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New VOIP App. Profiled
sniggly writes "Cnet News.com has an interview with Kazaa co-founder Janus Friis about their latest product Skype. Skype is a p2p VOIP technology that quote '... is addressing all the problems of legacy VoIP solutions: bad sound quality, difficult to set up and configure, and the need for expensive, centralized infrastructure.' Windows only beta client available."
Pop-up ads and spyware! Now when you mention the right world, it'll be replaced with an ad. "I'm going to go drink a soda" becomes "I'm going to go drink a refreshing ice-cold Coca-Cola."
"Making modifications to the Materials or creating derivative works based on the Materials is prohibited, as is using the Materials on any networked computer environment or other website."
Huh? Then how the heck can you use it?
The next wave of bell propaganda will be "If it's not copper, it causes terrorism".
Sounds like a good idea, after all Apple's trying to make video chat easy to use for the mases... Maybe Kazaa should also implement the same specs that Apple is with their iChat.
use teamspeak: teamspeak.org
has excellent sound quality, is free, has windows and linux clients and servers...
According to their FAQ there is no spyware. However it suggests that there is an Skype to fixed landline phone / mobile phone feature on the horizon. So they're marketing plan is probably, create a viral product, get everyone to use it, add a valuable service ( make a cheap call to your friends mobile on the other side of the globe ). So I don't think they need the spyware this time, and the apps quality is quite good also, although I would like to see conference calls implemented. Just hope we'll get a linux client soon.
The 911 argument is and will come every time that VoIP is mentioned mostly due to the huge effort that went into building the system by alot of players. Getting the physical addresses changed and databased was big and kudos to those involved. This 911 effort is now built out and everyone is mapped so now all voice services can take advantage. Do not forget that every cell phone and telephone in the USA is required by federal law to be usable to call 911 out of the box and that no service activation or account holder is required.
Disclaimer: I use Vonage, turned off Bell South, and am a Geek.
There are several similar applications out there, the oldest I can remember off-hand is Speak Freely which does secure p2p.
Right now we use Ventrilo internally at work - it's not secure, but we can do conferencing in super quality with VERY low bandwidth! It's excellent!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
I went to the Skype page. It says you can "Make free phone calls - all over the world!".
So I gleefully download the client and setup an account.
Wrong. No capability to actually call anyone's telephone.
Q1. key exchange?
And the key exchange is handled by... ? AES is a symmetric cypher, so there has to be some kind of key exchange. I'd like to know what that mechanism is, or if there's just one key and they can listen in on anything. After all, who'd need spy-ware if the whole thing was insecure by design? Oh, and if they've reinvented a bunch of cryptologic libraries, look out - there will most likely be fresh exploits to be had.
Q2. Why the lock-in?
Okay, so they're trying to make a buck or two here eventually, but touting a proprietary protocol as being a good thing is usually not a good sign. People buy Microsoft Office though, so I guess it's not that big a deal for the average person.
Suggestion. Would someone (or some group) restart development on Speak Freely?
Okay, so this is a bit of a sidetrack, but it's a valid point. There is a large body of tested code available for doing most of this kind of thing, and it's called Speak Freely. However, on the downside, John Walker (Mr. AutoCad to you) has decided to cease development, as of August 1 2003 (yes, that's in the past). All the code is at SourceForge, (both Unix and Windows) so you can go wild with it.
Something to think about.