Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Messenger Architect On The Future Of IM
CowboyRobot writes "ACM Queue has an interview with Peter Ford, chief architect for MSN Messenger, by Eric Allman, CTO of Sendmail. They discuss the present and future states of IM, the current big players as industry shuffles toward standardization, some of the social implications of IM versus email or telephone, and technical issues such as using SIP as opposed to XMPP (Microsoft is pushing for SIP, everyone else seems to favor XMPP). They don't bring up Wallop, Microsoft's community application that will be built into Longhorn, but that's surely part of the long-term discussion."
Try Gaim
Its not as polished as Trillian, but its OSS and cross platform, and thats whats important!
The interviewer says:
Microsoft, Lotus, Sun, and Novell seem to have settled on SIP. Intel, H-P, Hitachi, Sony, and more or less the entire open source world is going toward XMPP, sometimes better known as Jabber.
and the poster says:
Microsoft is pushing for SIP, everyone else seems to favor XMPP.
Yeah, it's fun to paint the world in black and white but this is just a blatant lie.
When men used to be men
Umm, how about:
AIM
Yahoo Chat
ICQ
???
Profit!!!
Do you know what pundit means?
Who cares if they charge for a service you could otherwise get free? You don't have to buy it. Similarily, they don't have to provide it if there is no incentive to.
Also, these prices aren't just guessed at. The price should be set so that it ultimately brings in the most money. If only fifty people will pay $30/month, and 900 will pay $1/month, but 600 will pay $5, then the choice is obvious.
I'll post AC, since you're commenting on diction, and not substance.
Basically this is the use:
1. A source of opinion; a critic: a political pundit.
So like, someone who is cheering the IM scam on.
I read about wallop briefly.. and it it quite threatening to my linux desktop usage if it should succeed.. Being a social geek, I make friends, join groups. And odds are several will demand wallop for communications (Clubs at university, charitable organizations) if it is all it is supposed to be. Solution? I realize there are web-based deelys... but they really really smell... I could set up PHP-Nuke occasionally, but people will probably prefer wallop 10 years from now when longhorn becomes mature (by way of how many computers run it). Sortof like when MSN took over IM where I live... except this next time, one may not be able to create a linux client.
For reference.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) has been around for a long time and AFAIK is a binary protocol. SIMPLE is built on top of SIP and provides the instant messaging functionality.
XMPP is relatively new and is based on XML (hence why it's so extensible.) There are two parts, the core (which might as well be equivalent to SIP's core) and the IM extensions.
The glaring practical difference is that there seem to be about zero open-source SIP servers, and about a dozen open-source XMPP servers (going off the list at JabberStudio which might not represent all of them.)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
SIP most certainly is a text based protocol, and even more certainly is extensible.
SIP messages look like HTTP messages, but can be encased in either TCP or UDP packets. (Which means you can add new HTTP style headers, just as web browsers do)
SIP is mostly used for carrying VoIP session information at the moment (as an SDP message body), but SIMPLE would work really great for carrying IM.
At least MS only bloats the system with one IM app installed by default. Some Linux distributions install four or five.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Netmeeting is no longer going to be a part of Windows. Windows and MSN Messenger are already performing much of what NetMeeting originally did. On a side note, does this mean Microsoft innovated with the IM clients? NetMeeting is a pretty old client app.
If you're happy with your IMs being sniffed left and right, feel free to use Gaim et al. My friends and I have migrated to Trillian as our main IM because it does all the major IM protocols, is feature rich, and lets us encrypt our IMs. Sure, its vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks then again so is ssh, ssl, etc but it sure beats plain-text.
Gaim is feature poor and the developers refuse to interoperate with Trillian's secure protocol. The secure Gaim spin-off doesn't want to play with Trillian either, they want their own gpg-based system.
Regardless, Trillian is excellent for Win32 users. Its a shame there hasn't been a Linux port of it yet.
AIM uses TOC (external protocol) and OSCAR (internal protocol) NOT XMPP.
Yahoo Chat uses a proprietary binary protocol NOT XMPP.
ICQ uses a proprietary binary protocol NOT XMPP.
Try again.
NetMeeting was useful in that it brought decent IM to a consumer grade OS (Windows 98), but I can recollect CUSeeMe around 1993.
Go somewhere random
Apple are using SIP for negotiating A/V communications establishment. They are using OSCAR for remote presence and messaging, and Jabber for local/rendezvous presence and messaging.
So, they are using XMPP in the local messaging stuff, but SIP to negotiate the exchange of A/V streams. Which is really what the two protocols were designed for.
The SIP pushed for by MS discussed is actually an extension called SIMPLE.
If you want proof of iChat using XMPP, either install a packet sniffer on your network, or run "strings", "otool -tV" or the 3rd party "class-dump" utility on the executable for iChatAgent, and grep the output for "Jabber".
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
I don't own a cell phone, and I haven't even seen The Two Towers. I'm generally not interested in "hype" - I appreciate predictable, reliable and elegantly designed technology without a lot of "crap" in it. You're right that it's easy to mock what we don't understand, but this is something I *do* understand.
The examples I give in the grandparent post are real. Some people that I personally know really do think that a worm spreading through email is normal, and don't understand that it could be prevented by using a different email client. And someone I know really is both simultaneously annoyed by the deficiencies of IE and disinterested in trying Mozilla. Another person I know was shocked to hear that there even was an alternative to IE at all, and that a web browser is just a program that can be replaced. How can you use a computer every day for YEARS, and not have even the slightest idea of how they work ?! I may not be a mechanic, but I have a car, so I take it upon myself to have at least a basic familiarity with the various parts and how they work and interact. I probably couldn't design an internal combustion engine correctly, but at least I have the first idea of how to.
For the most part, I've found that ignorance is a compelling force in our society. People don't want the burden of having to think, regardless of the possibilities or consequences. I think a lot of this probably comes from advertising and the media. People have become so accustomed to being bombarded with ideas, what to buy, political opinion, and so on, that they resist doing any thinking of their own. I have a few more thoughts on this topic, but I'll save them for a more appropriate discussion.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
If by compulsory you mean "I have to use it because I'm too stupid/ignorant/lazy/indifferent to use something else", then yes.
If you're referring to the more traditional use of the word "compulsory", then bollocks.
On OS X if, for some weird reason, I chose to not use iChat at all, thought that the software was crap, hated the icon, whatever, all I have to do is drag the app to the trashcan and that's it... no more iChat, I'm free.
Same with Windows. Don't like Messenger ? Delete the shortcut, tell it never to load again on login and you're "free".
On Windows XP on the other hand, you're dragged to passport account creation everytime you login and there's no damn easy way of getting rid of the sw...
Rubbish. Cancel the dialog, go to Messenger's preferences and tell it not to load at login. Then delete any shortcuts and even the whole binary if that makes you feel better.
So Mr. I Know it All... explain to me why where I live (Italy) the average iLliterate user started using en-masse Messenger with the coming of XP.
Lazy and/or indifferent users.
I've tried for years to convince people that IM was cool and better thatn email for this kind of comms but NADA, ZILCH, NO!
I am not at all suprised Microsoft does a better job of marketing a product than you do.
But now everybody uses MSN and the only ones I can iChat with are those I evangelized appropriately, for the rest... I'm stuck on that shiteware.
Your evangelising is probably one of the main problems.
Added to that, what precisely is wrong with MSN Messenger ("it's from Microsoft" is not a valid reason) ?
Next point: you claim I'm crying foul because Messenger is easily shut up... by who?
By anyone who wants to do it. A tickbox for "Run this program when Windows starts" is at the top of the preferences tab.
The avg user will (and does) follow the clickety route into MS's embrace: the least resistance wizard. Tell me how does a user behave with a new, unknow UI, in a new unknown OS. Does he/she jump into the mumble jumble preferences or follow the convenient route?
Please explain how OS X and Apple are any different.
I'm on a mac but I've read stories of OE not working properly and precise HOWTOs on how to delete the program without damaging the system... (just google for it... or follow the convenient link: uninstall messenger) Can you, in your infinite wisdom explain to me what's a bloody IM got to do with a MUA?!
Outlook Express uses the services provided by Messenger to integrate IM. Much like Apple uses the services provided by Quartz to allow any app that can print to generate PDFs. Completely remove the IM components and some things will probably break. This applies to _any_ OS that has reusable modules.