Slashdot Mirror
Kazaa and Skype Co-founder Interviewed
karvind writes "BBC is running is an interview with Niklas Zennström, the internet entrepreneur behind both Kazaa and Skype, about how his two inventions came about, and how broadband and wireless devices are shaping his vision for the future. From the interview: "On the other hand, Skype, just like Kazaa and other software, are encouraging people to buy broadband connections.""
...to install several programs into their startup folders and add browser extensions to enhance the user experience.
One thing I'd like to know is their position on spyware and why it has to be installed along with the actual program? How much money are they getting from it? It's quite annoying.. my father installed Kazaa lately and now he has their spyware on his system... which means that I get the fun job of removing it. Thanks, Niklas!
see a Text Widget
It's common for dial-up connections to have local charges, so you have to pay-per-minute to access the service.
For some users, it's still cheaper to use the dialup every now and then to check email, but if the online-time goes
beyond certain level, it just becomes financially more reasonable to get broadband than to use dialup.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
With ambitious statements such as these, I think it's just a matter of time before phone companies start taking a hard look at competition from VoIP in general. Whether they will attempt to embrace the technology and adapt or restrict its usage via litigation (as the RIAA and MPAA have done when confronted with new mediums for delivery) remains to be seen.
and I had - on the BBC last week. Don't you just hate it when you find things out before Slashdot does? You have to spend time actually doing something at work then...
Kazaa encourages users to break the law. And if they're not particularly bright users, how to unknowingly break the law. There was a load of lawsuits sent out last month by the BPI (British equivalent of the RIAA) a month or so ago, and the general reaction was "Oh, I didn't know Kazaa was illegal" (generally everyone being sued were Kazaa users).
Aside from that, surely I'm not the only person here who finds it extremely hard - no, impossible - to believe that "while Zennström thought it had great potential from the start, he did not know exactly what people would use it for"? Because he then goes on to say in the article he didn't think Kazaa would get to the stage where it could compete with Napster...presumably he knew that the primary use of Napster at the time was illegal downloading?
Niklas Zennström: "I want to create a medium where 13 year olds can rename large files to the names of new game disk images and movies ... and put them online for download, it will provide them with hours of enjoyment... AND, here's the sinker, it will take away from SETI AT HOME'S BANDWIDTH! Those bastards will never discover my home planet now! MUAHAH!"
[[ note: this quotation has been fictionalized and may not actually represent reality ]]
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Another reason for getting broadband is so that I can help Slashdot a site just a little bit faster.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I thought this was highly interesting when I read
it, and plus it answered your question. I wonder
how sincere they are.
from the article: Zennström agrees the amount of adware in programs like Kazaa, and some of the other file-sharing networks, is "way too much". "It destroys the user experience", he says. Kazaa initially had a very limited number of advertisements, which he says "wasn't that bad in the beginning", but they grew over time. "That's something that me and Janus learnt as an experience, and with Skype we did not have any type of advertisements whatsoever."
SKyp has save the start up I work for a lot of money. It's saved me money, no more long distance charges to the family.
I think you forget how big a deal IM was when i came out. Hell, it's still a big deal, it's just a big deal you have gotten used to.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
you!
A. Its much more fun to leech off an established monopoly than start from scratch!
B. In many cases its unpractical to start project without financing and a good chance at a big return on investment
C. Karl Marx is dead, and the best thing he ever said is "I am not a Marxist!"
Technologically, Skype doesn't bring anything new to the table, true. NetMeeting had voice chat back in the day. Still, the compression algorithm is pretty good, and it's the only way to engage in voice chat between platforms.
I'm on a Mac and it's been a boon for me and my Windows-using long-distance girlfriend. There's a Linux version as well.
How easy is it to use skype (esp. behind NAT)?
thanks.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Dude, if you think skype = yahoo chat you are mistaken. Skype is peer to peer. yahoo chat is not. Skype doesnt have actual servers carrying the data. Look at the technology behind skype. It is amazing.
Of course, we all know, Michael Powell stepped down and this new guy may not be as friendly.
What I wanted to find is the quote where Powell talks about downloading and installing Skype - he said that he saw a revolution in front of his eyes when the program started. (or something to that effect)
Get your Unix fortune now!
warez, pr0n and MP3s!
in my times it was sex, drugs and rock'n' roll.
Who is really using Kazaa today?
No matter. That is what killed Kazaa in the first place. Of course they say there is no spyware in Kazaa 3.0.
Get your Unix fortune now!
To me, Skype audio quality is a lot better than Yahoo.
It also works better through firewalls which I think is it's true claim to fame.
Why is the CEO, CIO and every other person involved with Kazaa and in Australian courts and having their houses raided and this bloke gets in on the BBC. Its interesting to see where things go. These guys are being hauled through Australian courts and this bloke is no where to be seen. Check out http://www.apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/412A621F4556A65 FCA256E77001DD222 and http://www.apcmag.com/apc/v3.nsf/0/7CC596EF71F41B3 4CA256E77001E31D0 for some information (they're a bit old, but do the trick)
I always wondered where this setting was...
It's interesting to note that they talk about how Skype and Kazaa are encouraging people to adopt broadband usage. I do remember back in the day how agonizing it was trying to download mp3s on dialup. In fact, I didn't really want to download any for fear of bashing my head in from being so damn frustrated. I have used Skype also (still have it loaded on the 'puter) but I think it's more of the "established" businesses and practices that are pushing broadband (that and "Keeping up with the Joneses"). I now use Broadvoice for my VoIP at home and surely wouldn't do it without broadband. I also think iTMS is a HUGE influence on broadband adoption that is often overlooked. Who would have guessed the so-called iPod halo effect would not only push over to Mac sales but also to broadband sales?
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I just subscribed to Skype, having forgotten that it was the same guy who invented Kazaa. First off, I'm pretty happy with the service (it's the only software-only VOIP I'm aware of that runs on linux as well as windows). Secondly, having read a few threads I ran spybot and adaware. I had a total of 60 entries show up in spybot, all of which were tracking cookies.
Both of those are current, so I feel safe that, unless someone knows something that I don't, skype is decently safe (at least at this moment).
I believe them since the adware and spyware got out of control after they sold Kazaa. In the beginning, Kazaa was great (that's why it got so popular).
You can blame them for selling their popular software to such an unscrupulous company, but everyone makes mistakes.
Skype is a great product, and they make money from long distance calls, and not from ads. With Kazaa, how were they supposed to make money without ads? That was the problem!
Connecting free to landlines would be.
Then people wouldn't need their Rboc.
There are SIP (a standard VoIP protocol) clients for pretty much all platforms... KPhone works well on KDE. Skype doesn't use any standard protocols, so it's useless for communicating with most VoIP users.
Luke-Jr
> Skype doesn't use any standard protocols, so it's useless for communicating with most VoIP users.
I don't use it to communicate with other VoIP users, I use it as my primary telephone service.
Sounds expensive, at least compared to using standard VoIP protocols for primary phone service. ;)
Luke-Jr
What dumb users share their entire hard-drives and then tick the box labelled "allow anyone to see a list of all my files"?
don't mandate telcos to make 911 services universally available
Here in Cincinnati, we learned that you *must* mandate. We learned the hard way. The telco shut someone's service off and they couldn't call 911. That person had a child die in front of their eyes.
Then the law was changed so that every phone line must be able to reach 911 in this state. Hey, we here in Ohio don't like to see people die because they don't have a dime to call 911 or they let their phone bill go unpaid.
Sorry, but life is more important than all of this "business" to some people. You know, maybe Vonage/Time Warner cable/whoever shouldn't market their services as "phone lines". People think that VoIP will be able to dodge FCC line charges and other "taxes", but not forever. I say that if you want to call it a phone line, then treat it like a phone line. Sorry, but that includes 911 and the taxes that go along with it.
If the only reason you went to VoIP is because you wanted to skip over a few taxes then it wasn't worth it. On the other hand, the telco has no right to restrict access to government services, or even their own lines (that is why we broke up AT&T right?).
Get your Unix fortune now!
>>Skype doesn't use any standard protocols, so it's useless for communicating with most VoIP users. Oh, is that why it works so well? Last week, a co-worker was flying back on SAS airlines from Stockholm, subscribed to WIFI on-route, and we had a 45 minute Skype conversation that was amazingly clear except for all the jet engine noise. It just works.
On the other hand, skype is a pain in the ass if you want to block users in your corporate network to use it (bandwidth is still expensive where i live).
If you block connections to the skype login servers, the client will then start trying to connect to random "supernodes", which are other clients connected to the internet and that accept inbound connections. It also uses ports 80 and 443 to disguise itself as http traffic, and it encrypts its traffic, so its nearly impossible to block it using proxy and firewall acls...
msn messenger at least correctly identifies its tcp headers, so network admins can "choose" to either accept its traffic or not.
.
It hasn't just got a lot of us buying broadband, but a ton of us have bought anywhere between 1 and 10 new super-huge hard-drives over the past 2+ years, CD/DVD Burners, spindles of CDRs/DVDRs, and now having downloaded a 40 minute TV episode that is a 1.5 GB xvid 720p, I'm feeling the need for a 3800+ system with a brand new $500 video card!!
.
As long as there's Spyware included with programs like Kazaa, there will be jobs to remove and prevent the installation of spyware. Much like the virus industry. :) I always tell people I'm always thankful to Microsoft for creating a market for Linux.
Did anyone bother to ask the customers what they want?
You can conference call on Skype with multiple users. Also you don't have to log into some small centralized server like with ventrilo/team speak. You can contact any skype user out of millions as opposed to 40 or so on your vent server... it's MUCH different than those two apps.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I'm not a shill for Skype but it has reduced our company's monthly expenses. Members of our dev team are geographically spread out all across the country and our guys stay in constant contact with Skype; we prefer it to IM because voice is more immediate than typing and their hands are free to work (code) or, if you know anything about our product, do 'other' things :-) Instead of the variable cost of long distance charges, we have the one-time fixed cost of a good quality USB headset for each employee -- the choice of headset greatly affects the voice quality of the calls; we've found that the Plantronics DSP 500 provides superb voice quality at a relatively inexpensive price.
This is probably not the right place to indulge in such a discussion, but yours is a very common fallacy, so I'll bite anyway.
;-)
If company X announces a net rate profit of 20 per cent and the cost of all the machinery, factories and so on that it owns is $100 million, then it's left with $20 million profit after paying the wages, raw material costs, and the cost of replacing the machinery that wears out in a year. In other words, after five years the company will have made a total profit of $100 million, i.e., the full cost of the original investment.
It can't be denied that:
1) the capitalists have been paid back completely for the money they have put in in the first place;
2) the capitalists are twice as wealthy as before: they still owns his original investment plus the accumulated profits!
As a matter of fact, all this taking about "reaping rewards for risk-taking" assumes that money has the property to grow like a plant or an animal, but the capacity of money to grow really lies in the buying and selling of labour.
Now, I may or may not be "another crazy left winger on slashdot", but it seems to me that the balance is not quite right here.
Quite - which is why socialists don't advocate capitalism at all. Any so-called socialist that advocates for a "regulated market", is not really a socialist at all. They're most likely a liberal.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Slightly, but not hugely concerned about that one...
I'd really like to see a compatible GPL product - Skype is the one thing that I've recommended to my non-technical friends/family that they really get enthused about.
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
Neither Kazaa nor Skype were inventions as such, sure the technology behind them may be impressive, but an invention is something that has never been done before.Both Netmeeting and Paltalk are examples of programs that have used voice chat in the past (with Napster being the relevant example for Kazaa). What he has effectively done is step into market niches, otherwise known as being in the right place at the right time.
The technology may well be impressive, but cutting the phone companies profits will eventually catch up with us. I don't think that they'll go out of business as such, but it will affect the quality of service these companies supply if they are hurting from this. Skype is not exactly the same as P2P where sharing has actually increased the number of CD sales, or where the artist and record producer have (in the past) had a license to print money (if their decent).
Telecommunication Companies have to take care of infrastructure, and pay wages to a myrriad of employees. VoIP and Skype are all very well, but what happens when the internet goes down, its happened before (at least to chunks of it), and it can happen again. Is it just going to be a case of blaming the internet when our customers ask why they couldn't contact you?
Enough for now!
http://support.skype.com/index.php?_a=knowledgebas e&_j=questiondetails&_i=70&nav2=General
Most any program will interoperate with itself. Try one of you using some other VoIP program-- in particular, one that uses standard VoIP protocols.
Luke-Jr
How about "Software Nuker" adding Skype to their adware list? Frankly I'm afraid of running Skype on my PC - I don't trust it.
That shouldn't be too concerning. Without that feature you can spoof permission to have people on your contact list. They used to have programs to do just that for ICQ back when it was popular.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?