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John Dvorak Hypes Skype
Eh-Wire writes "John Dvorak gets all warm and fuzzy over Skype now that 30,000,000 users have registered for the free Internet telephony service. Dvorak extols the installation as, "smooth and elegant" and continues with, "Without any tweaking whatsoever it works immediately and works better than anything else I've used." Skype has appeared on the radar without pomp and fanfare and it doesn't look like it's going off screen any time soon."
Backlash in 5, 4, 3, ...
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Nobody wants to admit it (yet), but now Skype is the standard. The only problem is that the protocol is proprietary and only Skype knows how it works. This seems to offend a lot of people.
My problem comes with who developed Skype (KaZaa). Sorry, but I have zero respect for companies that promote/promoted spyware.
when he makes painfully, pathetically obvious statements, he gets money. I just get derision, and strange looks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If the line is noisy then desktop-to-POTS does not work. I have tried it to my parents in South Africa from USA. Desktopto-desktop works well.
I'm just waiting for the day when the services become totally free. They could have a advertisement based model where you have to listen to an advertisement before you can dial. And yeah.. they should have unlimited free minutes with an advertisement of 10 seconds for every hour of talk. Even better.. they should have mobile handsets.
fuvoo: watch something
Why is anything mr Dvorak does a news story .. the man is a quite biased and a rather poor journalist of recent years.
Sure the story of skype hitting 30,000,000 users is perhaps news , but its not news that Dvorak has payed slashdot to have a link posted
Skype was written by the original authors of Kazaa, not Sharman Networks, the company who took it over and added all the malware.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
But Skype means talking to someone! *shiver*
The 30 million users figure appearing without any 'pomp and fanfare' does ring home when you consider that is roughly half the population of the United Kingdom.
MSN messenger is been horrible recently, with message lag and problems with connecting. Should I use Skype?
P.S. IRC forever.
For businesses wanting to cut costs between satellite offices, families wanting to cut long distance charges when calling between family members, etc., Skype is the natural solution.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Skype is dying.
Any time he speaks up about technology that will revolutionize things, he seems to be horribly wrong, with horrible, and predictable results.
Maybe he could endorse the Corvair or something.
Skype is amazing, I use it to play online games with my friends, and nothing else has even come close in terms of latency, clarity, and lack of audio break up.
I love it.
Gustave Flaubert "To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity
Skype have definitely got something going on, everything you read about Skype is positive. Everything you read about their compeitors is terrible!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Now, Skype really need to add video support. I hate to be limited to using VideoLAN client to send video when I am chatting on Skype.
The company uses the apt catchphrase: "It just works!"
... and will soon be sued by Apple... and maybe Microsoft, too.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
One thing I can't figure out is how Skype got so popular, when AIM Talk, Paltalk, Yahoo, and MSN all had voice chat features. Yahoo even had Karaoke rooms. Apple's iChat touted voice and video chat as one of its selling points for the OS.
So why did Skype do so well? Was it the marketing, or the catchy name? Or simple cross-platform compatibility? Or was it just a new brand?
If Dvorak is talking it up as the next great thing, Skype is sure to die. How often is this dude right?
John Dvorak is famous for his fictitious lookout on technology.
One of his recent articles predicts the fall of the video game industry in the near-future, which has only grown, and continues to grow.
Skype has been around for a long time, and has been fairly popular. It was hyped when it came out a while back. This is not news. It has always had a smooth UI.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
Without any tweaking whatsoever it works immediately and works better than anything else I've used.
I guess he didn't try the Linux version, which doesn't work at all on my machine or my wife's laptop.
Interestingly enough just today a vendor of ours introduced a USB phone that works with Skype.
h tm
http://www.planet.com.tw/news/productnews/UP-100.
Sean Milheim
iDREUS Corporation
*dial tone*
"Hi honey, when are you coming home for..."
*buzzzzz*
"Automated voice: This service comes with bundled adware. Please listen to this ad and say 'click' at the end of it. Thank you"
"I will be home in a couple of hour. Please make sure...."
*buzzzzz*
"Automated voice: This service comes bundled with spyware. All your conversations will be recorded and used for targeted advertisement"
"byeeeeeeeeeeeeeee....."
fuvoo: watch something
We're trying to find a platform independant offering that will let us play World of Warcraft (me on my iMac, him on his PC).
However, I could barely hear him. I had to crank my volume up really, really loud to hear him and tweaked all the settings I could find. Tonight I'm going to try my bluetooth headset to see if that makes a difference but is there any settings on the windows side to increase the gain? He couldn't seem to find it, and well he's a gamer, not a computer person so he may be missing something and I dont' have a windows box at home to look myself on.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Do you really think that the phone companies will allow this?
But for communications between two machines behind "unfriendly" NAT Firewalls then things did not work so well (because if one of the machines cannot act as a server then all communications must be routed through one or more "supernodes" which are really other user's machines, can you spell "unreliable"???). Here's what I'd like: to only allow skype to act as a server for conections to my friends and relatives. In other words (call me egoistic): I DO NOT WANT other people traffic through my machine! (and I do not want to send my traffic through anyone's machine either). Is there a tweat that would allow me to open the firewalls this way??
But here I am.... agreeing with him.
I started using Skype late last year - the Mac OS X version came out behind the Windows, and possibly the Linux version. But its just so convenient to use. If I do have a bone to pick with it, its lack of integration with other programs - I know skype has a built-in IM client, but does anybody SERIOUSLY expect me to WANT another one of those? What I'd like to see is a way of just clicking on an online contact in other IM programs and asking to skype through that - or, baring that, a way of giving an online contact something like a URL that I could just send them to say "hey, skype me, skype://whateverwhatver"
Past that, though, its an awesome program. It works very wel, and the SkypeOut feature has got me to stop buying calling cards for making international calls - I don't spend $25 a month, so getting VoIP from Vonage or one of those providers doesn't make sense, and I think Skype's quality is actually better than the VoIP service at my mom's house.
Tim
It must be on the way out already then.
How long has Skype been out now? Thanks for the update guys...
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Well, the installation went fine, but I can barely hear myself on a test call. (I can hear the voice from Skype fine.) I've been through all the settings and the help pages, all the rest of it, it's a Skype-approved headset, no joy. I can hear myself fine in Sound Recorder (deafened myself, in fact), so it's not the mic.
Tried to submit a support request, and was presented with "we've not submitted this because there are pages that would help" - all of which showed up as visited links. Fortunately they let you submit it anyway, so I have. But not an encouraging start.
The only problem is that the protocol is proprietary and only Skype knows how it works. This seems to offend a lot of people.
There's a good paper investigating how it all works here. Interesting stuff.
- shadowmatter
Netcr^H^H^H^H^HDvorak confirms it - Skype is dying.
> Skype was written by the original authors of Kazaa, not Sharman Networks, the company who took it over and added all the malware.
True. The questions is when those guys sold their program to an evil corp, did they know what they were doing? How for so many ppl, Kazaa would be their first ugly encounter with spyware?
Would they do it again? Write a good app, build up a userbase, and then sell their users computers to be sacrifed to the Great Media Desktop?
I don't trust Skype yet. There are two equally bad scenarios. It is sold off to the spyware giants, or a virus infects the windows clients and users phone a premium rate number.
Read the Wikipedia article, and you'd be worried too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
And this is in the hardware section why?
My friend uses Skype all the time to call overseas, says he has never had a problem (believe it or not.)
Cut his long distance bill by 100%
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
If he thinks Skype is amazing, just wait until he discovers *.
That'll give him a coronary[sp].
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Just curious if it works well, or is static-y as others say about Skype-Out.
OTOH, I've used it to talk with people in Switzerland and New Zealand--works pretty well.
Why did AIM do better than ICQ? It was simpler and easy to use. All the instant messaging clients try to be like general stores and do everything. its like how many single use devices are better than all-in-one printers. you tend to cut corners or the quality isnt as good when you try to spread yourself too thin.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
I hadn't seen or heard any bad things about Skype when I was looking into them. I now have my reason - John Dvorak is hyping it.
A community-oriented lyrics site
if skype is actually going open-source i might use it but until i see that happening i will remain sceptical towards skype. at least SIP and H.323 are open protocols.
How it chooses the proxy to use if you're behind a firewall and can't accept incoming connections.
I'm in New Zealand, and when me & a friend in another part of NZ tried out skype, the connection was routed via another skype user in germany.
Some background: NZ is pretty much at the arse-end of the world, and national network traffic is very fast and reliable, but if you go out to the rest of the world you add in about 150 ms latency, each way.
Connections to europe are even worse, as the connection typically goes from NZ to the US west coast, then to the east coast, and then to europe. And back.
Although our network infrastructure here is very good, international bandwidth is expensive, so broadband connections have a monthly traffic limit, of 1-10gb per month, depending on your provider and plan. One bonus of the provider I use is only 1/10th of your national traffic counts towards your bandwidth allowance.
So here I was, thinking the voice quality is pretty good, but there were a few glitches (probably dropped packets etc), but there was a latency of close to one second, and this local call was using my precious international bandwidth. Other calls had similar results - the quality is basically hamstrung into the worst case scenario.
Skype is very good in that It Just Works, but its almost completely devoid of any configuration or logging that tells you what its doing behind the scenes. My router supports uPNP, but sykye didn't even seem to be making use of that to route calls directly to me.
Has anyone in NZ had similar results? Have these problems been improved since I last looked?
...if Skype would release a GTK version of their client, so it wouldn't clash so horribly with my GNOME desktop.
I've been pretty unimpressed by Skype. True it's the only voip service that's worked out of the box behind my office firewall, and it's also free. But i've found the call quality to be a bit flaky and that it's prone to dropping calls. Quality-wise i've found freeworlddialup to be much better, although it tended to be broken a lot of the time.
I've used vonage before and was very impressed and just signed up with lingo today since their deal is too good to be true. I know how the saying goes but $20/mo for unlimited calls to US and western europe + first month free + $25 referral credit... you can't beat that.
For business use between satelite offices i'd suggest that IM might work just as well.
By having firewalled participant A using a third part B to communicate with firewalled participant C. If two firewalled users talk with each other, their conversation therefore pass through another totally unrelated user. I personally thought that's a bit scary. What encryption do Skype use anyway?
out in florida looking for a tech job in the process of relocating from the financial hell hole that is los angeles I was staying at a hostel by the everglades using their wireless internet access through their cable modem and using skype to talk to my girlfriend back home in LA while we went over pictures i uploaded to my website that i had taken of potential apartments we were looking at. it was really cool and worked really well. i even set up a three way call with my parents and my girlfriend (both in LA) but it choked on that either because someone was leeching files or my parents NAV was downloading updates. the quality was far FAR better than anything id ever experienced on a phone though.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
How is this useful? Services like Yahoo have had this for a while now, and it's cute and all, but not really functional unless you *live* in front of your PC, and the people you're calling do, too. We just signed up with Vonage, and based on other people & businesses I know using it, it sounds like they've got it right. This Skype thing sounds like yet another toy for geeks, which is fine if that's what it's being billed as. But as long as you're tied to a PC, it's in no way a replacement for a real telephone (POTS or VOIP).
I don't respond to AC's.
Since John Dvorak is always wrong, Skype must suck somehow.
I only hope he doesn't praise all VoIP solutions. This could bring dire consequencies to the whole market...
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
I even have the PocketPC client.
1) Load Skype client on wireless iPAQ ...
2)Walk into Boss' office while talking to friend in Chicago
3)
4) Profit! (get a raise because I'm so smart)
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Uhhh. No.
/. PR articles. One referenced Paul Graham's site, the other rightfully questioning the objectivity in hardware reviews. Please review both to get a better understanding of how the creation of editorial content actually works.
Skype pays handsomely to put product in Dvorak's hands.
Furthermore, Dvorak might, but probably doesn't install it himself. He'll typically get a report from a staffer on how the install went.
I'm too lazy to find the
Dvorak needs to hype something new to keep the advertisers happy. Period.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
OMG!!!!1111!!!!! 5kyp3 4 L1|\|ux r0x0rz!!!
The skype protocol is a serious contender for IP telephony. While the others crave expensive hardware skype "just works". I think its just a matter of time before some of the big players swallows their pride and start using the skype protocol.
Best of all is that Skype works on multiple platforms and has full in/out routes to POTS in many countries.
HTTP/1.1 400
Could anybody be more wrong more often and still keep their job Got nothin.
It is times like this that I find it amusing to consider who would win in a fight to the death between leo laporte and John Dvorak.
I am pretty sure leo would take him, but I suppose it depends if they are allowed to use weapons.
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Now we're gonna have to quit using Skype for fear of losing respect for agreeing with him. Sheesh, the guy needs to keep his nose in his own business.
I am Spartacus
SALT!
...and the fact the vendor is currently being sued into oblivion over their other product, Kazaa, in Australia.
Not to mention the protocol.
Nothing says stable technology like a wonderful closed-source product whose vendor might just soon evaporate.
Hi,
Try running tcpdump when you think your Skype is sitting idle.
It was like "where the hell is all this traffic from all over coming from?"
In case you didnt know, supernodes only connect the call, they do not handle the whole thing. once the connection is made there is no work for the supernode
I heard that VOA (Voice-Over-Air) was popular, with an installed user based of over 6,000,000,000. It doesn't have a long range, but it has a kewel interface, sort of like a really high-frame-rate webcam in 3D. Low drop rates, and freeware, too. Perhaps we should target this technology toward developing countries...or countries like the US which will soon be unable to afford regular Internet-based communications.
This article rightfully points out some very icky things about Skype. User beware.
I think the best selling point for skype is skype in . Like right now i am in india, and i got a failry decent internet connection about twice as fast as 56K dial up. They got this crazy deal for 30 Euros and it gets you a local telephone number in the states, as in you can pick from a variety of area codes. Soo all my parents or friends have to do is call that number and it routes it to my comp here in india.. pretty nifty.. and oh yea you get yourself a handset and your good go.. something else too look into aside from PC to PC chat
Does this name grate on anyone elses ears? It's kind the equivalent of a fingernail on a blackboard.
So what are the legal ramifications of reverse-engineering the protocol based on docs like these? If someone where to implement a reverse-engineered client, could the Skype folks come after developers with the DMCA?
I had one problem with it though, and that is a recent one. To use SkypeOut, you have to buy credits. Now, I used to be able to simply charge credit to my credit card and it will virtually instantly appear in my account. Recently, though, Skype switched to using some English company to handle this (Moneybookers London, or something like that), and this shows up on my credit card as a cash withdrawal, which triggers another $10 charge. With the abundance of alternatives, this might drive me away from Skype.
When netcraft confirms it, only then will I believe Skype is dying... *blinks*
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Why do people hype skype, as there's nothing new about it any more? There is a certain category of people you can call "tech dreamers": journalists, VCs, entrepreneurs, etc who are motivated by the promise of fame and fortune in the future. Skype is what they all are dreaming about: an upstart changing a market, and the founders getting (probably) real rich. There aren't that many companies like that any more, so the few remaining get a lot of attention.
Easy!
Find out your friends and relatives IP addresses and close all ports for all traffic form/to any other address. Use tcpdump and when you see any traffic through your computer call your friend and ask him if it's really your friend speaking an not your friends granny, and yank the line if it is his granny!
Doesn't anyone proof-read anyone proofread any more?
I had to stop reading the article when I started losing my place my place while into the middle of reading. Nice to see John's been learned in English.
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Many (if not all) talk about the features that made Skype famous.
It is not about features, but about brand recognition. It was introduced as the product of the same guy who made Kazaa, and not by what it really was.
Everyone knows the name Kazaa, and have interest in the files you can get via Kazaa. So a program made by the same guy, MOST be interesting, people think.
Skype could have been anything, it doesn't matter.
The reason for the sucess of Skype is Kazaa.
I've been using Skype while playing mutliplayer games with my friends, and I'm very happy with it.
However, I'm not impressed with SkypeOut so far. Mind you, I've only used it to make calls within the Greater Toronto Area. I'm sure it's much better in other locales, but in Toronto it sounds like you're calling from an extremely bad mobile.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
All you have to do is invent a new keyboard!
very informative...
Pity there was a 5 minute lag between either of us saying something and the other recieving it though
Feel free to correct me if this has changed...
Skype refuses to allow me to select which input I want to use on my sound card. The SoundBlaster that I have has no inputs on the back of the card, except for a cable that goes to a standalone box with multiple inputs and outputs on it. The input on this box (which I want to use) is Mic / Line In, and shows up in Windows as such. In Windows another input (named Microphone) also shows up. I assume this is something on the board itself, which could be hooked up internally. I don't have it hooked up however.
Now normally, I simply set my input source to be the Mic / Line In input, and any sound recording programs work perfectly. Skype, however, for some reason refuses to use this default that I've set, and changes my system to use the Microphone hookup. It doesn't even just do it once, it does it every single time I place or receive a call. This is *really* annoying.
I was unable to find a solution to this issue. The only information I could find related to it basically suggested the problem might be addressed in a future update.
Oh well. For me, it made Skype too much of a hassle to be of real use.
does anyone pay attention to him anymore, seriously???
Skype is doing phenominal. They are doing so well, in fact, that their competitors are exercising unfair business practices to deny Skype business. In one of my blog posts I wrote about how Telmex Blocks VoIP Traffic and Skype.com Web Traffic, and it should also be noted that teh United Arab Emirates is blocking Skype.com as well. I suppose these people are pissed that Skype is offering a service for free which they were hoping to charge customers for.. It's true that Skype is changing the way people communicate and traditional phone service providers are going to have a difficult time competing unless they keep up with the times. =)
I'm in a long distance relationship, and after a lot of research we still can't find another voice chat system that works between Macs and PCs.
:~
Thanks, Skype
... who are on the other end of all of these phone calls when it is Skype->PSTN. It's terrible audio with major latency. No wonder it's free.
Windows to Linux voice chat... that's what got me. I pleaded with gaim, asked yahoo, and even inquired why jabber didn't support it...
Open standards or not... Skype works... even with dial-up. I use it, and I love it. Mostly... high latentcy connections sometimes have a hard time with it. My computer sits behind an 802.11b router, bridged to another building wirelessly and then from that building to 2.4ghz tower (3 wireless links).
I'm not sure if this is also a similar problem, but when I talk to my Father who sits behind a satellite broadband link it seems to have troubles too.
Still fairly good though. And the rates are unbeatable. I use it to call Venezuela, Canada, America, and my friends are calling Germany all of the time.
In other news, John Dvorak recommends Fiats, good fast cars with nominal repair bills, as well as Sandra Bullock movies, which he rates as being "well thought-out, intellectually stimulating films lead by a brilliant actress who we can expect many great things from."
I believe that callto:\\skype-username-or-landline-number initiates a call to a skype user, or a landline phone. Indeed, I have a link like that in my sigfile. However, I'm not aware of any applications that use this functionality.
When you create a UI that people have to ditz with you are stealing time away from them. Too many developers think their applications are so f'ing great that users will want to moon over it for the rest of their lives. Well wrong. They just want the crap to work and provide value instead of sucking their lives away. Get it?
Using the best knowledge of today to create the problems of tomorrow.
but what does ^H^H^H^H^ mean?! I see it in so many posts and feel left out.
I have been Skyping for a while now, my wife uses it instead of those cheap international dialing numbers; it works (which is pretty incredible if you have any insight into how). I make free and cheap calls from the US to Europe and Australia; I call my home for free from a remote hotel room. The only issue I have is if Skype get to monopoloy status and then start to milk the market but I think the market is still way too immature for that. IMO - rather Skype lead the market than AT&T.
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/sharps
My mother uses it to call my grandmother in Japan or her sister in Germany, and it's clear as can be. I think that it has a great deal to do with your connection and the phone number you're calling than the software itself.
In related news, a new phone keypad is announced by Skype:
5 2 9
8 7 0
4 3 1
6
vonage softphone = useless.
skype = worked like a charm.
I was in england for a few weeks and had to keep contact with the home office and clients. The vonage softphone had a delay of about 20 seconds.
If you want real privacy, use SpeakFreely with your own choice of encryption library.
In this case he is saying the obvious. So, no effect on Skype.
You said, "... Skype isn't technically better than other similar apps."
Skype is far better than other VOIP applications, because the audio quality is far, far better. They use a great codec and do other audio processing, too.
It would be MUCH better to use software like Speak Freely rather than Skype. However, my understanding is that Speak Freely is a hassle to install when you are behind a hardware firewall. Skype just routes everything over port 80; no hassles.
Speak Freely is not in active development: "News 01/04/2002 - Version 7.2 released!" That's the latest version.
Then we could integrate it into the various other parts of the desktop.
AP Wire
<p>
John C. Dvorak was found dead in his San Francisco apartment. He died from an apparent self-inflicated gunshot to the foot, from which he bled to death. He was 59.
Interesting. But most people cannot take the time to get involved with a new programming challenge, even if they are skilled programmers.
That's why Skype is so popular. It works without a big investment of time.
Ummm... does anyone remember Iphone?? http://www.vocaltec.com/ Skype is nothing new... We used to call in to radio shows from our dorm room using Iphone all the time...
They brought back regular card payments. I contacted them about this when it happened a month ago, because I had the same concerns. They wouldn't say anything, but there was a distinct pause when I asked if it was a security issue.
Anyway, credit payments are back. And the service is totally worth it for the quality of international calls.
"I have a cunning plan..."
I believe my friend that you are incorrect. From my observations: when both ends of the call are behind firewalls then the calls *are* going through a third party machine. Otherwise please explain why our connections (which were very unreliable) suddenly became excellent after one of the nodes allowed skype to act as a server (putting one machine in the DMZ of the nat router).
"To read more of this FREE archived story please sign in to MarketWatch."
No, I don't.
Obviously they are gambling that Linux on the desktop won't be a significant presence.
Not to mention that Skype ain't corporate friendly.
Why anyone uses it is beyond me.
I concur with Dvorak's assessment of Skype. It's phenomenal. But, the true test of any technology is how it stands under the pressure of intense usage. We at Jewel of Indra plan on putting Skype to the test. In fact, we have received permission to integrate the Skype technology within our multi-user 3D Adults Only community. With so many folks whispering sweet nothings it should be interesting to see how Skype measures up. I will not post the Jewelofindra site url here because this is not intended to be an advertisement for the community. But, with VRML, X3D, Text to Speak, and now VoIP all integrated together, it will be interesting to learn if either of those technologies crack under the pressure. I will keep my eyes open for any signs of smoke.
VRML is NOT dead!
Hey, I predict that the horseless automobile is going to really catch on sometime soon. Also, cocaine-based fizzy tonics for the overworked maid.
P.
It seems that skype disables the settings of the desktop windows firewall. If you remove it from the exceptions list it seems to replace itself when the program starts again, which is a bit rude ihmo. It looks like skype is going to be a no no for use on a work desktop unless you are behind an external firewall, my machine became a supernode in the last few days and I was rapidly jumped on by our network admins. Bye bye skype.
Link that works: Skype-ready USB phone.
The world does not begin and end within the US.
Americans know that. However, of course, it is entirely permissible for Americans to bomb anyone they want.
I've had no problems calling NZ land lines using BroadVoice. $25 USD/month, unlimited.
The latency is probably due to your own Internet connection. I never had a problem calling the U.S. or France from Brazil, and my Brazilian DSL had 200 milliseconds of latency when pinging to the United States.
Sometimes DSL equipment at the ISP has a malfunction in which it periodically drops packets. Try a hundred pings:
ping google.com -n 100
The ping times should be very close to each other.