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Jabber Makes It Good
el bastardo writes "According to this ZDNet article, IBM is building a new IM network for the Washington, DC area government agencies using Jabber as the base protocol."
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This is a good idea. It seems to be like a huge cell phone network that won't have line overload problems during emergencies.
Finally, an open source project used for good.
I have been pwned because my
The name "jabber" comes from the Japanese phrase, "jabu jabu" which means, "splashing water sound" and is commonly used during the amoral act of sexual copulation (for purposes other than procreation which is a necessary and unfortunate evil to carry on our species). Basically a male would say, "kuwaete! osouji! jabu jabu" to a Japanese female after spilling his seed all over the unfortunate girl's face, instructing her to "take it in her mouth", give it the "honourable cleaning", and "make splashing sounds".
The developers of the Jabber messaging tool obviously have taken basic Japanese 101, and decided to sneak this offensive term right past the noses of honest, hardworking, god fearing Christian Americans.
If you use this tool, you are engaging in an act of blasphemy. Please support a boycott of IBM until the Jabber product is renamed or taken off the market.
Thank you for your support, and God Bless.
Also, note the cost, $20m is peanuts for a Govt project. I guess they will try to use existing infrastructure where possible.
Its good to see an open standard promoted by the government. I'm half suprised MS didn't push for an MSN contract to help push their .NET intiative.
I'm also glad IBM is smart enough to roll out their own servers rather than use that godawful jabberd that jabber.org provides. I hope they release their jabber server as free software, as the lack of a fs/os production quality jabber server has hurt deployment.
Gnuyen
The ability to log messages is really keen. Accountability is important in a business setting; I witness Jabber developers' use of conference logs almost daily. The adoption of jabber in a messaging infrastructure by government makes sense.
tired as i write this.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
This sounds like quite a cool application, linking together the IM networks doesn't really give them more than a radio, but pluging it into their databases could be interesting. Especially if the edge devices know whereabouts they are; message for backup to the closest 10 units, run stolen car checks automatically (hook up a front end that pulls plates out of a video feed), or even, when you spot one message a uniform car in the direction that the cars going. It would be quite cool for managing evacuations as well, real time stats about people getting out could organise escape routes to avoid congestion amongst other things..
So when can I get a scanner for the car that checks there aren't any speed checks coming up...
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
There's more on the CapWin Site.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Since they link to jabber.com in the story - will they be using their technology?
I'm on that impressed by the jabber.com clients though. JIM (their client) hasn't been updated for "ages" it seems and it's not because it's bug free...
They have a webclient too...which only works with IE5-IE6 and Netscape 4.x! I'm NOT impressed!
The government is probably sick of having to use AIM (or MSN, or Yahoo) like everyone else.
But seriously, the DOD is fond of using SGML to process documents, and there's even a govt. website pressing for the adoption of XML standards as a way to facilitate communication between agencies. This would be a good thing.
Jabber clients, as an XML transport mechanism, would definitely facilitate this... For instance, right now the US EPA provides a database program called CAMEO which provides emergency response data for over 6080 different hazardous chemicals. Imagine, not a beowulf cluster, but a US EPA On-scene coordinator who wants data on "Methyl-ethyl-meatloaf", a chemical not included in the program. "Beep beep beep", she sends a query (containing the CAS Number for the chemical) via the Jabber IM client. Then about ten seconds later, she receives a response data information sheet on the chemical from the National Response Center. Her specially-designed US EPA Jabber Client takes the data and (a) loads it into her CAMEO program and/or (b) processes it with XSLT and dumps it into her browser for printing.
I do chemical emergency planning for a living and I'm always seeking to improve the ability to deliver appropriate information on request. One method is "give 'em everything we have and let 'em find it". That leads to (a) a file cabinet full of files on each fire truck or (b) a cd wallet and a computer guru on each shift.
An other alternative is fax them what they need on request (ugh!). A Jabber IM solution would be a powerful way to deliver structured content to the responder on request.
My father is a blogger.
Check http://sash.alphaworks.ibm.com/download/sashjab/
Don't be tricked by it needs IE, it needs MS XML stuff. The Sash thing is in its full a real interesting stuff... I remember I installed Sashjab, with all those cool tricks just made with WEB technologies, thing used LESS than ICQ of that time...
So, IBM isn't new for Jabber.
BTW, in this evil corparate games Internet, I know its a dream but, how a cool thing if all IM relied on a protocol like Jabber...
Personally, i think this sets a bit of a bad precedent for the future of the world. I'm worried that one day the only thing we'll use for communication is IM/Txt msgs. This is bad because Text has a number of disadvantages over speech:
1) It's near impossible to convey emotions in txt. The popularity of the internet has meant people use emoticons more and more, but even these cannot compare to a single facial expression.
2)Not many people can type as fast as they can talk. This doesnt really matter to us now, but speed is important for the Fire Service or any other Life Saving Service.
I think thats pretty much the way i feel, tell me if i'm wrong!
Everything sucks except musicandstuff
I wonder how IBM's push of this is going to affect their sametime Intsant Messenger for Lotus Notes.
I won't argue that Jabber clients, by virtue of being OSS and infinitely customizable, offer a greater feature set than the SameTime client (the java version of which barely runs on *IX).
My question is, is this IBM conceding that SameTime sucks (likely) and that they are looking for their Open Source embracing design theory to force the demise of SameTime as an IM client?
(That said, I think that ST may be the best enterprise collaboration untility still -- a thouand VNC streams just don't cut it -- unless someone knows something better?).
But I have to use fucking Sametime Connect inside the company! The bastards! Having to use Lotus software is the biggest downside to working at IBM. They have to justify that 6 billion dollar investment in Lotus, you see? And despite the fact that IBM is all gung-ho about Linux, we'll never see Linux ports of that software. I suspect it's not that they don't want to as much as no one really knows enough about the code base to even make the attempt. Or to be able to document their file formats. Lotus is this decade's Token Ring.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
there's a riot downtown. :( :O :)
stores are being looted!
all units respond now! >:(
officers have arrived. situation under control.
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
ibm does already sponsor jabber... http://www.jabber.org/sponsorship.html
The sf-like site for jabber apps is as dead as a doornail as far as offering files or getting at CVS.
Jabberstudio is far from it. Subscribe to their CVS commits notification list and see for yourself.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
IM allows a human at both ends to communicate. For instance:
Fire Chief: I need a MSDS for "Methyl-ethyl-meatloaf", I have a partial CAS Number: It starts with 456.
NRC Dispatcher: Chief, is it a drum or a cylinder?
Fire Chief: It's a cylinder.
NRC Dispatcher: The MSDS is being sent now...
Granted, this can be done over the phone as well as a IM client, but HTTP requires the user to navigate to the record. In some cases, the user doesn't know where to find the information (too much information available, not enough expertise in chemicals or searching). The NRC, Chemtrek, or state agencies staff call centers with experts that can handle requests from responders. Responders regularly communicate with them to verify their data and obtain additional information.
The benefit of using IM would be to communicate with an off-site expert (like a phone) and let an off-site expert to push the requested data to the user (like a fax). But unlike a fax, the data can be further processed: transformed to a standard format familiar to the emergency responders, or used in a chemical release modeling program to calculate a threat zone.
Frankly, the ideal situation would be if you could send data along side a regular telephone call. That's one niche I haven't seen explored.
My father is a blogger.