Slashdot Mirror
NY Times on VoIP, Skype Profile and the FBI
securitas writes "The New York Times Business section published a longish profile of P2P VoIP startup Skype, founded by the people that brought you P2P file-sharing client Kazaa. Previously the domain of geeks everywhere, this is significant if only because it seems to signal that VoIP is starting to garner mainstream consumer interest and serious business interest. The article discusses Vonage and a Daiwa Securities telecom report that says Skype 'is something to be scared of, and is probably set to become the biggest story of the year.' Critics dismiss it as hype.
But Skype faces a potential court battle with the FBI. 'Because traffic over Skype is strongly encrypted and distributed over wide-ranging sources, it could hamper authorities' ability to wiretap.' An FBI spokesman says, '... it is something that we are looking into.'
Of course last week's Minnesota federal court ruling that exempts VoIP from traditional telecom legislation doesn't hurt the case for VoIP. The text of the ruling is expected to be available this week. Read the previous Slashdot stories on Skype and the Vonage vs Minnesota case for some background."
Is anyone else reading this article running into a massive flood of 500 Server errors?
I started seeing these about 48 hours ago, and they've gotten to the point where it's just about impossible to read Slashdot.
Is this just me (i.e. ISP set up flaky transparent proxy) or is it affecting others as well?
May we never see th
"But Skype faces a potential court battle with the FBI. 'Because traffic over Skype is strongly encrypted and distributed over wide-ranging sources, it could hamper authorities' ability to wiretap.' An FBI spokesman says, '... it is something that we are looking into.' "
Since when does the FBI have the right to wiretap it's citizens? I have the right to privacy when it comes to my communications.
I can see that the FBI is going to see this as a major security comprimise for the US. What I'm curious about is if this VoIP in the long run will end up running off of a P2P type network, and if so, how will the company make money off of it? Some form of advertisement?
You're just mad because the voices in your head talk to me.
Despite that, VoIP still has one problem: voice is simply less flexible useful than text messaging, for most people.
IMHO, voice is only useful when I'm away from my desk, and this will only work when VoIP marries Wifi, and since widespread Wifi is still going to be a pipedream for at least a year or two, there sits VoIP.
I predict the next generation of small mobile VoIP handsets will be extremely popular with business travellers, and pretty much ignored by the general population.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
First, the FBI does not have the right to demand that new systems go out of their way to support snooping--maybe they do legally, but they shouldn't morally.
Second, there are already encrypted real-time internet communications protocols: Secure AIM comes to mind. If this technology gets blocked because it "can't be wiretapped", then something's fishy: it won't let The Terr'ists do anything They couldn't already do.
Wow, sometimes I wonder about this country.
Long term VOIP is the way to go and I can see the traditional phone number going the way of the DoDo bird. People will find others through directories such as those on IM. That is why MS is so big on Passport. They know that in the future he who controls the directory controls everythng.
Frankly, these guys have a poor reputation: they make a product that is designed to aid breaches of copyright, they use their network to install spyware and possibly worse on their users' computers...
It's hard enough to keep a clean rep (look at Google), but frankly I'd think twice before installing anything with the label "Made by the Guys who Brought You Kazaa!".
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Take a pick... I guess the new thing is that it's the most sneaky P2P developer out there who's doing it as a P2P network. Watch those popups will ya.
Only 51% of it belongs to the Commonwealth, the rest of it is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Well for the time being anyway...
-- "I can't tell the future, I just work there." -- The Doctor
I lo....vve.. my Voi...ce...over....IP.
Other analysts are more skeptical. Eventually, they say, Skype's growth will depend on customers who do not understand peer-to-peer networking or have computer headsets. Moreover, the program works best over broadband connections, which just 16 percent of Americans have at home, according to a May report from the Pew Research Center.
Hmmm. Nice to try to downplay it, but the music industry sure is in an uproar over something that is mostly only for broadband users who know how to use P2P file sharing...namely the swapping of mp3's...and popular music has a smaller base of interested parties. And I don't see that not having a $10 headset is going to cripple the popularity of this.
Everyone uses the phone.
Can I bum a sig?
I use Vonage and it is great, but I have become scared from pending/proposed legislation.
Looking at the history of the net, everything that lawmakers or big companies try to regulate, only makes that technology evolve faster.
If Napster had not gotten its butt kicked, then everyone would have been dl'ing just music from a centralized listing server for the past few years, instead, they forced it to evolve into a de-centralized network that you can download everything from.
Same will happen here hopefully. I used to be scared that they could prevent the free flow of information on the net, but so far, the net has been one step ahead.
Support anti-karma-whoring, click this reg-free NYT link today!
Why can't we just get the google link right out of the gates? Google News
Of what I know, Europe is outside the FBI jurisdiction... But who knows what plans Bush has for the Europeans? Perhaps they need to be liberated and be given US style democracy?
as it appLIEs to the georgewellian fuddite southern baptist freemason life0cide.
those whoreabull foulcurrs best get ready to see the light.
for each of the creator's innocents harmed, there is a badtoll that must/will be repaid by you/US, as the perpetrators of the crimewave against humankind, will not be available to make reparations, after the big flash.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator... more breathing... get ready to see the light.
Written communication became popular, because it was an improvement over word of mouth. Anyone could learn how to do it. It was free at first, but as it caught on, people payed for the priveledge.
Telegraphy became popular, because it was an improvement over commication by postal mail. Anybody could set it up. At first, it was free, but soon people payed for the priveledge.
Telephones became popular, because it was an improvement over communication by telegraph--It circumvented the charges normally associated with communication by wire. And anybody could do it.
The internet became popular, because it was an improvement over communication by telephone. Relaying information from point to point over a public network was cheaper than calling long-distance, and anybody could do it. Soon, people began paying for the priveldge.
Given our own track record, what on earth makes you think your VoIP service is going to be free? Like any other service, infrastructure is paid for by those accessing it. The networks that make it happen don't build themselves, you know.
Its a novelty for now, sure, but 10-20 years from now, you're going to be doing the same thing you're doing now. Paying someone to communicate a message over their medium.
The idea that VoIP is going to remain a free-as-in-beer alternative to traditional phone networks is a pipe dream. Sure, it's a charmingly optimistic to think so, in a cute sort of pat-you-on-the-head sort of way, but..At the end of the day, the one who pays the piper calls the tune.
Bowie J. Poag
That doesn't mean simply the expression of ideas, but also in what manner I express those ideas.
That includes whatever particular language or encoding system I desire to use.
If the FBI wishes to to figure out what my speach means, well, that's up to them kid.
I also have the right to be secure in my papers. Even if those "papers" are digital and I cannot be forced to testify against myself.
Again, the FBI can go scratch.
Once upon a time until a judge agreed that there was sufficient evidence that I had actually commited a crime the FBI had no right to even question my speach or papers in the first place.
Ah, thank God we're fighting for "freedom" now and homey don't play that shit anymore, eh?
KFG
Closed source Skype's proprietary encryption is weak. Easily crackable.
.. so all this is hearsay.
Is RSA affordable when the software is given out free?
Anyway, I dont think they would use high bit encryption anyway.
They have not published any info on how their encryption works
would the shills who pay /. to post nytimes links to get registration please not mod these useful links down.
the above link is legitimate!
If PC's were used to translate voice to text (voice recognition)and at the recieving end, translate the text to voice (voice sythesis), wouldn't the resulting data stream be small text packets that could be easily encoded/decoded and/or hidden in creative ways plus the result would be smaller amount of data to send over the net? (thesound may not be the original speaker, but it may sound cool, and also, the computers could interact with the parties as the decoded text strings could now be recognized by computer programs and the computers could resond to you too, sort of like an application where you could talk to and get a response from search engines (or other computer entities (CYC?, like ask.com) on the net?
That isnt allowed any longer in this world by our governments. What were they thinking?
When they all goto prison for supporting terrorist activities ( you know.. if you want to encrypt you HAVE to be a terrorist ), i guess that ends Kazaa too. All the RIAA has to do now is be patient.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Instead of trying to control the way things turn out to be, they should just deal with it, and make the best with what they've got.
============
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
i am phoning over the net for years using icq and MS netmeeting.
that's just what happens when you try to implement a non-trivial site with perl cgi scripts and mysql...
Please leave these forums! Skype rocks! I chat with folks in New Zealand all the time for free with excellent clarity. Just because Some people use Kazaa to shipe music, you are implying that we all do. Try this on for size you shithead!!! Every criminal who has ever been in jail or who will ever be in jail has breathed oxygen, therefore YOU are a criminal!!! Ya asshole!!! Did you fail logic in college, or did tou fail to reach that level of education? Premise and conclusion, a fallicy. But you criminals would not unserstand that, you are too hyped up on oxygen!!! (classified as a drug in the US Pahramcopia!!!)
Probably the most replys will be about the spyware in kazaa.
This was added by Sharman Networks and was never intended when the original developers made kazaa. They sold it to an interested company (Sharman Networks) which in it's turn abused it.
Second, kazaa was not intended as a tool for illegal fileswapping. It got abused for that because it was possible.
That being said, Skype looks promising if they make the crossplatform thing work (SIP and POTS).
Hopefully they will be able to churn out a Linux and Mac version as well. This could be a good thing for VoIP. But then again, the competition isn't making any big inroads either...
Countries like my previous home of Jamaica, who have a telephone monopoly, are already banning VOIP because it cuts into C&W's telephone revenue. In fact, in the past, there have been police and telecom raids on VOIP users there.
In Jamaica, broadband (including DSL, Wireless Broadband, Satellite Broadband, T1) are being rapidly deployed and the cost is becoming even reasonable. What are the implications of Technology like Skype?
- No central authority to bill or control calls
- Any computer user with 56K and upwards can probably use it
- Not easy (legally) for computer authorities to prevent data transfer between two computer users.
- Not so easy to block ports, since they change
- Cannot block IP address ranges
- Joe sixpack will learn more about VOIP
The only way around this is to outlaw use of the software and shut down the site, but the cat is already out of the bag. If you really think about this, if this technology catches on, then its a bit bite in the chunk of traditional phone company revenue. Is bandwidth costs going to rise as phone companies depend more on that for revenue?At the very least, Skype is going to make introduction of VOIP to the masses super easy. I wish them luck, and I wish that the Phone companies will take their heads out of the sand for a few minutes to see the lay of the land.
Newsfollow.com
One notion is for the Speech Reco engine to parse it into phonemes (small chuncks of words, though that definition is slightly innacurate) and ship those little guys off. It doesn't account nicely for things like 'expression' (changes in pressure and volume of the speech) though. The catch: Recompilation on the far end would probably sound 'wierd.' IE: "Would you like to play a game of chess?" The catch MK II: Languages have different phonemes, and some are so subtle (Chinese, for example) as to be nearly undetectable. The catch MK III: We're talking semi-serious horsepower requirements on the reco side, more then likely. Most of us probably have adequate hardware, but Joe CompUSA probably doesn't yet. Check out Nuance.com, or Speechworks. Both offer pretty decent speech recognition engines, and have whitepapers galore on the topic. I know the more advanced IVR players (such as Interactive Intelligence @ www.inin.com) use them.
Inmate Cycle Volts Amps Ohms
Buenoano
1 2000 9.4 212.8
2 650 2.9 224.1
3 1,900 9.4 202.1
Remeta
1 2,100 9.2 228.3
2 675 2.9 232.8
3 1,850 8.9 207.9
Stano
1 1,600 9.1 175.8
2 550 2.9 189.7
3 1,500 9.0 166.7
Jones
1 1,600 9.1 175.8
2 500 2.9 172.4
3 1,450 9.2 157.6
Davis
1 1,500 10 150
2 600 4.5 133
3 1,500 10 150
Powerinmate of the year is Remeta with 19 KW, runnerup is Buenoano with 18.8 KW far ahead of Jones and Davis who both only achieved a disappointing score of 14.5 KW.
From what I know, Austrailia is outside of Europe....
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
the above link is legitimate, even if it only complies with w3c standards. Fuck you, shill for modding parent down & and will repost this link may times now!
This may seem interesting, but speech recognition would not work because you would end up transmitting the wrong message most of the time with it. It just doen't work good enough to be used like this. Test it yourself. Get AIM, a text-to-speech program, and a speech recognition program and see how accurate it can be.
While some people may complain about it, I have been happy with my first month of using Vonage. I don't make a bunch of phone calls from home typically. In fact, I had really cut back to mostly cell phone usage, but was eating my minutes rapidly on business calls, so decided to give vonage a try to see about the quality and try and dump SBC for good.
Well, after a month of use, I've been fairly happy with it. There have been a few hiccups in communication, but that was mostly related to using eMule with 40k/40k settings (combined with hosting my own web server and email server among other things). I dropped it to 30/30 (using a 1.1Mbps DSL line) and the quality has been pretty close to POTS quality (most of the time it's the same quality, but for some reason, there are a couple places where there are hiccups).
Nowadays, whenever I work out of home, I set my cell phone to forward to my vonage line and have no complaints whatsoever. Nor have I had anyone tell me that the sound quality is bad or have problems understanding me.
It saves me 5$ per month in just base costs, without even using my 500 free long distance minutes. It definitely is a lot more cost effective for me then SBC, and if my next month goes as smoothly as this past month, I will be cancelling my POTS line and not have to deal at all with an RBOC for anything.
-- If you can't laugh at yourself, someone else will do it for you.
You may BELIEVE you have free speech, that is guaranteed by the constitution, but you don't.
You see, they have passed legislation that nullifies the constitution.. time and time again.
And no one stood up to refuse to stand for it. Everyone rolled over and took a reduction in freedom for a perceived increase in security..
Now we are all paying the price... soon even the common man will realize it. And hopefully stand up to fight to regain control.
Retaining freedom is only achieved thru constant diligence.. So few people are willing to sacrifice to do this. Are you?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Since e-mail is an improvement over snail-mail (and possibly phone-alls), do you see everyone paying for it?
While all the previous improvements you mentioned needed new infrastructure, e-mail and VOIP do NOT!! Introducing new applications on the Internet is easy! That's where the end-to-end, dumb network, smart edge nature of the Internet shines!! And that, my friend is where your analogy breaks down.
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
The question is: "does the U.S. government have the right to monitor our daily communications?" If the case would be stated this simply, the Court will have no option but to say "no".
But I do not think that the weasels will ask such a powerful question, nor do I believe that the American people are sharp enough to force them to do so.
This is an idea that has been thought of before, but currently there isn't enough CPU horsepower to really enable it to work well. First of all, the encoding software would need at least 3 different fuzzy logic/artificial intelligence type systems to properly encode your voice. It has to be able to train itself to your vocal cadences over a period of time (say, by using an introduction paragraph that you read and it knows the words from). Secondly, it has to be 100% certain what words you are saying. Thirdly, it has to properly encode into the text possible codes that allow your voice to appear similiar at the decoding end when it is re-speeched.
The third system is already being developed, AFAIK, as I've seen numerous text-to-speech implements that allow you to enter vocal peculiarties into the initial text in order to get the speech portion to sound individual and tailored to the application (accents, lisps, etc).
Should the system be developed and the CPU horsepower be available, you can bet that we'll be seeing tons of interesting applications, especially reduced bandwidth communications over satellite and other wireless implementations. How about 10,000 talk-radio channels instead of 100, over AM radio. Or books-on-CD with maybe 200 books on one CD instead of just 1?
My senior thesis was on first amendment protection of encryption source code. As far as I could tell, this will be THE issue of the next twenty years, so much so that the final sentence of my thesis was "perhaps it's time for another amendment".
Simply put, authorities will regulate this at absolutely any cost, and will trounce over the first amendment in the process. "Speech" has become such a technical legal term, that it's easy for a lawyer to find loopholes around the first amendment by insisting that only "expressive" and not "functional" speech is free. Because source code in general has a highly functional component, the authorities have argued that it does not fall under the first amendment. If that doesn't work, then the national security exception will be used to make sure that encryption can be regulated.
As I'm sure everyone here knows, this is a shortsighted measure to overcome the problem. The "bad guys" will get encryption and learn about it one way or another, whether it's a "national enemy" or a digital bank robber. If we are going to use encryption for all sorts of legitimate uses, such as ecommerce, etc., there is no way to guarantee the security of our national electronic infrastructure unless we use absolutely the best encryption methodologies known to man. Furthermore, I would trust the efforts of the worldwide scientific community working in the open with my own safety in a heartbeat before I would ever trust the NSA, even if they do employ more mathemeticians than anyone else.
So, then what to do about child pornography and all of that other crap? Well, its a fairly intractable problem. I'm just a pragmatist and I feel I can tell when people have not thought through something fully. Saying we should have governments limit the use of encryption as much as possible just does not hold up to scrutiny. I'm as anxious for an answer as the next guy, but I'm still looking for any sight of reason.
My overall feeling, and it's not something I'm very happy about, is that people will just have to learn to become more responsible to one another. Powerful technologies will make it way too easy to wreak havoc and disrupt social order, so we'll all just have to learn to be better to one another and hope that some jackass doesn't ruin it for everyone. Internal restraint will increasingly become the only practical form of it.
And I was surprised at the voice quality which I got with a simple dialup connection. It wasn't better than phone as skype claims but it sure was good enough. I could hear everything clearly and the lag was negligible. The only problem was that the connection kept gettting dropped, no idea why, but I still managed to get about 15 minutes call between each drop so it wasn't that bad. So yes this technology does have a future. As far as inability to snoop, I don't think it is relevant. I mean it can only matter if the company is based in US. It is almost like saying that ban freenet in US because we can't see whats going on there. So I don't really see a problem with that.
What's under yellowstone?
Furthermore, the company behind Skype is Swedish, and based in Stockholm. I just don't see any way for the FBI to exert pressure here and I think the article overstated the danger.
skype seems to be living up to it's hype. i love this app, my favorite since cuseeme.. skype has plans to add video in the future btw. we are using it here to keep in touch with each other and coordinate.
To extend your highway analogy - we currently pay for highway access (through taxes) regardless of what we're transporting*. If the phone companies ran the highway system, you're going to pay a different fee to drive four people across town relative to just driving yourself. Same distance, same car, same wear-and-tear on the road system. The only difference is that the 4-person transport has more value to you, and the phone company wants a piece of that.
...
The "free" part isn't really free, but rather an unrestricted use of the bandwidth you pay for. If I'm paying for brodband cable or DSL, the transport company shouldn't care what data I send over the pipe as long as I don't exceed the bandwidth limit.
The counter-arguement is that transporting voice over a telephony network is a pain in the ass. I work in that industry, and the end-to-end latency is what kills you. The transport vendors will argue that meeting the latency requirement for VoIP costs them extra, so they need to charge you by-the-minute or by-the-packet (on which I call bullshit.) They can bill me a fixed fee for a VoIP-capable broadband connection, added to my monthly ISP fee, should I desire to use VoIP.
It all distills down to money-grubbing for the almighty buck. (I was going to say "greenback," but that's obsolete now, isn't it?)
*Yes, I realize that there's a different fee structure for vehicles Class 3 and above, but that's largely because they tear up the road more. The fee is structured by weight of the vehicle, so hauling 10 tons of chickens is considered the equivalent of carrying 10 tons of steel. Yes, Hazmats are different too
The company behind Skype is Swedish, as were the Kazaa people. Sharman which now controls Kazaa is Australian but entered the game late.
Are we seeing the beginnings of a total ban on encryption? The concept of 'secure communications' is nothing new.
Remember that we encrypt mail, files, data streams.. even IM messages, already..
I wonder if the HSD/FBI/etc will start moving to squelch that as well.. ' for our protection '
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"Australia is outside of Europe...."
Shhhh! George Bush doesn't know this.
Come on...
The FBI and the powers that be shouldn't be able to listen to everyone's phone call at all, ever.
They can use actual INVESTIGATION skills to find everyone, not a monothilic computer that records and transcribes every communique by everyone everywhere.
Which is what we have now. If you don't believe me, keep thinking that. Start using words like "car bomb", "infidel", "jihad" in your regular phone conversations. See, you do believe me.
This might be an opportunity to use technology to escape the iron fist of people like Asscroft or Bumsfield or Condi Racecard.
They have published some info on their encryption. Look here and here.
As for the FBI, I guess the NSA still isn't sharing their decryption technology. I always here the, "Don't wiretap me" arguement, but anytime some Mob ring is busted through wiretaps John Q. Public seem to say, "good job, see that is what happens when its used to nab bad guys".
If your not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about. I don't see the FBI recording every conversation on the current phone system. it logisitically & cost prohibitive to do so, but if they can provide enough evidence to get a judge to okay such a tap, they need to be able too.
I'm not too worried, they will find away.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
That can easily be fixed. In international politics, power has a way of voiding justice.
You are right up to a point.
We structure our communications like this:
1. emergencies: phone
2. normal business: web-based workflow
3. random shit: email
Email is too unreliable for the business, and phone are too interruptive for normal work. Oh, and there is a category zero too:
0. personal: mobile.
The most evil form of "communication" I have ever experienced is the conference call. It is almost as bad as PowerPoint.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Since when does the FBI have the right to wiretap it's citizens? I have the right to privacy when it comes to my communications.
But not until they present reasonable suspicion to a court of law, whereupon the court will grant a wiretap warrant. At that point, they can force your telco to wiretap your phone, they don't physically go in and hardwire it themselves. The telco must accomodate for this, both for landlines and cell phones.
I suspect exactly the same will be the case with IP to normal phone too. They'd love to do it for IP to IP conversations too, but for that there are so many encrypted alternatives, it is pointless.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I totally agree, and am happy to see someone working in that space make comments like that.
"the transport company shouldn't care what data I send over the pipe" -- this indeed should be the case, but it's increasingly not. I don't want to digress, but priority is being given not to the type of content (video, audio, web, etc.) like it should, but to the actual content itself, these days.
Technology makes encrytion useless anyways as long as the FBI has a warrant. Decryption is useless and unnessary. I like encryption because it keeps that bony busy-body out of my life.
CIA, NSA and that kind of stuff may have problems but they've shown them selves to be exceptional.
The government doesnt have this right. If I choose to use heavy encryption then its my business. If I demand powerful encryption from my VoIP provider then they should be able to deliver the goods without fear of a government legal attack.
We've been down this road before with SSL key-size and other attempts to muzzle crypto. The genie is out of the bottle and the government cannot/shouldn't outlaw something just because it has potential criminal uses.
Then again with Bush and Ashcroft at the wheel it could turn out that weak encryption and government mandated key escrow are the future.
It's the New York Times. Better double-check the facts to make sure they're not lying again.
Everytime I see stuff about VoIP, I get the same question pop up that I get about any service which lives on the internet. Why aren't companies offering what they do best, instead of offering a huge package that they barely know and that spans a bunch of different laws/technologies? This fits in with VoIP in that a company could offer just the service to connect VoIP to POTS. Then, it could be regulated and the rest of the pieces wouldn't have to worry about it. And I could choose to pay for that service IF I NEED IT.
Of course I've been confused for the same reason about ISP's from the beginning, (I always wanted to be able to buy my connection separate from my email if that was what I needed) so maybe I've just skewed in how I think in general...packages are nice, but I like choices on the pieces
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
They've done some work with speec recognition by looking for phonemes rather than whole words. This is a much simpler task and computers can do it with greater reliability. This stream of syllables would be just as bandwidth-saving as word recognition and be even more reliable on the text-to-speech side.
Dyolf Knip
Having run skype for a while now, it seems to have fairly low latency - on the order of about .4 seconds which is far better in my use, which is far better than the 1.5 - 2 seconds of many other VoIP programs I've looked at.
Second the spyware thing - thats Sharman's work. The creators of Kazaa didn't put spyware in - it was free from that crap until they sold it. Lastly, if we're ll so worried about the spyware, get a copy of kazaa lite K++ edition ( http://cache.techtv.com/binaries/2003/klitekpp.zip ) for free and skip the spyware. Sharman might hate you for it but maybe they'll reconsider sticking that marketroid crap into their software.
If you take the software and make it free (as in beer) to the public, then it will be very difficult to regulate, if not impossible. The differences will inevitably show when you interface an unregulated Internet software program with a heavily regulated essential service. Marrying the two technologies to make phone calls to standard POTS phones from the Internet may prove far more difficult than one might think. The cost difference will make VoIP far more viable once high speed has more market and people don't care for their phone service quite so much. I already pay for high speed and if my calls to Australia could be free over the internet, versus $$/minute on the phone company the even a retarded bonobo chimp can see where the smart money won't be spent.
OUT
Thanks John.
From what I know, Austrailia is outside of Europe....
Isn't Australia a state in the USA?.. or is that Alabama? They sound alike... Anyway, Hitler was born in Australia?
There is some benefit to QoS, but most ISPs that are evaluating it or providing it use a model like "X% of your bits are high priority for Y% extra price per month" or "$Z extra per month, all you can eat", because the primary impact of prioritization isn't on the fat backbone pipes, it's on the skinny line into your home or office, where you need to make sure that VOIP packets get on the wire before FTP/email/web packets (so it's really a router CPU cost.) The other big problem is that ISPs are using a random mixture of business models and technical settings, so in general you can't get your high-priority bits to go between ISPs.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You've got the rights and powers bits backwards. US courts have let the police get away with wiretapping because they haven't always valued privacy, and because traditional telephone companies were regulated monopolies, the courts have let police get warrants to force the phone companies to cooperate with wiretapping. The FBI has unfortunately been very successful in leveraging any bit of power they have into getting more power, and using that power as leverage to get even more. That's one of the reasons that end-to-end encryption is so critical, because it's the one part of the system that's clearly under your control - and even then, the wiretappers will try very hard to see _who_ you're talking to and when.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I installed skype on my PC, thinking I'd help out with the p2p infrastructure, but there is NO traffic coming across, despite the fact that the client says there are 7K users active...
Amazing magic tricks
Inflammatory is good. The FBI, NSA, and their ilk have tried very hard to prevent private use of encryption, and folks like the EFF, academic crypto community, cypherpunks, Netscape, and VPN makers have done great work in stopping that. But in fact the Feds, mainly the FBI, have been trying very hard to interfere with end-to-end communications because it is hard to wiretap.
The CALEA wiretap laws are an immense pain in the ass to any voice telecom carrier trying to build a Voice Over IP system, because you need to buy equipment and modify your designs and operations to support meddling middlemen into something that's an end-to-end protocol, while competitors who *aren't* regulated voice telecom carriers don't have the same requirements so they only have to do Stupid Network things at the edges and can therefore use more standard equipment.
The real problem is how you make sure that the privacy is actually implemented adequately.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yes, I'm just tackling this problem. Do you have IIS or any other web server running on your PC? Also try File->Options, connection tab, and turn off the fallback to port 80.
The really nasty thing about this problem is when it occurs Skype says, "You have no friends online". This is probably true, but I really didn't need reminding!
Regards
Ian
Here are some VoIP programs that are Spyware & Adware free.
a ult.htm
h tml
P E.htm l
n ternet Call.html
Dharma Phone
http://www.datavoice.es/DharmaPhone/en/def
PicoPhone
http://www.vitez.it/picophone/index.
Personal Internet Phone Equipment (PIPE) 1.4
http://www.geocities.com/goofball_express/PI
Internet Call
http://www.geocities.com/goofball_express/I
PGPfone 1.0b2
http://www.pgpi.org/products/pgpfone
For instance, Skype says they're using 256-bit AES to encrypt your voice. That's a really good start, but how do they exchange keys? Is there a way to steal the keys? Is there a way for a man-in-the-middle attack to get both you and the person you're talking with to pass your voice calls or key exchange messages through the attacker? Since it's a supernode-based system, there's a very convenient place to _locate_ a MITM... How do you even verify that the directory entry for the person you're trying to talk to is really theirs? Since Skype's documentation hypes the fact that it's using AES, and doesn't mention public key, that strongly implies there's no public key infrastructure to help you.
Microsoft's original PPTP had at least seven things wrong with its crypto, most of which were related to password handling or crypto key reuse (which is Rule Number 1 for what not to do when you're using RC4 encryption.) Some of their weaknesses were in their fundamental protocols, and some of them in their implementation of their protocols. As far as we can tell, Microsoft was trying to do the right thing, and could afford to hire real engineers, yet they screwed up inexcusably badly. Skype doesn't document their protocols, or their implementation, and at least their marketing people don't understand enough crypto to be able to tell if their engineers have a clue, much less whether there's deliberate spyware included, or who gets to be the spy if there is.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
semi-serious horsepower requirements on the reco side
No, the reconstruction of data-to-speech is trivial. The hard part is deconstructing the speech-to-data. On the other hand the point is moot, a phone conversation goes in both directions.
Blah. All services should communicate over encrypted channels. Terrorists will use encryption even if it's illegal, as they don't refrain from planting bombs and killing people. So fuck wiretaps. It won't make me more secure if the FBI wiretaps people.
here's a couple links i just posted to the last voip story - reposted here in case you don't read that thread.
_ v1 .0.pdf
another perspective on SIP:
The Instant Messaging Standards Race:
Comparing XMPP/Jabber and SIP/SIMPLE
http://www.jabber.com/pdf/The_IM_Standards_Race
more related data for curious phreaks:
http://www.openss7.org/
(CALEA originally didn't cover wiretapping ISPs, but if PATRIOT didn't, then PATRIOT 2 or 2.6 or 3.0 probably will, either to prevent foreign and homeland-betraying terrorists from selling drugs and pr0n0graphy to your children while committing insider trading or else to collect the Universal Service Fund tax and the Gore Tax that provides low-cost internet for schoolchildren, and non-legal wiretappers (whether they're police or crackerz) can often break in even without the ISP's help.)
In some of these cases, the wiretappers can see who's talking to whom, at least at a per-building or per-IP-address level, but in other cases they can only see one side of the conversation, or can see two sides separately but may not be able to glue them together. That's a separate threat from actually listening to the conversation, and US wiretapping law has traditionally set much lower legal barriers to getting approval to wiretap that (on the dubious theory that the caller and callee information is a conversation with the phone company, and therefore has less expectation of privacy than the user-to-user voice conversations.)
That's actually one thing that Skype could do better than conventional VOIP, if it wanted to, not that you could easily tell because the protocol and implementation are proprietary and undocumented. It's a supernode-based system, so it's possible that if Alice and Bob are end users behind supernodes, that they could have end-to-end encryption but only have the IP addresses of their supernodes published to the world, with their real IP addresses only known to the supernode, which isn't a CALEA-regulated telecom carrier, it's just one of millions of random DSL users who has no clue how to find out who he's supernoding for or how to get Skype to cough up the information the Fedz or local police want for a subpoena, and that information might or might not be stored after Alice and Bob hang up.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
How are these guys planning to make any money? So why not GPL the code if it's soooo free?
From the FAQ on skype.com:
:P
What type of encryption is used? Skype uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) - also known as Rijndel - which is also used by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive, information. Skype uses 256-bit encryption, which has a total of 1.1 x 1077 possible keys, in order to actively encrypt the data in each Skype call or instant message. Skype uses 1536 to 2048 bit RSA to negotiate symmetric AES keys. User public keys are certified by Skype server at login.
Well, that sounds solid enough for me! How about you?
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
We should all keep in mind, there is a huge difference between "We'd like you to enable us to tap your network for legal purposes" and "You are not allowed to deploy anything unless there is some way for us to snoop'.. these are entirely different things. #1 is opportunistic.. if it's possible for the FBI to tap in, then they can request help in doing so... it's not at all the same thing as requiring it.
As anyone else experienced this when running Skype?
Seems like a Newtear Attack coming from 64.246.17.55!
VoIP will be just as hard to regulate as P2P.
And, just like P2P, all the VoIP software will be free. I can also see the free IM clients expanding directly into VoIP, since they already have a directory.
Thus, for-profit companies will have an impossible time competing against free VoIP, just as they do against P2P.
Big-time commercial VoIP? That's about as likely as a successful online music download service.
And of course, the FBI will be totally left out in the cold on the encryption issue.
When will people learn? Packets will get to where they want to go, regardless of how many lawyers try to block them. And free software shall lead the way.