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Skype Founder Interviewed On Engadget
prostoalex writes "Niklas Zennström, the ever-elusive CEO of Skype, is interviewed by Engadget. Turns out Skype currently has more than 13 mln users in 200+ countries. The interview also discusses the future of Skype and VOIP applications in general."
At home, I still have a regular phone line because I sometimes need to send faxes. At the office, we actually don't have a land phone line. We use Skype mostly, and mobile phones to receive calls from people not on Skype.
What about 911? How do you dial that without a landline?
Ok, this lil program is closed-source but works with little lag, and decent sound.
;P )
We know that there's nothing special about the audio, it's known.
We know that there's nothing different about the latency of the lines (software cant change network hardware on telco side
Can somebody explain why we couldnt do something like this by using UDP packets over a tunnel? GnomeMeeting should provide the rest..
TCP's the killer here. Drop it and you have less lag (no negotiate).
I know we are supposed to forgive and forget but I will not trust this corp all that quickly considering how spywared up Kazaa was/is.
It is not so much about what Skype is now but what Skype might become, the company have shown us how much value they place on ethics and treating their customers with respect..
This "911" / emergency call issue is regularly rolled out as a "problem" with VoIP, due to the concern about the perceived lack of reliablity of IP based networks. While it is legitimate to address it, I don't think it is the issue it is made out to be.
If you consider what life was like 20 years ago, each house only had one land line, and all the land lines in the neighbourhood were attached to the same exchange. From the individual end user's point of view, there was no redundancy at all. If your land line failed, you couldn't go next door to use your neighbour's phone in an emergency, as their's was dead too. All you could do was jump in your car and go to the hospital, police station or firehouse.
Today, not only do we still have traditional land lines, we also have cell / mobile phones, and we still have cars. If we add VoIP into the mix, in sum, we have significantly more available "emergency communcations" resources as individuals than we did 20 years ago. That's why I don't think "911" / emergency call services is the issue it is made out to be when thinking about deploying VoIP.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
They (or somebody) sold a cordless handset.
On their shop they sell a "CyberPhone":
"Plugged into the USB port of your PC / laptop, you can chat using the Cyberphone just as you would on a normal telephone. "
Cool. But it still means I have to be at my PC to make/receive calls.
Hey Skype: sell cordless CyberPhones and you're on!
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Same thing happened to me. I'm from the US and work in Peru. I was able to purchase time in August and September and have now been refused and locked out of my account. I understand the need to screen out fraud, but they should realize their best customers for Skypeout, which is where the revenues come from, are going to be people who are in a foreign country and have parents, children, and close relatives back home to communicate with. They would have had at least 25 euros a month just from me. Now I've had to go back to pc2phone from iconnecthere.com. The sound quality isn't as good, but at least my money is good for them and they don't label me as a crook.
and if you're referring to using UDP over tunnels to get around the problems NAT causes, look up "NAT traversal" in google. It is being introduced to both IPsec and SIP.
Skype doesn't do anything special, other than lock its "customers" into a proprietory VoIP network.
I think skype will kill itself.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Just give us the Palm OS port already.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I figured as much, however, I think this issue really is best judged from the individual's point of view, as they are the ones "suffering" from the emergency. In the past, they were only had the option of relying on a single phone line, or using their car. Now there are multiple, alternative communications channels available to them in an emergency.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Yes? If so it's hardly "spyware" in the sense of "something that is running without you knowing about and doing nasty stuff".
So I'm not quite sure what the big deal is here.
I mean, I was using VocalTec's Internet Phone in '96, and really, given todays general ample bandwidth, I don't understand why Skype is so big. I've seen Fortune articles on it, and this guys name used with some sort of business-man's reverence.
Once you get past the novelty of talking to random people by voice over the Internet, the novelty wears off, and all you've got is a VOIP that you can't actually use real phone with (granted, the end party can).
I have a Vonage line at home, and that form of VOIP seems all that much more interesting, if only because they've bridged the software/hardware gap. Is this really that much different from video chat, other than the fact that you can call to a MeatSpace phone (or is that the Big Deal?)?
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
or would you prefer to only be able to use Sony batteries in your Sony devices, Ford petrol (gasoline) in your Ford car, etc.
I'm certainly pro-open source, however, I think open standards are far, far more important than the open / closed source issue. If the best tool for the job is closed source, that's fine. I use closed source Adobe Acrobat under Linux rather than xpdf, as I find it better and quicker to use. I would abandon Adobe Acrobat if Adobe closed the PDF specification though, as the open specs of PDF are more important to me than the Adobe Acrobat software itself.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
For that matter, is there any reason to restrict it to the "standard" authorities? What about some sort of broadcast topology, so that someone can send their identity, location, and situation to any number of clients -- police agencies, fire stations, hospitals, Coast Guard -- who can watch for emergency traffic within their geographical region.
In short, we need some sort of standardized, generic method for issuing a distress call over IP. Morse code has had SOS for almost a century now, yet IP has no equivalent (so far as I know).