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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."
For GAIM functionality in OS X you can try Adium X It doesn't do IRC (by design choice), but the functionality for a lot of protocols is there.
(Also, IIRC, Adium X does use libgaim.)
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I have been running this since last night and I must say, it is a nice release.
Two things I have noticed that impress me the most:
1) They finally fixed tab chatted, so if someone on your MSN list decides they want a 20 character display name, their tab wont take up 20 spaces on your chat window. Instead it truncates it and evenly spaces the tabs.
2) When you type/recieve a message you see it scroll in from the bottom of the message window. Really neat effect when you are typing, as it looks like it zooms from the text input field into the conversation window. Nothing major, but neat.
All in all, its a pretty good release.
Encrypting the passwords would mean the key would have to be stored in the program. The key could be retrieved from the program. This is *EXACTLY* how the DVD encryption was broken. It didnt work there, and its not gonna work here.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Actually, if you read the page you're linking to, you should really find it makes perfect sense. Either you store the password in such a way that you need user interaction to retrieve it, or you use some sort of obscurity approach which is worse than nothing. As it is, gaim stores it in plain text, yes, but there's nothing to keep you from either not storing the password OR using file-system or file based encryption - which is actually perfectly feasible. If you're using windows XP for example, just right-click the accounts.xml, properties, advanced, encrypt. (The encryption key is linked to your XP login password)
On the other hand, yes, some sort of OS specific hooks to make this easier would be sensible. For example, using Mac OS's "keychain", or Windows XP's "secure storage".
Still, even using these built-in encrypted storages only protect against a very very short list of threats.
Now, if you just stored accounts.xml on a hard-ware level encrypted harddrive that needs a smart-card and a passphrase to work, you'd be getting somewhere..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The ability to set away messages is not new - not at all. I don't know what the submitter was smoking, but maybe he didn't understand that part of the changelog that says that the code dealing with away messages (as well as other parts) has been completely rewritten.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
gaim-vv is being merged back into the trunk, so at some point, 2.x should have video support as well.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
A couple things, if you can't find where to get the windows version (the windows port page hasn't been updated yet) it's here (with GTK)or here (without GTK)
Second, if you want bigger text for everything since the default is fairly small, make sure you install No Theme (or anything BUT the WIMP theme) and then goto your C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\etc\gtk-2.0 folder and edit the gtkrc file with notepad or something and change the one line from sans 8 to say, sans 10
There's a few more things I like to do to mine but it's all personal, I thought I'd throw out those two things though.
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
This really bugs me, and is the reason I will not be upgrading to Gaim 2.0
* Removed "Gaim usage" and "Idle time reporting" preferences; behavior now always uses mouse/keyboard when available
I do not have Gaim report my idle time, largely for work reasons. If I am busy at work or whatever, I don't want the "obligation" of having to reply to a person that notices that I am no longer idle. This is a very common thing, and I prefer that that remains private. As far as anybody else should be concerned, I am away. It doesn't mean I am avoiding the person, but sometimes you have other things that need to get done, and I don't want to have to explain that to people that I don't want upset at me.
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"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.
Because:
Gaim offers two ways to conduct secure conversations over AIM: the gaim-encryption plugin and the OTR plugin.
slashdot broke my sig
Simple. A little over a year ago, I contacted one of gaim's core developers about gaim's difficulties with file transfers when any of the party is NAT'd. He didn't know or care about the file transfer stuff, so he put me in contact w/ another core developer. The second guy was even worse; he was in charge of file transfers and such, but outright told me that he didn't care if things didn't work in NAT'd environments and that things would probably never change. Though I cannot remember the conversation, verbatim, I do remember this: not only was he pretty damn rude (whereas I had been more than polite), but he didn't care that the code he was in charge of didn't work well.
I gave it some thought, and decided that if the developers of gaim have attitudes like this, it is not a project that I want any part of. <shrugs> What's more: IM has become an integral part of staying in touch with people. It's right up there with email. If the developers of the defacto standard IM client for *nix don't care if it has issues and don't care to fix those issues, how in the hell do people honestly expect anyone to switch from windows to a FOSS *nix (ie. linux, freebsd, etc). Having bugs is one thing, but not even caring about those bugs? Psssh.
(And, yes, I know the changelog says that they've fixed some of the NAT issues... but for me, I've already decided that the apathy about the quality of their product is cause enough to permanently stay away from gaim.)
/dev/random
After spending over an hour trying to get it to compile with the voice/video support only for make to choke on something in mediastreamer, I did get it running fairly easily after that. (Fedora Core 4, KDE)
My first impressions are mixed. There seems to be a bug in the handling of the new away window on the buddy list, as it has completely vanished on me once and sometimes it contains the message-window-style formatting bar which by itself suddenly vanishes.
I'm also annoyed at the size of the status buttons. I shrunk the ones for the individual protocols all the way down and got rid of them, but there's still that giant one and it would be nice if it were smaller.
I love the little effect where new messages "scroll up" from the bottom, as though the text entered is moving right up into the window. I've seen numerous complaints about it, but I think it's very neat.
File transfers work now in AIM. FINALLY. Previously, I'd had a 20% success rate, primarily when I disabled iptables. It worked flawlessly when I tested with some friends last night, which is nice because now I don't have to tell them to go e-mail me stuff.
I did get pretty annoyed because I knew the theme could be controlled through Gnome, but from KDE, I could NOT find the Gnome theme control! I Googled, I checked a ton of menu options and documentation, and there was no way to do it without logging out and logging in under Gnome. I thought this release was uglier than past releases and this was the first time I'd tried to theme it.
I still think Guifications needs to be included as standard rather than a plugin. Every other client I've used has it standard, and in fact, some like Trillian even have it better, displaying the message text rather than just "xyzperson has messaged you."
Overall, I'm quite impressed, but there's quite a bit of work that needs to be done I'd think.
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.
actually, this _was_ the case. the Gaim-vv devs were all ready to merge into CVS HEAD, but Sean Egan changed all the hooks for voice and video without any notice, all so google's voice chat could be integrated. this means that all the gaim-vv work was essentially for naught, and it seems that the devs have given up merging in the support. the lead gaim-vv dev updated his blog with the situation, and others like Christian "ChipX86" Hammond chimed in with their personal horror stories working with Sean Egan. Egan has alienated most of the other GAIM contributors, who refuse to work with him anymore. sadly, it looks like Kopete will still be the only IM client for linux with cam support.
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.
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suwain_2
I looked at the sourceforge page, and it says that they're just giving up on gaim-w. If Sean Egan is such a tard and so many developers won't work with him, why don't they give up on gaim instead, and make their own fork and tell everyone that theirs is the one with voice and video support? It seems to me that that would be a good plan at this point...
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.