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Skype 1.0 For Windows Released, Updated Linux Beta
egjertse writes "Today Skype launches its free Skype for Windows Version 1.0 software, which includes SkypeOut, enabling Skype users to pre-pay and call any phone number in the world at highly competitive local rates. Also included in Skype 1.0 is a new file transfer feature and other software enhancements. New beta versions of Skype for Linux (Previous Slashdot Story) and Skype for Pocket PC with the SkypeOut feature are also available. Here are the release notes."
As you can see in the linked release notes, there's a new EULA. It forbids you to make worldwide calls between Skype users so it seems like Skype has contracts with the telephone companies as well!
That would be nice but what about the POTS interconnect?
Is this thing not chock full of adware, spyware, malware, and all those other wares that make me wary? From the makers of Kazaa? Come on, I don' trust Kazaa as far as I can throw it!
This meme must die!!!!
Aside from the standard POSIX calls, which don't include lots of things that a modern program that goes beyond the command line must do, Mac OS X and Linux are as different as can be. Although Mac OS X has an optional X11 server that can be used to porn X11 programs over, there is one other critical area where they are completely different: sound! Linux sound IO and Mac sound IO are completely different.
Not to mention that when somebody says "Linux", they usually mean "Linux on x86", so you have completely different processor architectures to deal with too.
Yes, Linux and Mac OS X share various underpinnings, but that does not make a port of a program between them, in either direction, to be necessarily easy.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The INDUCE act is trying to outlaw p2p software. Since Skype reports to have the ability to share files, it too will be outlawed if the INDUCE act passes.
Port? Wouldn't you need, like, source or something for that?
I'd be using Vonage right now (actually returned the hardware when someone in house ordered it) if they encrypted calls.
I think the telnet example is the clearest way of illustrating the problem with Vonage. According to Skype, calls between Skype units are encrypted (at least until FCC can change things).
Telnetting outside the lan is considered a no-no. And even Rsync and Sftp are frowned upon, as compared to ssh and ssl. The regular phone line (pots) is often derided as being wholly unsecure, but you still need, for the most part, a physical tap to compromise pots. And law enforcement needs reasonable grounds (and a judge's approval and oversite) before they can listen in. With Voip, other than Skype to Skype, anyone in the middle can listen in, from my landlord providing the lan, to my landlord's isp, to the techs babysitting the servers rooms at the upstream providers, to the carnivore system at every major hub.
Yeah, I'm not building and arranging delivery of inter-continental ballistic missiles. But I don't use postcards for my banking transactions, don't ship my dirty laundry home to mamma in clear plexiglass boxes, and I don't use telnet across the Internet. Why are others using a form of telnet for their daily phone calls, often as their major or only telephoning ability, and this is considered ok?
Hopefully Skype will force other providers to add encryption. And it will become prevalent throughout the system, as it should.
If they succeed in banning encryption in Skype, why not go after ssh and ssl next?
In the meantime, anyone reading this, and who either is using Vonage, or plans on, please go to their site once a month and search for "encryption" and "security" on their site. Maybe if they see encryption enough times in their logs, they might get a clue, and implement it. Otherwise we'll have to wait for some incidents of interception, and identity theft (and ruined lives), before they're forced to implement it.