Financial Companies Ask IM Companies To Work Together

sammy.lost-angel.com writes "From this CNET article: "Two weeks ago, six top financial institutions met privately with AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, IBM and other leading corporate instant messaging providers and urged them to build communications networks that interoperate." The article even talks about Jabber."

Comments

It's about time

[jpampuch]

External FINANCIAL influence always makes a difference.

Re:It's about time

[plague3106]

Personally i dont see why they care. Just use trillian, or something like it. Does it matter then that someone has logins to 3 different IM system?

Re:It's about time

[Jaysyn]

Can you send a file to YM! thru Trillian yet?

Jaysyn

Re:It's about time

[famazza]

• External FINANCIAL influence always makes a difference.

Yes, you are right. It always makes a difference, but makes difference for the wrong choice.

The consideration about MS, AOL and Yahoo get paid is completely out of question IMHO. They want to make a paid service to become standard when there's a whole comunity (FreeSoftware comunity) avaiable for developing a brand new protocol to become the free concurrent, and maybe become the real standard.

When will they hear their technical consultants?

Re:It's about time

[plague3106]

Dunno, i don't use Y!, but you can send a file thru AIM, ICQ and MSN on trillian.

Besides, at work we usually send files through email.

Re:It's about time

[SlamMan]

Lets see.

Something like 800 billion people using AIM.
Something like 80 people using Jabber.

Yeah, what in the world are they thinking?

Re:It's about time

[GLX]

It matters for exactly one reason:

Auditing.

The SEC has struck the fear of God into Financial Firms regarding shady transactions that have taken place on IM networks.

Things like Don't Delete That Email and
Email Compliance Alert
show that the SEC has expanded the supervision and archival rules of e-mail to also include instant messenging.

"HOW DID THESE E-MAILS BECOME STATE'S EVIDENCE?
Under SEC Rule 17a-4 and NASD rules 3010 and 3110, financial-services firms are required to supervise and record all electronic communication between employees and clients. Under the regulations, the communications, which initially focused on e-mail and now have widened to include instant messaging, have to be preserved for a period of not less than six years, with the first two years in an easily accessible place"

Companies like FaceTime are making a market out of IM auditing and archival - they basically have a proxy server that sits between the client and the 'net that takes every IM message and dumps it into an Oracle database... It even goes so far as to insert a disclaimer into the top of every IM session you open every few minutes...
The main problem with this is cost - FaceTime charges somewhere in the neighborhood of $100k to get started, and then $50k for each additional 500 screennames...

The last thing any financial company wants to do is to get caught with it's pants down in any SEC investigation - so it's easier to block IM altogether or to just allow one easily auditable one than to allow five different kinds.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

You all realize that this is so they only have one protocol to BLOCK, right? I manage security for a Canadian FI and we're running with content filtering and definately IM blocking. The hazards these things pose totally outshadow their benifites, eh? :D

Re:It's about time

[t]

Probably something like, it'll cost me a $100K to go with AIM + a continual ongoing fee like leasing software, or $0 to have jabber company wide. Money matters. Especially something that adds to the everyday operating costs.

Re:It's about time

[plague3106]

Or you could use trillian, which defaults to logging all conversations on all chat mediums. Seems like a simple enough solution to me.

But if this is too much for financial firms, then fine, they don't need it.

Or they could hire another firm to create an automated im logger. Hell Ethereal can decode aim packets just fine. it can't be that hard to pick up the packet and decode. throwing it into a db is trivial.

Re:It's about time

[LR_none]

I am a former CIO for a US brokerage company. I doubt the firms cited in the CNET article intend to promote a single standard to make it easier for their security folks to block. I don't know aobut Canada, but here in the US, the technology guys don't get to overrule the business guys when the firm's revenue is on the line. At my previous company, the traders on the desk discovered IM long before the technologists had a strategy for it. By the time we figured out what was going on, sales traders were taking not-held orders by IM from their sell-side customers. Even though there was no immediate was to monitor it (this was before Communicator) and hence comply with SEC rule 17, there was also no way we could block it without losing business. The representatives of Merrill et al. that were cited in the article are in the same position. Standards will help them comply with SEC and NASD requirements for electronic communications review and retention, which also protect the firm in case a dispute arises over communications between a customer and a rep that happen over IM.

Re:It's about time

[SlamMan]

But there's no comercial liscinse, version of Aim, is there? its till in actuallity a bunch of individual users who happen to be at one place. Where we work, however, we've got 4 tech for 120 some users. We don't have time to develop jabber to meet our needs. Turnkey does have many good qualities.

I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Anyone interested, please see my website, and email me, or reply here.

Summary:
They are not good work tools, if you want to keep productivity high.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[evilquaker]

They are not good work tools, if you want to keep productivity high.

...because? At my workplace, we're trying out Yahoo! IM at the moment (with a view toward moving to something more secure behind our firewall). I've found it helpful for things it's appropriate for. It's saved me several long-distance phone calls already, and helped out in situations where I needed an answer quickly to give to someone on the phone.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Run a little sample survey, and see how many users have communicated with people outside of work, at least once using the IM. Chances are you will find all but one or two have.
They are also another vector for virus infection, unless you configure your firewall properly.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[blogan]

So? If they don't have IM they might use the company phone or compose a long e-mail to the person? I tried looking for the paper but couldn't find it. I use an IM at work all the time and it's nice. If I'm talking on the phone to someone and they want a URL, I just IM to them, instead of trying to spell out the URL.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

the paper isn't up on the website, but I will post email it to you if you like. Write me, at my email on my web site, and I'll send it to you. Do you have Word 95?

People who use IMs can abuse them too easily. They can be great, but they are high risk.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a team distributed across the country and use a private Jabber server for our developers. I guess I should just knuckle down and pay AT&T long distance? (A telecom stock holder I presume...)

Plus, which do you prefer - a cell phone call from the wife about what to pick up on the way home, or an IM? Guess which one is the productivity killer...

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Trinition]

Yeah, I read that paper... A co-worker of mine IM'ed it to me today.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Trinition]

how many users have communicated with people outside of work

And that is counter-productive? I have a close circle of personal friends who are all programming gurus. I consult with them about work problems all the time. And, I also BS with them.

Take away one and you take away the other. My gains in productivity from talking with them will be gone along with the time I waste communicating with them for recreation (or, maybe I'd just resort to e-mail or telephone calls instead).

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Godeke]

We use Jabber for a distributed (multi-state) group of developers. Perhaps I should just knuckle under and pay for long distance? (I'm sure telecom stockholders would appreciate my efforts). I think you lack an understanding of how IM is used by professional developers - we don't sit all day chatting about the weather, how 3l33t we are or throwing MP3s to each other; we get quick answers to questions that would otherwise hold up programming a module.

Additionally, I love it when people use this to communicate outside the building - rather that than the Cell going off during a meeting because the wife needs some fixings for dinner on the way home.

The reality is it depends on the maturity of your team. All of my team members are mature enough to use IM as a tool. Those who were not mature enough were fired after a warning. This applies to ANY communication tool, any violation of company codes.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

Post the text of your paper as a reply to this message so everyone can see it.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[evilquaker]

People who use IMs can abuse them too easily. They can be great, but they are high risk.

The same is true of telephones, internet connections and water coolers. As the other poster said, it depends upon the maturity of the employees. If they're not mature enough, they're going to find a way to screw around at work with or without IM.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[drsoran]

At my workplace, we're trying out Yahoo! IM at the moment (with a view toward moving to something more secure behind our firewall). I've found it helpful for things it's appropriate for. It's saved me several long-distance phone calls already, and helped out in situations where I needed an answer quickly to give to someone on the phone.

How is this instant messaging any different than IRC? If I want to talk to people I hop on our private server and join the channel and talk away. As for people that aren't on IRC e-mail works just fine. If they're sitting in front of their desks chances are I will get a reply within a few minutes. I'd rather read my e-mail and reply when I have time than be a slave to IM popups all the time. Plus, do you really trust AOL, Yahoo, and MSN to see what you're chatting about, especially at work? I would think an IM system where you can setup your own private server and link it to external servers and ONLY route messages to external servers if they can't be reached on the private one would be a much more preferred solution for a standardized instant messaging protocol. But wait, how would they deliver ads then? ;-)

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[SpyHunter99]

Who cares? I didn't know you were the self-proclaimed god on IM and effective work tools. Go impress some secretary....

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[BourbonCowboy]

Pfft... IM? I hear Microsoft Office has a new file transfer option built right in.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[ergo98]

Summary:
They are not good work tools, if you want to keep productivity high.

Absurd. I'm a software developer, and like most software developers I'm an introvert. As such I have a desire to use forms of communications like email or instant messaging wherever possible, so I don't proclaim to speak for anyone and everyone, but rather for my "type": I would say, without the slightest ounce of doubt, that instant messaging (and its close cousin email) have been incredibly productive in the workplace. Why? While the reasons are several, the primary reasons are that they are instantaneous to send (no looking up a phone number, dialing, waiting for ringing...waiting...waiting for voicemail menu...talking for 35 seconds...hitting pound...1....2), they are asynchronous (they don't demand the time of the other person instantly, but rather effectively install queues in your workplace so that people can work most efficiently at given tasks. Of course every workplace has the work avoiding blamecaster who'll always be spinning his wheels idle, protesting to all who'll listen that he's "waiting on so and so". Such people should be fired immediately), and you can get to the root of the matter far quicker than you can using alternate methods of communication. I won't bother exploring any of these because they should be self evident.

Having said that, I have met some very firm resistant from "old schoolers", and alternately people who I would best describe as "bullshitters": I worked with one gentlemen (to loosely use that term) once who was a unbelievable pathological liar- He would spin such a web of bullshit that it was just baffling. However, I noticed that he would never reply to an email, or send an IM, or even leave a voicemail for that matter: It always had to be a "quick meeting". Social hackers love the control that physical or voice meetings allow them as well (a control that is lost in asynchronous messaging).

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[ergo98]

The reality is it depends on the maturity of your team. All of my team members are mature enough to use IM as a tool. Those who were not mature enough were fired after a warning. This applies to ANY communication tool, any violation of company codes.

Any company that fires based upon the use of a communication tool deserves what will ultimately become of it, which is failure (apart from the criminal or sexually harrasing, of course). If someone is producing good quality whatever in good quantities, then it should be absolutely irrelevant if they are playing computer chess while chatting with their buddies about D&D. If, on the other hand, someone isn't producing, then it shouldn't matter that they put in 60 hour weeks (as is usually the case with non-producers: Martyrdom through incompetence), and that they sit starting hardcore at code from 8am until 6pm every day, they should be moved to a different job, or ultimately fired.

The way I manage is entirely output based, and no amount of ass kissing or excuse making can make me ignore a lack of contribution to the project, but on the flip side I don't care if someone works 12 hours a week and has slashdot on auto-reload: If the output is there, then how can they be faulted? Too many people bring a factory line mentality to software development, and unfortunately such a mentality is often based on envy: You have to keep everyone beaten down to the same level to ensure that the lowly doesn't feel green with envy.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

They are not good work tools, if you want to keep productivity high.

True... if you work at McDonalds. But if you have an office/desk/programming job, IM isn't going to make you any less productive than IRC, E-Mail, or going out for a smoke break.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Dreamweaver]

If someone is producing good quality whatever in good quantities, then it should be absolutely irrelevant if they are playing computer chess while chatting with their buddies about D&D.

Exactly, and I wish more managers realized this.

My current managers have a reasonable handle on it, but I've had people in the past that simply did not understand that someone could be productive without constantly looking busy. I talk to friends outside the company via IM quite a lot during work hours, not to mention browsing slashdot, yet I'm still the most productive person in my department. Because I'm a good employee, my overseers turn a blind eye to pretty much anything I feel like doing as long as my work quality stays high. Other people in the department slacked off playing games and such when they really weren't good enough workers to afford the distraction, and they no longer work for the company. It's really that simple, and anyone who thinks the road to high productivity is rules upheld with an iron fist is just deluding themselves.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[DEBEDb]

Yes, if you want to keep productivity high
it's much more efficient to get up
and look for your coworker every time
you need to ask them something.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[EvanED]

I agree somewhat. Personally, I think people should be paid by output, but that's difficult to measure. You do twice as much, or the same amount twice as good? You get paid twice as much. In this case, I fully agree with what you say.

However, I don't completely agree with what you said if you're paid by the hour. Now, a little fooling around never hurt anyone as long as they are productive anyway, but if I were a manager/etc. and I'm paying you $x per hour, I think I should be able to expect you to be working for almost all of the time I'm paying you for.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[blitziod]

wel IM's if using a standard would make many call center type departments much less expensive. They could reduce hold time, cut LD costs and help more customers per agent. Also for finacial co's they could more easily trade over IM's.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Thank you for your confidence. It will be filed by my secretary under "I", for "I don't give a damn". She'll do this right after she gets off the Yahoo! to her teenage son.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

I think that brings up the crux of the issue. It is just too easy to slip into bad habits using the computer. We have a bazillion email a day to manage, a billion work requests, and to top it all off, the girlfriend sends an IM. Add on the security risk of running IM [without firewalling file transfers], and you have too many things wrong.
Sure IM can be great for people who use it right, but you don't know who those people are until you let the user try it. When you do that, it may be hard to take it away, even if things aren't working out well. Feelings, if not more will be hurt.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Or you could look at it from the perspective that getting up and taking a 2 minute break from your RSI keyboard, is a good thing.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to spout off that you wrote a paper, and reference a link, please post the goddman paper on that link. Oh, and you're wrong.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[cebarro]

Nope. I work Tech Support (Graveyard)for a company with offices in many countries. I have Wintel, UNIX and Network guys everywhere. And everyone is on my contact list, from the CIO (so I know if he's upstairs), to our UNIX guy in Singapore. If a call or ticket comes in, or a situation arises, I can - at a glance - at 4AM - tell who's in, and if they're actually using their PC. Instant messaging someone for whom it is a minor issue to perform some small task (restart something, whatever) certainly beats the hell out of Dialing For Dollars and waking people up who then have to boot, connect, fix it and try to get back to sleep. It also beats calling the guys overseas, who I frequently cannot understand. For some reason, these guys have perfect spelling and grammar on Trillian.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

Um ya, but so what? the people at my work don't seem to lose any productivity because of it. I know it doesn't slow me down at all.

As far as the virus question goes, its no more simpiler then getting one from an email. The workstation shoudl have a virus scanner running already, so when a file is saved from an email or an im, it will be scanned.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

People who use IMs can abuse them too easily.

I dunno. I tend to think that if you're going to stop working on something to chat, you probably would just go do something else non productive if you couldn't. Like surf the web. And if you couldn't do that probably get some coffee or go outside. Its usually helpful for people to have minibreaks anyway.

Those that abuse them can easily be spotted, because their work will show it. If they're getting all their work done on time or ahead of schedule (and its done well), then who cares if they talk to someone for 15 mins over im?

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

There is the law of diminishing returns. Would you rather someone that can get something done in 2 hours with 30 minutes 'wasted', or 3 hours with no time wasted?

I don't really understand your point. If you give someone a job that takes x hours to an hourly employe, and its done in x hours then so what? Do you suddenly expect the hourly employee to work faster because he's hourly, but a salaried employee can take x hours?

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

IM is usually less intrusive. I can send an IM, close it, go back to work, and instead of sitting and watching the irc screen go by for my answer, the program notifies me when i get one. My answer doesn't become lost in a see of other messages either.

Plus, people not on the project won't see possibly confidencial informations.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

It also beats calling the guys overseas, who I frequently cannot understand. For some reason, these guys have perfect spelling and grammar on Trillian.

Yes, i wish someone would study why that is true.

Of course, then there are english speaking people that speak english fine, but butcher it when they try to type it.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[SlamMan]

If you get payed by the hour, and you can spend 2 hours a day playing chess online, you haven't been given enough to do. I mean, come one. Its a job. Payment for services rendered and such.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

'Nice' doesn't help productivity. Chatting online is much less conspicuous than standing around the water cooler. Those who actually are still productive with chat programs would be much more productive without it. For instant communication purposes, something like biff or MS Exchange provides all the functionality you need, and email actually encourages communication, as opposed to chatting, and even better, provides a suitable, searchable archive, so that when you need that quick detail from someone across the country, its still there when you need it next week.

If you want to know the real exchange killer, it isn't calendaring (that's trivial), but something that makes archiving and sorting messages easier and more intuitive, and easier to implement, a better search. Ximian Evolution does this.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

two things.

1) Most of us aren't paid by the hour, unless we're "contract to hire."

2) If I was paid by the hour and could go home x hours earlier when my work for the day was done, I'd be at work by 7 and work straight through till done.

3) Of course, I wouldn't want pay reduced for 2. So they need to pay me for the work I do. If they're paying Michelle, who only ever makes everyone elses job harder, and sucks up to management the same as me, and we're both getting $22 / hour and are required to be their 8 hours, I'm going to slack down to the level that I'm only accomplishing 10x as much as her, so she can keep her job. It's called compassion.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Aren't you more concerned about AOL or MS reading your secret projects?
Lots of people are crucifying my report, without even reading why I came to the conclusion I did. I thought setting up a local IM server or IRC server makes sense for some businesses, and I've seen IRC used effectively, but for the most part, people don't handle frequent IM interuptions well. If you are a programmer who doesn't need to concentrate [ or you are good at blocking out messages for later response], or you share a lot of code [get a CVS], or you have a boss that needs to know if you are sitting at your desk so he feels you are doing something[PHB], then by all means get IM.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Sibshops]

If someone is producing good quality whatever in good quantities, then it should be absolutely irrelevant if they are playing computer chess while chatting with their buddies about D&D. If, on the other hand, someone isn't producing, then it shouldn't matter that they put in 60 hour weeks (as is usually the case with non-producers: Martyrdom through incompetence), and that they sit starting hardcore at code from 8am until 6pm every day, they should be moved to a different job, or ultimately fired.

Good point. There are two problems tho.

First problem:
What if someone would be producing good code but doesn't because his coworkers keep messaging him with mostly irrelevant information?

Does he get fired because the actions of his co-workers? Keep in mind, he doesn't want to piss off his coworkers either, because he could be fired on performance reviews.

Second problem:
Suppose the worker would be producing good code if he wan't tempted to check on his wife and family.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course we criticize your paper without seeing it because you haven't posted it!

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[ergo98]

"What if someone would be producing good code but doesn't because his coworkers keep messaging him with mostly irrelevant information?"

Managing one's own time and information flows is one of the most important aspects of any worker, and is a personal responsibility. The same sort of issue could be brought up about any communication medium: phone, email, IM, or even in person (which is often the worst because it's totally synchronous).

Second problem:
Suppose the worker would be producing good code if he wan't tempted to check on his wife and family.

Then the net effect is that he isn't a good worker, and needs to be dealt with. This is the "lowest denominator" factor that leads to most of the draconian, ridiculous policies in workplaces, and it quite frankly is horribly wrong. People have to take charge of themselves, and those who cannot multitask should know how to put the phone on DND, IM to "Busy", and close Outlook. Those who thrive in a multitasking jobplace might be IMing with friends while coding, and playing a game of minesweeper. Making a base set of rules to help people with no self restraint isn't the solution.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were as good as you claimed to be on your resume, you wouldn't need to be asking your friends for help all day long.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

Aren't you more concerned about AOL or MS reading your secret projects?

No, they will most likely have no clue about what we are discussing. However, someone in the company may know more, because of rumors they heard or whatnot. But the singleton questions that go across aol or msn will probably be less then worthless, since they lack any context whatsoever. Two Ims in the same day might not even be related to the same project.

Lots of people are crucifying my report, without even reading why I came to the conclusion I did.

Probably because we know your conclusion, and it flies in the face of everyones personal experience. You also never posted it anywhere for people to read in the first place.

If you are a programmer who doesn't need to concentrate

Most decent programmers need to concentrate. Depending on what you're doing, sometimes more then others. But in my experience, IMs are far less intrusive then someone coming to my desk, calling me, or sending me an email. Depending on the volume and settings of your IM client, you can chooes to ignore htem all together. Trillian has an option now to make it work basically like icq; you get a message, and the only thing that happens is a sound is played and the system tray icon blinks. No windows even open. So i can choose to ignore it or not. Usually, it takes less then 30 seconds to answer and i've helped someone else move thru their problem much quicker. if i start getting too many i simply put up and away message or DND message, and am not bothered.

So in closing i think i'll say this. Your conclusion is wrong. IMs have greatly improved efficency in our project and company, and greatly reduced the amount and severity of interptions. I know your conclusions, i don't need to read your paper. Since your conclusion is wrong, the paper is invalid since it leads you to the wrong logical conclusion.

I do have a question for you though. since you did a research paper on this topic, i'm lead to believe that you are a college student. Do you actually have any real world experience? Or did you take this from thesis to conclusion without and real research?

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Well since you were at least polite while being condescending, I'll guess you won't be modded down.
However to answer your questions in no particular order:
The conclusion I posted here, was a SUMMARY. Read, then think before you write. If you want all the "buts" ask for them like I said.
I'm not going to post a 20 page report on the Internet, unless I want it plagarized. You are welcome to ask to see it though.
All of your examples here talk of strictly one kind of work. My report was written for another. Naturally that effects the outcome of the report.
As for my real world experience, what makes you think a college student [as it clearly mentioned on my webpage; which you did not even research] can't have real world experience? I have worked with two federal agencies, in 3 cities.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[pVoid]

As a disgruntled programmer (disgrunteled against people like you), all I have to say is that people who are against IM are probably the people who've never heard of the 'mythical man-month' argument, and who believe that if working 20 hours produces 100 lines of (bug free, clean) code, working 40 will produce 200 lines of (bug free, clean) code.

<rant>
I also believe it's because of that lurking illusion in the industry that software these days is so poor... because the reality is, working 60 hours actually produces 400 lines of (buggy, unmaintainable, insecure) code. Especially if the programmers aren't gurus (which probably accounts for at least 80% of the professionals out there).
</rant>

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Actually, I'm in favour of IMs for coders.
My report was written for a different line of work. IMs are one of several tools that can work for teams. CVS is likely a much better cooridination and code sharing plan for coding teams though.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

The conclusion I posted here, was a SUMMARY. Read, then think before you write. If you want all the "buts" ask for them like I said.

I read it. If you're going to just post a summary, and not back it up (by including all the 'buts', expect to be reamed).

I'm not going to post a 20 page report on the Internet, unless I want it plagarized. You are welcome to ask to see it though.

Um why do you care? Usually profs and teachers are smart enough to check the internet for plagerism. If your paper is easy to find so someone can plagerise it, it is easy for those checking against it also.

All of your examples here talk of strictly one kind of work. My report was written for another. Naturally that effects the outcome of the report.

So how about saying a bit more here to back up this statement? Back up what you say, or no one will be swayed by your arguement. Personally, in any kind of work where one uses a computer, i don't see how a less intrusive IM lowers productivity more then someone stopping by or calling on the phone. those seem like more of a distraction then an IM. Notice how i'm trying to provide logic to back up my thesis. You should probably try it too..

As for my real world experience, what makes you think a college student [as it clearly mentioned on my webpage; which you did not even research] can't have real world experience? I have worked with two federal agencies, in 3 cities.

Thats nice. Obviously i was on the mark if i didn't need to see your webpage to know you were a college student. While your experience certainly counts for something, there is some experience that coops still cannot provide (although they make a great starting point). I never thought you didn't have any real world experience; i only thought that it was probably limited compared to the experience of someone who's been in the field after college.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Other people emailed me for the report. Why are you so concerned about asking for it nicely?

What you assume, incorrectly, is that people would place a phone call or drop by in place of an IM. IM is a temptation for some to just wander away into a chatting world, when they would normally just continue working.

As for NO one being swayed, try reading ALL the responses to my thread.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

Other people emailed me for the report. Why are you so concerned about asking for it nicely?

Quite honestly at this point i don't really care anymore. We can go back and forth on this forever. Why are you so concerned about just posting it? Whatever, it doesn't matter.

What you assume, incorrectly, is that people would place a phone call or drop by in place of an IM. IM is a temptation for some to just wander away into a chatting world, when they would normally just continue working.

What you assume, incorrectly, is that someone working is more willing to go to IM to goof off, as opposed to do something else. Either someone is working, or they are getting bored at that moment and want something else to do. If tha latter is the case, they could IM, or they could walk to the water cooler, or go outside to smoke. I don't think they're any more likely to goof off by doing htat (or surfing the web) then IMing.

As for NO one being swayed, try reading ALL the responses to my thread.

I think i've learned all i need to from your responses. You started out saying IM was bad in all workplaces, then saying no its bad in certain one. Let me know what you find out when you work fulltime and they use IM well.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[saskboy]

Well, since you like the parrot act to troll, I will stop feeding you after this. Just letting you know that I think you are entitled to your opinion, as narrow minded as it may be. I just don't care too much for it.
Maybe I'll send you an IM when I get that job you speak of ;-P

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in the work place...

[plague3106]

I'm not trolling. I simply have alot of experience that contradicts your conclusion as you stated. I also have alot of people at work who's experience contradicts your research. I've asked you several times to back up what you say, but at most you've given one sentence, and that sentence seems to be your belief, not any hard facts.

Your only response has been to call me a troll or say 'ready my 20 page paper.' Well if you had credible research you could use pieces of it here. So far i haven't heard anything credible.

I don't see how i'm being narrowminded. You stated something i disagree with. I have my experience to back up my point of view. You have offered nothing in your posts. Maybe if you said something that might have seemed like a fact i would have requested your paper to read more. But you never did, and you still haven't. Instead you simply try to ward me off as a troll. Its too bad they hide karma now; someone with Excellent karma usually is not a troll. OH well.

Oh I can just imagine...

[messiertom]

A typical day goes by running *nix, and I decide I'd like to talk to some friends:

1) Open xterm
2) [tom@mitosis tom] msnaoltwnjsms &
(MSN AOL/Time Warner Netscape Jabber Sametime Messaging System)

Re:Oh I can just imagine...

[norweigiantroll]

Or you could just type:

norweigiantroll@impi:~$ gaim &

Yeah right!!!

[kryonD]

every 4 years over 250 Million taxpayers get together to beg the government to work as a team and look how far that's gotten!

Re:Yeah right!!!

[buswolley]

"every 4 years over 250 Million taxpayers get together to beg the government to work as a team and look how far that's gotten!" (But they still vote for the same damn two parties) hmm. Maybe theyll decide the only way to do it is if AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and IRC merge into one company. sense is nothing

Re:Yeah right!!!

[bluGill]

I beg to differ. I know that I'm not the only one who wants goverment to NOT work as a team. Most of my family concluded long ago that the goverment only does things that we do not want them to do. (Mostly spend my money) Sure every once in a while they do something good, but the large majority of the time they do not. Case in point: Passing those terrorist bills after 9/11/2001 that limit freedoms more than terrorism.

I wont' get into how only about 40% of the elligable population votes (in presidential election years, less in off years), Not to mention underage, fellons, and non-residents (citicians but I can't speel it:) who can't vote.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[rmohr02]

Sure every once in a while they do something good, but the large majority of the time they do not. Case in point: Passing those terrorist bills after 9/11/2001 that limit freedoms more than terrorism.

Am I to assume that by "government" you mean the federal government, namely congress and the President? Nearly all of the things government agencies do are things the American people as a whole want, and local governments are generally more productive than the federal government.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[bluGill]

I'm not too fond of local goverment either. At least we have a little more control, but the federal goverment puts too much pressue on what local goverments can do.

I'm not sure I'd agree that the federal goverment does what the people as a whole want. I would say more they do what the people as a whole will let them get by with. With all the things that the goverment does, nobody has time to look at each one, I'm sure there are things (but I don't have the time to look close) that only a few people want, and the rest don't, but those who want it will vote to have it stay, while the rest of us don't know. The DMCA snuck in that way, I had no idea I had to care so much about that one issue until we discovered just how bad it was. I always wonder what other ones have got through that I'm not aware of.

I'd run for congress, but I'm unelectable. (I would keep my promise to make goverment small, and plenty of retired folks, farmers, etc would balk at specifics (while encouraging me on what they don't care about...). Still, I vote for those who will make a difference, which is rarely the big two.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the American people as a whole want, but what the majority wants. There's a difference.

People are stupid. A person can be smart.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where has it gotten us? Highest per capita.
Only remaining world super power. Space
exploration. Moon exploration. World's
leading educational institutes. World's best
road systems (say what you will). Excellent
health care, and public health.

We're the envy of the freakin' planet. I
think the government had a part in this.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[s390]

I'm not sure I'd agree that the federal goverment does what the people as a whole want.

What, you're not happy working 5 months out of every year to pay taxes? How dare you, you ingrate! Shut up and pay, peasant.

Maybe you don't like the federal government spending over 50% of the available US budget on imperial warmaking (er,... defense, that's it) on behalf of the US-based oil cartel? Well guess what, they bought this Administration, they're damn well going to get their moneys worth, and they don't care _what_ you might think about it. Don't like that? Well... you can just go pound sand.

Or, in November (and two years later, too), you can vote _for_ candidates who stand a chance of defeating slimy Republicans.

For the dense, that's _not_ Libertarian or Green party candidates. Voting for fringe ideologies just reelects the monsters, as the results of the 2000 elections should have burned into the conscience of every Nader voter. Congratulations, ... you elected Bush!

Re:Yeah right!!!

[Joheines]

I'd rather ride the train than be living in a country where your max speed on highways is 55 (and maybe 90 in the desert).

Re:Yeah right!!!

[Bob Uhl]

Voting for fringe ideologies just reelects the monsters, as the results of the 2000 elections should have burned into the conscience of every Nader voter.

Just as the results of '92 should be burnt into the conscience of every Perot voter. Face it: neither the Dems nor the Reps support a reasonable government. I happen to prefer the Libertarians, then the Republicans, then the Democrats, then the varous looney-tunes. Heck, were it not for the Libertarian support for infanticide (a most un-libertarian platform), I think I'd probably register as one.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

World's leading educational institutes by arse. Harvard, Yale and Princeton are kindergarten compared to Oxford and Cambridge.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[plague3106]

Funny, i think that if people actually voted for who they wanted, reguardless of whether they thought that person would win, 3rd parties would have much more power then they do now.

Re:Yeah right!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so we aren't doing too badly.

Multiple IMers

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem's existed for a while. I mean, Trillian(Trillian.cc) now charges $25 a year to use there program, of course there is a free one. Odigo, Jabber and Trillian all attempt to bridge them, but until people start using them, IM companies will be too lazy to care, since many people don't pay attention to them.

In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

In related news, the wife of a top manager at Citibank has recently filed for divorce because her husband never replies to her 'Love you!' messages which arrive in the middle of important meetings.

I always thought of IM as productivity wasters

[Billly Gates]

I purposely delete it and all my games off my system whenever I am in school and go to work full time. I never would of thought that they could have some bussiness value. Email seems to be the top of bussiness communications needs.

Re:I always thought of IM as productivity wasters

[saskboy]

Exactly what my report I wrote on IM a year ago, concluded.

Re:I always thought of IM as productivity wasters

[MsGeek]

I got my MSN Messenger account when I was working at a tech school. MSN Messenger was a handy way of knowing when someone was in, out, teaching or at lunch. It's all in how you use it.

Before that, when I was working at a bandwidth provider that went spectacularly out of business, we used a MUSH in a similar fashion. Being that many people worked off-site, the MUSH was extremely effective.

Re:I always thought of IM as productivity wasters

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in.
I'm out.
I'm at lunch.
Seems like having groups set up with email would handle this just as well. IMs are for interns. IMs are just one more level of crap that companies try to put on my systems.

Re:I always thought of IM as productivity wasters

[Anonymous Coward]

Well moderating f'ing genius, I guess it is easy to see how something that agrees with the original comment, is redundant, but do you really think people only need to see negativity?

Re:I always thought of IM as productivity wasters

[Anonymous Coward]

Instant messaging is instant. (hence the name)
E-mail is far from instant. (why its not called I-mail)

Trillian

[elite lamer]

Trillian - Who cares if they work together? Trillian's still damn good, and despite threats of legal action, works with all the major IM networks (besides Jabber). It even has a quite nice IRC client.

Re:Trillian

[beavmetal]

Not to mention is keeps great logs (if you select that option)of all messages. Finance companies are looking to track all aspects of employee communication to avoid all insinuations of illegal activity. Changing trillion to keep logs on a company server and making the files an encrypted format instead of text wouldn't be overly difficult. Not to mention if huge companies backed a for-fee version of trillion, think how great the free version could be. Not that it isn't already great! Jeez, why stop there, let the finance companies revolutionize the IM industry by making real standards. Then us slash-dotters could make our own chat proggie, non-loggable, non-traceable, hehe.

There will always be a way to communicate with out easily being traced.

Re:Trillian

[buswolley]

Hooray for Trillian!! Its funny how the financial industry ignores Trillian and other such multi-chat software, like it was there idea first. Rediculous. Trillian has good styling and compatiblity. The down side? I don't think there is a version for Linux. Is there?

Re:Trillian

[Anonymous Coward]

There will always be a way to communicate with out easily being traced.

Of course your actions are usually far more traceable than you would think. If you really want to be anonymous on the Internet, you have to make sure your initial point of access is not associated with you in any way (e.g. log on to someone else's account in a computer lab).

Re:Trillian

[bill^2]

Who cares? I do. If interoperability was a fact, Trillian would just be a great program instead of an absolute necessity. I'd love to be able to disconnect three of my four messaging services. And even the for-pay Trillian isn't perfect -- still doesn't support file xfer via Yahoo, etc.

Re:Trillian

[fatwreckfan]

Yes there is. It's called gaim.

Re:Trillian

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the free GAIM that supports more IM protocols work quite nicely with Yahoo File transfers..

It works only on *nix though.

Re:Trillian

[Anonymous Coward]

A windows build of gaim is now on gaim.sourceforge.net

Re:Trillian

[Shardis]

Actually, you can do that with trillian anyway if you just setup logging to a fairly secure network share and just have the server crypt it transparently. Easy enough...

Re:Trillian

[WWWWolf]

Right - except that Trillian is more like a solution in style "out of sight, out of mind".

Think of it this way: As a Trillian user, you don't need to care if the IM systems work together or not.

However, I'm sure that the Trillian developers are having severe headaches when trying to get the program as beautifully as it undoubtedly does, especially if the IM companies are hostile toward the "clones" that don't spam the user with annoying advertising.

im

[sstory]

wouldn't it be great if there was also an API? then there could be display clients on your machine, and you could interact with your online buddies as if, say, you were at a bar, e.g. Neal Stephenson's Metaverse. How cool is that.

Re:im

[Anonymous Coward]

>>How cool is that.

That's gay, faggot.

Re:im

[phorm]

I've got a winsock program that allows almost any TCP/UDT data similation. So far I've used this trick to decode basic data:
Find the IP of a server an app is connecting to. Edit my "hosts" file to make that IP point to a local machine.
Run a listener that intercepts data intended for the remote host, on appropriate port.
The program connects to the remote host IP in place of the original client. Any data intended for the host IP from the client gets intercepted logged and routed to the IP. Vise-versa applies to data from the host, so in many situations they act as if normal communication occurs, not realizing they're being logged and router.

This works for simple FTP/telnet and some other connections. I'm going to try it for various apps and chat programs etc and see if I can easily decode the messenging/data structure. Currently, my major problem is that I want to be able to do this with direct-IP connections as well, but it doesn't work via HOSTS of course and this theory won't work as well. Suggestions are welcome

If anyone wants to help, I'll glady share the app and collaborate. It's fun to see the logs of some applications when the data is more or less plaintext.

Hi Bill, I lost my hard drive contents, can you send it back to me on CD? - phorm

Re:im

[reyalsnogard]

Try Hunt.

Easily allows you to do quite a bit: packet-sniffing, ARP/DNS spoofing, session hijacking, etc.

Re:im

[maunleon]

Not exactly sure what you are getting at, but...

I think that the MSN Messenger API is published. I haven't personally looked into it too much, but.. it's an API.

Yes, the servers are owned by the eeevyl Microsoft, but for those paranoid about that, they can always develop a client that transmits encrypted transmission over the MSN network.

Also, I am thinking MSN Messenger is setting itself up to win the war of the browsers, because AFAIK it is the only (major) one that can be hosted inside a private network (attached to an exchange server), for those companies paranoid of confidential data being transmitted to unsecured outside channels.

Re:im

[Electrum]

There is no need to do it yourself. Use a network traffic analyzer like Ethereal. The Win32 version works quite well.

Re:im

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure you differentiate between MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger. Windows Messenger (aka Exchange Messenger) is installed behind the firewall and has API's to extend the functionality. MSN Messenger works only with the MSN network and is a very different animal. Interoperability between the two doesn't even exist today, but it's just a matter of time.

AOL for-fee service for corporations

[baldass_newbie]

AOL has announced plans to introduce a for-fee service for corporations, but has yet to set a launch date. However, the company has talked about introducing such a service since early 2001.

That's smart. Far better a company keep paying AOL thousands a month than set up a Jabber server for, uh, nothing.
Good marketing model, fellows.

Trillian on Wine

[Codifex Maximus]

Works fine for me.

Seriously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, going by my own experience, how much IM usage is valid in your average office?

More than nine times out of ten, the stuff I see travelling over IM protocols consists of things not important/work-related enough to send an email message.

Instead, it's more like 'Hi there, what are you doing tonight?' 'I got so wasted last night that I can't imagine going out again tonight'. 'Are you at work?'. 'Yes' and so on for twenty minutes. Work accomplished: zero.

Re:Seriously...

[enderak]

Very little, but it does have it's strengths... For example, you can easily send files back and forth without having to share a folder over the whole network, and it prevents people from e-mailing 2-meg documents back and forth all day, which not only wastes time, but also bandwidth. I haven't set people up with IM's in the office where I work, but I have thought about it. Perhaps it doesn't seem like such a bad idea in my case since it is a small business and half the employees are owners as well, so wasted time comes out of their pocket in the end anyway... heh

shame...

[doc_side]

Corporations using this kind of tactic to wield influence has always bothered me.(duh) It isn't enough for there to be a good idea that can be implimented on a large scale. There has to be a corporation behind it. But...

its not like these guys got together and said, hey wouldn't this be good for humanity/technological progression. They counted the available beans and said, "More!". I guess money is how ideas are measured.

Re:shame...

[voisine]

Sounds good to me. Money represents value. It alows
you to trade the best of your effort for the best
of someone elses. If an idea is of no value to
anyone, noone will pay money for it.

Trillian is and will stay free.

[MsGeek]

The non-Pro version of Trillian is and continues to stay free. I am right now on four IRC channels and (gulp) MSN Messenger through Trillian.

I will pay for Trillian if and when there is a Trillian for Linux.

Re:Trillian is and will stay free.

[superpeach]

How does trillian combine the different IM services? is it like gaim which supports them all on the client side, or Jabber which tries to provide connections to other IM servers from the Jabber server?

Re:Trillian is and will stay free.

[Anonymous Coward]

like gaim, but with the all-important file transfer.

Re:Trillian is and will stay free.

[Anonymous Coward]

And video conferencing too, by the looks of it (pass off to netmeeting I guess?). Actually, thats about all I found out about it from the trillian website.. it does video conferencing, you can use plugins if you get the pro version, the pro version costs $29 or something... ooh look, pretty pictures. Its a crap website if you want to know anything about it, good if you like following orders.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not going to happen. AOL, MS, etc, agreeing on what would have to be an open standard?

*laugh*

Unless your employees are simply wasting time, companies using IM software should have procedures and regulations for it. IE - forcing them to use one certain client. Problem solved, eh?

Re:Why?

[fgodfrey]

Problem not solved. Some of these companies want to use IM to comunicate with their *customers*. Now, they could, I suppose, mandate that the customer use a given client, but that isn't necessarily going to go over too big with the customer, especially if the customer is either a) religiously attached to their present platform/opposed to the company's platform of choice or b) not all that good at computers and or short on time and doesn't want to learn a new program.

One would also think (although I'll bet there isn't actually a regulation about this) that a financial firm requiring its customers to use proprietary technology from a company on which they are also doing financial analysis would be a bit of a conflict of interest. Not that *that* would ever happen on Wall Street....

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about between different companies, you can't really have procedures for that, unless you've multiple clients on both ends, OR the both ends use clients which speak the an interoperable protocol.

AOL protecting profits

[GoatPigSheep]

AOL is one of the worst companies when it comes to intrusive ads... Just look what they did with netscape, forcing them to remove the ad-removal options. Unless the united IM supports ads that aol can profit from they will never get on board.

I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[Archfeld]

and we use Jabber in house like mad to bridge all the other protocols. With Jabber I can ICQ, AIM, Yahoo all acrossed a validated http proxy. In house we also use Lotus Sametime, which IMHO SUCKS horribly compared to any of the other clients.

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[Trinition]

Whatever happened to the aim-t probelms? The last part of the saga I remember is that instead of making up new FLAP codes, AOL just started looking for large quantities of signon from the same IP indicating a possible Jabber server running aim-t and just blocked its entire class C (so as to prevent the server moving to a new IP in the same class C). Has that ceased, os has there been soe other workaround?

Coming from AIM as my primary chat medium, that was ahuge hurdle to adopting Jabber personally. Now, I'm using Trillian Pro 1.0, happily.

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[atrus]

I haven't seen it lately. A local university (CSUMB) has all of the dorms NATed, so you can a multitude of IM logins from the same IP. If (well, when) the network gets borked, the insant it works, AOL's servers reject all of the login requests from the dorms since they come in a sudden flood. It can reportedly take several hours for AOL to allow everyone back online. But it does explicitly block them forever.

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[Anonymous Coward]

So this isn't just for needy feely touchy interns that have to be on a cell phone 10 hours a day informing their companions of EVERYthing going in their lives. Alright maybe I am a curmudgeon but whats the point. Is it like a little window on your screen? A little Paper Clip guy that you type messages in and that has a list of everyone on line at that moment? Why don't you just put a chip in your head that will allow the tracking of all activity? That might save everyone some time. I mean right now I am on the net and I can email my friends. If they are online they can return a message. If not I have to WAIT. OH THE HORROR. I am out of communication. MY GOD. my head is going to explode.

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[infiniti99]

Whatever happened to the aim-t probelms?

AFAIK, aim-t isn't even an option at the jabber.com / jabber.org servers. There's not really anything that can be done to prevent an IP address ban. From what I understand, these are explicit bans against the major Jabber servers, and are not necessarily related to the amount of AIM logins.

Coming from AIM as my primary chat medium, that was ahuge hurdle to adopting Jabber personally.

Depending on how you feel about open standards (and I hope a lot of us feel strongly towards them here), I encourage you to put in a little bit more effort :) It is a darn shame Trillian doesn't support Jabber, otherwise I'd actually recommend the program. My advice to you is to use a Jabber client alongside Trillian. Yeah I know, using two clients sucks, but you were probably doing this before Trillian came around anyway. Start building your Jabber roster now. You're gonna have to do it eventually anyway, and starting early will speed up adoption.

I recommend this especially to Trillian users like you, who probably have other Trillian-using friends that could all easily begin using Jabber. I agree it is tougher to convert your AIM-using Grandma to Jabber, but you Trillian users are natural rebels, right? Rebel! And keep Trillian around for talking to Grandma.

Personally, I used to use ICQ for a long time, then I began using Jabber and the ICQ transport. Later, I decided to start using AIM and MSN transports also (I figured, hey, why not?). Bad move.. this brought me knee deep in proprietary IM. I strongly suggest NOT using IM services that you weren't already using. Ie, if you start using Trillian or Jabber, do the world a favor and please don't just start using every single service. This only promotes them.

So one day I decided to bite the bullet and unregistered from ALL the transports I was using. Now I use Jabber only. It was tough in the beginning (well, a lot less people bothered me on IM, hehe), but eventually I rebuilt my contact list. All my friends use Jabber now and so does my family. Right now I've got over 100 Jabber contacts, although I can't say I talk to a lot of them. I don't recommend this route for everyone, but it sure feels good to be free of AOL once and for all (and there was much rejoicing).

-Justin

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[guest]

Aim-t works on the server by including the binary with the transport so when aol does a hash on a part of the binary aim-t can return the proper result.

Aim-t still doesn't work on jabber.org or jabber.com because AOL has done an IP ban on their server. My own private Jabber server works with all four major IM services (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ and AIM), I've got friends on each so it's important that they're all working.

If you're interested in using Jabber again you should try joining a non-jabber.org/jabber.com jabber server (try myjabber.com or black9.net maybe?). In addition if you use windows I heartily recommend Rival (rival.chote.net), it's really an excellent client.

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[Dexx]

Where I'm working, we use an IM program called E-pop by wiredred software. Works fairly niftily. They've got several groups set up so you can message an individual or an entire group. (Which is always a fun option for the newbies to play with.)

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[Moofie]

See, I can talk to everybody in the universe with Trillian. I can talk to, like, four people with Jabber. What is the impetus to change? More to the point, what is the impetus that is going to convince my less-geeky friends to talk all their even less geeky friends into changing to Jabber? What's the win for a neophyte user?

I'll tell ya. Nuthin'. Trillian gives me all the interoperability I could want. If Jabber actually happens some day to be useful to me, I'm sure there will by that time be a Trillian plugin for it.

Re:I work for one of those Large Financial corps

[infiniti99]

You may have missed my point. I didn't say to give up Trillian, but rather I recommended that you (or whomever) run both Trillian _and_ a Jabber client. This way you and your geeky friends would be able to switch over, yet you'd still be able to talk with everyone else. I'm well aware that the average user of some proprietary IM would have little incentive to switch to Jabber. I wasn't talking about them. We'll let them use AIM for now. I was talking about geek folks like us here.

I'd only expect the people that care about promoting open IM to do this. You may or may not be that type of person.

Gaim!

[bleak sky]

Why, when you can use gaim natively? And without all the ads and other clutter... It supports AOL and (with plugins that come with it) MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, even ICQ and IRC...

John

Re:Gaim!

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

Trillian + WINE has no ads either

Re:Gaim!

[Codifex Maximus]

>Why, when you can use gaim [sourceforge.net]
>natively? And without all the ads and other
>clutter... It supports AOL and (with plugins that
>come with it) MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, even ICQ and
>IRC...

Hmm... was unaware that gaim worked with all those IM systems; maybe they should change the name to grillian?

Re:Gaim!

[intermodal]

The problem with GAIM is that it requires GTK+ 2. As far as I know, this cannot be used for windows yet, unless someone has done some uberhack that I'm not aware of. So until it's cross platform, or until you find a way to get these places to put a *nix on the desktop, then good luck, man. (note: I am a KDE user with GAIM as my primary AIM client, and like the program. not trying to flame GAIM in any way.)

Re:Gaim!

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure? I compiled the latest GAIM just yesterday, and it worked fine with GTK+ 1.2.x..

Re:Gaim!

[Anonymous Coward]

it works fine with gtk1.2 AND gtk2, AND works fine on Windows

Re:Gaim!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://gaim.sf.net

Note that the VERY TOP ITEM refers to the windows build, which had BEEN AROUND FOREVER.

Fact: you are wrong

Re:Gaim!

[JabberWokky]

Kopete is the new standard IM framework for KDE 3.1 (due out end of Octoberish), and supports AIM, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, and theoretically Yahoo. I say theoretically, because I'm running the prerelease right now, and while everything works fine (there are a few missing features - gaim *is* better), Yahoo support is looking like it won't be in 3.1. Of course, they are all plugins, so they can be updated individually.

I'd say go with Gaim right now (I don't, but then I like filing bug reports for KDE :) ), and check out Kopete in a few months.

Incidently, Jabber is a protocol, yes, but most servers have gateways to AIM, Yahoo, etc. They work fine - I was using Psi through charente.de (I probably have that server name name wrong), and would talk to all of my AIM, Yahoo and ICQ using friends. Again, Gaim still has the best support for all the features of the various protocols.

--
Evan (no reference)

Re:Gaim!

[SmokeSerpent]

And without all the ads and other clutter...

what ads?

Re:Gaim!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trillian allows fairly easy to set up encryption. GAIM has very strong encrytption, but is somewhat more difficult to set up. Trillian also has a lot of smilies ;)

AOL

[Thorin_]

Good luck trying to get AOL to play nicely with everyone else. They know they have the largest base of IM users and do everything in their power to keep it that way.

Everybuddy

[Foresto]

Running trillian on wine seems to me like an awful lot of overhead. I use everybuddy on my linux systems. It doesn't have a fancy skin-laden UI, but it does the job nicely. (I didn't like gaim because the interface annoyed me.)

Re:Everybuddy

[Foresto]

I forgot to mention one of my favorite features of everybuddy: When one of your contacts has accounts on several different IM services, you can combine them in your contact list. In other words, the program knows they're all different ways of reaching the same person. I wish trillian did that.

Re:Everybuddy

[Moofie]

For what it's worth, the new "pay if you wanna" version of Trillian does that.

And I dig the program so much, I do believe that I do wanna pay. It just rocks out loud.

The Pretenders

[__aafkqj3628]

This is the sort of crap that everybody gets to hopeful in. It starts planning and then there is a war about a trivial issue, the things collapeses and w00t, all companies invloved are back at each others necks.

funny isn't it

[tahpot]

in our post .com crash era its the customers coming to the IT companies asking them to sort themselves out so they can buy their product(s).

distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a COMPLETE distraction. The company I work for uses Sametime (hmm i wonder why?). I see half my colleagues using it to waste time and the other half setting their status to Away so they aren't bothered every 2 seconds.. I know there are a lot of benefits to it, but currently I don't even log on unless *I* need to contact someone

Thirtieth Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Of all the moderators in all the world, it had to be you who moderated me down you lame assed monkey masturbator

Use Gaim

[jchawk]

I am using Gaim, and I have connections going to IRC, AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ. All work great, plus everything works as a plugin. I even have a plugin loaded the checks my out-going messages spelling. :-)

Re:Use Gaim

[Thoughts In Chaos]

Does gaim support server-side contact lists on ICQ like it does for AIM ?

Re:Use Gaim

[reyalsnogard]

..aaah, the marvel of spelling checkers! Here's a little ditty for you (source long forgotten):

Eye half a spilling chequer,
as you can sea,
it Marx fore my revue
miss takes eye can knot sea!

It does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use Trillian Pro 1.0 instead.

From the article...

[blixel]

"There has to be a business model where Microsoft and Yahoo and AOL get paid,"

I disagree. There doesn't have to be and there shouldn't be. The article mentions that IM should be like E-Mail. Well, Microsoft and Yahoo don't get paid just because some guy using a yahoo e-mail account e-mails someone using a hotmail account.

My advice to these "finanical" guys seeking standards - ignore it. The problem will solve itself in a matter of time. IM is too big of a thing to be contained within proprietary networks. As these all in one messenger programs like Trillian become the de-facto standard, companies like Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo will have to give up their futile efforts of hording all their IM customers to themselves. Or better yet, if (when?) Jabber becomes the real standard, the corporations wont even have to worry about Microsoft or AOL anymore.

Re:From the article...

[reagan9000]

"The article mentions that IM should be like E-Mail. Well, Microsoft and Yahoo don't get paid just because some guy using a yahoo e-mail account e-mails someone using a hotmail account." Sure they do. One get paid for pasting an ad after the .sig of the outgoing message and the other for displaying an ad when viewing the message on the receiving end.

Re:From the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

Trillian no worky with the penguin

Therefore it's dead, because everyone who has anything interesting or informative to say uses linux

Thanks for reading my troll ! I admit it's a troll but it's also true.

Re:From the article...

[Phroggy]

Well, Microsoft and Yahoo don't get paid just because some guy using a yahoo e-mail account e-mails someone using a hotmail account.

Uhh, of course they do. You can't check your mail on Yahoo or Hotmail without going to their Web site, which contains advertising banners. The companies are getting paid to run those ads.

(Whether you choose to see them or not is another matter, of course, but most people do, so the companies do get paid.)

Re:From the article...

[Anonymous Coward]

That email is not the standard for sending and receiving email. It is an email client for convenience. I could just as easily load evolution and use the network that I am all ready paying for from my provider - or set up my own server which will allow me to control it myself. The thing is, with email, I don't have to worry about someone not being able to send and receive messages from me because they all work from a standard set of rules for defining the protocol

Here's your problem...

[djrogers]

from the article...

"There has to be a business model where Microsoft and Yahoo and AOL get paid," Maghsoodnia said.

Yeah, just like they get paid for hosting all of our web pages, email, and ft.... Wait a second, we run our own servers for those things! Why the heck can't we have an IM system that's the same way? Run our own darned IM gateways/server, and just include it as part of your address (whoops - screen name, can't have anything technical sounding). User@server has worked well enough for email, heck with an LDAP3 directory backing it, email your address could easily be mapped to the IM presence on your server/gateway. If you really wanted to get fancy, add an IM record type to DNS.

Thinking like this is just plain stupid - there's no possible reason why this couldn't work without relying on MS/AOL/Yahoo to run our servers for us... Except they beat us to it. So how do we convince those planning to spend $$ to do it in a responsible fashion?

Re:Here's your problem...

[slamb]

Yeah, just like they get paid for hosting all of our web pages, email, and ft.... Wait a second, we run our own servers for those things! Why the heck can't we have an IM system that's the same way? Run our own darned IM gateways/server, and just include it as part of your address (whoops - screen name, can't have anything technical sounding). User@server has worked well enough for email, heck with an LDAP3 directory backing it, email your address could easily be mapped to the IM presence on your server/gateway. If you really wanted to get fancy, add an IM record type to DNS.

You've just described Jabber. Anyone can run a server. It uses user@server email-style addresses. Servers communicate between themselves as in email; this can be turned off for Intranet usage. It uses SRV DNS RRs which are a generalization of email's MX RRs. I think LDAP integration in the existing servers is poor so far, but that's an implementation detail and can be improved later.

Thinking like this is just plain stupid - there's no possible reason why this couldn't work without relying on MS/AOL/Yahoo to run our servers for us... Except they beat us to it. So how do we convince those planning to spend $$ to do it in a responsible fashion?

Jabber is being pushed toward standardization in the IETF, as the article mentioned. I think the situation will improve greatly after the IETF working group for it is created.

Re:Here's your problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a better idea... Tell your clients to PICK ONE instead of making them all work together. My friends used to use yahoo, ICQ, Microcraps IM.. now they're all on Aol's AIM and I can uninstall all the rest :-) (well, if MS ever lets me uninstall thiers.. lol). Yes, it would be better if there were an open-source, open-spec decentralized IM system, but AIM will do fine for me (and perhaps I'll switch to Yahoo or microcrap if they get better features like streaming video instead of simple cam picture updates)

Re:Here's your problem...

[BusterB]

Man, what happened to 'talk'. I use this with my machines all of the time, and I can do 'talk joeblow@machine' very simply and its been around forever.

Hell, even windows has the popup messaging protocol that's been around since at least WFWG, and I can still talk to windows boxes using Kopete today!

Re:Here's your problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

AIM will do fine for me

Sure, until it becomes a de facto standard, at which point it will become virtually impossible to convince a critical threshold of users to switch away from it. Since AIM uses centralized servers, AOL can use their monopoly to dictate the terms of service. If you and your friends were wise, you would switch to a decentralized system which no one has control over (ala Jabber). If it's too painful for you and your friends to switch now, then we're already doomed.

Re:Here's your problem...

[Phroggy]

Yeah, sounds an awful lot like this, which everyone has been ignoring, most notably AOL.

Re:Here's your problem...

[lightspawn]

Mod parent up!

This is, of course, exactly right.

Re:Here's your problem...

[Bob Uhl]

Hell, talkd in most RedHat boxen is completely broken. It's very sad, as it's one of the protocols I most enjoy. Anyone with a fix will be my friend for approximately as long as it takes to pour & drink a beer at the Falling Rock...

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

an irc server running on your intranet; while having whatever port IRC runs on not accepting connections to or from the 'outside world'?

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs--- email

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats the difference between IM and email?
Or why don't you just set up ultimate BBS online?
Am I missing something?

It's time for an instant version of SMTP

[Anonymous Coward]

IMTP -- is that taken?

Anyway ..as people on here have been saying, why cant instant messages be built on an SMTP like hybrid system? hopefully with one that supports public keys and cryptography.

We dont need a stinkin' central IM server.

-Johan

Try proofreading ...

[A nonymous Coward]

I even have a plugin loaded the checks my out-going messages(sic) spelling.

Re:Try proofreading ...

[Jonny 290]

Last time I checked, 'the' was a valid word and the highlighted section reflected a grammar, not a spelling error, you tedious motherfucker.

win32 alpha port released today

[mekkab]

Here it is ... we always knew friday the 13th was a freaky day...

Re:win32 alpha port released today

[ceejayoz]

interesting...

They need to fix the logging directory - can't have a directory called ".gaim" in Windows.

Re:win32 alpha port released today

[jchawk]

I just downloaded it and installed it after reading your message, and it's working just fine.

There are no other plugins, at least that I can find, so I only have ICQ and AIM working on the windows version.

This is badass though because I have to use a windows box at work and I was stuck with multiple chat programs. (I know there's trillion or whatever, but I didn't like it).

Re:win32 alpha port released today

[ceejayoz]

Sounds like you haven't checked the "enable logging" checkbox in options. Mine works fine except for the logging, too.

gaim for windows seems pretty cool so far, don't think I'll be switching just yet though.

Re:win32 alpha port released today

[sthiyaga]

Gaim for win32 has plugins for Oscar(AIM/ICQ), TOC, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, and IRC. Check the plugins/ directory under gaim.

Why? They're different formats?

[antis0c]

Thats like asking all the Internet Application developers to please just develop one do-it-all Internet application that uses the same Protocol.

The point is to have choice. Just because something becomes popular, lots of users start using it, and there is competition doesn't mean they have to interoperate or anything. Sure that would be a cool feature, but thats up to the developer, not the users. I don't go telling Linus Torvalds I want him to make sure Linux runs Windows binaries natively, at any cost.

Its not the telephone system, its not an essential service that all should have free access to. Hell, everyone still has free access to use AOL IM AND MSN, AND YAHOO! AND JABBER. They're only complaining because its a "hassle" to have all those programs installed to chat.

What next? The government decides AIM should interface with the public phone system so users without computers can still chat? Give me a break. There are no monopolies here. Its good healthy competition and it should remain like this. I wasn't forced to use AOL, I wasn't forced to use MSN, and I certainly wasn't forced to use Yahoo!. I'm still not even forced to have a home phone. Alright, enough ranting.

Whatever.

Re:Why? They're different formats?

[infiniti99]

The problem is that IM is now a widely used application of the Internet, and thus should be interoperable. The existence of programs like Trillian (and its millions of downloads) shows there is no question that the public wants interoperable IM. You may not think IM needs to be interoperable, but the rest of us certainly do.

The reason the government stepped in on AOL is because they are so dominant. It is MUCH harder to enforce a standard this late in the IM game. Back in the early days of the public Internet, many services had incompatible/closed email systems (Prodigy, AOL, Compuserve, etc). Eventually they wised up and all agreed to use SMTP, but this was probably only because SMTP was already an established standard. It is much harder to wedge Jabber in as a standard today, when you've got millions already using the closed systems.

I should add here that, for example, AOL does not offer POP3. They still use a proprietary email client. In much the same way, they can continue to use Oscar (the AIM protocol) internally for their users (and have all sorts of internal "value-added-competition-healthy" services), but they really ought to talk Jabber to the rest of the world.

Anyhow, there's not much to debate here. Jabber is going to be accepted by the IETF soon, so finally we'll have an official standard. However, only time will tell if the big boys of IM will start using it...

Re:Why? They're different formats?

[MavEtJu]

They're talking about *PROTOCOLS*, not about *APPLICATIONS*. If I can happily access your MSN with my ICQ, we are both happy.

Re:Why? They're different formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's a joke. look at all the IETF drafts for internet presence and messaging already. it's like AOL IM, IRC, and Gnutella rolled into one with MIME and XML for that special late-night telly feeling.

Re:Why? They're different formats?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Taking your phone system analogy a bit farther...

If your friends were on different long distance services (Sprint, AT&T, MCI, GTE), would you think it reasonable to have 4 different phones just so you could talk to them?
hmm...Mary is on the blue 900 Mhz cordless, Joe is on the wall phone in the kitchen, Jim can only be reached from the 2.4Ghz, and Jill from the cellphone.

oh yeah...that would work REAL well.

Re:Why? They're different formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true! There is lots of talk about Jabber here, which is an application and a protocol. I think this will limit the acceptance of the protocol, because it's associated with the application and the company that sells the application. No one seems to talk about SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence) here which probably has a much better chance of gaining adoption. It's already used by many of the commercial, behind-the-firewall software vendors.

the wheel

[skydude_20]

is it just me, or are we trying to re-invent the wheel here? namely, re-inventing email with the added feature of knowing who in your address book is currently also logged in to their email client...

Re:the wheel

[Anonymous Coward]

the 100th was

Re:the wheel

[Phroggy]

If you don't understand the vast differences between IM and e-mail, you obviously haven't been using IM to its full potential.

Re:the wheel

[ergo98]

And HTML is just gopher with better layouts. It isn't some big mystery that IM and email are very tightly related (and it isn't some great insight when people comment regarding IMs with the profound observation that IMs are quite a lot like email) however IM has some important differences:

-Most IM tools let you create adhoc conferences among people.

-Most IM tools allow you to send a file, knowing that the receiver has the option to deny it. This is useful when you're not sure if you sent it.

-IM is often perceived as useful for quick "off the cuff" questions that don't seem quite important enough for an email, yet if you were right beside the person you would likely ask them.

-IM shows people's status. Add this feature to email (allowing me to avoid sending the message in the first place) and then you'll have a better comparison.

Re:the wheel Curmudgeons UNITE.

[Anonymous Coward]

YOu see it. I see it. Oh well. Email doesn't the cache of IM. Of course if the admin is smart email doesn't have the viruses and worms either. These are the people that get EVERY option the car salesman throws at them. Email isn't cool. No cachet.

MS has already made attempts at playing nice

[SpyHunter99]

If you rememeber, MS was trying to work with AIM and AIM kept changing the protocol and eventually MS stopped trying. On top of that, MS is trying to create an standard for IM and more specifically using DNS to located services (i.e. RVP like for Exchange IM) and speaking of Exchange IM, our company uses it for work purposes more than email. It is a life saver

Re:MS has already made attempts at playing nice

[phillymjs]

MS does not 'play nice,' they only give the appearance of doing so to distract you while easing a hand into the pocket in which your wallet resides. :-)

In an alternate universe, this is going on:

1) MSN Messenger (MSNM) interoperates with AIM.
2) MSNM is welded into XP.
3) MS says, "Hey, Windows users! Why bother to download AIM when you can just use MSNM, which is already in XP and lets you send IMs to your AIM-using friends?"
4) Lazy users, content to just use what's already there, abandon using AIM in droves because hey, they don't have to download MSNM.
5) MSNM becomes the dominant IM app.
6) AIM usage drops. AIM ad revenues sink. AIM development budget and staff is cut. AIM starts lagging behind MSNM, feature-wise. AIM becomes IM also-ran.
7) MSNM gradually adopts a new protocol that is DMCA-protectable to lock out 3rd-party clients.
8) After the new protocol is in place, one day MSNM users can suddenly no longer IM people using AIM. Microsoft PR spews forth some mumbo-jumbo about 'IM technology heading off in a different direction' as an explanation.
9) A subsequent Windows version or service pack renders AIM inoperable. AIM, long un-updated, finally has a stake driven through its heart.
10) Time to start charging for use of MSNM.

~Philly

Re:MS has already made attempts at playing nice

[Jucius Maximus]

"4) Lazy users, content to just use what's already there, abandon using AIM in droves because hey, they don't have to download MSNM."

This is part of the reason that, for years, MSFT allowed rampant pairacy the Office suite. It was not about mindshare. For every copy of Office out there, the value of the copy of Office that some business legally bought off the shelf becomes more valuable because there are more people whom they can interchange documents with. This means that it is more likely that the next person will buy a copy of Office. This is why fax machines were originally sold in pairs.

Now AOL has had a history of cutting Trillian off from AIM while MSN gives the facade of playing nice. If MSN helps trillian keep current, then they are increasing the value of the MSN messenger client, thus indirectly hurting AIM. Therefore MSFT is using AOL's moves to isolate AIM as the tools for their (AOL's) own demise. Nice.

Re:MS has already made attempts at playing nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Better post this anon....check.

A very close friend of mine who works at Microsoft Canada stated that their intention is to really start charging for MSN Messenger. The basic IM service will be free, but the extra features such as Video chat and voice chat will be charged to the consumer.

BTW, it's not only that Microsoft "service", but other services as well(i.e. Hotmail). Though he was not specific as to what features we will have to pay for if we wanted it.

My 2cents: Microsoft has already owned a majority of the web market(im,email,browser,etc)...they have no point creating more features for free...as there are less and less people to convert. So they might as well start making money, no?

What is wrong with diversity?

[bluhatter]

As soon as things begin to become standardized, the major companies involved get the idea that they can charge (more) for it. When there are two Blockbusters and three Starbucks on every corner, who's gonna wonder anymore about the neighborhood coffee haus and rental emporium?

In short, it's best imo to keep things diverse. Afterall, I sort of don't mind having six windows open, as long as there are multiple desktops

will IM be treated like email or cellphone network

[nmarshall]

it's funny how imho IM is just another communications tool, like you know email.

just goes to show that, with out open standards we all we have is WALLED islands of networks.

me thinks that making IM more like email less like a cellphone network would be MUCH better.

Re:Article

[rmohr02]

For the month of July, 12.7 million office workers were using instant messaging services, including those from AOL, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ and Trillian.

Whoa! I never knew Trillian was an instant messaging service--I'd always thought it was just a program that operated with other instant messaging services. I must've missed out on something. Maybe the newly released Trillian Pro is an IM service as well as client.

I love the headline

[stratjakt]

IM giants told to work it out

I can't wait for..

Financial giants told to shove it

Seriously, where do these jackasses get off?

Uhh..a united IM service from United Coders?

[Istealmymusic]

Does anyone know anything about the supposed unified IM service to beat Jabber and Gaim, written by United Coders? Their website is lacking any information on the project, but from what I hear its very promising.

Wake up and smell the standards

[Alex Belits]

Financial companies should just give up "some fatass company should sell us things" and look how IRC is superior to all those closed and semi-closed "messengers".

There is no compatibility problems between chat systems just like there is no compatibility problems with email. It's just closed email systems already disappeared, and closed messaging system are still there -- but people who rely on them deserve to suffer from their closedness.

Re:Wake up and smell the standards

[Phroggy]

IRC doesn't support a lot of the functionality of AIM, it's much less convenient for most of what I use AIM for, and maybe I don't always want everyone to know my IP address?

Re:Wake up and smell the standards

[Alex Belits]

IRC doesn't support a lot of the functionality of AIM, it's much less convenient for most of what I use AIM for

What functionality is in AIM and not in IRC? By IRC, of course, I mean "what can be reasonably done with it using existing clients and minimal scripting", not "what comes by default with the only IRC client I have seen 5 years ago".

and maybe I don't always want everyone to know my IP address?

Server doesn't have to disclose it, and you can proxy the connection if you are paranoid. Not that it matters for any reasonable purpose that financial institutions may have.

wishful thinking

[Raven42rac]

Urging companies who produce competing IM clients to cooperate is as futile as herding cats. While it would be a neat idea, it would get bogged down in the particulars, like overlapping screen names, security, ads, games, plugins, etc. Besides, half the fun of the pc world is having choices.

Re:wishful thinking

[ramzak2k]

would get bogged down in the particulars, like overlapping screen names, security, ads, games, plugins, etc. Besides, half the fun of the pc world is having choices.

I dont know about the hearding cats part but other issues do have solutions

screen names wouldnt be a problem - you log in with specific domain names along with the user name.

ADS- They could set up a definite number of messages after which a link to an ad can folow automatically with the message or maybe they could make it a little more sophisticated so that depending on the service the user logs in to, he receives AD banners from that service (just as it is today but with a modification to allow for switches)

security : We know how badly individual companies handle security issues already. When companies get together and work on common standards my belief is that this can only get better, although i dont have examples to prove my point.

games,plugins: that have already been developed can still be part of the regular clients - they dont form an essential part of IM experience anyways. developing new ones for the integrated client also shouldnt be a problem.

some cheap IM solutions

[ramzak2k]

Turbonotes - we used it during the time when IMs were banned at our workplace. Its pretty neat - allows for sending messages using computer names.

Fomine messenger is another i have heard of and seems to work the same way.

The impressive part about these cheap solutions is that they dont require any server running and work well as standalones.

Lazy financial companies

[gerardrj]

Why don't the financial companies in quesion get together and decide amongst themselves what IM system they will all use? Seems to me that would solve their problems and keep a healthy competition amogst the current services.

While their at it, why don't get demand that all keyboard manufacurers all use the same exact layout. Or that all cars use the same size/type tires?

Sametime et. al

[LinuxHam]

The natural Sametime client is pretty raw.

IBM has been developing a new Sametime client for internal use only for quite some time. It runs on Sash, IBM's RAD (sort of) platform. The external "weblication gallery" there is a subset of the internal one. What's really nice is that the "weblication manager" automatically updates managed apps a few times a week, without requiring a reboot. Its really very cool. Here is the Redbook on Sash.

OCD breeding environment? Anyone? Beuler?

[pedro]

A constantly same work environment with no unanticipated stimulus (hopefully NOT from the PHBs) is antithetical to mental health and creativity.
That's why workers with (small w) windows are more productive than those without.
Nobody can focus on a particular task without relief for more than a finite, task dependent period of time without losing focus, and becoming inefficient.
Sorry, Mr. PHB wannabe, but this is a property of ALL neurological systems, from flatworms on up the ladder.
What one is accustomed to, one ceases to pay attention to. Which leads to a mind inhabited by one big 'think within the box' hummmmm....
I'm gonna guess you're a 20ish business sk001 grad that fantasises that he actually possesses a clue or t00.
Guess what?
YOU'RE A MORON!
You know *nothing*.
Life does not work in the infantile 'gimme, gimme' fashion that you seem used to thinking in.
You do NOT own a plantation, and your workers, in order to do good work(s) for you, must be attracted to you via your glowing personality and obvious democratic ideals.
Otherwise..
Well.. you know the rest.
I had a physics teacher that put this one on a final:
'Joe Physics is sentenced to death.
The height of his guillotine is precisely 10 cubits.
We had to convert.
(lots of stuff about neck diameter and coefficients of friction slicing through flesh)
Will his head fall into the basket?'
Yes/No?

This guy was a BOFH par excellance.

Re:OCD breeding environment? Anyone? Beuler?

[Wiwi Jumbo]

Anyone make any sense out of that??

Re:OCD breeding environment? Anyone? Beuler?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he just likes to spout out. Hmm...making broad generalizations, insulting people that he's never met, giving no background on himself, saying things like "clue or t00," and going off on some bit about guillotines and heads being chopped off. Yeah definite spoutage going on here. Move along, folks, move along. Nothing to see here.

Re:OCD breeding environment? Anyone? Beuler?

[pedro]

Sorry if that was a tad incoherent, but it hit all the notes that I intended.
The thing about loppings of heads should have been more closely targeted towards the wannabe inclinations of the poster.
My segue'(sp?) sucked.

The plan for NextGen IM (non)service

[Em Ellel]

Ok, I'll start off by saying I am not familiar with Jabber, so please do not flame me if it does what I am about to describe - which is "Peer to peer IM services."

Not client P2P, but server P2P. Follow the SMTP/IRC model. Anyone, ISP, company, whomever, can set up an IM server, just like they currently set up email servers (hell, you can probably combine the two.) Your IM name is similar to email address user@server. The client logs in to their IM server (user1@server1). When they try to lookup another user (user2@server2), the server opens a connection to server2.

If done right, all connections should be SSL encypted. And no more than 2 servers involved in any conversation. Like SMTP, the client uses standard protocol to talk to server and can log into any server he has an account with. The servers talk to each other and can negotiate common set of features (again like SMTP).

Like SMTP, this model is pretty scalable, and independant of a central server/service. But unlike SMTP, it can be build to be near real time and reliable and without large legacy overhead associated with email.

Unlike IRC, there is no need to keep a large number of servers always in sync for every message. A lifespan of the message is between client1 - server1 -server2 - client2.

The protocol is open so anyone can run their own server, their own client, etc. Large company like AOL/Yahoo/etc. can sell/give away their own accounts (like email accounts now) but any ISP can easily throw in this as service. No matter who your provicer is, you can communicate with anyone.

For a large company, like the financial companies mentions, it would be easy to run an internal server that can have secure connections with their partners - one that never even has to leave private networks - like internal email or in the olden days Lotus Notes peering modem networks (anyone still remember those?) . The security implications of this alone are worth the trouble for them. And if they are concerned with logging everything, it would be as easy as logging email if they are running their own servers (I do not like this, but I am sure it will be needed).

All in all, this is not all that different from SMTP, but SMTP is aging and has too much overhead to accomplish this. But it will be duplicating much of SMTP purpose and I can even see it replacing SMTP all together.

The two biggest problems I see is a - the big guys will not like this - the only way to shove ads down your throat is to make you use THEIR service and THEIR client - and there will be no reason to. But if it gains enough momentum, it can happen. The bigger problem I forsee is SPAM. Not sure how to keep it down without compromising the whole model.

It's my dream, what do ya think?

-Em

Re:The plan for NextGen IM (non)service

[prockcore]

"Ok, I'll start off by saying I am not familiar with Jabber, so please do not flame me if it does what I am about to describe - which is "Peer to peer IM services.""

I'm not going to flame you, but I am going to tell you that yes, you just described Jabber exactly. I send an IM to my friend bob@bobchat.com, and my IM server, talks to the server located at bobchat.com and passes the IM, which in turn passes it to Bob, if he's online, if he's not online, then it just holds onto the IM for him until he is.

The protocol is completely open, it's 100% XML.

Another nice Jabber feature is that people can't get "presence" info from you (they have no idea if you're signed on, away, or what-not) unless you allow them. So the added privacy is nice too.

So why don't you head on over to jabber.org and set yourself up a server. Jabber even supports Whiteboards now.

Re:The plan for NextGen IM (non)service

[Em Ellel]

The protocol is completely open, it's 100% XML.


I am drooling already.

I have to say, I like coming up with a cool idea and then finding out that someone has not only already came up with it, but it's already developed.... Maybe I should post my plan for world peace....

Off to download jabberd.

-Em

Usenet

[blair1q]

Marketing and fey technologism will never replace the central hub of the Internet.

--Blair

AIM interoperability

[AntiNorm]

Wasn't one of the conditions of the AOLTW megamerge that AIM must be essentially opened up, allowing competing IM programs to interoperate with it? What happened to that, or am I missing something?

Re:AIM interoperability

[Anonymous Coward]

iChat, Apple's new IM client is the *first* (only) AOL-authorized 3rd-party AIM-interoperable client. Comes with Mac OS 10.2. It's buggy but the chat bubble UI is surprisingly decent. Apple.com iChat info

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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External motives

[Niadh]

In other news, some of the top Wall Street brass asked the internet today if they wouldn't mind picking one IM protocol and port to make it easier to ban/snoop at work. The internet responded by eating the free lunch provided for the meeting, and then promptly leaving.

Re:External motives

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder about this myself, my stupid company is about to block all IMs. It's all about control I guess.

Assnine. Really.

[Mulletproof]

My first question... Why? Beyond the fact that it'd make our lives as consumers easier. It's like pleading with the 5 major ketchup makers in the US to sit down and brand one ketchup. I could use any number of products as an analogy, but I have to ask, why don't these great almighty 5 finacial firms just sit down and -gasp!- Pick one! Sure, it'd make our lives easier, but "they" generally don't care about you or me, so I ask: What is the real reason? What's going on behind the scenes? Offhand, I'm thinking one system would be easier for someone to control, level taxes against on, whatever. Speculation, but my spider sense is tingling... No, that's just heart burn. Nevermind.

Re:Assnine. Really.

[ramzak2k]

ketchup analogy is so wrong.
If the financial companies were pleading Adobe & Macromedia to come up with one solution instead of photoshop and fireworks, ketchup would certainly work.In that case you would be dealing with specific products that are used independently. ketchups are not used with one another or photoshop with fireworks.

A closer analogy would be telephones. How would it be if two different bell babies would allow outgoing calls only to their customers ? Working out a standard for inter-communication in that case would be most logical.

Re:Assnine. Really.

[Anonymous Coward]

You got a problem with ketchup? If you don't like ketchup then get the hell out!

Re:Assnine. Really.

[Primordiax]

> It's like pleading with the 5 major ketchup
> makers in the US to sit down and brand one
> ketchup.

No, it is like pleading with the 5 major ketchup makers in the US to sit down and use the same standard for measurement and ingredient listing.

And guess what, the FDA does that. Just look at the label.

hey people

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot sucks nowadays. soooo.....

Quit Slashdot.

Internal IMs

[Alizarin Erythrosin]

If you're just looking for a way to communicate internally, as a supplement (or even replacement) to email I would suggest a program I found surfing the net. I didn't write it but I've been playing around with it on a few computers in the lab where I work and it's pretty nifty.
"Peer to peer network messenger"

Gaim!

[rlangis]

As these all in one messenger programs like Trillian [ceruleanstudios.com] become the de-facto standard...

Don't forget Gaim! Gaim ROCKS as an open-source multi-protocol IM client. Oh hell, and today they even posted an alpha for win32. What is the world coming to?

You are an idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Xbox is big lol!

This would be a good thing

[term0r]

Where I work we all _used_ to use ICQ as our instant messaging client, which was great for phone messages and just leaving messages for people when they were away from their desk. We all predominantly used Windows, so we just used the Mirabilis client, with a couple of people using Licq (ie. myself at home).

This was all great, until an employee refused to use ICQ and wanted to use MSN. Some people have converted to Trillian, some people are with ICQ, and one person on MSN. I myself hate Trillian, and cannot find a good client that supports both MSN and ICQ so have stuck with Mirabilis ICQ. For the ICQ users to contact the MSN user we have gone back to the archaeic form of post-it notes.

What we need is a system that lets people use their favourite client, possibly with some alterations, on a general chat network. Then we can have the users that love their MSN client talking happily to the users using their ICQ client, maybe even chatting to some Yahoo Instant Messaging users. Sounds great!

Common IM protocal = easier control

[ayeco]

It's simple, they are asking for this because it would then be easier to monitor, shutdown, and manage their employees who use it as a distraction.

ICQ?

[Joheines]

It seems like most posters here are using AOL, Yahoo or MSN. I have the feeling this must be something exclusively American.
Here, in Germany, I have about 100 contacts on my ICQ contact list and have never felt the need for some other messaging client, like those mentioned above. Even in my company, everyone's using ICQ; except for the time when the ICQ 8 protocol broke licq compatibility, when we had to use Yahoo for a while to talk to our Linux users.
How about you? Why do so many people use AIM? Because it comes pre-installed with AOL? Or MSN? Just because it so annoyingly presents itself in every new Windows XP install?
ICQ was there first; long before the others even started to think about it, it has the most features (even if about 90% are useless, childish crap) and there's even plenty of anti-ad cracks ;-).

Re:ICQ?

[jquirke]

Interesting.. I remember I started using IM in 1998 (ICQ) at the age of 13, in the earlier days before ICQ spam etc.

These days Instant Messaging is something everyone I know uses - instead of "call you tonight" it's "talk to you on MSN tonight". 99% of the people I know who use IM in Australia use MSN, and I think that's mostly because "everyone uses it", so, even if they dislike MSN, they use it anyway in order to talk to everyone.

In the last two years my contact list has multiplied by 10, as EVERYONE uses it, probably as much, or MORE than they would use the telephone (most people I know are under 20).

A friend I know from the US who lives here now told me that MSN however was not "the standard" for IM communication there however. He said AOL had the lion's share of the IM users.

I still have an ICQ account and jabber account, however I really don't have a need for them, as there are probably only about 5 contacts in total on these services that aren't on my MSN list.

What this is really about

[smiff]

Internet service providers already pass the cost of bandwidth onto their customers. There is no reason to charge again just because their customers are using a certain type of (very low cost) service. Especially when the customers on each side of the communication benefit equally from the mutual conversation.

Like so much we read today, this is really about control. The financial institutions have large investments in AOL/Time-Warner, Microsoft, and Yahoo. They would like nothing more than for an elite club to control and profit from instant messaging. They know that if something isn't done quick, Jabber will take over as the de facto standard and eliminate the profit opportunity.

It looks to me like they are trying to form an organization, similar to the DVD-CCA, which would dictate payment and conduct requirements amongst member companies. The organization (let's call it Chatter) would form an artificial barrier to entry for startup vendors. If you want to enter the instant messaging market, you will have to pay a modest fee ($100,000) to read the protocol specifications, and agree to pay an annual fee to communicate with the other vendors.

Each member of Chatter would maintain their own servers. If you want your servers to communicate with other Chatter members, you have to become a member yourself. It does not matter if you're running a Jabber server, AIM server, or some other instant messaging server. If you want to communicate with the vast majority of IM users, you have to join Chatter.

In the end, almost all instant messages will be filtered through a few small companies. In order to pay for the artificial costs (and of course generate extra revenue), vendors will force advertisements upon their customers, track who people communicate with, and otherwise turn all aspects of life into a commercial venture. Who knows, maybe they'll also archive conversations for law enforcement.

What needs to be done, is for someone to smack them hard with an anti-trust suit. Of course, we all know that will never happen. If people would just switch to Jabber (before the formation of an organization like Chatter), this would all become a non-issue.

Re:What this is really about

[ostiguy]

Uh no. Not everything is a conspiracy. US finservices companies now are required to log all email and IM for 6 years. Loging IM is probably a PITA because of all the different standards. It would make their life easier if they had one standard that they could easily log, use internally, and yet all use it for web based CRM stuff - allow customers to IM them for questions, etc.

Re:What this is really about

[modipodio]

True not everything is a conspiracy ,However I dont know about you but it would not supprise me in the least if a cartel or something close to what the original poster said did happen and I would not call his opinion a conspiracy as I would Imagine that if such a state of affairs did eventually come about the negotiations preceeding the formation of such a cartel would not ,(for the most part), be done in shady backrooms with the lights off but in an open and blatent manner as the two biggest players who have the most to lose from jabber are aol/microsoft and I dought they would care if the majority of there users knew about such a cartel and even if they did would they really be likely to do any thing at all about it.

Re:What this is really about

[smiff]

Not everything is a conspiracy.

This is true. I originally started writing assuming that AOL was trying to monopolize the IM industry, while Microsoft et al were trying to do the same thing. Whether it's a conspiracy or not does not matter. If the major IM vendors go ahead with an interoperable standard, the result is likely to be no different than the consipiracy I described.

Where's bitwise?

[llamaluvr]

I can't believe they didn't invite these guys to the IMSB meeting.

[OT] Directory names in Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

You can, you just can't do it in explorer. Try a command prompt and type "md .test" or something.

IM in banks...

[willis]

Wassup -- I used to work on an IM project (jabber based) at an investment bank. There's a couple things floating around here that I don't think people are getting ::

1. the messages
It's not about just messaging "wassup" and other time-wasters back and forth to people. It's often two traders on different sides of the floor communicating prices back and forth, being able to IM clients from some research tool, broadcasting large market events/news to everyone at once, tech support getting IMed when systems start going through the death throes (followed by pages, etc). It might be getting IM'd and having the message go to a pager if you're away from your desk, or to email if your pager is down.

2. productivity
Working on multinational teams, or in different buildings, or using chatrooms to say stuff like "I'm taking down the test system" when you don't want to disrupt the guy next to you (and let 10 other developers descretely know what the story is) enhance productivity. Sure, there may be some bullshit floating around on IM, as well, but investment bank IT people are pretty industrious as a whole (at least from what I've seen), and a good number of employees over the entire firm take desk lunches -- implying they'll stay on task pretty well.

3. logging/external service providers
A big advantage to running an IM through your firm is that you can log everything (good for SEC, etc). I sincerely doubt that the banks are looking at having all of their internal stuff go through MSN/external or AOL/external. Anything that happens is going to be kept local unless it HAS to go outside.

4. The current mess
My company runs an proprietary chat server, jabber, sametime, and some yahoo gateway, and probably more crap that I don't know about. It'd be BRILLIANT if everybody (including clients) could standardize on one message format -- it could save all of us loads of trouble.

5. jabber
As good as jabber is in theory, the open source server components used to be pretty rough (last fall). The commercial stuff might be nice, but I remember spending loads of time hacking at the XDB/XML database and thinking "Damn, this is really not flexible for enterprise-level usage" (i.e. 20-80,000 users, multiple continents/offices/divisions). It would be nice if everyone standardized on it and everything was made bank-reliable (a system going down can literally mean millions of dollars lost). Maybe all the banks should devote a few good programmers each to fixing it up, or donate a mil to the jabber foundation or something.

Just a few random points (I'm in a hurry)

I have 3

[t_allardyce]

I use ICQ, AIM and MSN, i have friends on each who only use that system. It doesn't really cause a problem, i've tried jabber and trillian but i never got used to them. My main problem is implementation: often, if i use a non-official client to tie things together, there are missing features. One of my friends uses jabber and a gateway, they appear on my ICQ list but there are problems, sometimes they appear offline when they're not, and visa versa. I like to have the official clients installed so i know that im getting the same as everyone else, no missing profiles, or profiles with the ends clipped off, no online errors, no lost messages etc. I have 3 clients running on windows, even MSN isnt that resource hungry :) so i just live with it.

Yes, IM is very messy, unlike email there is just no standard protocol that fits the bill (irc? no).

Re:I have 3

[Anonymous Coward]

"visa versa"?

Trusting your employees

[RatFink100]

The trap I think you've fallen into here is to think that because something can be abused that it will be, on a large scale.

The fact is that aside from a certain initial novelty factor - most employees will spend most of their time focussing on their job. They'll occasionally use the IM for personal stuff, just like they make the odd personal phone call or email. If they abuse that then it'll show up in the quality of their work, because a few geniuses aside, most people can't make 2hours output look like 8. So there are always ways to spot and deal with lazy people. But if you start out assuming your workforce is lazy what does that say about you as an employer?

The remaining questions are - is it useful and is it safe. I suspect that it'll be more useful in some types of job than others. I work in Tech Support and we used to have a team based in 3 different countries. IM was very useful. Since then we've been centralised and we don't use it so much. (Note - we weren't ordered not to use it - we just stopped because it's no longer useful)

As for safety - it's definitely something that should be protected behind a firewall. I don't know the details of that but I assume it can be done.

Re:Trusting your employees

[Anonymous Coward]

are you kidding? Any joe can make 2 hours output look like 8 in the corporate world. In fact, that "productive" molly with her nose down in cubicle 813 is only putting in 4 hours of "real" work. And when she makes manager, it'll drop to 2 (and she'll shine next to the other managers who give at most, 1 hour to work)

Re:Trusting your employees

[saskboy]

You can trust your employees, but if you give them a tool with no guidelines on how to use it without abuse, they might not know how to use it productively. At the very least if they are allowed IM, they should be asked to create an account specifically for contacting fellow employees, or strictly business contacts. If they want to add their wife[husband], then I don't see a problem. Like you said, you can spot underachievers.

Re:the wheel OK maybe.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess what makes me nervous is when you append Yahoo or AOL to a service that gives me the willies. What is considered internal and what is considered external? How much information leaves the company on the way to this person that you want to send a message to? Thanks for the answers so far. Realize that I use emacs, lynx, and I don't have a cell phone or pager.

Make it peer-to-peer, and use what you have.

[Pig Hogger]

Use what you have.

With the current available OPEN protocols, there no reason why it can't be achieved.

Use e-mail (SMTP+POP/IMAP), and TALK.

Talk is peer-to-peer. No need to go through a server that can be brought down.

The e-mail part is to disseminate your IP address when it changes. The chat application simply e-mails your IP address to your correspondant's e-mail addresses; the chat client looks periodically for those specially marked messages, and updates it's own IP address database.

Big banks need not worry, as they have fixed IP addresses; their small fry, when they connect, simply sends out a flurry of small messages to all the correspondents.

And to remove the risk of flaky ISP mail servers, the program could connect directly to the big company servers; a special protocol could be used in case the ISP blocks port 25; heck, make it HTTP on port 80!

This way, the system is completely open, and doesn't need any commitees to implement in three years.

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs ^^^ Talking on the

[Anonymous Coward]

phone in a 2nd language or to someone for whom english is a 2nd language is MUCH more difficult than face to face conversations or communication via fax or IM. They have perfect spelling and grammar on Trillian, I would imagine, because they had the time to go back over everything several times and use a spell checker.
If you have to talk on the phone, speak slower and with as few idioms as possible in a normal tone of voice without being condescending. NOT an easy task.
-
By the way, your explanation is the first to actually make me think this is worth the trouble. Mostly. Almost.

And you thought Open Source users were cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the richest institutions in the world (excepting the US government) get together and refuse to even pay a cent for what they want. Every single one of them has tons more money than Microsoft. In fact, they're the ones that made (and can break) it.

They don't even have anything costructive to say other than "gimme." There are good alternatives out there. Something like a program I use, Imici, not only provides interoperability with ALO, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber (as well as it can), but provides a secure, internal deployment option. They even have free clients (and network) for personal use.

I don't work for Imici, but I'm a very happy customer.

Re:And you thought Open Source users were cheap

[Primordiax]

> Every single one of them has tons more money than Microsoft.

Um........

I hate to break it to you, but there are very few COUNTRIES with more money than Micrsoft, and even less COMPANIES with more money than Microsoft.

It happens to be one of the wealthiest companies in the entire world. It is up there with GM, GE, etc.

Re:And you thought Open Source users were cheap

[Master of Transhuman]

What is this, a joke?

Microsoft does $28 billion. That is NOWHERE NEAR GM, GE, IBM, HP, and quite a few other companies. They do $50-100 billion....some do more than $100 billion...

Don't confuse stock value in the go-go '90's with actual revenue...

Re:I wrote a paper about IMs in =====: @)

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, some people feel that without personal contact, there is NO team building. But you have a good point. Am I to understand though to really make IM work the user must interact with the IM agent so as to keep everyone aware of the users status?

Re:shame...Trust me.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't want a bunch of house wives from New Jersey getting together to wield influence either. And basically we the people should only be worried if these corporations suck all this innovation into a big black hole that never sees the light of day again.

Re:[OT] Directory names in Windows Or even better

[Anonymous Coward]

Try md .ðëéêùèduh

Re:Here's your problem...OH mY GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

RealityMAN strikes again. That is exactly the same way I feel about IM. I have yet to get a clear answer out of people but if an IM client needs an IM server run externally(as in outside the firewall at AOL) then this AOL Yahoo MSN IM sounds like another wonderful 'feature' that ends up on my security alert list.

...request to make aquisitions easier?

[haaz]

Why on earth would financial companies ask IM companies to cooperate? Are they suddenly finding their brokers and back-room deal makers suddenly IMing all the time? Wouldn't they have banned such behavior from their intranets and extranets?

Sounds to me like they want to make the IM companies easier to acquire. (How you can build a company on something as nebulous as IMing is beyond me.)

There MUST be a superior open source IM CLIENT

[Primordiax]

I really hope someone like jabber or GAIM successfully creates a viable alternative to AIM, MSN, and all the rest. But the key is not the protocol. The key (imho) is the client.

People hardly even talk about ICQ now, but it was the former king of the block for IM programs. AIM whupped its butt largely because people seem to prefer the way the AIM client operates.

Someone just needs to write a more feature rich/easy to use client that piggybacks onto the other networks. Open source it and the community will make sure to keep it operating with the existing IM networks.

As more and more people use this client, the necessity of it working with AIM's protocol becomes less and less.

That is the best way to ensure that IM does not lie in the hands of a few huge corporations. This is a very important battle because IM *is* a significant killer ap that is used so extensively that it cannot be controlled by AOL and Microsoft.

It would be nice if some of the open source communities that handle things like Apache, Linux, etc. would work on a top notch IM client.

Financial companies???

[SCHecklerX]

Great. Just what I need is my financial information running out in the open, probably in an insecure fashion.

People, if you need to communicate within your company with some sort of IM, just set up an IRC server for pete's sake!!!

It's called SMTP

[jonadab]

I thought we already had a Simple Message Transfer Protocol.

Okay, so not all email clients do the interrupt-the-user-at-
once-so-he-can-reply-to-th e-message-instead-of-get -work-done
thing, but that's strictly a client behavior issue and no
reflection on the protocol. If you take any random mail
client and rig it to burden the network by checking the
server continuously for new messages and pop to the front of
the user's workspace with an annoying beep every time an
incoming message is received and steal keyboard focus, you've
pretty much got IM, but without the proprietary protocols.