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Gaim 2.0.0beta1 Released
BerkeleyDude writes "Gaim 2.0.0beta1 has been released! Here is the changelog.
New features include account status, away messages, etc, UPnP and NAT traversal support, new UI for buddylist, chat windows and preferences."
And it still doesn't support AIM encryption. The only way to have a secure IM with gaim is to talk to another gaim user.
I still don't understand why their developers chose to do this. One of the few things that is right with AIM is the secure-chat feature. It's fairly easy to set up, and its very secure.
/dev/random
Hahaha. Linus Torvalds were right. Gnome people are all about removing features.
Switch to Kopete.
My daughter lives with her mother a fair distance away from me, I only get to see her 2-3 days a month, and I'd quite like to be able to video-chat with her from time to time.
Any objections?
(Pardon me for coming off all snarky, but some of us are interested in using Internet technologies for purposes that have nothing to do with prurient gratification.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Is it just me, or did they oversimplify everything? I know they're trying to go in a new direction with this version of Gaim but jeez, all the options became so sugar-coated that I no longer feel like I'm being treated like a newbie at the program, I'm feeling like grandma. Where are all of my options? Now I see what Linus was talking about, though Gaim isn't static to Gnome..
space is pretty cool.
Firstly: let me reiterate: I was beyond polite to both developers. I didn't bitch and moan, and I didn't flood them with unrequested details. I simply said that I had noted that NAT'd environments seemed to be causing gaim clients problems. Their responses were totally uncalled for. If they knew of the problems, and didn't want to discuss it.. there are more polite ways than saying, "Yeah, we know. And I'll probably never fix it, since I don't use NAT. Only loosers use NAT. Don't like it? Fine. Find another client." (yes, this is a paraphrase, but more accurate than you would like to think. It's both immature and uncalled for.)
Secondly: I never claimed that NAT traversal was easy. I have total sympathy for anyone coding to make it work... but that does not excuse the gaim developers' attitudes. There is little excuse for being a dick to a user. And not even caring if your code causes everyone under NAT to have headaches? Sorry.. but with attitudes like that.. their product will rarely improve, and they will drive away a large number of people that might have migrated to their product.
If you wish to use an IM client developed by people like that... fine. Just remember that next time you're bashing the poor quality of code and corporate apathy of companies like Microsoft or Real-Networks. (mind you, I am not a fan of either.)
/dev/random
I don't use gaim either.
But... Let's consider this. If you went to Microsoft and asked them to implement a feature, do you really think they'd listen? Do you think they'd give you the relevant developer's email address?
(Rhetorical questions.)
Amen. Gaim has a habit of removing the features I like most, and then not offering alternative instructions to still have that setting (surely it still can be managed via a config file somewhere, but I have no idea how). In the changelog, these feature removals are listed as: "Simplified configuration-x interface"
I will try out Gaim2 for myself, but if there truly is no way to set idle reporting to gaim usage, I will revert to 1.x
Making me dig and dig trying to figure out how to use Gaim the way I used to be able to use it is not simplifying the interface.
There goes my karma, but it's attitudes like this that slow the progress of alternative OS's. I think it's fine to cater to the people who don't want to know the ins and outs of compiling from source. Gentoo is pretty good like that.. but it's also one of the hardest to install. Don't get me wrong, all of my linux boxes are gentoo both at home and at work. I love it personally, but my wife (who also uses gentoo), parents, or many of my friends and coworkers wouldn't want to or simply couldn't set one up by themselves.
So aside from gentoo, people are pretty much left with two options. Install from source and a binary package. I don't think it's reasonable to mock someone for asking if there's a binary disto available. Granted, there's a lot of distros out there, and it may be harder than it sounds, but don't jump on the guy for asking.
http://cubemonkey.net/quotes -- fortune-mod quote generator
So... about 99% of the people I know (I'm hangin' with the wrong crowd, don't remind me) use msn.. and with that I mean the Microsoft client. The have all kinds of neat stuff like the emoticons that you can show other people, audiochat, videochat, a buzzer (which is very annoying btw) and, nudges, winks... which don't have any real function besides being considered a MUST HAVE amongst almost every msn user. And not 1 microsoft-client msn-alternative comes even close in implementing this. And Gaim 2.0 probably won't either.
I know.. if it ain't there.. do it yourself... but I'm not capable of coding such a thing.
Maybe the specs are closed... whatever. Fact is that at this moment for a lot of young people.. msn is the killer app.
Firefox baseline Theme is sparton on Windows. Now, the guys that made the Noia Theme.... Now that's a nice-looking UI.
~The TwoTailedFox posts again....
Actually, if you read the page you're linking to, you should really find it makes perfect sense.
No, you're risking increased exposure. While the idea of using filesystem protections to secure the password is a good one in theory, it fails to provide layers of security, something that is nearly always a sound security principle.
If a system is compromised with some other avenue of attack, the unobscured nature of the stored password gives the attacker a password. While we are supposed to have different passwords for every system, we all know that reality is often far different.
This happened at my employer recently. Our system uses NTLM for most authentication, including Jabber. From a single compromise and the nature of the gaim stored password - instant access to anyone's accounts that stored a password with gaim (well, supposing that their password had been written in an appropriate place - it's not quite that simple).
Yes, yes, any obscuring that did not require a password would be a schill. It could be cracked with relatively little effort. But when a compromise has happened, there's a big difference between someone instantly having access to all accounts and someone having to do some work for each.
So while I agree - obscuring stored passwords does not increase security in any formal sense - it seems silly to deny that an extra layer of protection, capable of slowing an attacker, is useful.
Rather than saying that, it would be better for you to be more specific on what the problems are.
Couple projects have tried to fork gaim, now you don't really hear any of them. I think that speaks for itself.
I always install a console-based version of whatever gui network app I need to use. Lynx/firefox. pine/Tbird. Etc. And CenterICQ is a pretty decent console analog to Gaim. Only problem I have with it is that screen messes it up bad. So just open up another putty/xterm.
But for GUI stuff, gaim is hard to beat.
If you don't like it, you don't like it. But if you're one of the guys bitching about the developer's attitude, step back and think about it for a moment. They're giving you free software, and they're trying to keep up with not one, but several closed protocols. It is open source, if you feel so strongly that they can't be trusted to do a decent job, fork the goddamned thing. Your reaction makes sense if you're paying for it, but you aren't. And they won't care if you stop using it... doesn't cost them any money.
This attitude befuddles me... if only you people would do the same with crappy commercial software, stop using it because the developers are assholes, Microsoft wouldn't be the force that it is today. Somehow though, it only ever gets applied to OSS...
I realize that it's impossible to be extremely secure, but when you're running a computer that your whole extended family has accounts on, you want something more than just plain text, even if you do have permissions set not to allow anyone else to see your passwords. I wasn't saying just encrypt it with the password, but what I am saying is to store it in a better way than plain text, even if it means security through obscurity. Ultimately, I'd like my retinal scan to be my password. Nobody sane is gonna steal my eye for my password.
I really wanted to change my sig to something witty, but all I could come up with is this.
I know this is probably not the spot to ask for things from Win-GAIM, I'm sure a person or two could possibily comment on what I'm asking for.
.. (this is openended, and I'm a bastard for suggesting something like this because it's huge and not really broken down, but damnit, I want more stuff -- and I'll write for GAIM, just give me a piece to write, and I'll get to it .. seriously, I should do that .. I will.)
.. hopefully somewhat positively. =)
(1) GAIM should not have such a large memory footprint. I'm not sure if this has been fixed in 2.0 beta, but it's a huge gripe I have. Given enough time and use, GAIM will just become this behemoth application that slows everything to a crawl.
(2) I know the Aways Message code has been rewritten, and hopefully it has taken into account the fact that not all away message lengths and types are standard -- so setting one away message for all acounts is not really feasible. For example, I could place a huge away message for my AIM accounts, but my Yahoo account will be awkwardly cut off. It's just kinda lame.
(3) I wish the logging feature in GAIM could somehow recollect logs from the ancient versions of GAIM (sub 0.70, I believe). I have logs that extend wayyy back in time, and I'd love to be able to reclaim them in GAIM today. I know there are some elements that were not included in those logs to break them into the exact format that is being used now, but I'm sure they are still parseable and reclaimable.
(4) I honestly believe that GAIM looks like garbage. I know the UI stuff is what OSS has been all about sucking at, and this is no departure from what seems like the norm, but c'mon. I am seriously waiting for the moment when GAIM can look like DeadAIM or Trillian, or anything in that general region of interest. Frankly, I think GAIM is a super powerful program, that I have loved for years, but damnit, make it look nice.
(5) The file sending and receiving feature for GAIM is garbage. I rarely can receive and send files without something catastrophic happening to my client. That is terrible, and almost a reason why I am slowly making plans to move away from it. Yes, I am sad about this too. Well, hopefully you are sad.
(6) And I really want to be able to control my buddy list a lot better. I remeber testing a really unstable CVS copy of GAIM, and I did notice that there was a way to list buddies based on log size, which is excellent, but still. I want other ways to do it too. And I'm not sure if there are other ways (you could enlighten me), but I think that would be an amazing tool.
(7) And then, generally speaking, I want GAIM to have more features. I really want the clients that I have on GAIM to have much better access to the normal client's array of stuff
And that's that. I have ranted
-Pavan
Ultimately, I'd like my retinal scan to be my password. Nobody sane is gonna steal my eye for my password.
You overestimate the amount of sane people in the world.
This is why I reject biological scans. Nothing I could ever have is that sensitive that I would want to risk losing an eyeball over it. Besides, a password you can change when compromised (or even before it gets compromised), but when someone manages to duplicate whatever biological trait you use to identify yourself, you're screwed (which together with cloning tech might actually turn out to be a fine way of copying bio identities).
But, to me, the point of the password is to keep someone looking through files from stumbling across it. It's like hiding Christmas presents under the bed--it's trivial to circumvent, but it prevents truly-accidental discovery.
People are thinking of encrypting the file as the equivalent of putting it in a vault so no one can get it. I see the encryption more as a "Please Keep Out" sign, where anyone can disregard it, but most people will respect your wishes.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Grow up.
Other people don't like to use computers the same way you do. You're worse than the idiot 11 year olds I deal with every day that INSIST that Playstation is better than Nintendo. I like Debian. Other people might like Ubuntu, or Fedora, or Suse, or Slackware.
There are hundreds of Unix distributions, yet they're always one fucking idiot claiming his way to be the one true way. Moron.
There's a HUGE difference between adding new functions (the problem with Mozilla) and adding new options. Increasing functionality beyond what is expected or what is reasonable leads to bloat, slow speeds, and makes things generally unweildy. Putting a check box in a program that determines whether or not a 16 pixel by 16 pixel image displays or not doesn't increase file size or slow down the program in any meaningful way at all.
sig.