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Gaim Speaks Out on MSN Ban
joejg writes "As FootNotes is reporting, the developers at Gaim have responded to the ban Microsoft is placing upon users of third-party clients accessing the MSN protocol. It appears that starting October 15th I will not be able to talk to my MSN friend in South Korea." Gaim's site is more optimistic, saying they may still be able to connect, only without a license to do so.
A possible method to block out other 'rogue' clients which was used by AIM for example, is to have the 'challenge' a random number/offset, and the 'response' being the value in the executable at that offset. Hence the only way to connect is to have a copy of the entire executable, any 3rd party clients would need a copy of this and may be breaking some 'DMCA crap' in doing so.
Of course, another method is to just use PKI, but then extracting the key out of the MSN client for use in login may not be seen as a breach of copyright/other rights/DMCA crap etc.
I.O.U One Sig.
I read on bugtraq that one of the anonymous sites had to change the client after federal pressure to provide a back door.
Could this be related? Could M$FT be making some changes for "Patriot Act" related requests that makes 3rd party clients incompatable?
Or am I just getting really paranoid =)
is that people think nothing of the power they give to a third party when they agree to use private and centralized systems such as AIM, or MSN. These systems change often, and with unpublished protocol specifications, interoperability is a mere hack that can be broken at the whim of the company.
What we really need is some sort of Jabber based universal chat system for example. (Or, without trying to start a holy war, maybe we can avoid excessive markup and not use XML).
I use Fire on OS X, and I can interface with both Jabber and AIM. Often I'll set my away message on AIM to: "Download Trillion or Fire to talk to me on the superior Jabber network."
Or... I know! How about a nix `talk` revival!
Give it a go.
I mean who really cares... MS IM in my opinion isnt even that great of a service, let them go.
Children, mainly. Many parents in the Netherlands at least have a vague idea that while chatting in general is very dangerous for their children, MSN is safe. So my daughters friends are allowed to use MSN but not ICQ or AIM. I know it's silly, but they actually reason MSN == Microsoft == safe.
Will this also affect clients such as trillian?
Let me get this straight... They're stopping the development of OutlookExpress, InternetExplorer won't be available for download any more and now they're seriously limiting who can connect to MSN Chat?
:)
Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming!
What a fucking moron. If I could log in right now I'd expose the prick's identity to everyone.
This really reminds me of the whole netscape / IE thing, except this time they are taking on the IM side of things.
Honestly i have to say that MSN messenger is a great tool. The new additions it has added make total sense,
video conferencing, audio conversation, games.... to me these are totally great things to implement and make a whole lot of sense.
Hey wait a second... video, audio, games,, all through MSN? Is there some sort of trend here? Do MS have plans to continue pushing content onto MSN exclusive setup? If they do to me this is really really dangerous, think about the critical mass they will be able to pull in no time at all. MSN will continue to ship with windblows, no doubt about that.
Perhaps I am subscribing to a conspiracy theory here, but to me it makes sense. MS has pulled stuff like this in the past and will continue to pull stuff like this in the future. Unless they keep dominating, shareholders get angry.
To me the only way this will go away would be to make a better, open alternative, at the moment there isn't.
I actually don't know anyone who uses MSN. And most of my friends aren't very computer-savvy. Everyone I know uses AIM, simply because it got their first. They all signed up for AIM accounts in high school 5-6 years ago before MSN existed (or before it was big anyway), and so they've all kept them now. The people at my college pretty much exclusively use AIM too -- it's assumed you have an AIM account, 'cause otherwise you won't be able to talk to anyone, since that's what pretty much every single person at the college uses.
Really I was under the impression that nobody used MSN/Yahoo/Jabber/whatever. But I suppose this might vary regionally.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
First off, realize that Microsoft has no right to demand a license to write compatible software to connect to their service. Reverse-engineering is and always has been a legitimate practice and, if you're trying to achieve interoperability, is expressly granted by copyright law. Microsoft demanding a license to write compatible IM software is exactly analogous to Pacific Bell/QWest/BellSouth demanding a license from Radio Shack to manufacture compatible telephone sets -- which is to say, they can't.
As such, I recommend you deal with Microsoft as if you were in the superior position (because you are). Your first question to them should be, "What are you going to do for us to make this worth our while?" Since you have ably demonstrated you're willing to go ahead on your own, do not give Microsoft any other choice other than to offer you a sweet deal.
And if they fail to do so, walk out. Remember: you are in control, and under no obligation to agree to anything. Your right to achieve interoperability exists whether Microsoft "licenses" it to you or not.
Best of fortune to you.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I really haven't looked into the architecture of the MSN IM network or its protocol, as I have only used an "IM" once or twice.
;)
However, it is still very possible, as I am sure you all know, to work around this "ban".
First, does MSN IM run under WINE?
If not, one option, I suppose, would be to create a sort of "proxy" that can sit on the Windows machine, and, for communications with any specified users, intercept outgoing communication, and after performing a conversion based upon some mapping between the two protocols, send it to a Jabber or AIM network. Do the reverse for incoming Jabber or AIM communication. I don't know, but I would imagine that some reasonable mapping between the protocols can be established for at least basic communications.
Obviously it could become fairly complicated, but then I suppose so could getting all of your contacts to change their IM client. I've come acorss people with quite a number of them.
Why we want faster and more intrusive ways of being remotely pestered in one's own home, I suppose I just don't always know
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
More than likely the day will come when MS adds some custom feature that will require some ActiveX on the PC and some custom version browser on the Mac. Then you can use only their MSN browser (basically their next generation browser for the Mac - but it only runs if you subscribe to MSN)
Second, computer users in general would rather not have to know how computers work, Linux users included. If that weren't true, how do you explain Gnome, KDE, Linux "Live" CDs, DHCP, the Mandrake installer, pico, perl :-), or for that matter, X11 as a whole?
Third, AFAIK, Apple wrote that AOL client. It's official because AOL said so, and that's the extent of it.
Fourth, Microsoft sold all of its non-voting stock from that deal a few years ago almost immediately after the deal was completed. It does not, as far as I am aware, own any part of Apple.
In short, as Samuel Langhorne Clemens once put it, "It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
Has anyone put together an IM protocol that is truly P2P and doesn't require a server? Finding your contacts would be done by linking with other IM nodes. From what I read even Jabber requires a server.
It is not paid by advertising, it is an integrated part of windows (according to MS), and as such, windows users already paid for it. The ads are just another form of spam, and users installing an alternative program are just compared to people installing spamfilters.
So, if advertising is the reason for blocking access for clients that filter out spam, IMHO Microsoft can scream about being anti-spam themselves as much as they want, they are still pro-spam and spammers.
My preference is to simply stop using the software when they cut me off.
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No kidding. :P The thing is, open source conflicts with this entire business model, unless extremely well built cypto is used. Which, by the way, isn't an easy thing to implement. Codewise or legally!
/. trolls!
Otherwise you change maybe a couple of lines of source, which any 1st year college student, or anyone who actually likes coding can do. --> Not that well built crypto is hard to find mind you, it's that it's hard to integrate into this kind of thing by anyone who cares about the technical specifications AND the legal specifications involved. Even if "Open Source" crypto is used, legal models currently prevalent my preclude such from being acceptable.
It's easy! (to make "a profit!", and almost exactly how proposed by numerous
Just make your product available to everyone, until such time a significant market share becomes reliant upon such technology. By reliant, I mean, that the total cost of changing over to somthing else is more than the cost of just paying whatever fees that the license holder deems fit to be acceptable.
This, in my opinion, is no better than legalized extortion! Also, how is this NOT leveraging a monopoly?
http://microsoft.order-5.com/Messenger/
Maybe you'd better drop support for it and let someone else develop the MSN plugin (someone outside of the "Land of Free").
1) If using MS' service without using the official client is 'freeloading', I still think that it's in MS' interest that we freeload off them, and not one of their competitors. I use GAIM pretty much exclusively, but most if not all of the people on my buddy list use Messenger under Windows. I add a small amount of value to their experience of the service :-), and this makes them marginally more likely to use it (and hence see the ads etc.) whenever they want to talk to me.
2) I suppose an alternative for those who just want to connect would be to try to run Messenger under Wine. I gave it a cursory try, it didn't work straight away and I moved on to something more pressing, but has anyone else tried this with more success?
It's possible they don't...
I haven't actually seen anyone mention this yet, so, why not :-)
MSN Messenger is one of the pieces of 'bundled middleware' that is continuing to cause Microsoft legal troubles under antitrust laws... the last I heard things were moving forward in Europe to do something about it.
If there is ever going to be an antitrust ruling about messenger, I'm pretty sure this will make the ruling harder on Microsoft... maybe they'll have to give $200 million worth of software to schools instead of $150 million :-/
(I personally dislike messenger. Virtually everyone I know uses it simply because it came with Windows. This is the sort of thing antitrust laws are supposed to protect against...)
Not use Hotmail without a Windows system? So? It's their service, they can do whatever they want. Want to have a webmail service which you can use from Linux? Fine, set one up yourself.
There's the barren wasteland known as ICQ, there's aim, there's the ever so buggy yahoo. And a few more out there... I use trillian which works on multiple networks and doesn't support ads. So I don't really care which system I talk over, and I'm sure many people here use multiple systems. It's not like people will be so desperate to stay with MSN that they won't be willing to leave it. What would be really nice though is if Trillian and Gaim go together and came up with a compatible encrypted messaging standard. Then I could just get all my friends to move over to one of them.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
"While it's within their right to do so, it's just one more thing for anti-MS zealots, and really anti-MS anyones to use as fuel"
Who cares about anti-MS zealots? You`re saying that their existance means that MS should modify their behaviour in some way? Why on earth would they want to do that? Legally, morally, financially...just give me one reason. Some people always complain. Just listen to the tin-foil hat people here with stuff like RFID, or cameras to trap speeding motorists or whatever. Both groups are completely ignored by anyone with a brain. You should ignore them too. I do.
"It is not paid by advertising, it is an integrated part of windows"
The app is. But MS has the right to charge a fee for ads to help pay towards the cost of running the network.
> The ads are just another form of spam,
Spam is unsolicited commecial email. But these ads aren't spam - they are solicited by MS. You've chosen to use (and paid for) MS software.
"Microsoft can scream about being anti-spam themselves as much as they want, they are still pro-spam and spammers."
No, their problem with spammers is people making their hotmail system unusable because of obscene or unwanted emails which clog up peoples inbox, cause them to delete wanted emails, and expose children or the easily offended to unpleasant text/images. They also carry the risk of viruses and spyware. This is completely different to an image in a box next to the box you read and write messages in.
Stop your screaming and shouting for just a second and think about it.
The problem with MSN, AIM, Y!IM and so forth is that they are centralised. One entity both controls and pays for the hub of the service without which the service will not function. Obviously they must somehow recoup costs, which they usually do via advertising in the official client.
What we need is a decentralised IM system. We techically already have one in the form of Jabber, but noone uses it for reasons I can't be sure of. I suspect the major problem is the high barrier of entry: you must either use the jabber.com/jabber.org servers (centralisation, again) or install your own Jabber server, which is where things get tricky.
In order to run your own Jabber server, you must have a box somewhere preferably with an always-on connection and static IP. This box must be Internet-accessible, at least on the ports Jabber uses.
Had Jabber been invented around the same time as email and news, ISPs would no doubt run Jabber servers on behalf of their customers as they do with USENET news servers and SMTP servers. Unfortunately, it's now far too late in the game for this to happen. Convincing one ISP to do this would be nearly impossible, so convincing the majority to do it will never happen.
As with most new things on the Internet today, it seems like peer-to-peer is the only answer. The clients must also be the servers, and it should be no harder than simply running the program. Designing an efficient peer-to-peer system for instant messaging which works behind NAT gateways sounds tricky, but not impossible. Is anyone working on this already?
http://amsn.sf.net is the homesite of this nifty msn client that looks and behaves similar to the msn client itself. It's on version 0.80 right now and has already upgraded to msn6.0 emoticons etc. I think they are working on the connection protocol too. Oh yes, btw, though msn 5.0 users on my LAN get disconnected often, I hardly ever do. I guess this is due to protocol incompatibility for the older msn clients..
Only because all my friends are on AIM. I used ICQ in the past, but when I was in high school I would ask all the girls what messager they used and they would say AOL. So I installed it just to talk to a girl or two I knew from high school. Here I am 4 years later using GAIM under Linux to not only talk to my girlfriend but also to talk to my friends. Hell I don't care what I use long has I get to talk to my friends online and program a little at the same time.
From Zero to Hero... Starbuck Zero
Iv'e never had a problem getting to any website that I've actually wanted to visit with Firebird. I've actually had a better experience with Hotmail thru Mozilla than with IE 6.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
It much easier. According to DMCA (music of Village People in the background), if you have some security system build in to protect your copyrighted material, it is illegal for someone to circumvent it. Case in point.
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http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/16
That is why the are building in "security features" in an attempt to set up the garage door opener defense. It seems quite clear from the wording of the new fixes.
Quote: Hi Folks,
As many you have read recently, MSN has decided to no longer support older versions of their clients. Within their announcement, they mention that some third party applications may be affected. Trillian Pro 2.0, which is currently in beta, supports the latest and greatest MSN protocols. The free version of Trillian will be updated in time to reflect the new protocol as well. If we hear anything from Microsoft directly, or find out any more information, we will be sure to let you know first.
Thank you all for your support!
~The Cerulean Studios Team
Looks like Microsoft's plan isn't quite going to hold up. Though I'm moderately worried that Trillian may lose connectivity for Real-World reasons (read: they're gonna get sued).
I stole this sig.
However, I still think Microsoft doing this is like Panasonic creating a phone that only accepts calls from other Panasonic phones.
Exactly. What surprised me the other day was when I purchased a digital cordless handset from Siemens that without hitches worked with my Ericsson base-unit. That's interoperability the computer world doesn't have. Oh, the Ericsson handset also worked with the Siemens base-unit.
we come in peace / shoot to kill