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Google Talk Claims Openness, Lacks S2S Support
rm writes "This LiveJournal entry by Nugget quite well sums up the disappointment in Google Talk among many Jabber users, caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support: '...Google has uncharacteristically missed the real strength of the Jabber design. Despite all their self-congratulation about open communications they've only embraced the smaller, less important aspect of the Jabber openness.'"
Select Quotes FTA...
When do we get to the "rant" part? This is boring.
It was a nice trip down memory lane, so don't knock yourself about it. I have fond memories of ICQ with buddies on Captured.com, planetquake.com and late nite mapping sessions with the UH-OH echoing into my brain. And then there was that dreaded song -- you know what I'm talking about. ICQ invaded MTV. Ack -- **flips channel**.
What makes Jabber truly great is that it is a decentralized system.
You can't really make any money in a decentralized system, which proves Google is still looking to captivate us because they have always been quite central. They may have a bottom line to think about, yet we are not in business as free-thinking human beings to serve the needs of one company. What we tend to want always comes first, we are all very selfish -- centralized and independant. We do not want to give control to anyone. We want to save it for ourselves, because we have learned from our mistakes and we know what happens when you trust something far bigger than you.
We want to be free, open, decentralized.
But at Google, it's all about centralization. That's their way. The information they have access to at any given moment is insane, and I think it's the primary reason they believe so strongly in centralization, so that they can collect more information.
It's time to embrace a truly workable and distributed topology that will move us past these ridiculous incompatibilities.
I concur.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
the article starts with "This LiveJournal entry by Nugget..."
That is, after all, the point of open source, is it not?
Surely it's too early to be slating what they're doing with this technology. Don't you think they might be taking an incremental approach?
Then again, I *do* sound like another Google apologist, don't I?
Seriously, I'm tired of hearing about some great new Google product and seeing the "System Requirements".
Is it so difficult to make portable software in 2005? Do we really have to keep a Wintendo box lying around just so we can use the newest gadgets?
I think Skype (and many others) have shown that the answer is, "it runs on your box, whatever that is", and I really hope Google pay attention to this. Unless they have a vested interest in reducing their market, they must deliver applications that run on Windows, Linux, and OS/X.
My blog
A truly open system would not require YET ANOTHER FREAKIN' EMAIL ADDRESS. I have like seven email addresses, although I use only one. The rest are needed for IM services.
Google Talk will not be successful until Google management realize this.
More
I thought google was out to "organise the worlds information" Froogle? Yes! Maps? Yes! Gmail? Mabye. But Jabber?!?
Wonder what the public key field is for?
I do believe that it is still in development. I don't know much about developing software, but could this not be added later?
caused by the service's complete lack of XMPP server-to-server communication support
I tried to explain to my 15-year-old niece how she shouldn't use Google Talk because of its lack of support for XMPP server-to-server communication. Then she discovered some new emoticons and stopped paying attention to me.
I'm a big tall mofo.
give it a few months. google has showed in the past that they rarely do something for no reason. i'm willing to at least give them the benefit of the doubt that they have something bigger planned down the road and that this is just an intro.
Remember this is still in a very early beta stage. On the developer page, they claim that they're moving toward interoperability with other networks and fully documenting the custom VOIP protocol they use.
They encourage people to comment in the Google
Talk Interoperability Google Group. It seems like they're trying to determine how to balance openness with security, privacy concerns (i.e., avoiding spam). I frankly don't know enough about Jabber, etc. to know if this is BS or not, but it sounds reasonable enough to me.
I'm sure they have something big planned. I doubt they would be using Jabber without planning on using S2S in the future.. The potential for this is HUGE.. Use Google talk and watch Google adds when talking to anybody on any protocol. Why wouldn't they? Remember folks, this is beta software that is only a week old.
I must be honest I am incredibly disappointed with Google talk (as of right now). I'm currently in the process of setting up my own jabber server and I am fairly new to jabber but I really do think that Google talk has a lot more potential..
Losers whine about their best, Winners go home to fuck the prom queen
For one thing, when you allow just anyone to run a Jabber server, you're assuming they know HOW to run one and run it securely. Hell, even I run a Jabber server, but there ain't no way that thing is EVER going to be on the net in the open or do S2S with any other servers outside of my close circle of friends who *I KNOW PERSONALLY IN REAL LIFE*. My Jabber server is used by friends and family over OpenVPN. I really don't think anyone in their right mind believes in decentralized stuff unless they're doing something illegal or they're libertarians (who I am not so sure are in their right minds). I like a good top down solution with centralized control because it "just works" and you don't have to worry about weirdo incompatibilities since you define compatibility.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
The real strength of Google talk will be Sip combatibility
It has been out for a week or so, and we should cut them some slack as they work out the kinks and add new features. GMail lacked a number of things I wanted it to have when it first came out, but Google seems to be slowly adding them with time. Google seems too happy to call things beta for just about forever, but at this stage I think we all should consider it as a real beta and just wait and see
What do you know I wrote a novel
Thank you Slashdot editors, please continue to keep me informed of any breaking news stories from this "LiveJournal" news organization.
Aaah yes. Slashdot, infringing people's copyright since 1997. It's Livejournal. It won't get slashdotted.
If only S2S was the only Jabber feature that Google "left out" when rolling out GTalk... but they also forgot to activate all these standard jabber features
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I'm getting freaking tired of people trashing google everytime they put out a beta!
Yes..it might not be the greatest thing since sliced bread but the POINT of releasing test software is for TESTING and feedback!
It's OK to trash the BETA, but don't mistake that by saying "Well....it sucks gonads. Google failed...I'll never use it again"
The main problem with Google Talk isn't what parts of what protocols or whatever it implements.
The main problem is that it's a complete piece of crap in comparison to all other IM programs out there. Yes, I know, it's only "beta", but so is damn near everything else from Google and they all were released looking far more polished than this turd.
First off, the program is ugly. Extremely ugly. Here, have some white. And while you're at it, here's some white on white. Not enough white for you? That's ok, here's some more white. Variety is the spice of life. Often I see programs that are so extreme that they hurt my eyes. This one falls on te complete opposite end. It's so plain-looking that it nearly puts me to sleep.
Secondly, those stupid colored balls next to the username to display status. They are nowhere near obvious enough at a quick glance. There needs to be some sort of icon change. This is compounded by the fact that if you put up an away message and someone then sends you an IM, they do not get your away message back as a response. That just further confuses the issue and makes people think you're ignoring them.
Next up, is the popup hell. I wouldn't have so much trouble with this one if it wasn't on by default, but it is. Minimize a window. Next time you receive a message on that window, a popup alert displaying that message will show up on the bottom right of your screen. Now imagine this with multiple conversations, and you get my point. Yes, I can turn it off. Would Joe Average figure that out? Probably not.
Next, the lack of fonts. It's possible that I didn't look deep enough into the program, but I found no way for an individual user to change their font, font size, or font color. This is a popular enough feature that it makes no sense not to include it. If you're talking with multiple people, and some are using a distinct font, it is a good visual cue for keeping the conversations in order.
These are just a few of my gripes with Google Talk. It's just not a product that should have been released yet.
I'm pretty sure that if you actually read the google talk FAQ that they mention linking up with other networks in the future but they haven't implemented it yet. But why should we let facts get in the way of a good rant?
"Of course it is, Google has stocks now, things have changed, along with Google. You shouldn't act so surprised, what with everyone here saying Google will change once it offers stock."
So really nothing has changed then. Google has always had stock and has always wanted to make money. The only difference is that you and I can buy it now.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Yes, Google talk is still a beta release. Implementing S2S is a no brainer for Google programmers. I am sure we'll have it the moment we are out of beta. The problem is Google software never seems to leave the beta stage...or takes a looong time to leave the beta stage to put it another way.
No way I'm going to pass plaintext through Google to be mined and added to my electronic dossier. So unless it has encryption support with verifiably no back door, it's a non-starter for me.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I wonder what "beta" means for all of you...
And this is a surprise because...?
I hate to say this, as I used to be probably one of google's biggest supporters, but as most techies now know, it's becoming next to worthless.
I can't actually believe that so many people really believe that they aren't gathering and selling this information even from their emails through gmail. Far be it from a publicly traded company to actually care about their customers instead of their investors.
It's a well known fact that as soon as a company becomes public that their goals change and google is no different.
Something I've noticed with the whole Google talk thing is that even the people I know who are hardcore Linux geeks say "How is this better than AIM?"
I must say this is somewhat surprising... one of the tenets of the greatness of Linux is the openness and freedom to innovate - why does nobody care about the fact that IM has had almost no innovations lately?
Google promoting Jabber could be a great thing, assuming they will enable the server to server support. IM could become more of an open service where people actually CAN innovate, rather than a closed protocol run on some corporation's servers.
So, even if you are afraid of Google becoming powerful, or if you think that IM innovation is dead, I'm willing to carry at least some hope that getting Jabber into wider use could be a big deal in evolving how IM works. Just a thought...
Leaders in the jabber community have made it fairly clear that s2s support just hasn't been coded yet. Its on its way.
I am positive that they are trying to figure out how to control SPAM that would happen if they opened up the S2S portion of their server.
I 100% agree, we are becoming our own worst nightmere. But we can be happy that we have slashdotted LJ, now all the 14 year olds can not write about how much life sucks as a middle class white kid :(.
Imagine if google would open it's talk.google.com for server-to-server communication with other jabbers around.
..
Y! opens a jabber2yahoo bridge
MSN opens a jabber2msn bridge
AOL opens a jabber2aol bridge
..
Everybody would be happy, except for Y!, MSN and AOL.
Happend before, with Inbox size!
And they could keep their voice algorithms for their use, a hell with them! for a couple of years, until it becomes a standard feature, I can agree with that.
Then they should open this too:D
gtkaml.org
Hmm... how many of those are features of the protocol, as opposed to features of one or more of the main server implementations?
I can easily understand why they might want to omit offline messages, for example. In addition to the matter of storage (which they're probably not that bothered about) there's the issue that they must then store and forward messages. That may be legally different to a direct "switching" rely or direct user<->user comms.
The gateways are probably a legal thing, and again probably a feature of specific server implementations.
As for file transfers and group chat, I don't get that. I can only imagine that to be client limitations - or do they not work even with 3rd party clients?
"disappointment in Google Talk among many Jabber users" All three of them? I mean seriously. Everyone i know uses GAIM with their AIM/MSN/Yahoo/ICQ etc. Even us hardcore Linux guys still cling to that AIM SN, dont lie.
Why didn't they release an os X port?
Sure, iChat on Tiger supports it, and if you don't have Tiger, you can do Adium, or Fire, but that's not an optional solution for a lot of us. (My parents for example are on a dial-up connection in eastern europe and don't speak english.)
Was it so hard to design a client for OS X?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Google Talk doesn't even have the most basic features of a modern chat client such as S2S and encryption. How do they expect anyone to be willing to use it? Encryption is standard nowadays.
Looks like your time stamp got modded up at least.
Hey, I blogged something about Google Talk too. Can I be on the slashdot frontpage now? *end sarcasm*
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
My rant about the lack of s2s and transports was posted on the 24th.
Granted his is about 20x longer than mine.
He could've started writing his the same time as me and just finished it 2 days later...
PAGERANK++ Robsell.com
A presidental address or a Nobel prize speech are both delivered through word of mouth, and drunken ramblings about how ugly that guy in the corner is is also word of mouth - they have nothing else in common. I don't see how this article has anything in common with the "let's analyze at my lunch, oh and life sucks" stereotype people like to hold out to be the epitome of LiveJournal - other than the delivery medium. Likewise, would you consider it fair if you discussed quantum physics in a comment, and the rest of the world modded you a troll because "hey, it's a comment"?
Let's not get into the dumb and shallow habit of deriding a message because of its medium.
Did you type that with a straight face? Bloggers never make any sense.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to rant just a bit because I've found many things Google has done to be incomplete. Like another company we so enthusiastically bash for putting out products that take several iterations before even getting close to the feature set first anticipated, I've seen this with Google. For instance, gmail doesn't handle HTML email, to name 1 of a number of shortcomings when compared to other rival online offerings. I'd like to see them solidify and expand on such basics, but they seem to always be partially implementing something else to expand the overall base of subset-implemented apps. I know, I know...I'm a heretic, so let the flaming begin...
+-+-+-+-+-+-+ "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm quite sure it's hard to pronounce."
Where the *hell* are the typewriter key sounds?
:-)
How do I know I'm actually typing anything without it?
-chargen
This is the first release and is still a beta system. Why don't people keep their complaints for the final version?
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but I personally am not interested in the voice chat aspect of Google's client, nor am I interested in building an IM "platform." When I use IM, I just want to send messages back and forth to someone, and as long as the service itself is adequate, as most are, for me it comes down to the client itself. With all that said, these days I am still running AIM 4.3 on my Windows machine because it's the least annoying (doesn't ask you to put in a zip code, has no "AIM Today" Window). I'd been using gaim on Windows for a while, but it seemed to add ~30 seconds to my system boot time (I think it installs gtk or something to run) which I found annoying, so after my last format I didn't bother with it. So far I've found Google's IM client (which, I realize, is still "Beta") pretty lackluster. While it's got a clean interface, I find even an aging version of AIM like 4.3 to be more friendly, and it has what I absolutely require: timestamps in the chat. I absolutely will not use an IM client that doesn't show timestamps for all events. This is a relatively simple thing to add, so I imagine it will be added as an option in a future version, but for now it's a showstopper for me. All in all, I don't see what the hype was about, it's Just Another Jabber Client. Voice chat? Whoopee...
rooooar
You mean a beta service is not feature complete? Stop the presses. Or something.
Get a GRIP, people...
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It's in BETA, you friggin' idiots!!!
This is the bloody first thing I tried when I connected to google talk. Running a jabberd in S2S mode is not a /requirement/ of a jabberd *AT ALL* As his edited article admits that he knows that not all jabberds need nor require S2S functionality. In fact has he even RTFM'd the jabberd's manual at all *sigh*. Nugget? F*ck Nugget more like! Seriously, someone with a decent CV really needs to lay off the caffine pills before they end up talking as much sh*t as rms about gnu-everything. (rant over)
When they (google) actually went to press they specifically stated that the DNS SRV records were not active - which allows discovery of the host running the jabberd for that domain.
I don't see the reason for sensationalist claptrap for a beta service, hell do you REALLY want to support voice comms to someone@jabber.org when you're *starting* to roll out a project?
Here's the thing. A number of people are saying how wonderful it is that google's using an open protocol like Jabber. This is merely pointing out that it's not as open as you might think.
Personally I'm thrilled with google's opennes even if it isn't the full monty so to speak. I've been using GAIM and/or Trillian for a very long time, and I'm sick of the proprietary reverse engineered protocols occasionally changing and breaking. I've occasionally gone weeks without being able to chat with some friends because of such things. No it's not the end of the world, but it's quite annoying.
So it's not perfect, but it's a lot better. That seems to be google's running theme. Most everything they have is in beta and not quite perfect but it's all much better than the competition.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Looks like your mum got modded up
Everyone come down out of their ivory towers and quit trumpeting how great they are for pointing out yet another reason why Google ain't the bees knees. Climb down out of your ivory towers and take a nice dose of reality.
Incremental improvements are a good thing - Starting w/ the absolute minimum feature set and building on it, all along making sure it works as advertised is a sound strategy. This approach allows you to continuously improve the software, and focus on addressing the issues that arise with the current feature set in a manageable way instead of having to address a mass of problems from all of the half-assed features you had to squeeze in because you had to have all of the bells, whistles, and even legit features. A frequent improvement/release cycle is a common practice for open source software products and Google is adopting a similar approach for its service.
You can't simulate this kind of load accurately - Sure you can run computer models of how the traffic load will behave and how the infrastructure will handle it, but you really don't know how it's going to work until you start putting some real user load on the system. By limiting the feature set, and in particular limiting inter-server communications you naturally limit the amount of load on the system. The users aren't going to switch completely from their current service to GTalk all in one day... so as traffic builds they can adjust the service settings, tweak the servers, do whatever to make sure they can continue to provide a quality service. And back to point #1... once you have a good understanding of the traffic patterns and capacity you can begin introducing new features that may change those patterns in a controlled way.
You can't predict how people will abuse the system - By limiting the feature set Google can better ensure that the system is not seriously abused by individuals who would want to use the system in a way that would annoy/harm the general user population or impact system performance. Connecting to other servers is a risky proposition that deserves careful attention and control to ensure that it works correctly. If Google make a misstep here and allows spammers to spam all of their users, and virii to spread across their system, and poorly managed Jabber servers to cause their messages to not reach their intended destinations you'll have a system that most people wouldn't want to trouble themselves with using. Google can start by controlling the environment while providing a base set of services... and then expand in a way that they can monitor and control to ensure that service is not impacted.
Get real feedback from real users - Instead of dreaming up a hundred things users probably want and squabbling over them internally, why not just release a base product that people will use and get direct feedback from them on what they want. This is what Google has setup... now they can ask their users do you want to jabber w/ other non-GTalk servers? Do you want more emoticons? What about real voice call capabilities? What about being able to search your conversations? What about... The point is let the users help direct the next round of development instead of spending a lot of time developing features for people who don't use the product.
Protect the service the customers want - The underlying principle behind all of this is that you have customers who want a service. The way to attract and keep those customers is by offering them a service they want and that works. Google has started by offering GTalk to a group of users. They'll hone the system, make sure it works, and if it meets their objectives and draws in customers they'll continue to expand on it's feature set in a way that keeps their customers from moving to some other service and continues to attract other customers... all the while being very careful not to make the service unstable or give something to their customers only to have to take it away (premature release of poorly test
WAAAAA!! cry about it elsewhere. I still think google talk is awesome, decentralized or not... nobody should care as long as they do a good job making the product.
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
I don't claim to understand the whole Jabber protocol, but it seems to me that having decentralized servers might be a security problem, and be a disadvantage when everyone and their brother can throw together a jabber server.
Once Google allows the other servers to be used with it's own service, it's giving them legitimacy. That's something that people should be careful with. It would be cool if there was some kind of verification system with the server operators, say something similar to personal SSL key verification that people like Thawte were doing before being aquired by Verisign.
There's also the issue of everyone using google's server's as the nexus of the entire jabber network if google started working with other jabber servers.
It's a damned shame that you got modded down for expressing your opinion. Personally, I feel much the same about it as you do. I won't be using GTalk as my main IM program until (even assuming that) they start getting linked up with other servers (providers email federation@google.com, as per their FAQ) and their client gets more polished.
At the risk of sounding like an apologist: it is beta, and for something like IM, it does make sense to start simple. In this case, they started really simple. That doesn't mean that I'll use it now, of course, but I'm holding out hope for the future.
here's somet text from the google-talk-open list at groups.google.com:
Peering my company Jabber server
Charles Duffy August 25 12:13
I work at a small (well, not as small as we used to be) startup making
medical software. One of our plans on the board for a long time has
been running an internal Jabber server (such that internal users could
still use IM to communicate with the outside world as they do now, but
internal discussions would *stay* internal, not touching outside
lines).
If users on our company-internal server can't communicate with friends
on Google Talk without us executing an agreement which sounds to be
open only to "communication service providers", that makes in effect
considerably more closed even than the closed-protocol
competitors with whom, in practice, I'm able to communicate (albeit via
a protocol they can alter at a whim).
Otherwise... what are your requirements for federation? Does one need
to have a given number of users? If I ran a Jabber server for myself
and my circle of friends, would that be eligible? How large of a
userbase is needed?
If 'yall could assuage these concerns (ideally the personal as well as
the professional), I'd be rather grateful. Thanks!
END OF QUOTED TEXT
When was the last time you used gmail?
n t.forms;for(i=0;i
It started supporting html mail months ago... There was even a hidden boolean javascript value that lets you edit html mail inline... I don't remember if that is still valid.... I have a bookmarklet in firefox
the code was: javascript:function%20H(w){var%20i,c,h,f=w.docume
It doesn't seem to do anything anymore, but now there is that rich text editor on the page which lets you put html in... albeit not handcoded html.
Gravity Sucks
Beta...
BETA!
I'd expect an information company like Google to be interested in the information delivery aspect of IM over it's interperson communications capabilities.
IM is a combination email-webbrowser that can deliver information between clients (like email) on request (like a browser). Will google offer IM-bots to deliver content? Seems reasonable to me.
Also, offline IM is email! In fact, I log all my IM conversations to my mail folders so that they are searchable along with my other main form of communication, email. What I've never understood is why email and IM aren't the same application. I think (hope) Google is taking us there.
If there's no hostile party on a hop between you and the person you're talking to, you don't need any encryption because nobody is reading your packets.
If there is a hostile party on a hop between you and the person you're talking to, public key encryption is risky unless you already have your correspondent's public key - because if you just ask him for that key over the compromised channel, you can't be sure whether what you get back is really his public key or whether it's the attacker's public key. The attacker can simply decrypt everything you send him and then reencrypt it with your real correspondent's key, and neither of you can tell anything's wrong.
That's why you should have a web of trust (this key is digitally signed by someone whose key was signed by someone whose key was signed by someone I know) or certifying authority (this key is digitally signed by Verisign) or out-of-band (I called my correspondent on the phone last week and verified the hash of the key he'd sent me) means of key verification.
Even without a verified key, though, public key encryption is better than nothing. There are more people who can read your data than people who can rewrite it, so a defense that only works against the former group is still worthwhile. For that matter, even verified keys aren't bulletproof - they only protect against attacks from all the networks bouncing your packets around. If your own computer or your correspondents' have been compromised, you could be using one time pads and it would't matter.
> In fact, the blogger may tend to make more sense because he's not serving other masters. (Note: This isn't ALWAYS true.)
In fact, the blogger will make more sense if he's not serving other masters.
and, no need for parenthetical disclaimer.
i don't think it's shallow. *NEWS* for nerds, stuff that matters - livejournal, myspace, or some nerds blog is not a valid news source.
referencing such "sources" as real news (hell, referencing slashdot as real news) only makes this place look worse.
and mods, you can eat me.
One reason for Google to use Jabber technology but not to join their server network is simple: Google wants to spam people with their own advertising targeted by message content. That could be hardly acceptable by original jabber network community.
There you are, staring at me again.
Thus it can be difficult to tell if a "blog" is actually something that can be safely ignored as a poor form of entertainment, or a reasonable attempt at serious writing.
It can be as simple as whether the blog entry is entitled Windows 2003: The Top 10 Reg Hacks, or Why My Girlfriend Hates My Cyst.
Some of the best things I've ever seen on Slashdot (like, but surely not limited to, this one) weren't news in any sense of the word (or by your definition). Furthermore, I think it's fairly obvious that Slashdot doesn't need to restrict its publishing guidelines to its motto (which, almost per definition, is mostly for show).
Personally, I care much more about the contents of the piece than I care about what people might label the medium it was published in, or whether it would qualify as "news" or not.
Well, I'll be the 50th person to comment that it is a bit too soon (less than a week isn't it?) to criticize them for not having S2S support when they plainly state that that is one of their primary goals. DUH. Clearly they are not finished yet.
As to the article, which was far too long for the amount of actual information it contained, there were no revelations in it other than that which would be dictated by common sense. That common sense was cloak in a shroud of innuendo, inside sources, and conspiracy.
If in fact AOL, MSN and Yahoo cooperate with one another in some way to fend off the now "evil" Google, all users will be better off than before. They key prediction made by the article and the one on which the veracity of his sources can be measured is the notion that all three companies are going to suddenly obsolete their own IM clients and replace them with some surprising new thing.
That would indeed be a coup for this blogger to have gotten early word on such an event. In the mean time if you believe it, please contact me to make large bets on the subject.
The other thing not mentioned by the article or much of the speculation I've seen on it is that at least some of the IM protocols use peer to peer connections once the two parties have located one another. Remember, if everyone in the universe had a fixed IP address there would probably have never been a need for IM clients at all. Once two parties have identified that they are both on at the same time a direct connection can (and probably should) be established. The only reason we needed servers in the first place was because everyone's IP address keeps changing these days.
that's fine; we'll agree to disagree. i do agree that the content of the article is most important, but i also believe that the source, along with grammar, spelling and citations lend more credence to the text. however, i'm sure you can agree on this: the quality of the articles and editing on slashdot has greatly decreased in the past say, 4 years.
and i remember that graphing calculator story, interesting...
I'm very suprised at how many of you so quickly forget that this service is in beta, and has only been in beta for a week at that. Wait until a product is actually released before complaining about missing features.
Has anybody who runs a Jabber server tried sending email to federation@google.com to see whether and how fast they respond to the request? It's just stupid to speculate on what their motives might be without first taking their word for it that they want to interoperate with "qualified" peers.
Besides, not everybody and their dog is going to be running a Jabber server. As mentioned before, large companies will do it for security reasons, but there are probably few enough of those that google will have no problem accomodating them.
Well, given iChat is Jabber compatible, and Google Talk is Jabber based...
Well, shouldn't the two work together?
Please help metamoderate.
Point: Google's client doesn't have emoticons.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
First a fairly standard reply:
Thank you for your input on open communications. We appreciate your thoughts on how Google can build a communications network that is open, promotes user choice, and protects consumers' rights. While we may not be able to respond directly to all feedback, we do appreciate your input, and it will be taken into account as we do our part to help promote open communications.
If you've expressed interest in federating your service with the Google Talk service, we will respond to you shortly.
Sincerely,
The Google Talk Team
After that I got a not so standard and more interesting one, I have contacted as a company I have that gives XMPP service hosting, and this is what I got:
Hello MyNameHere,
Thanks for your interest in federating with the Google Talk service. While this is not something that is enabled today with our beta service, we hope to enable it shortly.
When we have more information to share, it will be posted to http://www.google.com/talk/developer.html.
I'll also follow up again on this mail with details when we have them.
Regards,
The Google Talk Team
So I think that all depends on what Google understands as "shortly".
Google has a feedback form for the Google Talk service. We can rant here all day on Slashdot, but we're not going to get anywhere. Spend a few minutes out of your day to send some constructive feedback. I just did. Maybe we'll get the functionality we want.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
So really nothing has changed then. Google has always had stock and has always wanted to make money. The only difference is that you and I can buy it now.
What has changed is that now Google MAKES money relative to its stock price, which is influenced by market hype, yes you could argue their old stock made some money from venture capitialists, but not $4 bil in one day type money.
that's fine; we'll agree to disagree.
Thanks for being civil and making sense. I'll take one last chance to defend my view - not to pick a fight but only because your reasoning, while accurate, almost asks the question itself.
Proper grammar, spelling and sources certainly help your cause if you want your text to say "I'm credible". But sometimes, good reading and certainly nice revelations can come from people outside of respected news sites. (The whole ea_spouse thing, for instance.)
As has been mentioned, the article this comment is attached to actually is incorrect for reasons mentioned otherwise, but had it *been* correct, I don't reckon it should have been exempt from being spread via Slashdot simply because it was written on someone's LiveJournal. Had the news agencies picked it up, where would they have gotten their story? The guy's LiveJournal. I don't see how Slashdot, in the eyes of some, is somehow 'above' this, and I certainly don't think that stories appear out of thin air without these exact kinds of sources to start them off. That closes my argument, as I believe in letting people think what they want to think (like you say: "agree to disagree").
I've only been reading Slashdot for three years and haven't been noting any particular falls in quality - but this could easily be due to people being blind to the status quo, and it's likely that the quality *has* detoriated and that I'm just green enough to not notice. It's true that they sometimes get spelling wrong and that dupes are many, but for every article with that kind of error are five published articles without that kind of error, and surely 150 unpublished suggestions that have to be weighed against each other and against the crop of the day. I don't think that the editing job is as easy as one might imagine.
As for the qualities of the actual articles, that's a bit tougher. I don't think I've ever seen an article by an editor (not based on submitted material) that hasn't been accused of bias or agenda-pushing. I don't think it's the fault of the editors if it's actually a "slow news day" and there are less than stellar articles that get published because there's not really much that's better. And I certainly don't complain loudly about "money-grubbing opportunists" when some poor sod tries to break even on his bandwidth bill by including some Google ads as a security measure. (However, there are definite blunders like the whole Roland Piquepaille affair. There's simply no excuse for that.)
Particularly if you don't immediately use such an exchange to send anything sensitive, and you connect a day later while both are at different locations, the probablity that someone was eavesdropping is reduced.
But the true strength would be over some independent, hard to modify channel verify the key fingerprints. You make a phone call or skype session and validate the key that made it all the way unmolested. Hard to change a voice convincingly on the fly to say something completely different. Even sending the text as payload would be enough for most things, but it would then be feasible for it to anylze IM payload to try to detect and modify such challenges.
In the long run, I've never relied on gaim-encryption for much important, but it would be highly difficult to keep hijacked an even moderately mobile set of people who use multiple machines with the same key without them noticing..
There is no full proof way to do it really. With a CA or web of trust, it can be falsified, so long as any one member of the 'web of trust' or one CA can be duped, the system becomes flawed, and gives false sense of security.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
everyone needs to relax, it's still in beta.
Good karma sticks to me like velcro on a piece of plexiglass.
Move along, citizen.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been a fan of Jabber for years now, and use it heavily. I was very happy to hear that Google Talk used the Jabber server, but completely disheartened to hear that server-to-server communications don't exist. Why do you choose to create yet another closed IM network? I don't want a gmail account, but I would like to talk to your gmail users with my existing jabber account. What you have created is NOT OPEN, and NOT JABBER but a bastardised subset of its protocols and ideals.
Open up your servers!!!
Somehow, despite the use of various technologies, these messages seem to pass among all the mobile providers. Could the same business model or whatever standards, software, and services provide a solution or inspiration for this problem?
...and they haven't given me any response, either in public or from my private email (w/ the same content) to their federation link.
1. Jabber Backend - an open source instant messaging protocol. Google is a company that actually embraces open source. The entire Jabber protocol is publicly available and well documented. 2. Jabber == Growth - although Google Talk doesn't implement much of the Jabber protocol right now, it has LOTs of room to grow. Features like multi-network communication, IRC-style chat, and offline instant messaging will keep Google Talk a much desired client. 3. Clean Interface - People who claim that Google Talk is "weak" simply do not get it. In fact, it shows just how ignorant they are. They fail to appreciate the simplistic beauty behind the whole thing. Simplicity has always been Google's main advantage and has set them apart from the competitors (compare Yahoo's homepage with Google's). Not every Google Talk user is a g33k. Why would the typical user want to tweak every aspect of the client? Keep it simple! Want more features? Use a more sophisticated client. Remember, Google Talk uses an open system of communication - any Jabber client will work. 4. No spyware 5. No annoying ads, stock tickers, flashy crap, blinking banners, or news tickers. 6. Very small executable - No bloat. No extra crap. Remember, this is just an instant messaging client. That's it! If you want a stock ticker, alerts, news, or whatever, use the corresponding tool. An instant messaging client was never supposed to have all of that crap built in. This is a huge advantage for dialup users and people who don't want or need any extra crap. 7. Integration with other Google products. Gmail integration is already there, but that's not the end of things. I imagine that as time passes, Google will integrate more products such as Google Maps in their product.
How many times does the letter 'D' occur in 'advertisement'?. Only once, so...
Its 'ads' not 'adds'. One adds one number to another, perhaps whilst watching the ads on television.
It annoys me as much as the people who confuse loose and lose. It's sad to see how loose we are becoming with our grammar, we are losing the ability to spell correctly.
Oh well...
When Richard Stallman gave a talk at my Uni he wore bare feet and picked his toes while he talked, IIRC (please bear with me). He is so not on the radar of the 5.99999 billion people who don't religiously read Slashdot it's not funny. Google employs lots of really smart people who want to change the computer industry but also want to eat. For Google to support Jabber rather than come up with their own completely proprietry IM system like everybody else is F$#king awesome in my opinion. They've said they want to interoperate with others. That probably means they're trying clean up all the stupid restrictive practices of major IM clients, the same way they cleaned up the search engine business (can anyone truly remember search engines before Google with masses of ugly flashing banner ads for offshore casinos and useless results because most of the top search results were probably paid for, and still dislike Google?).
Why are there so many articles critical of Google, and so few critical of say AOL or Yahoo? Why is Google held up to such a different standard to other companies, who wouldn't think of basing an important product on something Open Source that has some potential but hasn't really had a huge impact yet? Maybe Jabber enthusiasts could think "Hmmm, perhaps we're lucky that Google has taken an interest in our obscure technology, and is paying smart people lots of money to take it to the people". Last I heard, Google wasn't doing anything to hinder hardcore Jabber people from doing what they were doing before Google Talk came along, if they don't want to be a part of the happy masses.
Lets think here for a moment In about 2 hours and 15 minutes from the time I read this, GTalk will have been out 1 week. Now, lets think how long other messengers have been out. A long time. They have had time to constantly build to a point where they are freaking good messengers. I'm sure when MSN was out for only a week, it wasn't as good as GTalk is now. Also, you forget that even though its easy to get GTalk, it is still only BETA, thus, its not really fully featured yet. Give it time anbd updates and it will capture the full potential it can acheive.
No, you get to log onto MSN Messenger using any Passport account you want. Now, you have the choice when creating your Passport account:
- to use your personal email address as your login name, or
- to create a hotmail/msn email account and use that email address as your login name, or even
- to create an @passport.com login name which is not an email account,
but one way or another, you still need to create a Passport account.Just because a login name is of the form user@host.domain, doesn't mean it's an email address.
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
You can't really make any money in a decentralized system
Who really makes much money on IM anyhow? None of the ones I've used have ever charged me. Yes, there's advertising on various IM services, but I have to wonder how that compares to maintaining servers capable of tracking millions of IM accounts on a live basis?
Yeah, nobody complains about Microsoft here on Slashdot, we are all such Microsoft fanboys. Thankfully we have people like you to support poor little Google in the face of Slashdot's overwhelming bias in favor of Microsoft.
I don't complain about them because AOL or MSN's services don't feign 'openness' or customer choice and freedom to attract users. Google can sit around and make proprietary junk all day long for all I care, but spewing BS about how open free and good it all is -- that is garbage!
It's nice that they have chosen to use jabber, and I bet their bottom line is eventually going to benefit from not having to maintain a wide breadth of clients or worry about constructing their own protocol from scratch -- but you know AOL could switch to XMPP too and it wouldn't make their service any better. See, the protocol is not the thing, it's the implementation of the sstandard, and the XMPP standard includes s2s message transports which Google has FAILED to implement, thereby completely negating all of the openness and accessibility of the system they claim. If they are sincere about their desire to interoperate with people, then they need to step up and either do it or make some kind of guarantee they are, otherwise people like me are going to continue to complain whenever someone asks about Google talk or there is an open discussion about google talk.
I guess the Jabber server has an option to log everything? If not, the GTalk server will.
All conversations -> Central database
and then a little later:
Ads -> User
In other words, soon to be unveiled: Google 1984.
No, older versions of iChat are not Jabber compatible. (Like iChat for Panther)
(The new iChat + Jabber only works on Tiger)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.