pretty silly; I agree that the government should mind their own damned business in this particular regard. Besides the bandwidth in question, they are AOL servers with AOL content and AOL isn't going to get a DIME from the clients who choose to stick their own advertising banners in.
As for the "IM doesn't have anything to but say 'Hi'" post below, I say that's not quite true. My friends and I run AIM (Jabber in my case) all day long, and when one of us gets stumped on an issue or wants to discuss an issue, we simply pop onto AIM, see who's immediately available, and resolve the problem.
-- Talonius
My reality check bounced.
Everyone I know uses ICQ. A couple use AIM, but also use ICQ. Is it just the masses of AOL drones putting AIM on top?
On another note, the article says "Competitors have criticized the Web powerhouse for not allowing open IM access for seamless communication, regardless of Internet service provider." AIM is available regardless of your ISP! Somebody needs to get their facts straight.
On yet another note, who CARES who I use for my IM provider? I don't pay for it. It doesn't show me any ads. What do they gain by having a larger user base other than even more users? Does a monopoly on this market really affect anyone? I mean, if AOL started charging for AIM service one day, everyone would just switch back to ICQ. Am I missing something, or is this whole thing a non-issue?
Um, hate to break this to you, but AOL owns ICQ.--they bought out Mirabilis a while back.
Related questions: Why on Earth do I need to have two memory-hungry IM clients (AIM and ICQ, weighing in around 5-7MB usage for the former and 8-10 MB for the latter after I've been running 'em both for a while) open on two different IM networks so I can get messages from people who are on services run by the same company??
Or the "ME TOO!" messages... ;>
hello??? Coming from australia i know 1 PERSON who uses IM,we all use ICQ, u can get open source, linux, its fast, and simple andwhile it was recently bought by AOL its not in any way linked to IM, pardon me but i don't think they have market control and it isin't the governments role to regulate this, everyone is free to make theeir own messanger and plenty of alternatives exist with plenty of users 75,000,000 for ICQ.
The government should have NO BUSINESS in this.
At first blush that was my reaction too - WTF is the FCC (!!) doing telling AOL or anyone else to open thier code?
Then upon further reading, it turns out the FCC is doing this as part of the AOL / Time-Warner merger deal. In that regard it makes sense. The merger gives one company a hell of a lot of clout, getting them to shake loose a few proprietary things as part of the deal sounds like a good idea to me.
Did anyone read the article?
"Earlier Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal cited FCC staffers involved in the review process who said regulatory approval centered around opening Instant Messaging and high-speed Internet cable line access to competitors."
IMHO opening the cable networks is much more significant than the AIM issue. This would allow for competition in the cable ISP market which is *literally* impossible at this time.
AOL sigle-handedly created the IM market, ICQ jumped in much later. Yahoo and MS weren't on the scene until everyone and their dog had an IM client, of course they can't break into the market.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"