Intel and Skype Exclude AMD

Raenex writes "CNET is reporting that Intel and Skype have signed an exclusive deal that would cap the number of conference call members on all but Intel architecture. Skype will only offer 10-way conference calls on specific Intel chips while other chips, including all AMD chips, will only offer 5-way conference calls. From the article: 'Though few would argue that a niche feature like that is going to be a deal breaker for most PC buyers, the importance of the Skype-Intel alliance goes well beyond VoIP conferencing. Indeed, it's the latest, and certainly most prominent, example of Intel's new take on marketing: Lock in software partners as well as the PC makers.'"

Comments

Low Blow

[Kickboy12]

To allow more conference calls to users who are using a specific CPU is a cheap shot at the market. It's not fair to chip makers, and definetly not fair to the consumers.

Gatta start watchin Intel's sucker punches.

Re:Low Blow

[CastrTroy]

I agree. I think they should do a speed test on your processor and if it can handle the load, then the feature should be enabled. Disabling a feature because you don't have a specific brand of processor is kind of low.

Re:Low Blow

[TripMaster Monkey]

Gatta start watchin Intel's sucker punches.

You mean you're only beginning to watch now?

This is just the latest round in Intel's ongoing anti-competetive war against AMD.

Re:Low Blow

[DJCacophony]

anticompetitive? or competitive?

Re:Low Blow

[Xymor]

Seriously, even chatting 10-way using top real-time video compression it's very unlikely that new cpus in new systems, even cheaper less powerfull ones, should not be able to handle skype.
AMD user-base is increasing so it will probably be skype's loss.

Re:Low Blow

[oringo]

I agree. Am I the only one smelling an anti-trust suit out of this?

Re:Low Blow

[Sebastopol]

So?

BMW dealer mechanics charge 3x more for service calls, and they do a better job. I can choose to go with a generic mechanic for less money and get crappy service.

Pay more, get more.

Re:Low Blow

[SatanicPuppy]

I think it's pretty clearly anticompetitive, when you're pushing someone to write software that is specifically noncompliant with a competitors hardware.

If I were Intel I would have waited until that particular competitor was no longer suing me for anti-competitive behavior before adding more weight to their argument...But that's just me.

Re:Low Blow

[Yartrebo]

That's not the case. This is like Ford passing a law mandating that 55 mph governors be installed on BMWs, and then advertising that their car can go much faster than BMWs. AMD is widely known to make better chips in this case, not Intel.

Re:Low Blow

[MadJo]

agreed... I'm starting to think, that it is time for me to bail out of Skype.
This is indeed a very low blow, and I hope it will bite them in the {you know what}

Re:Low Blow

[AndroidCat]

Low blow? I'd say Skype shot themselves in the foot.

Re:Low Blow

[mrmeval]

Sounds like a trust needs bustin'

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHA. BMW marketing managers cream in their pants over people like you.

Remember, this is the same company that kept mechanical valve lifters in their engines decades after everyone else had switched to self-adjusting valve lifters. Why? To make you come in for adjustments every few thousand miles, so you would be sure to pointlessly "pay more and get more" over and over.

Here's a tip: Do a little work and find a really good "generic mechanic", then stick with them. That way you won't have to go through life as a sucker.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

anticompetitive? or competitive?

So, Intel does it and it's just good business practice, Microsoft does it and it's time to bring in the antitrust lawyers because it's unfair and anticompetitive.

Re:Low Blow

[GoRK]

I understand your post and agree, but just for fun: the governor on BMW's.. (or at least the ones that have it) is 155 MPH and there are plenty of carmakers who advertise about how much faster their cars can go by comparison despite the fact that the BMW's speed is artifically limited. I don't think that it's hurting anybody's sales however.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is no fair... you might well ask AMD why they are supporting things like Trusted Computing when it would allow things like this to be done with consumate ease in at and all levels of the computing stack. They are busy building their own coffin.

Re:Low Blow

[Dashing Leech]

"anticompetitive? or competitive?"

Competition is making a better product or doing it for a cheaper price. Anti-competition is forcing people to use your product by artificially limiting another product that people want to only work with yours. This is just a bullying tactic. Now, Skype with 10-way conferencing isn't exactly a big stick, but it's still a stick we're being hit with. But the principle is even worse than some of Microsoft's monopolistic tactics. It's not just integration or bundling, it'd be more like only allowing Windows to play mp3 files above 128 kbps using Windows Media Player and artificially crippling others. (The fact that it's two companies here instead of two MS departments doesn't make much of a difference to the harm to the end user.)

I'm wondering if they factored in the anti-marketing this does for them. I'm less interested in using Intel and Skype products now.

Re:Low Blow

[GreyPoopon]

agreed... I'm starting to think, that it is time for me to bail out of Skype.

I'd say bail out of Skype and Ebay both. Also, if you have a choice, don't purchase anything with Intel inside. What's the best replacement for Skype that has a feature similar to SkypeOut and works in both the US and Europe?

Re:Low Blow

[captain_craptacular]

Not really. It's more like Ford making a deal with Alpine (stereo manufacturer) so that Alpine 10 disc changers only accepted 5 discs if installed in a non Ford vehicle. Basically, is a great move for Ford and not anti-competitive at all. It's most likely a foolish move for Alpine, but thats not really a big deal since there are other stereo companies.

In the long run, it's a non-issue to the consumer, they have other options.

There is no law here, no one is going to be FORCED to buy an Intel.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

So does this feature work when the OS is run under QEMU/VMWare/VirtualPC.

Re:Low Blow

[lar3ry]

Apple did this as well. With OS X 10.4, iChat got the capability to do more advanced conferencing. The limitation was that you need a G5 processor to be able to host this facility.

Now, the reason for this is that the G5 is more capable of providing the service. However, it can also be argued that the G5 systems bring more money to Apple, who sells the hardware... so, in order to host this nifty new feature, you need to fork out money to Apple.

Now, this bit of distrust has not been given to Apple. I wonder how much Intel really deserves this right now. Does this deal truly elminiate AMD from participating in 10-way conferences, or is a Skype-AMD deal in the works, and since it's not finalized, people might be jumping to the wrong conclusions?

Re:Low Blow

[crawling_chaos]

I think it's pretty clearly anticompetitive, when you're pushing someone to write software that is specifically noncompliant with a competitors hardware.

Stupid perhaps, but hardly anticompetitive. It's not like someone couldn't launch a competitor to Skype that offers these features in a platform independent way. If you feel otherwise, then Apple should have sued Intel and AMD for funding software that did not run on the PowerPC platform, no? They didn't because they knew that there's nothing illegal going on here, just business decisions. (and poor ones at that, in my opinion).

Re:Low Blow

[savorymedia]

To allow more conference calls to users who are using a specific CPU is a cheap shot at the market. It's not fair to chip makers, and definetly not fair to the consumers.

Then to hell with Skype. Use Google Talk or some other competitor.

Re:Low Blow

[Tyler Eaves]

The reason for that is the tires. Have to go to a Z-Rated tire above 155, which not only rides harsher, but is considerably more expensive.

Re:Low Blow

[despisethesun]

Actually, I'm pretty sure all the German automakers have governors on their cars for around that speed. There's apparently a "gentleman's agreement" among them, and there was some controversy over it because the Chrysler 300C is not speed limited in this way. There is a bit of a disagreement as to whether Chrysler should be bound by the agreement as a part of Daimler Chrysler or if it only applies to Mercedes autos.

Re:Low Blow

[SatanicPuppy]

Your analogy would seem to suggest that currently, software that runs on intel does not run equally well on amd, which is not, in fact, the case. This is more analogous to lexmark's print cartridge scam where their printers refused to use cartridges manufactured by competitiors simply because they WERE managed by competitors.

In this situation, intel is offering incentives to a software manufacturer to cripple their product on a competitors hardware. I agree that a competing product could be released that didn't have this arbitrary restriction, but I think it is clearly anti-competitive behavior that it was released in the first place.

Re:Low Blow

[MadJo]

gtalk? :) although people are asking whether you can trust Google or not. :)

Re:Low Blow

[GreyPoopon]

gtalk? :) although people are asking whether you can trust Google or not. :)

Does gtalk have a feature that allows you to call someone on POTS?

Re:Low Blow

[beebware]

How about the multiplatform Gizmoproject ?

Re:Low Blow

[MadJo]

well, since everything will eventually be Google(TM), it might as well get that too ;)

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

But the principle is even worse than some of Microsoft's monopolistic tactics.

This is one of Microsoft's monopolistic tactics. The most criminal example was when they caused Windows 3.1 to intentionally die if DRDOS was detected, and the most famous example was the rumored slogan "it's not done until Lotus won't run"... but one could argue that the most successful example was writing incompatible APIs to reinvent the POSIX wheel.

Sure, having your phone service force you into switching your CPU vendor would suck, but in the software world that's just standard operating procedure. What percentage of programs today are portable enough that you can choose to run them without having a choice of operating system forced on you as well?

Re:Low Blow

[GreyPoopon]

How about the multiplatform Gizmoproject [gizmoproject.com] ?

Any idea what kind of service quality they have?

Re:Low Blow

[Aspirator]

I was looking into a provider for VoIP, Skype was reccomended to me,
with this news Skype is out. (Even though most of my computers have
Intel processors.)

Not because of the 10 v 5 way conferencing (I don't care) but because
of the mentality it conveys.

Can anyone name some competitors to Skype that offer world wide POTS
access?

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD is widely known to make better chips in this case, not Intel.

Pfff. What are you smokin'?

Skype is an office application, which Intel handily dominates. Don't you read anandtech or tomshardware? And the Centrino Duo slaughters anything AMD has to offer against it.

When AMD starts making money, they can do the same thing. Until then, ain't capitalism grand!!!

Re:Low Blow

[Fordiman]

The question you have to ask yourself is "What value does this add?"

See, the only difference between competitive behavior and anticompetitive behavior is that anticompetitive behavior isn't innovation; it's simply trying to squash the competition.

Further, you have to ask, what does Skype get out of all this?

Re:Low Blow

[danpsmith]

When are they ever fair to the consumer?

Re:Low Blow

[Sebastopol]

You should read this post:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=177277&cid=147 11403

Re:Low Blow

[Fordiman]

Feh. I'm just wondering how long it takes to fix the firmware in an AMD telecommunications chip to handle 10-node conference calls.

I mean, come on. Unless the software is burned into ROM, it's just software.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Yes, you are. Out of all of slashdot no one else had that idea. Congratulations.

Re:Low Blow

[Sebastopol]

Well, there is something called Anti-Trust to keep capitalism fair. I think that's the issue here.

But check this out:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2648

Itty, bitty mobile processor Yonah, at 2GHz, with no 64-bit extensions, kicks the bloody shit out of AMDs top of the line offering on almost all the benchmarks. Can't wait to see their 64bit mobile part in a few months.

Re:Low Blow

[mattyrobinson69]

im not sure, but doesn't google talk (jabber + new audio extentions) meet that criteria?

Re:Low Blow

[SomeGuyTyping]

But apple can kinda bs their way into saying that the g5 is capable of handling such a feature, and older processors are not. There's no such excuse on this deal. This is blatant.

Re:Low Blow

[PerlDudeXL]

I wouldn't be surprised if for example the EU Commision is going to block that deal for Europe.
Fining Intel and Skype for being anticompetitive ...
I'm sure AMD is going to complain.

Re:Low Blow

[gmack]

Shouldn't have to AFIK you can just trap the CPUID call and fake the reply.. it's been done before.

Re:Low Blow

[fupeg]

Competition is making a better product or doing it for a cheaper price. Anti-competition is forcing people to use your product by artificially limiting another product that people want to only work with yours.

I undersand your sentiment, but you're completely wrong. Competition implies that you are competing with one or more compettitors. The goal of compettition is to beat the other compettitors. One way to do that might be to make a better product or a cheaper product, but there's nothing inherent to compettition that says "you must do it this way." No, the only thing inherent is that you are trying to beat your compettitors. It's up to you to decide on how to do that.

Now it may be that the activity that you are competing in has rules and this would place restrictions on what you do to beat your compettition. The only real rules of business are those created by the government. One might say that if you break those rules, then you are being anti-compettitive, but really you are just being criminal. So the question becomes, is Skype/Intel breaking the law? If not, then Intel is simply being compettitive. They are simply trying to beat AMD. They are not limited to beating them by simply producing better/cheaper processors. They owe it to their shareholders to pursue any legal means of gaining a competitive edge over AMD.

Re:Low Blow

[jma05]

http://www.gizmoproject.com/

In some respects, they are better than Skype.
Cheaper calls within US. Standards complaint (SIP) - which means you can plug in third party hardware to hook up your normal phone (can be cheaper than Vonage at some usage rates). Software looks better and does not force itself to startup. Probably does not abuse your bandwidth either like Skype.

On the other hand,
Overseas calls are slightly more expensive as is call-in.

Re:Low Blow

[StikyPad]

Or W, or more realistically, Y. Anyway, "luxury performance" tires are the new thing, attempting to combine a smooth quiet ride with enough grip to freak out your average passenger. Also if you buy any high end BMW, it's gonna come with Z rated tires. The only point in gov's and lesser tires is to make people feel like they're getting something of value when they buy higher models.

It's like turning off pipelines on GPUs and selling them as econo models.

Re:Low Blow

[JesseMcDonald]

Gizmo appears to have most of Skype's features (direct VoIP, inbound and outbound POTS calls, IMs, conferencing, call recording) as well as a slick UI and support for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It may not have encrypted connections (I'm not sure), but it does have the advantage of interoperating with other SIP and Asterisk networks (it uses SIP internally), so you can call e.g. Free World Dialup subscribers from the Gizmo interface, and visa-versa. Outbound calls appear to be cheaper, as well: 1 cents/minute to the continental USA and Canada, 3-5 cents to the UK, France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and a number of other countries. Somolia, Iraq, Papua New Guinea, Antarctica, and Palestine were the only countries I recognized with rates over $1.00/minute. The highest rate I saw was $2.50/minute to Diego Garcia in Asia, and that was only for landline calls; calls to mobile phones were less expensive. Disclaimer: I only found this earlier program today (I started looking when I saw the story), so I haven't had a chance to evaluate the quality of the program in operation. Perhaps someone else could comment on that point?

Re:Low Blow

[Arramol]

I can't imagine how there wouldn't be one. I'm completely baffled that they think this is a good idea.

Re:Low Blow

[dpilot]

It adds a whole lot of value... for Intel.
Just like DRM is a really good thing... for content providers.

While I'd like to think this is the same great country I was born and grew up in, stuff like this SUCKS, along with a whole lot of other things. This sums up to leave me with the distinct impression that MY country has been sold, behind me. That little fear bubbling in the back of my mind is that it's beyond redemption.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

I can choose to go with a generic mechanic for less money and get crappy service.
You can believe that all you want but it is nothing but FUD
You can not glob all non dealer and delaer mechanics into two specific groups.
You think a BMW dealer can repair your front end damage and paint your car better then a dedicated body shop? How about some suspension work? Those are just examples. Anyone can replace a wheel bearing, brakes, spark plugs, battery, belt driven accessories (water pump, alternator, PS, AC compressor etc..). Those things have been around in one form or another for as long as cars themselves.
There are things I would consider using a dealer for but blindly assuming a dealer is a better choice for everything and automatically assuming a non dealer is the suck is not smart.
A lady I work takes her Acura to the dealer for EVERYTHING, including state inspections and for tires and fluids changes. That Acura garage really knows tires huh?

Again, nothing but FUD...

Re:Low Blow

[Firehed]

It's not even being non-compliant, it's more like sites that have one of those "Switch to Firefox!" banners up at the top if it detects you using IE. It's only there for certain browsers; the features are only enabled for certain processors. It's not in the slightest bit a technical limitation. Both browsers are capable of not showing the banner, and both chips are (way more than) capable of 10-way calling. Definately anti-competitive, and most definately bad timing on their part considering the lawsuit.

That said, if I ever have a desire to talk with nine other people at once, I'll be sure to just use teamspeak, which is much free-er (because out of the ten, you know at least one will be on a non-skype line)

Re:Low Blow

[RedDirt]

I'm curious, did you even read the article that you linked to? Here's a few samples since you seemed to miss them:

"Under Battlefield 2, we're able to see a small 3% performance advantage over the Pentium M. However, compared to the Athlon 64 X2, the Core Duo does not stand a chance."

"What performance at lower resolutions does tell us is that in this type of AI/physics load, the Athlon 64 X2 is a much better performer than the Core Duo, which does have some importance for performance in future games."

And in the summary:

"In the past, power users on the go had to sacrifice mobility for CPU power, but with the Core Duo, that is no longer the case. You will still most likely have to resort to something larger if you need better GPU performance, but at least your CPU needs will be covered. The one thing that Intel's Core Duo seems to be able to do very well is to truly bridge the gap between mobile and desktop performance, at least in thin and light packages.

But what about the bigger picture? What does our most recent look at the performance of Intel's Core Duo tell us about future Intel desktop performance? We continue to see that the Core Duo can offer, clock for clock, overall performance identical to that of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 - without the use of an on-die memory controller. The only remaining exception at this point appears to be 3D games, where the Athlon 64 X2 continues to do quite well, most likely due to its on-die memory controller."

Based on that, I don't see how you can conclude that:

Itty, bitty mobile processor Yonah, at 2GHz, with no 64-bit extensions, kicks the bloody shit out of AMDs top of the line offering on almost all the benchmarks.

The Core Duo is impressive, no doubt about it. Near desktop performance with laptop-like power consumption (at least once Microsoft fixes XP so USB devices don't cause Windows to remain out of standby) but it seems you've gone a few too many laps 'round the Intel hype hampster-wheel. As a matter of fact, in direct opposition to your assertion, in all but one of the benchmarks Yonah trailed AMD's offerings. The gap wasn't generally tremendous, but it certainly was there. Yessir, that'd be kicking the bloody shit. Yup. Oh yes.

Re:Low Blow

[Akaihiryuu]

Skype has been removed from every computer on my network, and the ports that it uses have been blocked on my server. No Skype traffic will be allowed on my network.

Re:Low Blow

[ceoyoyo]

Come on, it's not the same thing. This is more like Apple saying okay, if you've got AppleCare then your computer can add some extra people to an iChat conference.

Put the other way (and exaggerating a bit for effect), your example is like blaming Skype because you can't conference with as many people on a 486 as you can on a PIV.

Re:Low Blow

[Dashing Leech]

"The goal of compettition is to beat the other compettitors."

While you are not strictly wrong, you are out of context. You've defined competition in the most generic, generalized sense, not in the market sense, and don't accept that it can mean something else in another context. By your definition violations of anti-trust laws can still qualify as competition. But at least you'd have at least one major supporter of your definition. (If you look, you'll even see that word "anti-competitive" used in the same context as here.)

Re:Low Blow

[cdn2k1]

Money. What else do you think?

Re:Low Blow

[ThePiMan2003]

Appearently they got the technology from Intel to allow Skype to do the bigger conference calls.

Re:Low Blow

[RubberChainsaw]

"Further, you have to ask, what does Skype get out of all this?"

Intel's marketing muscle.

Re:Low Blow

[thinkliberty]

I am sure the linux users will be the first to prove this is easy to bypass by running skype in a sandbox and returning /proc/cpuinfo with bogus model name and vendor_id "intel inside" information... Web browsers have done this for a long time... I guess CPU information is next.

This takes about 5 minutes to bypass, unless they are using a special compiler.

Re:Low Blow

[ceoyoyo]

Customer! I've got a choice between two cell phone providers. Their prices and services are very nearly the same. One refers to "consumers" on it's web site. The other uses "customers." Guess who gets my business?

Re:Low Blow

[danpsmith]

Customer! I've got a choice between two cell phone providers. Their prices and services are very nearly the same. One refers to "consumers" on it's web site. The other uses "customers." Guess who gets my business?

Regardless of what they call you on the site, they both regard you as a consumer =P

Re:Low Blow

[ceoyoyo]

Yeah, but at least one of them isn't arrogant enough to put it on their web site.

Re:Low Blow

[nacturation]

What if the argument were turned around? Maybe Skype was planning to offer only 5 person conference calls, but Intel sponsored 10 person conference calls on Intel chips?

Re:Low Blow

[SeaFox]

There is no law here, no one is going to be FORCED to buy an Intel.

Except the people who use Skype and need to make a very large conference call. It's not like they need to make the call and AMD just doesn't have the hardware that can handle it, it's an artifical limitation, and doesn't sound entirely legit. An X86 compatable PC is supposed to be an X86 compatable PC. What's next? You cannot make a 10 person call because you're not using all Dell workstations? Your browser only works if you use a laser mouse?

Re:Low Blow

[narzy]

That is some monopolistic bullshit right there. strait up. wow, that is low, really fucking low. Is Intel really that scared now of AMD? Is AMD's product that much more of a solid platform that they have to cripple software to make their chips win? that is fucking sick.

Re:Low Blow

[DingerX]

What about encryption? Sure, you can claim that the proprietary nature of Skype's software makes us unable to know how effective its encryption really is, or if Ebay has already given the US the "keys", but it's still better than demonstrably in the clear.

Re:Low Blow

[richlv]

skype could provide binaries optimised for particular intel cpus.

but this seems somewhat stupid from skype as there already are concerns about them being proprietary - and this shows that the concerns are valid...

Re:Low Blow

[xarak]

I can't see "Switch to Firefox" as being a feature, nor the displaying or not of it as a "limitation".

Re:Low Blow

[SillyNickName4me]

Not because of the 10 v 5 way conferencing (I don't care) but because
of the mentality it conveys.

They were out the day they got bought by ebay.

Good to see they are actually helping themselves die now.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

first of all.. everything that isnt configurable is bullshit in my eyes.

second of all who cares about the skype hype? skype is only combatible with itsself and is closed source. its also unusable in a corporate environment because of the virus threats it exposes the box to.

i use ekiga (new gnomemeeting with sip support) and asterisk... because i want a powerful professional open source solution that can do more then just calling other skype users...

Re:Low Blow

[Znork]

"I undersand your sentiment, but you're completely wrong."

Actually, he's completely right. Competition in the economic sense and as the justification of and reason for the efficiency of a capitalistic free market economy is narrow competition with quality and price, driving efficiency of resource allocation.

You can 'compete' in other ways, as a game of 'winning' or 'losing', but as you step out of pure economic competition you are actively damaging the economy and the wealth of your society as a whole by actively preventing the creation, and availability, of value at optimum resource cost.

In its economic implications, it's no less harmful than actually running around damaging public property, it's just less traceable and immediately obvious, as missed opportunity costs are difficult to calculate.

Re:Low Blow

[Jaseoldboss]

You're right, I haven't seen any reference to Asterisk testing the processor type to make sure it can handle hundreds of calls at once.

If this was genuine Skype should test for Spyware / Virtual Machines and how many other processes are running before initiating a conference call. It's abuse of monopoly pure and simple.

Re:Low Blow

[Bobsledboy]

No, next is that you can't watch HD content unless your computer is made by a major vendor eg. Dell

Re:Low Blow

[Danimoth]

I don't know about the sound quality in Skype, but as soon as you have more than 2 people talking in Gizmo the sound quality seems to drop fast. My WoW guild used it for a while to communicate before the Teamspeak for Mac got useable. It also lacked features like push to talk. Although, the ability to have one person host a conversation and have other join free to chat, in addition to the normal calling services is nice.

Re:Low Blow

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

A shot at being bundled with Microsoft's operating systems?

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't kid yourself, the NSA has the "keys" whether Skype gave it to them or not. Numerous buildings full of blade servers can do that.

Re:Low Blow

[Sebastopol]

Yessir, that'd be kicking the bloody shit. Yup. Oh yes.

Yup, 2.0GHz vs. AMD marketing machine's 4800+. Thanks for proving my point.

You AMD fanboys have the shortest memories every.

Re:Low Blow

[Creepy]

While I don't like this deal, the article does say it's not permanent - Intel has just bought itself an "exclusive" platform release for advanced features, which may/will be added for all platforms later. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me to see a hack/patch to make the advanced features work on AMD, though that itself may be illegal.

The big problem I have with this deal is that Skype is the dominant player in the PC VoIP market right now, and many people don't know the alternatives like Google Talk, Gizmoproject, GAIM, etc. My wife even knows Skype and she's never used it.

What value does it add? Marketing for Intel.
What does Skype get? A lot of something green.

Re:Low Blow

[chrish]

Clearly a dump-truck full of money for all of the CxO executives and the Marketing "genius" that initiated this move.

Re:Low Blow

[RedDirt]

Yup, 2.0GHz vs. AMD marketing machine's 4800+. Thanks for proving my point.

Since you've demonstrated a lack of reading comprehension I'll refer you to page 5 of your article. The AMD processors are clocked at 2 and 2.2 ghz. What's your point?

You AMD fanboys have the shortest memories every.

I bow before your command of the English language. Or is that typo the result of an Intel optimization? =P

Incidentally, I'm not an AMD fanboy - I have a mix of processors and each is used according to it's fitness for a given task. My current portable is a Fujitsu subnotebook with a Pentium M. Prior to that it was a Transmeta Crusoe (13+ hours of battery life for the win!). My gaming rigs tend to be AMD but that's because they're less expensive for my target performance points (several steps back from top-end). I have an elderly dual Pentium 3 machine serving up my music (stupid slimserver software eats CPU like it's going out of style) and a Opteron in my disk array box. Various firewalls and routers are VIA Epia or Natl. Semiconductor Geode based. *shrug* Heck, I'm posting this from a first-generation Mac Mini with a PowerPC. I don't have computers so much as I have appliances that perform specific tasks for me.

CPUs have achieved a level of performance that makes them all essentially interchangable. Performance deltas in benchmarks typically run less than 5% and bottlenecks can be traced to other system components (notably graphics cards) depending on what's being exercised. I applaud Intel for making the tough decision to jettison the classic Pentium 4 line in favor of what's now Core Solo and Core Duo. If I was in the market for a replacement laptop, I wouldn't hesitate to snap up one based on Intel's latest offerings (provided I could get one that had the graphics oomph to run Vista - mebbe that shiny new NVidia GoForce 5500).

The new Intel stuff is good - desktop wise it's within shooting distance of high-end AMD parts and it's a quantum leap for notebooks (a place where AMD has historically struggled anyway because of power/heat issues). However, if anything has kicked bloody it'd be the previous generation Pentium parts and therein lies my disagreement with you.

Re:Low Blow

[fupeg]

Competition in the economic sense and as the justification of and reason for the efficiency of a capitalistic free market economy is narrow competition with quality and price, driving efficiency of resource allocation.

Ahh, yet another person to try and apply macroeconomic principles to microeconomic entities. Individual entities (compettitors) have no knowledge and have no obligation to overall macroeconomic trends. The compettitors only obligation is to their own best interest, i.e. to "beat their opponent." Intel's only obligation is to beat AMD. The overall efficiency of the market is not Intel's concern.

That being said, the aggregation of individual actors, all pursuing their own best interest, will generally lead to greater (approaching optimum) macroeconomic benefit. That's the beauty of the free market. Each person involved doesn't have to worry about the overall economy. Instead they just do whatever is best for them.

Don't worry, a lot of people smarter than you have made the same mistake you made. Hence all the anti-trust legislation that has been passed over the years, not to mention all the government regulations of business that are justified by the aforementioned anti-trust laws. Go take a look at your phone bill or cell phone bill one day to see the net result of people trying to force individual companies to act in the "best interest" of the economy.

Re:Low Blow

[Bert64]

Use a SIP or IAX provider, there are lots of them such as teliax, voiptalk, etc... voip-info.org is your friend.

You can connect with a software phone, giving you roughly the same flexibility as skype but far more choice of provider, or you can run through an asterisk pbx if you want more fancy features... You can do conference calling with asterisk limited only by your own bandwidth, you can bridge to physical phonelines and use multiple providers, setup incoming numbers, setup menu systems, run your own voicemail, create a list of banned caller-id's etc...
Also you can use a physical IP phone instead of having to keep a computer running whenever you want to make a call.

Incredibly flexible, and well worth playing with, and most importantly of all, with SIP your not locked in to a single provider or a single client.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

A big check from Intel?

Re:Low Blow

[Sebastopol]

Since you've demonstrated a lack of reading comprehension I'll refer you to page 5 of your article. The AMD processors are clocked at 2 and 2.2 ghz. What's your point?

My point is, AMD is saying, look our 2.2 is so darned badass we'll call it 4800 to compete with intel's high GHz numbers. So on one hand AMD wants credit for running 2.2 GHz and still competing with Intel's 4.0 GHz CPU. Now here's the rub...

Today (on the the hand), AMD compares against Yonah 2.2GHz, and suddenly AMD wants to ignore the previous statement and say, well, we're really competitive because we're not 4800 MHz, we're really just 2.2 GHz, so it's fair. The fact that a mobile product is competeing with the flagship turns years of arguments on this board on their heads.

So I see this as: AMD proponents wants their cake and wants to eat it, too.

That's what I'm calling shenanegans on. (Well, I called "bloody stool" on it, but only because it sounded more edgy.)

CPUs have achieved a level of performance that makes them all essentially interchangable. Performance deltas in benchmarks typically run less than 5% and bottlenecks can be traced to other system components (notably graphics cards) depending on what's being exercised.

Hey hey this is supposed to be a flamewar, no rational comments please!

However, if anything has kicked bloody it'd be the previous generation Pentium parts and therein lies my disagreement with you.

No argument there. Haven't we been reading Tom/Anand's websites for like three years seeing intel consistently trying it's hardest to play the 1% performance game on the desktop? It gets tedious. I understand Intel can't just nuke a flagship product, or suddenly come out and say, "Uh, gee, we suck." No 30+billion dollar corporation in their right mind would do that. But it's squeezing every last drop out of a overdesigned architecture... It's the marketing that kills me. AMD made a smart decision to put a memcontroller on die, and that one simple step bought them 12~14+ months of performance domination. Underneath, both AMD and Intel archs are based on ISAs from 20 years ago, and the extent to which the ISA reflects the microarchitecture, there's really nothing new under the sun from either of them w.r.t. microarch (well, IA64 was a revolution, but look how much performance boost we got outta that!), and now it's all process process process => frequency. I'm really excited to see the race to the bottom-Watt, at least it's new. Where am I going with this... Oh, right. Yes, this originally just started out as a "case of the mondays troll", and now it's a brain dead zombied wednesday...

Re:Low Blow

[jma05]

1.) I don't know how secure Gizmo is just as I don't know how secure Skype is.
2.) I don't care either. Can you show me one single case where some crook in real life intercepted a voice stream and profited from it or caused harm? If yes, how common are they? I am not going to get hung up on hypothetical possibilities.
3.) If you have special security needs there are VoIP software that allow you to control security. SpeakFreely is one such. Opensource too.

Re:Low Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the problem? We are comparing the fastest somewhat cheap AMD processor (not the FX line) against the fastest Intel CoreDuo processor. This is a fair comparison. If Intel would have now a 2.5 GHz CoreDuo processor, the comparison to the 2GHz unit would be unfair

OS X

[CMiYC]

I haven't read the articles, so I apologize if this has been stated already. Is there news if these "enhancements" applies only to Wintel systems? Or will Dual-core Mactel systems get the added benefits too?

The Skype OS X client is already somewhat lacking compared to its Win-counterpart.

Re:OS X

[spacefight]

I haven't read the articles

Why don't you read the linked articles? No need for an apology then...

Re:OS X

[Trogre]

What about Lintel? Don't forget Lintel. :)

Re:OS X

[nbert]

The articel doesn't mention Apple or OSX, but those "Mactel" computers aren't part of the Viiv campaign (couldn't find any better word for it, sorry), so there is no formal reason to allow this on new macs.
On the other hand you already mentioned that Skype isn't up to date feature-wise, so there are different problems to worry about right now (like lack of performance in the latest version, not being able to use a webcam and so on)

On a more general scale I really doubt that there's any benefit in talking to 9 people at the same time over a phone-like device. Might work if you say over whenever you are done and if you start your statement with your name. Furthermore it might help to use an ALOHAnet like approach to avoid collisions. I know I'm a little sarcastic regarding this point, but IMO 10 people on a conference call are just too much to handle in most situations.

Re:OS X

[Surt]

Offtopic: that is a great sig. Very clever.

Re:OS X

[BobPaul]

Or will Dual-core Mactel systems get the added benefits too?

According to Skype Staffer rosnow on the Skype forums, Intel MacOSX machines will also support the 10 way calling:
http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=46469&highl ight=

Re:OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks :)

Re:OS X

[dfries]

On a more general scale I really doubt that there's any benefit in talking to 9 people at the same time over a phone-like device.

I would have to disagree. I would also have to say that limiting it to just 10 seems harsh as well. I've been in a few conference calls that were hours long at a time that I'm sure we had many more than 10 people on at any one time. In my case we were doing software integration testing and getting ready for a demo. As far as people talking over other people there was a lot less talking than there was silence.

Granted in most situations 5 would be plenty, but in our case we had more buildings that needed to be in the conference than that.

As far as Skype goes, how long before someone either disables the 5 call check by modifying the software or runs in a virtual machine program that only changes the return value of the cpu id?

Intel Outsiders

[Doc Ruby]

CNet says Intel locking software to hardware is a new *cough*Wintel*cough* take on marketing.

Re:Intel Outsiders

[Eightyford]

CNet says Intel locking software to hardware is a new *cough*Wintel*cough* take on marketing.

Windows only works on Intel CPUs?

Re:Intel Outsiders

[Doc Ruby]

Only on Intel-compatibles. It used to work on a competing processor, the DEC Alpha (WinNT, anyway), but Compaq (then the #1 Windows reseller) killed the Alpha when it bought DEC - just as MS killed its Alpha version of Windows.

Of course the "lockin" isn't that simple. Intel doesn't lock out other OS'es, like Linux, from Intel CPUs, nor does it lock Windows or any other OS into using only Intel. Even the Skype/Intel preference isn't simple - other CPUs will still work, but not as well, by contract. But HW/SW lockin is far from new, as the creaky old term "Wintel" itself indicates.

Of course, that's not the point of the Intel PR that CNet is reprinting without critical reflection ("reporting").

Oh no... bloody murder!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure everyone on Slashdot will now be screaming bloody murder but this sort of a deal is completely legal and allowed. Intel and Skype don't have to play nice with anyone else's stuff. I'm sure I'll be modded as flamebait but I challenge all of Slashdot to prove, using US Law, to prove that this is illegal without any doubt.

Re:Oh no... bloody murder!

[Soothh]

They may not have to play nice, but the rotten #@$%!@#$ are taking away choice.
Its moves like this that make me chose against the product rather than for it.

Re:Oh no... bloody murder!

[Pantero Blanco]

I'm not sure if it's legal or not (I don't know of any law prohibiting it), but artificially limiting the ability of a technology in order to make a competitor look bad is, as far as I'm concerned, a jackass thing to do. If my monitor began to only work properly, regardless of having correct drivers, when I used a particular operating system, I'd be pretty pissed.

Would my not liking it do anything about it? Probably not. Most people only see what works and what doesn't and aren't interested in why, but I'd still refuse to buy from the vendor at fault out of principle/spite (is there usually even a difference?).

Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[XorNand]

Heh... In five years Skype is going to be as relavant as Napster is today: a historial footnote to a great idea that could have been much more. The dot-bomb hangover is finally fading and there's a resurging interest in funding Internet-based technologies. Some people have called it a "new boom". VoIP is far and away the biggest reason for this new boom. New VoIP providers are coming out the woodwork because the industry finally matured enough to standardize on SIP as the defacto VoIP-standard. Vendors are cranking out interoperable SIP hardware, which allows us (as part of a recent VoIP startup) to rapidly roll out services without having to second guess whether we're using the right tech. Open standards makes things cheaper. It makes it easier to find, hire and train knowledgable engineers. Etc, etc... Skype, however, is still locked into a propietary protocol. Compare the history of the CD to that of the Minidisc to see difference that open standards makes. Like Napster, the only value of Skype in five years will be the brand name.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[XorNand]

Correction: VHS vs. Betamax is a better comparison than CD vs. Minidisc.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ObjetDart]

There are so many problems with this argument.

Comparing Napster to Skype is absurd. Napster failed because its business model, such as it was, depended on its customers violating copyright law, and it got sued into oblivion. Skype is providing a real, legitimate service to real people right now. It could of course still fail for many reasons, but not for the reasons Napster did. Skype is also backed by the very deep pockets of EBay.

Claiming that Skype will fail because it is based on a proprietary standard is also silly. Counter-examples abound, for example, say...Microsoft? That whole multi-billion company is based on a proprietary standard.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[monopole]

The one merit of Skype is that it "just works" at the moment while in my last foray into SIP it was nearly impossible to get working on certian broadband configurations. This is critical for VOIP because you the intended recipients are a long distance away.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[Anonymous Coward]

So very Very true!

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[Anonymous Coward]

It does seem like a silly and counter-productive thing to do. Why limit a growing portion of your market, especially when that portion is made up largely of the early-adopters that are likely to want such a feature.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[Pope]

And as with any "new boom" there will be a "new crash" just as hard. More typical Wired Magazine pitching to the executive crap, IMO.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[kannibal_klown]

I didn't take his comment to read that Skype fill become like Napster due to their similarities. Because, as you say, one was a different (legal) animal than the other.

I take it to mean that, it will be an innovative business providing an interesting service that ultimately failed (or will fail) due to poor planning. That it was (is) a great service that could have built the foundation for something great, but hit a brick wall early in its life.

I love Skype; I have a SkypeIn account and the whole bit, but I can see it dying eventually. And when it dies it will be remembered as a one of the big time services that brought something great to popularity but ultimately died due to stupidity.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[Anonymous Coward]

New VoIP providers are coming out the woodwork because the industry finally matured enough to standardize on SIP as the defacto VoIP-standard.

What you mean is that SIP is the de jure standard. If there is a de facto standard, I would say it's Skype. On the other hand, I can see vast areas in which they don't really compete with one another. It depends on whether you see VoIP as "cheaper phone service" or "instant messaging/voice chat with a phone number". Sure, you wouldn't base a VoIP startup on anything but SIP, but that doesn't mean that Skype isn't more valuable for some.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[Anonymous Coward]

The moment Skype decided to make their software behave differently based on arbitrary metrics, like CPU vendor, the "just works" went out down the toilet. Now it will sometimes work for some people and for others not. The solution? Get different software.

Skype just took their first step toward being irrelevant in the market.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ObjetDart]

OK, granted (re: point about Napster vs. Skype.)

I certainly agree that Skype could fail for any number of reasons. However, the GP wants to arrograntly predict with absolute certainty that it will fail, based on...what? Nothing convincing. "In five years Skype is going to be as relevant as Napster"...like any of us really has any idea what will happen in five years. It sounds like he mostly just has an axe to grind about open vs. proprietary standards. And this gets a +5 Interesting?

I think other VOIP vendors are actually scared of Skype. The problem is, their business models are built on wooing people away from traditional telco with cheaper prices but still charging them something for VOIP services. Meanwhile, Skype provides 100% free VOIP for people who are willing to change their phone habits slightly, and free is hard to compete with. The real question is whether Skype can build a sustainable business based on subsidizing the free service with optional for-pay add ons.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[XorNand]

lol... "Is freely giving away our service a sustainable business model?" Where (or better stated, when) have we heard that before?

Nah, Skype isn't even on our radar. At least not with my company since we focus exclusively on VoIP for small businesses. And we love Vonage and the handful of other major players because they are leading the charge against regulation and fighting the legal battles with telcos. Plus their marketing saturation lends creditiblity to the concept of Internet telephony.

And to the GP, I wasn't claiming that Skype will fail for the same reason as Napster. I simply said that they will have the same historical significance. Also see: CP/M, Altair 8800, Lycos, and the thousands of other technological pioneers who were later runover by more nimble players in the market. They all failed for different reasons.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ChrisGilliard]

Well, the big difference is that Napster was doing something ILLEGAL or making it easy for others to do so. Skype isn't breaking a single law. Basically, they are just allowing people to do this free when others have charged an arm and a leg to do so. The people charging the arm and the leg are PISSED. But that's life. I think a better comparison is to Craigslist. Craigslist offers free classifieds and get you better results than newspapars. Are newspapers pissed? YES. But, basically, there's nothing they can do about it because there's no law against doing online classifieds. That is why Craigslist is still very relevant. Skype will not be the next Napster just by doing things cheaper than their competition.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ChrisGilliard]

lol... "Is freely giving away our service a sustainable business model?" Where (or better stated, when) have we heard that before?

You mean like Google?

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ObjetDart]

lol... "Is freely giving away our service a sustainable business model?" Where (or better stated, when) have we heard that before?

More times than we can count, no doubt about that. But as I stated it, that wasn't the question...the question is whether the free giveaways can be sustained by selling add-on services.

There are numerous high profile successful internet companies that freely give away many of their services, such as, say...Yahoo. Or um, Google. While not a guarantee of success, it's certainly no guarantee of failure either.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[jimicus]

You mean like Google?

Yes, but when was the last time you saw an ad in Skype?

And the last time I checked, Skype didn't directly sell anything like this,

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ChrisGilliard]

Yes, but when was the last time you saw an ad in Skype?

Google didn't advertise for the first few years either.

And the last time I checked, Skype didn't directly sell anything like this.

Check out this.

You are right that free is not a good business model, as we learned in the late 90's, but the idea is to charge people to use the service in a way that they don't notice. For Google, that means through advertising that's very nonintrusive. For Skype, they offer free internet to internet phone service, but if you want to call a land line or cell they charge. Also, if you want to get voicemail (and who wouldn't if they seriously used this service?) they charge. There's so many other services they can charge for as well. The options are limitless.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[aaronl]

Google sells quite a few things, actually. They "give away" search, email, etc, but they sell search appliances, advertising, and Google Earth, off the top of my head. They are also likely soon to be selling corporate webmail hosting. They have Google Video, and the Enterprise Google Desktop product, too. They also have quite a few other projects that they could use to make money in the future, such as Transit, Compute, Froogle, and Local. They could also try making deals over Scholar, Books, News, and Catalogs.

Just because you don't see the obvious money making schemes that Google could try does not mean they aren't there. They do have products and services that they charge for, today, and there are many ways that they can leverage their other services to make a lot more money.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ChrisGilliard]

Just because you don't see the obvious money making schemes that Google could try does not mean they aren't there.

This is my point exactly. Of course I know that Google is one of the most profitable internet companies around. My point in saying "You mean like Google?" is to say that Skype doesn't have to sell VOIP to be the most profitable player in the VOIP market. Just as Google doesn't have to sell search to be number one in the search market. The GGP implied that unless Skype starts charging for Skype, they will go out of business, I'm merely pointing out that it's not true. You can finance a free service through other means as you've correctly described with Google.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[aaronl]

Ah, that makes more sense. :)

I'm not sure about that with Skype... one of the reasons that they're popular is because they're free. Of course, they have ways which they could get revenue, such as Skype-out and Skype-in, but nothing that's earning much right now. Perhaps they will embrace an open standard, like SIP, which would make it easier for them to play with the bigger boys in the market. As they currently sit, they're only useful for point to point single user calls. Their conferences is the same idea... not good for an office, but fine for a group of individuals. They certainly *can* have a viable business model, though.

The big flaw that I see is that they depend on nodes that they don't own to place outgoing calls. I would never use a service that operates in that fashion for anything commercial, or anything that could be potentially confidential.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[goodie3shoes]

Regarding the name "Skype" - is that pronounced "Sky-pee" or "Skippy" ?

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ChrisGilliard]

I like the idea of Skype charging for voice mail. Everyone uses voice mail and if people seriously start using Skype, they will pay for voice mail. Also, calling out to cell and land lines is charged for. I think these are very good starting points actually and I think this alone could be a profitable business model. Not to mention advertising that they could do as well as various other services they could provide to their HUGE customer base.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither. One syllable, and rhymes with gripe.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[petermgreen]

Meanwhile, Skype provides 100% free VOIP for people who are willing to change their phone habits slightly, and free is hard to compete with.
so do some other providers, in fact some even give you free direct inward dial from pots.

but yeah most current voip providers (including skype) make thier money from selling pots interconnection. when most people have a PC where will thier income come from?

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster.

[ChrisGilliard]

Uhhh, does anyone have any idea why this was mod flamebait? I just don't get it. What could possibly be considered flamebait about this. All I'm saying is that Skype has a good business model IMHO. If you disagree, fine, but how is this flamebait?

I smell an "unfair competition" lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

A big one actually. One of the multi million dollar kind.

Devices

[dedazo]

I'm going to make a wild guess that Intel is not thinking about ye olde PCs, but devices. VoIP is the next thing, and they want to make sure all those appliances are running Intel chipsets.

Cisco has a good start on them though - but not the software, that's Skype.

This is going to be an interesting field to watch for the next five years.

Re:Devices

[tuomasr]

I'm going to make a wild guess that Intel is not thinking about ye olde PCs, but devices. VoIP is the next thing, and they want to make sure all those appliances are running Intel chipsets.

Nope. From the press release on Skype.com:

The new feature is available exclusively for home and business users with Intel Centrino® Duo mobile technology-based laptop PCs, and desktop PCs based on Intel® Pentium® D processors, Pentium Extreme Edition processors, and the recently introduced Intel Viiv(TM) technology.

Re:Devices

[Overly Critical Guy]

All the AMD fanboys here are going to scream "antitrust!" while ignoring all the AMD exclusive 64-bit game deals like with CryTek. Sigh.

Re:Devices

[JamesTRexx]

All I see on the Crytek site is a deal to get it running on Windows XP 64 bit edition, nothing is being said about AMD only support.

btw, "illegal music piracy"? O.o;

Re:Devices

[Overly Critical Guy]

AMD and CryTek teamed up for Far Cry 64-bit Edition. They actually added newer textures and lighting effects to make it appear as though the engine looked better on the Athlon64 running in 64-bit mode, even though such a thing was entirely GPU-dependent and had nothing at all to do with being 64-bit.

Re:Devices

[toddestan]

I don't see how that would be an issue, unless they specifically lock out the Intel P4's with the 64bit extensions. Otherwise, it just looks like a cheap way to generate hype over the 64bit buzzword.

Re:Devices

[Overly Critical Guy]

Just like this is a cheap way to generate hype over Skype on Intel chips, that was a cheap way to generate hype over Far Cry on 64-bit Athlon64s.

Re:Devices

[turnipsatemybaby]

Explain how Crytek is doing an exclusive deal with AMD?

Unless you can point me to a line that says, "Crytek checks the CPU ID and refuses to run if it's not an AMD chip", your comparison is invalid.

And this has nothing to do with being a fanboy. It has everything to do with restricting my choice in what processors to get for completely artificial reasons.

Re:Devices

[JamesTRexx]

The hype is just fluff, but the difference is that AMD made ALL 32 bit procs look bad then, and not only those from Intel, whereas Intel cripples comparable dual cpu's from AMD as well as single core cpu's.

Are they crazy?

[Otter]

Whatever the merits of AMD's existing anti-trust complaints, there is no freaking way this isn't an anti-trust violation. It's completely artificial and a clear loss to consumers. Seems odd that Intel would voluntarily give out ammunition like this.

Re:Are they crazy?

[AKAImBatman]

Whatever the merits of AMD's existing anti-trust complaints, there is no freaking way this isn't an anti-trust violation.

Yes, there is one way. I had the exact same thought as you did, right up until I realized something: Intel no longer has a monopoly in the processor market.

The conclusion that then follows is: There is no more anti-trust. Just competition.

Scary.

Re:Are they crazy?

[deviantphil]

Yes, there is one way. I had the exact same thought as you did, right up until I realized something: Intel no longer has a monopoly in the processor market.

The conclusion that then follows is: There is no more anti-trust. Just competition.

Actually...this behavior is called tying...which is also illegal.

Re:Are they crazy?

[AKAImBatman]

BTW, according to Ars Technica, AMD now sells 21.4% of all desktop and laptop CPUs worldwide. AMD's mobile chip sales have rising to 15.1 percent of the market.

AMD's Opertron architecture finally managed to cream Intel at just the right transitional period. AMD is now leading development rather than following. I find that to be a rather shocking turn of events, especially on Intel's own property. (x86)

Re:Are they crazy?

[AppleTwoGuru]

Too bad the DOJ didn't see deals like Microsoft made with OEM PC suppliers to only preload PC systems with Windows and not competitors (like Linux) or face steep financial/licensing torture. And don't tell me Linux isn't preinstalled because nobody wants it. The licensing structure is based on the old setup of excluding other OSes back in early 90's (like Novell DOS 7, OS/2 Warp, or IBM DOS) and is carried into the present (can't preload Linux or Microsoft will revoke your OEM license discount and send your business into the craphole.) OEM: "Oh, Oh Mr. Gates, please spare us, we wouldn't think of pre-installing Linux on common-market PCs. Please don't beat us. We will comply. We will even post a 'OEM recommends Microshifty Winders Pro' message just to show you we are submissive to you, Almighty Holy One Gates"

Re:Are they crazy?

[Tony Hoyle]

It's probably still illegal though.

In Europe it's product tying, which has been illegal for a while - if Skype try this there they'll be sued to oblivion by AMD under these laws.

Not sure about the US... I guess from the comments that there are no such laws there.

Re:Are they crazy?

[AKAImBatman]

Read your article. Tying is an antitrust complaint. If Intel can no longer be argued to be a monopoly, then they are free from many forms of antitrust complaints, including tying. In fact, product tying is a common strategy that small companies can use in order to gain leverage against competitors. (Such as video game console vendors tying game software with their hardware.) That's why it's important to prove that a company is in the position of being a monopoly.

IAANAL, but it may still be possible to argue the case in court, but without the key monopoly position, it can be hard to prove that a company should be punished for such a move. (Especially since such moves can hurt a company's competitive position in the market rather than help.)

Re:Are they crazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a hell of a lot more to anti competetive practices than just those available to a monopoly

Re:Are they crazy?

[Anonymous Coward]

But Intel is more of a monopoly than ever.

Consider that til very recently, you could get PowerPC (Apple) computers, or less recently Alpha or HPUX or Sparc or MIPS workstations on your desk at many employers.

This year is the first year that I can't, and x86 is the only option.

And even within X86, it used to be you could get a Cyrix or a NexGen or a Rise or a Centaur or a Transmeta X86. Today, if I use Apple's OS, my choice is Intel only; and if I choose Windows, it's pretty much Intel or AMD.

Sure, AMD's market share is up from when they were in the same league as Cyrix and NexGen; but that's largely at the expense of all those other companies.

By any metric - within the X86 family or outside of it, Intel's more of a monopoly and there's less compitition than ever.

Re:Are they crazy?

[ArsenneLupin]

Intel no longer has a monopoly in the processor market.

You got it backwards. Intel is not leveraging a (no longer existing) monopoly in the processor market to help Skype gain a monopoly in the VOIP market. Rather, it's the other way round: they are leveraging Skype's near monopoly in VOIP to bolster Intel's dying processor monopoly.

So the real question should be: are there today any credible competitors to Skype?

Re:Are they crazy?

[Tony Hoyle]

Console vendors aren't 'tying' games with their hardware.. they're only developing for it. Consoles aren't compatible with each other by nature.

Intel and AMD processors *are* compatible - there is no genuine reason for this limitation. That's illegal.

In a similar way when ink cartridge manufacturers tried to stop people refillling their cartridges by introducing chips... this was immediately deemded illegal (in Europe at at least, not sure about the US but I assume it was).

Re:Are they crazy?

[Arandir]

And don't tell me Linux isn't preinstalled because nobody wants it.

Nobody wants it.

At least, nobody wants it enough to pay a premium for it. Because a Linux pre-install is a *separate* product from the Windows pre-install, it doesn't get made for free. It actually costs the manufacturer to provide Linux pre-isntalls. If the demand for Linux pre-installs is high enough then the cost is worth it. But if not, it's a loss, and so the manufacturer stops providing that product line.

Linux users, as a whole, are perfectly capable of installing Linux on their own. Even if you did pre-install Linux, odds are the Linux user is going to slap on another distribution anyway. You might as well be marketing OS-less systems rather than Linux systems.

In short, the absence of Linux pre-installs on desktop machines from the large OEMs is not evidence of a dastardly conspiracy.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Duhavid]

If nobody wants it, then why does Microsoft do the OEM
"keep others out" deal anymore?

If you have to pay for the Microsoft OS, then additional
for the Linux OS ( yes, Linux is a separate product, yes,
that will cost the OEM something to make it available ),
then, yes, people will not chose it. If the pricing on
the Linux variant is close to the same as the Microsoft,
then people will most often chose Microsoft's product.

But as long as Microsoft has the "you will pay for a
Microsoft OS on every computer you sell, or you will
pay an uncompetitive price" pricing structure, then it
is reasonable to argue the point. I would have no problem
with Microsoft being the champion seller of OS's, if the
market were truely free to decide the point.

Re:Are they crazy?

[McMuffin Man]

Tying agreements were made illegal in the US by the Clayton Act of 1914 (I believe this predates most European anti-trust law, but I'm hardly an expert here). That doesn't mean, of course, that anti-trust is enforced in a way which does what a non-laywer would expect based on the language of the statute. There's been almost a century for complicating and confusing case law to build up.

Here is a pretty good site on US anti-trust law.

Re:Are they crazy?

[DRJlaw]

I realize that the public tends to focus on the "monopoly" aspect of antitrust law, but there are other sections of the Sherman Antitrust Act, for example in this case:

"Section 1

Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal."

The analysis is certainly more complex than this, but I'd be willing to bet that an enterprising attorney could construct a suit based on a section 1 violation, because it's practically impossible to argue that Intel and Skype lack market power in the VOIP field. I'm not saying that it would necessarily succeed, but you cannot claim "not a monopoly, therefor not regulated by antitrust law."

Re:Are they crazy?

[Rich0]

You might as well be marketing OS-less systems rather than Linux systems.

And why not do this? It certainly doesn't cost more to NOT image the hard drive, right? Unless you have to pay for Windows either way...

Re:Are they crazy?

[Arandir]

And why not do this?

Because no one wants them. Some manufacturers have done this in the past, but it turned out that there weren't enough buyers to make it worthwhile. This is because a pre-install is a good in its own right, and sufficiently valuable that consumers are willing to pay for it.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Arandir]

...if the market were truely free to decide the point.

But the market IS FREE to decide the point. Just because they aren't deciding it the way you want it decided is beside the point. Volume discounts are legal, ethical and moral, regardless of the size of the company. A restriction on volume discounts requires government intervention into the marketplace, which makes the market unfree. These interventions typically take the form of arbitrary anti-trust decisions.

You CAN have a free market with anti-trust in your legal framework. But you cannot have one when the anti-trust is arbitrary, as it is in the US legal system. The error in the US system is to treat competitive actions as anti-competitive.

Re:Are they crazy?

[TheNetAvenger]

If nobody wants it, then why does Microsoft do the OEM
"keep others out" deal anymore?

10 years and people still don't get it...

1) Bulk/Bundle licensing has been around for a long freaking time, pre-Windows even.

2) It is the OEM's decision to buy the bulk licensing to include Windows, NOT Microsoft. Blame Dell, or whoever is making the computer, not the OS Vendor.

I was the head of a very successful company in the late 90s that competed against the Dells, Gateways, etc. WE CHOSE NOT TO DO THE BULK BUNDLING DEAL WITH MICROSOFT. It cost as 3-5 dollars a copy more for OEM Windows (That is it), and Microsoft gave us all the benefits that Dell and any other company got. The only difference is we could choose to sell a BSD or Linux based computer, the trade off, we paid about $3 more for each OEM copy of Windows.

So when you talk about Microsoft keeping the 'market' from moving to Linux or BSD or anything else, you need to yell at Gateway and Dell and others for CONTINUING the myth that is a Microsoft thing, when it is their OWN thing and their OWN greed to save the $4 bucks instead of offer more choices for their users.

Everyone is mad at Microsoft for the Windows Bundling, but EVERY freaking company does it, and has offered it. Microsoft DOES NOT require ANY company to do it, nor do they get ANYTHING but a better price.

And yet companies like Google are signing the same deals with Dell, and other companies in the past have as well, so that you can't order a freaking Dell without the Google desktop, or think back over the past 10 years and all the CRAP software that was bundled with your computer as 'feature'.

Heck even Corel's Wordperfect tried to get my company to exclusive bundle their prducts by offering a better a price.

Why do you think you see so many Wordperfect bundles on systems (especially over the past 8 years), do you think it is because the computer makers are trying to get back at Microsoft? They could give a crap, plain and simple, Wordperfect is cheap, and exclusive bundles are even cheaper.

Yet everyone thinks Microsoft is the only one doing this, or is doing it in a way that no one else is doing it.

So go yell at Dell, HP, Gateway, NEC, Toshiba, etc. They are ones that have limited your OS choices, not Microsoft...

Re:Are they crazy?

[Duhavid]

If Microsoft wants to give volume discounts, I say let them.
But they should not do so in a way to make the economic
hurdle to competing products higher. And that is exactly
what they have done.

Paying exactly the same to Microsoft regardless of whether
there is a Microsoft product involved or not does not fit
my definition of a free market.

It does fit my definition of a distortion of the market.

And in what way is anti trust arbitrary? Do you feel,
really, that the anti trust actions taken against
Microsoft were unfair, and if so, why? Or are you trying
to say something else?

Re:Are they crazy?

[Duhavid]

A: Everyone does it != OK.

B: Microsoft was and is free to change their bundling agreements
        such that paying per computer shipped regardless of OS on the
        machine is not the case. I agree that the OEM's are complicit
        in this, but that does not absolve Microsoft of their share of
        the blame, nor does it answer the question of who set things
        up the way things are ( i.e., it was Microsoft decision to make
        the deal read the way it reads. It takes advantage of the
        desire on profit seeking companies to reduce their costs, in
        a way that reduces competition ).

Re:Are they crazy?

[Joseph Vigneau]

So the real question should be: are there today any credible competitors to Skype?

Yes. Standards based, and is at least 37% less evil.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Bob9113]

In short, the absence of Linux pre-installs on desktop machines from the large OEMs is not evidence of a dastardly conspiracy.

Assuming for the sake of argument that the rest of your argument is cogent, how do you explain the lack of OS-free machines? Why can't I get the same machine with no OS for $50 less? I've got no problem installing Linux on my own, but as things stand I have to build a machine from parts to get it without paying for Windows.

Re:Are they crazy?

[dhoonlee]

That has nothing to do with the grandparent's post. The absence of Linux as a choice, and the lack of alternatives to pre-installed Windows are two different issues.

Re:Are they crazy?

[_Sprocket_]

I don't know this is true - but I could see how not imaging the drive costs. The OEM has a production process to follow. Deviations could potentially cost since each deviation is a different step with different logistics, production paths, parts, etc. involved. Not that it can't be done - Dell has made a business out of it. But note that even Dell charges for a deviation in OS.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Lorkki]

Through that logic, what exactly do manufacturers seek to gain with a bulk-discounted Windows over, say, a free Ubuntu? Supposing that they are indeed only looking for the obvious quick buck, you'd think you'd see preinstalled Linux all over the place.

Since Windows is right now already pretty much everywhere, by only bundling Linux on consumer boxes you'd probably just attract a long tech support nightmare. On the other hand, by giving up the exclusive Windows deal but still bundling Windows you'd be at a profit disadvantage compared to several of your competitors. So no, nobody's being blatantly forced to anything, but there is that implied gun inside the jacket pocket.

Breaking away from the Windows lockdown could, in a pink rosy ideal world, come through the education of consumers, who'd then be able to make more informed purchase decisions and live with them. More realistically, I figure it'd require enormous coordinated effort from both manufacturers and software vendors, in providing switch-over application and user support, and currently it seems just about as likely to happen.

Re:Are they crazy?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Because a Linux pre-install is a *separate* product from the Windows pre-install, it doesn't get made for free.

So, it wouldn't make enough of a difference that it costs $50 less per machine to create an infrastructure for different OSes? Which some do anyway -- XP home or XP pro, pay extra for pro?

Linux users, as a whole, are perfectly capable of installing Linux on their own.

This is a vicious cycle. My father uses Linux at home, and is not at all capable of installing it on his own; I had to do it for him. There are people who would use Linux if it came preinstalled. The current Linux users, as a whole, are perfectly capable of installing Linux on their own -- because they had to, not beacuse there is something magical about Linux that turns everyone it touches into a hobbyist.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Ilgaz]

I am using Mac G5 1600 for 3 years and not following x86 scene but...

How come Intel is no more monopoly? I see nothing like 50% 50% share like Coke and Pepsi.

Using net since '94 and various BBSes before, I have never,ever heard a "processor can't talk to other" thing like that. As a foreigner, I can't express myself on this matter even.

The TCP/IP'es idea is to allow various architectures talk to each other. Gee, I remember HiTNET (Based in .tr, like your Fido) did not allow turkish characters because there were Commodore 64 users around accessing it.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Arandir]

I don't know. How come I can't buy an automobile without tires?

Re:Are they crazy?

[Arandir]

A: Everyone does it != OK.

Why is it not ok? What is it about bulk/bundle sales that is immoral or unethical?

p.s. And before you reply "it reduces competition", realize that *every* competitive action reduces competition.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Arandir]

Supposing that they are indeed only looking for the obvious quick buck, you'd think you'd see preinstalled Linux all over the place.

But no one wants a preinstalled Linux! That's the point! Not even Linux users want it, because it will invariably be the WRONG distro. (Besides, most Linux users dual boot anyway).

Manufacturers install Windows because PC consumers want Windows. They are familiar with it, any extra hardware or software they buy will work with it, and support monkeys are a dime a dozen. You may like the idea of a preinstalled Linux, and might even publicly praise a company that did it, but would you actually go out and buy one?

Walmart used to sell a PC with preinstalled Linux. Do they still? What happened to it? It may still be around, but if so I doubt if it's flying off the shelves.

Re:Are they crazy?

[TheNetAvenger]

Since Windows is right now already pretty much everywhere, by only bundling Linux on consumer boxes you'd probably just attract a long tech support nightmare. On the other hand, by giving up the exclusive Windows deal but still bundling Windows you'd be at a profit disadvantage compared to several of your competitors. So no, nobody's being blatantly forced to anything, but there is that implied gun inside the jacket pocket.

You are missing the points...

A) IBM was doing this with OS/2 and DOS and other various software companies back in the 1980s even.

B) The cost difference is tiny, even in volume, by buying from companies that won't ship you a computer without Windows is your fault first, and the vendor second.

C) Even if these companies wanted to start shipping Linux, what distribution? And do you think they want to take on all the support and patches themselves?

Until a strong distribution emerges that handles this support like MS does for these companies, they won't do it. HOWEVER, they should ship you a box with NO OS, and let you choose, if they don't yell at them NOT MICROSOFT.

This is NOT Microsoft's fault. No matter how you want to manipulate reality, they did nothing different than IBM or any other Software vendor has been doing for 30 years.

Gateway and Dell and HP, etc love to keep the myth going that MS forces them to ship you a copy of Windows, this takes the heat off of them for people like you or me that want to buy a computer with no OS.

Yell at the OEMs, not Microsoft. I was the head of a leading OEM, and we didn't lock our customers into Windows, or MS Office, even though users chose it 99% of the time.

GET IT?

Re:Are they crazy?

[Duhavid]

It is not OK because they are creating a barrier to the
competition that has nothing to do with the market's
selection process.

Competitively, I have a problem with it because of all
the claims of superiourity of Microsoft's products.
They might be and they might not be, but the market
cannot truely chose fairly when Microsoft gets a cut
per machine sold regardless of OS on the machine.
That means that I am paying for ( but not getting )
a Microsoft product, then having to turn around and
pay again for the competing product. Yes, competition
is a rough and tumble thing. But there are rules,
and they should be obeyed.

How about if you explain how this is ethical or moral?

Note, as I have stated before, I have no problem with
bulk/bundle deals in general. If Microsoft wants to
write one that involves only the product sold by
Microsoft to the OEM, then you would not hear a peep
out of me about it. But it doesnt.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Lorkki]

This is NOT Microsoft's fault. No matter how you want to manipulate reality, they did nothing different than IBM or any other Software vendor has been doing for 30 years.

Pardon me for repeating what others have already said, but that is not a justification to anything, even if I did claim that Microsoft does something which other vendors don't (which I didn't). My beef is more about what Microsoft does in context of what it is.

I was the head of a leading OEM, and we didn't lock our customers into Windows, or MS Office, even though users chose it 99% of the time.

Take into account that not every average customer is an informed and educated consumer when it comes to computers and software; many people might never see anything except for Windows. Lacking understanding about the relations between software components, it's easy to come to think that it's something inseparable. The rest might want to play their favourite games, or peruse their neighbours' software collections (like it or not) or whatever - that all goes under why the needed momentum for a change would be rather huge. "Choice" is a relative concept.

Even if these companies wanted to start shipping Linux, what distribution?

Any popular and stable distribution suited for the intended target market? You can't reasonably pick between a chainsaw and a screwdriver before you know what you need to do.

And do you think they want to take on all the support and patches themselves?

Patches come from the distribution vendors just as Windows patches come from Microsoft. As I understand, Microsoft's OEM deals also involve the OEM taking over responsibility of customer support.

Yell at the OEMs, not Microsoft.

As much as this is Slashdot, I don't mean to convey "yelling" or pointing fingers at anyone. I think attempting to analyse things is more interesting, if not as easy.

Re:Are they crazy?

[TheNetAvenger]

Pardon me for repeating what others have already said, but that is not a justification to anything, even if I did claim that Microsoft does something which other vendors don't (which I didn't). My beef is more about what Microsoft does in context of what it is.

Ok, I am kind of repeating this, but this is what you and the others are missing from this statement.

I also don't agree with exclusive bundles, or pricing that includes all units sold whether a copy was shipped with it or not.

However these bundling options were not invented by MS, they were entering the game from the old IBM model they were involved in, and picked up what everyone else was doing.

Ya, it is still a crap model, but a LOT of companies do this, it wasn't until Microsoft hit pay dirt of success that it became a problem.

The second part is that when Microsoft became too successful, and issues about these OEM licensing deal came to light, many people were quick to point fingers at Microsoft and be disgusted at Micrsoft for doing what almost EVERY OTHER software company was doing.

In fact, software companies that were offering the SAME deals to OEMs, were quick to step in and shake their finger at Microsoft. It was using the media and the anti-Microsoft propaganda at its finest.

The third thing that is STILL missed in all of this... Even though we all agree these are bad licensing deals, so bad my company would not touch them even to save a few bucks, we still push the blame back to Microsoft. It is the OEMs signing the contracts and screwing their customers, Microsoft is not holding a gun to their heads. Additionally, these same companies are STILL signing these same type of licensing/bundling deals with every other company in the business to save a buck or two.

It truly is the greed of the OEMS that has screwed consumers and consumer choice, not Microsoft, not Wordperfect, not even IBM.

Step back for a minute and remember I was in this position as the head of a OEM, and Microsoft was good to our company and didn't care if we did a licensing deal or bought our OEM copies through a vendor 25 or even 5 copies at time.

- Also realize that I looked at the other companies that were whoring themselves out to every software company in the world to save a couple of bucks and was in digust that these companies would screw the choice of the consumer for a few bucks.

- I saw this issue from the OEM side, we just chose not to screw our customers, and we also decided that we didn't want to lock our customers into Windows on 100% of our PC sales, and we even liked Microsoft.

The years I saw all of this transpire were from 1990 through 1999, and I still shake my head at Dell and HP and Gateway for screwing their customers to save a few bucks.

You do realize that hardware vendors also do this, right? There has been a reason Dell wouldn't sell AMD CPUs, or some companies only sold ATI Video Cards, etc... And again it comes down to the OEMs, not ATI or Intel.

Dell or HP could and can always say no, period.

It isn't fair to be mad at Microsoft, unless you are willing to be mad at almost every other software and hardware company out there.

Re:Are they crazy?

[Lorkki]

However these bundling options were not invented by MS, they were entering the game from the old IBM model they were involved in, and picked up what everyone else was doing.

Ya, it is still a crap model, but a LOT of companies do this, it wasn't until Microsoft hit pay dirt of success that it became a problem.

While I appreciate the amount of time you're taking writing that over and over again, I don't see how it changes the fact that it's completely irrelevant how many other companies might do it or not. Microsoft does hold a position which is quite different from any other software vendor at the moment, and which gives it certain authority on the market. Hence, "in context of what it is". Intel used to be in a similar position with their CPUs and I'm rather glad that AMD has managed to balance the scales. That sort of "success" wouldn't be such a problem at all if the "successful" didn't seem to have a knack for attempting to maintain their positions through dirty tricks rather than by being genuinely competitive.

But seeing as this seems to be dragging along, I'd be quite ready to just agree to disagree here.

Re:Are they crazy?

[TheNetAvenger]

While I appreciate the amount of time you're taking writing that over and over again, I don't see how it changes the fact that it's completely irrelevant how many other companies might do it or not. Microsoft does hold a position which is quite different from any other software vendor at the moment, and which gives it certain authority on the market

I appreciate the time you are taking trying to understand this as well...

When Microsoft first atarted offering these licensing deals they were NOT the 800lb gorilla they are now.

Secondly they were admonished by the press and the industry for a common practice. I don't care if you keep repeating, "just because everyone does it, doesn't make it right."

No it don't but don't hold Microsoft up above the rest of the people that do crap and solely blame them for the problems.

Your time on your soap box would be better spent actually addressing the OEMs and other software companies that are now packing Google Desktop on your new computer than to keep yelling at Microsoft.

Microsoft does VERY litlee exclusive bundling deals anymore, go read what they are allowed to do from the DOJ settlement.

You are beating a dead horse by contining to state how awful MS is, when they are aren't even doing half of the crap you assume them to do be doing.

When Microsfot was hit with the Bundling deals during the 90s, they were trying to compete with OS/2 and OS companies, WHICH ALSO HAD exclusive contracts.

This would be like letting everyone in the world drive SUVS, then one day, notice they are consuming too much gas, and pick ONE PERSON in the work that owned 5 of them and blamed them for the Entire SUV problem.

Do you see why your lack of logic is so distressing to me?

Re:Are they crazy?

[Lorkki]

Do you see why your lack of logic is so distressing to me?

In a way, but I always find it a bit odd when someone sees fit to attack me instead of confronting the actual subject at hand. If I'm making my point the blind anti-MS rant you appear to suggest, I'd nevertheless like to retain my right to critically examine any counterclaims.

You seem to say that since Microsoft wasn't always the monopoly they are now, what they do now may be examined on terms of what they were back then. I disagree. It's as if you answered to someone blaming a new SUV owner, "it's okay, he used to own a Volvo just like everyone else".

You claim that all problems are only due to greedy OEMs. In a Microsoft world, it's quite obviously beneficial for an OEM to get a deal to exclusively bundle Windows at a lesser price: since nearly everyone takes it anyway, you get a (slight) benefit "for free". For smaller software vendors, an exclusive deal gives them a way to spread their product and gain more share for themselves, and for the OEM to add "value" to their product package. I don't particularly like either case, but it's also a bit too easy to, as you say, yell at Dell and HP, for being the bulk manufacturers that they are.

Of course, the happy fluffy utopian situation would be to have a better level of service and choices available everywhere, but this would again require the bulk masses to educate themselves and not just buy the cheapest damn thing they can get at the local mall.

Ridiculuous

[inajamaica]

We play Mario Kart DS online and do Skype conference calls alot...we have 2 races going on with ~8 friends...but we can't Skype everyone together because of a moronic, illogical limitation like this. I totally can't understand this one...

Re:Ridiculuous

[ender-]

Why don't you just set up Teamspeak or Roger Wilco or Ventrilo or something?

Solution..

[gasjews]

Stick to open source telephony. Asterisk makes an excellent enterprise grade open-source PBX for the back end. For the end user, Free World Dialup offers a SIP compatible service with a free downloadable client that does not limit you like this.

Re:Solution..

[arivanov]

With all due respect Asterisk is not an end-luser solution. Administering it and configuring it requires some mental effort. This limits it to a fraction of the Internet population.

Skype is a an end-luser-only solution. This makes it the solution of choice for the rest of the Internet end-luser population until a better alternative comes along.

As far as the "limit conferencing to 5" this is quite an interesting twist. Conferencing is clearly a business feature. Very few consumers are interested in it. At the same time the main complaint of AMD against Intel is about practices that deliberately lock out AMD from corporate markets (not the consumer ones). So by doing a restriction on a business related service Intel is not just shooting itself in the foot. It is doing it with a bazooka while looking at the exhaust funnel.

Skype is also shooting themselves in the foot. If they claim that this is for technical reasons (which sooner or later they will) AMD can take them to court and force them to enforce this limit on all AMD driven hypernodes. While the argument is clearly far fetched, there is still a fair chance that a good AMD lawyer may manage to get Skype smacked with a "limit to 5 for anything on AMD " injunction. Now this will be seriously entertaining. Most hypernodes are consumers and students. This is AMD land. Not Intel who is usually sitting behind the firewall. So, I like the smell of collapsed P2P networks in the morning. It smells like victory.

It will be also a good idea for AMD to buy a few congresscritters to force mandatory legal interception provisions on Skype.

I see great entertainment ahead. This is worth watching and following. Time to chose a front row seat.

Re:Solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

Asterisk makes an excellent enterprise grade open-source PBX for the back end.

No, it doesn't. Here are list of issues that I've gotten burned on with Asterisk so far this month:

• RFC-2833 DTMF support is broken | Picking up multiple DTMF using RFC2833
  Asterisk implements DTMF very poorly -- it has no concept of duration or volume of key presses, and is therefore unable to send this information via RFC2833 (commonly used by SIP). Furthermore, the manner in which Asterisk sends DTMF is... unique. Even if you read the standard to mean that the implementation is legal, it's still very strange, and it causes problems with a lot of other SIP hardware.
• Generic jitter buffer for Asterisk (chan_sip implementation)
  SIP has no jitter buffer in Asterisk, making it completely useless if you want to use any Zaptel TDM hardware.
• Its time to start getting T.38 into *
  Asterisk has no T.38 support at all. Want to move to SIP? Want to send and receive faxes? Can't use Asterisk.
• chan_iax2 hangs intermittently
  IAX2, Asterisk's native/favorite VoIP protocol, hangs at random in the latest stable release.
• When jitterbuffer=yes DTMF is unreliable on IAX2 links w/ Asterisk 1.2.1
  Oh, look. DTMF is broken in a different way again. This time over IAX2.

Enterprise-grade my ass. These are all open bugs right now. I've hit other show-stoppers that I haven't been able to pin down well enough to open a bug on (involving IAX2 native transfers, and another involving DUNDi caching).

I wonder what they fixed before releasing 1.2 as "stable"!

Re:Solution..

[Dan Guisinger]

I can definately assure you, being a leading supplier of Digium gear (Digium being the guys who wrote Asterisk) and being the leading wholesaler of VoIP gear, Atacomm hears about problems non-stop with Asterisk. 1.2 has been very buggy; they had a date-related bug last month that killed hundreds if not thousands of PBX systems.

Enterprise it is not; maybe someday, but its not there yet.

Re:Solution..

[gasjews]

This is the beauty of open source software. If you find a problem, you have the source avaliable to you to fix the problem!

Can you do this with a Nortel or Alcatel PBX? Nope, didn't think so.

Re:Solution..

[DavidNWelton]

Yes, something open source is definitely the solution. The problem is that Asterisk is not something that my parents can install and use, whereas Skype is.

The open source community really needs to come up with an alternative to Skype before the network effects are too great to overcome.

Re:Solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats why he said FWD was for the end user and Asterisk was for the back end.. Read people..

Re:Solution..

[ploss]

No, Asterisk is NOT for home users, as stated in above posts. What you are looking for is Gizmo Project which is really looking great. Plus you can call other sip networks! It provides all of the same functionality of Skype AND the network is open so you are not locked into using a company that makes stupid moves such as these. Try it out.

Re:Solution..

[gasjews]

I never said Asterisk was for the home user. Two people have already corrected other people who repeated the same thing you said (further evidence you didn't read).

I suggest you re-read what I said. I even said one was for the back end and that FWD was for the end user.

Re:Solution..

[GoRK]

Large multiuser audio conferences are also a huge gamer feature and a market that Intel is grabbing at desperately these days. It's all but trivial to set up an Asterisk server (There is even a LiveCD distribution IIRC) and there are plenty of free SIP clients that will happily connect. As for the conferencing in Asterisk, "MeetMe" provides for a very simple and stable solution for far more than 10 users.

I do like your idea of only being able to feed 5 calls through a proxy node (or whatever the hell they call it) ... I have hated Skype from day one and the more stupid crap they continue to do like this the better I feel about my initial instinct.

Re:Solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were AMD, I'd write a wrapper that catch all API calls from Skype to determine the CPU model, and return "Yeah I'm an Intel CPU, trust me." :P .. and probably catch those Intel-only Opcodes (if any) and calculate them using software emulation.

Should be easy enough. OTOH, if the program is for the newest Intel chips only, how many people will be able to run it at all?

Re:Solution..

[GoRK]

I am unbelievably suprised to read a smear on Asterisk from a vendor as big as you guys, especially one who lists Asterisk compatibility and Digium hardware all over nearly every product they sell. I guess you do get a lot of mis-targeted fallout when dumb customers can't get thier shiny new phones to work with Asterisk, but I think it's a bit unfair to call it crap.

I am currently ordering equipment to build a small (30+ extensions) PBX for the company I work for. The total package including all cabling, PoE gear, Polycom phones, UPS's, T1 interfaces, etc. budgets to under $10,000 with Asterisk. Anything else that comes close to competing on the features we will be using is four to five times the price at minimum.

For what it's worth, I was considering placing an order for a good deal of the equipment that I need from Atacomm; however, I think it's justified to remove you from the list now.

Re:Solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

For what it's worth, I was considering placing an order for a good deal of the equipment that I need from Atacomm; however, I think it's justified to remove you from the list now.

How can you be sure this guy is not working for Atacomm's competition?

Or maybe he's just having a bad day.

You should not make any purchase decisions solely on what you read on /.

Re:Solution..

[jc42]

Interesting. A prospective customer criticising a supplier for open honesty about technical problems in the stuff they're selling. I'd think you'd want to hear about such things.

Threatening to go with suppliers who don't tell you about the problem strikes me as a bit unwise. Do you really want to teach them a lesson like this?

Maybe I'm misreading something, but this sure doesn't strike me as a very good approach, if you want something that works well.

Of course, this would hint at why companies like Microsoft have done so well in the market.

Re:Solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

use spandsp for t.38bits and faxing

SIP has no jitter buffer in Asterisk, making it completely useless if you want to use any Zaptel TDM hardware

thats odd... i am on my sip phone now and talking over a zap channel as i type this.....

Chan_iax has been much improved in the new version and I support ALOT of iax connections without any trouble at all

as for DTMF... well... yeah i agree!

Re:Solution..

[ploss]

You're right, sorry... I was just trying to point out Gizmo Project as a solution since I was suprised it wasn't mentioned earlier. Seems like I read through your post a bit too hastily :-P

Re:Solution..

[drinkypoo]

If Asterisk has so many problems, why are they pushing it so hard on their website? Not that it's all that hard, but it's true, there's Asterisk links everywhere. Fleece the sheeple, but then tell the slashdotters? (Granted, Slashbots are sheeple too.)

Re:Solution..

[jc42]

If Asterisk has so many problems, why are they pushing it so hard on their website?

Consider what asterisk is. A lot of people seem to think it's just another VoIP package. But it's actually a VoIP PBX package. It's designed for offices with a lot of phones and a fast IP connection.

There aren't too many of these things out there so far (and probably won't ever be). The impression I get from reading comments of people who've tried them is that asterisks, for all its warts, is the best. But a PBX isn't ever an install-it-and-forget-it sort of toy. You have to have someone quickly available who understands it, or your office's phones will be royally screwed up.

Asterisk seems to have lived up to its promise to provide businesses with a PBX that's orders of magnitude cheaper than the telco equipment. And instead of being a huge cabinet (or a rat's nest of wires in a large closet), it runs in a PC box off in a corner. But it's still a PBX, and I don't think anyone knows how to make them so simple that they don't need a telephony geek around.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe someone has just built a plug-n-pray black-box VoIP PBX that "just works", including reading your mind to determine what extension number and options you want on each phone. If so, I haven't heard of it. Of course, it's not my job.

Actually, a few years ago it was, sorta. I got involved in an attempt to find a cheaper "solution" for the phones in a client's somewhat-volatile office than the telco could lease them. Asterisk looked really cool. So I downloaded it and tried to install it. I couldn't make it work right. So I got a couple of other guys involved who knew a bit about phones. They failed to make it work. We gave up, and paid for a telco PBX.

Since then, when I've checked back, I've read lots of comments about how much better asterisk is now. There are people testifying that their office is using it and everyone loves it. Especially the accountants.

But YMMV. As the previous poster mentioned, it's still a work in progress. If it works for you, it's apparently very nice. But some people still find that it's not quite perfect.

I'm encouraged by a distributor who is open about its shortcomings. I'm more likely to trust someone like that than someone who paints a rosy picture of something that I know is still under development.

Anyway, I'm still on the asterisk mailing list, though I haven't submitted any questions for a while.

Re:Solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

STFU n00b

Re:Solution..

[GoRK]

I know I didn't mention this, but although I have not (until now) run an Asterisk server in a large production environment, I have been using Asterisk experimentally for three or four years and have contributed my time and my code to its development and at times participated actively on the mailing list and the bug tracker to assist in its continued improvement.

That being said ...

I'm not so much critisizing a vendor for honesty. There are a lot of ways to say "We have had reports from our customers having problems with Asterisk." I am happy to concede that it is a very complex piece of software and difficult to learn and grasp fully, especially if all you want to do is deploy it quickly and set it up yourself without help and you are not an expert on Linux, network and telephony hardware. If you spend a lot of time really working with Asterisk in an experimental environment before you settle on equipment that you like you learn a lot of the tricks necessary to combat certain problems. I don't think there is a single problem that I have seen with an Asterisk installation that could not be rectified somehow. The tone of the original post, however, was not positive. I'd rather puchase from a vendor with a better attitude -- maybe one of the many who actively and financially support the improvement of the project instead of trying to upsell you some other solution they can make more money on.

What really bothers me more than the slam is that the poster is being so two faced about the whole thing -- pushing asterisk hard on their site to make money but complaining behind the scenes. That is a dishonest vendor, and biting the hand that feeds is no way to get my support.

It's worth repeating an AC's reply to my first reactionary post -- the original post could possibly not be someone from Atacomm.

Re:Solution..

[drinkypoo]

I haven't tried their VoIP stuff but I used to "maintain" a netphone box when I worked for a web company in San Francisco. It was a classic POTS-style PBX (they do offer PRI interfaces and such, but we weren't using them, and instead had two or three cards with 24 lines, 6 of which were trunks) with a computer interface for setup/programing, since the cards were just ISA cards (later PCI) in a PC running Windows NT 4. It was highly reliable and just did its job. They also have a VoIP solution now...

Asterisk is better anyways....

[Anonymous Coward]

Bye bye skype....we hardly knew ya.....

wha?

[God'sDuck]

does this mean Intel is actually actively trying to chase off all the geek customers that were just starting to consider not despising them again when the Yonah benchmarks came in? or did some middle-manager just accidentally outsource their public relations to Sony?

Re:wha?

[scosol]

That's exactly what I was thinking- I would *hope* that whomever at Intel thought this was a good idea is quietly dismissed-

This is *not* the behavior of a world-class coporation...

Re:wha?

[mfh]

or did some middle-manager just accidentally outsource their public relations to Sony?

Certainly possible, although not feasible. Intel doesn't need DRM rootkits to frack up our lives (and their bottom line).

Re:wha?

[Spinlock_1977]

Intel is clearly a train off it's tracks. They canabalized the 3rd party chipset makers in the last couple of years (see article in today's theinquirer.co.uk) doing untold damage to their image, screwed up their inventory in the process (they're currently in "shortage" mode) as a result, fracked up the Intanic a dozen times, and fell off the sanity plane thinking that x86-64 wouldn't go anywhere. Most industry pundits say they're two years behind in desktop chips now.

Quarter-to-quarter-thinking mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging middle managers ought not play in the processor industry - it requires longer term thinking than they're capable of, and a level of honesty and humility we haven't seen in this industry since all the money showed up.

Re:wha?

[scm]

They know we're all going to buy that mac anyway... ;-)

Downright Disgusting

[Bulldozer2003]

This is a disgusting way of getting customers, it seems like there could be some kind of possible litigation considering they are making you buy one thing in order to use another. Maybe THIS is why VOIP companies should be regulated like we do the baby bells.

Re:Downright Disgusting

[dobedobedew]

Yeah, because regulation of the telcos has been so wonderful.
The facility where I work still can't get DSL because the CO here doesn't have any DSLAMs and nobody is going to be installing one anytime soon. Full T1 or Frame is all you can get.
If the market were more open to competition, somebody could set one up DSL here and make a killing.

sucker punch

[fak3r]

This is wrong, while Dell "recommends Windows XP" they don't do anything to block you from using and alternative OS. Likewise I can't see why people would want to buy a product that would lock them into anything, save for I can't think of many that would be swayed by "only" being able to conference with 5 people, it's more of a moral victory for Skype. Strange though, didn't see that coming.

Re:sucker punch

[Anonymous Coward]

"while Dell "recommends Windows XP" they don't do anything to block you from using and alternative OS"

the key word is YET

Ya, well... uh... NO SOUP FOR YOU!

[jigjigga]

Haha, like that is gonna make people want to stop their migration to AMD. Although this is a scary precident, it will most likely backfire. AMD will be able to further fan the fire with this.

Time to start the Class Action Law Suit

[GuyverDH]

Especially when the AMD processors can out-run, out-perform, out-class the Intel Chips every day of the week.

Re:Time to start the Class Action Law Suit

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially when the AMD processors can out-run, out-perform, out-class the Intel Chips every day of the week.


This is true for the most part, but there are a few areas where Intel still beats AMD. For example, AES encryption as provided in the CryptoPP library seems to scale with the speed of the processor. On a 2.0 Ghz Athlon64 I get about 45 MiB/s and on a 3.2 Ghz P4 I get about 72 MiB/s.

Since Intel offers the highest clocked processors, they would be a better purchase if your goal was simply running as much data as possible through AES (ignoring other factors such as investment and running costs).

The one positive thing about this.....

[achesterase]

Although I cringed when I read the article summary, this does underline how AMD has pushed Intel into a corner and I for one will feel a lot less sorry for Intel when they get crushed by AMD. ;-)

Re:The one positive thing about this.....

[JPribe]

It just makes me wonder about deals in the past we didn't know about. Intel has done a great job of maintaining their maketshare through the years, this isn't the first time and certainly not the last. I expect that as more and more options become available deals like this will continue...maybe even *gasp* become standard to the industry. The automotive folks do it with parts makers alot (as I understand it....)

Intel is Scum

[the eric conspiracy]

I think PC users should boycott Intel because of this kind of B.S. Clearly they have decided that they can't do it based on technology in the marketplace, so have decided to try to do it by strongarming the end user. It's baloney and hurts all PC users.

Re:Intel is Scum

[BiggerIsBetter]

This isn't about PC users. It's about corporate users... users who are probably already on Intel, probably with OEM boxes from Dell or HP or similar.

Re:Intel is Scum

[TrancePhreak]

How about when AMD sent people out to put their stickers on access points that were running Intel hardware?

Re:Intel is Scum

[Anonymous Coward]

what? not saying amd is morally superior to intel, but have anything you'd like to back that up with?

Re:Intel is Scum

[TrancePhreak]

It happened a couple years back. When all the local fast food places got WiFi. (I live near Redmond) Someone mentioned that they saw AMD stickers on some of the access points, where they were previously Intel (as Intel makes WiFi gear and AMD did not). I went out to my local places and saw the same thing. There was an article, but I am failing to find it.

I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[Chuck Milam]

From TFA: "Would you avoid buying a PC with an Advanced Micro Devices chip inside because it wouldn't let you host an Internet conference call with six of your friends?"

No, I wouldn't avoid buying a PC with an AMD chip. I pretty much buy all AMD now, and I plan to continue. I would, however, be sure to not use software that tries to dictate to me what type of hardware I use. I wonder if this will backfire on Skype?

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[bigpat]

I wonder if this will backfire on Skype?

Don't wonder. I recently signed up for skype, just because my family was on it and it was free. But I think it may be time to think about alternatives. Thing about a free service, it is really easy to walk away when they do stupid things like this. I can't possibly see why skype thought crippling its software would be good for business. And it really makes me think Intel is on its way out if they can't compete anymore on the merits of their products, but have to conspire with other businesses to exclude competition.

It is a sad day for those two companies.

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[pigs,3different1s]

As a Technical Consultant, I have strongly recommended AMD over Intel, every single time.

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[rajafarian]

And it really makes me think Intel is on its way out if they can't compete anymore on the merits of their products, but have to conspire with other businesses to exclude competition.

Hey, that business model has worked for Microsoft quite nicely, and they're still around.

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[Akaihiryuu]

It's already backfired. I uninstalled Skype from 3 computers today, and adjusted my firewall to make it as difficult as possible to make it work. Granted, since it's capable of using an HTTP proxy, there's no way to block it completely without blocking web access as well. But I still encourage that everyone that is involved in administrating a router do everything in their power to make Skype not work.

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[flibbajobber]

Surely it'll backfire - The summary states specific Intel chips, not even all Intel chips - what are the odds that the 6-10 colleagues that you want to make conference call with even all HAVE the acceptable chips? Surely if even one of those users doesn't, it kinda ruins it for all involved, and consequently all get irritated at Skype?

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why in hell did you sign up your family on a closed monopoly-based communication system? It's not like the world isn't screamingly full of alternatives -- from mee-to-evil MSN Messenger to Google Talk and Pulver and Xten and bloody everything that speaks SIP. The VoIP world has been ruled by the SIP protocol since it's inception five years ago, there are hardware and software all over the place. And you sign up for SKYPE? Just because it's FREE? Well, there's free for you. Free to do whatever they want with their software and service since you all depend on it now.

Re:I'd make a choice--but not on the hardware...

[bigpat]

Why in hell did you sign up your family on a closed monopoly-based communication system?

I was the last to sign up, not the first.

It will just drive more people to...

[shadwwulf]

Asterisk.

It does conference calls really well and is not just free as in beer.

Corporate stupidity isn't always a bad thing. It's just a matter of letting them shoot themselves in the foot and then reaping the benefits of their pain.

MTW

Re:It will just drive more people to...

[ZachPruckowski]

Wait. I've been looking at Asterisk. What am I missing? There has to be some sort of fee, right? I mean, to connect to out of network phones at least. Right?

Re:It will just drive more people to...

[Tony Hoyle]

Why should there be?

It depends on where you are.. from the UK I can call most of the world for free (well a connect charge usually about 1p), including the US. Of course as it's a free market rather than a lockin like skype I have to keep an eye out for the best deal but I haven't paid for a call in about 2 years now.

Re:It will just drive more people to...

[Quarters]

Not in the least.

* Skype - Download it, install it, run. If need be, purchase calling minutes and/or a phone number w/ voicemail directly from Skype.com. If desirable, purchase any of a number of USB based handsets and/or webcams that are certified to work with Skype. If all else fails go to RadioShack where you can buy ready to go setups.

* Asterisk - Set up a dedicated server, download Asterisk, learn obtuse configuration, buy (hopefully the right) add in cards, buy handsets, edit obtuse configurations, purchase local number service from a SIP compatible VOIP provider so landline folks can call you, edit obtuse configurations again, try to use existing in-house wiring with new handsets and add in cards, edit obtuse configurations again, ad nauseum.

Re:It will just drive more people to...

[aaronl]

Businesses would be fools for using Skype for their calls, anyway. I don't know what the GP was thinking implying that Asterisk is a replacement for end user point to point calls.

Asterisk is only marginally more difficult than getting a regular PBX up and running. Those things can be beasts unless you're purchasing a software configurable product. Getting *those* will cost a lot of money. However, Asterisk would probably save you $40,000 in hardware, easily.

If you manage to buy the wrong cards for an Asterisk server, you're doing something wrong, as in you aren't doing it competently... It's not just for doing VoIP to the rest of the world... that would be foolish in most environments. You *can* use it that way, but you can also connect a bank of T-1s or T-3s to it and place calls out on a PRI or whatnot. That would enable you to be fully VoIP on the inside. You *could* connect to SIP networks, such as other sites over a VPN, though.

Re:It will just drive more people to...

[Quarters]

Businesses would be fools for using Skype for their calls, anyway And the vast majority of home users would be fools for trying to use Asterisk for a home VOIP solution as opposed to Skype, Vonage, their ISPs offering, etc... That was the point of my post.

I'm sure Asterisk is very good for a certain size/class of business. At the point where the business decides to go with Asterisk as opposed to a tradition PBX w/ installation and support I should hope the time and effort is put into hiring or training someone in how to properly spec, purchase, setup, and configure Asterisk for that business's needs. All of that is *way* too much for an average home user, though.

In the early '90s I purchased a dirt cheap 14.4 modem for my Amiga 500+. Soon thereafter it came to light that the dirt cheap modem was the same as the (higher price, different brand) modem that had voicemail capabilities. Some time with a soldering iron and a few downloads later and I had a central calling system with voicemail boxes for everyone I shared a house with in college. Of course at the time I was a college student with way too much time on his hands. Would I do the same thing now? No. Do I have Skype running all the time and a dedicated wireless handset as my main telephone? Yes. Would I ever consider getting rid of that and going to a dedicated Asterisk setup just because Skype might not support conferene calling on my AMD machine? not on your life.

Re:It will just drive more people to...

[aaronl]

That's not a surprise, really. You get older and you start to value your time more; you want things to just work. If I were in a situation where I had a few people living in the same house, I'd probably be willing to invest the time to learn something like Asterisk for home. Learning it there means another skill that I can use on the job, and that makes me more valuable.

You're right though... setting up a full PBX just for myself would be silly. I'm also not exactly likely to use a > 5 person conference call at work, much less at home. It's a silly restriction to put in place, since it's obviously not a restriction of technology, but not one that will be a problem for most people. Those that it is a problem for could always just setup a paid conference call with someone like MCI, anyway.

I don't think I'll be comfortable with the technical setup that Skype uses for calling, just because they don't control the endpoints that they use to transmit calls. For my personal usage, that's generally ok, but I couldn't use that kind of setup for business. There are too many places for something to fail, or for information to be intercepted, and little to no way of knowing that it's occurred. That's largely me being paranoid, but there it is. ;-)

Microsoft got themselves in trouble this way

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use your marketing clout to exclude competitors, you will run afoul of the FTC. Doing that is illegal. Microsoft is still suffering the consequences both here and in Europe. These guys should know better.

Override?

[non0score]

I wonder how long it'd be before someone releases a hack to override the check done by Skype and how popular the hack would be. Furthermore, I wonder how this will affect the entire anti-trust case against Intel from AMD (I have no clue about the implications, if there are any, since I'm not an anti-trust lawyer).

Re:Override?

[iknowrobocop]

This shouldn't be a complicated issue. I've got a lot of bundled software from old machines that is supposed to install only on HP or Dell computers and I can trick it into installing just by modifying the registry to spoof a Dell/HP/etc. It'll no doubt be harder to spoof an Intel chip than just modifying the registry, but making your hardware lie has a long history in piracy and software hacks in general. A workaround seems inevitable.

Re:Override?

[boldtbanan]

And then whoever creates the hack is sued into oblivion by Skype using the DMCA (along with every person they can find who used it).

Re:Override?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you live in the united states maybe... .

Stupid move

[artemis67]

It only opens the door for Skype's competitors to gain a foothold by not instituting such a silly restriction.

It also turns into bad PR for Skype for the tech community to find out that Skype intentionally hobbles their software.

Re:Stupid move

[LehiNephi]

You make a good point. I would wager that a significant portion of Skype's customer base know a fair amount about computers and networking. And exactly the kind of customer that will leave in a heartbeat when they see this sort of tactic.

At the same time, I am certain that Skype management is very concerned with making money. I'm sure that money coming from Intel more than offset the potential cost of lost customers.

Re:Stupid move

[Alcilbiades]

I would disagree with you on the money from the deal making up for the consumers they lose. They probably are thinking that trying to carve out their market more fully will be risky and therefore not garuntee them a payday. With the Intel deal they get their payday and if they die and simply become a brand name then so be it.

Re:Stupid move

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the market for a new laptop. I'm trying to decide between a 64 bit AMD solution, vs. a duo core Intel. Whatever the technical merits of this decision, Intel and Skype's actions have pretty much made up my mind: AMD. I'm am not going to give my money to asshats. I've used Skype quite a bit, got my family on it, but I'm going to stop, and will try to get them unhitched as well.

Great marketing ploy. For AMD. At their competitor's expense.

Re:Stupid move

[dustmite]

Because Skype was one of the early VoIP services, they have network effects working in their favour (e.g. I "have to" use Skype because all my colleagues/friends and even clients already use it - it will now be quite difficult to switch in fact). I'm sure they realise this, I think it's already made them a bit lazy compared to their competitors, but I think they overestimate their position - there aren't that many Skype users yet that that a [new] competitor couldn't outgrow them. According to my Skype client there are typically between 3 and 5 million users on at any given time. That's miniscule compared to what the total number of VoIP users will be in 5 or 10 years. You're supposed to wait until you've really cornered a market before you start trying stupid stunts like this.

Interesting

[3CRanch]

I know there will be lots of "not fair" and "monopoly" lawsuits on the way, but if anything its interesting that they are admitting to it.

From what I've seen in other semi similar items, stuff like this gets coded in but never mentioned by the manufacturer...until they get caught. Its interesting that they are willing to bring it out in the open without having to reverting to backdooring the competition (i.e. AMD).

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[winkydink]

eBay owns Skype. eBay knows product marketing. Skype is not run by a 19-yr old kid with a manipulative uncle pulling the strings. The minute eBay sees they can capture more market share by "goign open", they will.

sky what?

[Anonymous Coward]

never heard of skype. must not be signifigant or important.

Another Fine Example of...

[eno2001]

...artificial limitations imposed on technology to provide monetary benefit for a select few. So can anyone tell me why profit motive is a good thing once it's applied to stockholder beholden corporations again??? Anyone?? ;P

Re:Another Fine Example of...

[boog3r]

Step 1: Dude! Did you hear about that new profit motive thingy? With this new profit motive we can spur all kinds of new innovation! Like being able to differentiate between different hardware manufacturers to ensure innovative limits to conference calls! YEAH!

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit!

Not unlike...

[Billosaur]

...Microsoft trying to bury Netscape in the browser war. But Netscape eventually spawned Firefox, which now stands to hit Microsoft where it hurts. AMD may be pushed to the brink by Intel, but once it's clear that they might die, they will suddenly find themselves free to follow new directions. Intel may be sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

Heh, great.

[necro2607]

Well, anyways, at least this makes me more glad that I bought my Apple iBook before the x86 switch. Good ol' PowerPC. ;)

Re:Heh, great.

[C_Kode]

Today you are, what about tomorrow when your Good ol' PowerPC chip is no longer supported?

Re:Heh, great.

[necro2607]

haha, it's a laptop! The software will probably be supported longer than the hardware lasts - especially because I'm using it for live music performance in a heavy industrial-electronic band ;) Not to mention, the only thing I need vendor support for is the hardware. As long as SOMETHING runs on this machine, I'm happy - no need for the absolute latest system software, really.

Re:Heh, great.

[bhima]

Fuck, Skype sucks so bad on my PowerMac / iSight I actually wound up using an old windows laptop and it's the *only* application I have running on it.

Re:Heh, great.

[necro2607]

haha, well, all I hear about Skype is that it sucks, so that doesn't surprise me.

Not very smart...

[PFI_Optix]

Skype must be getting ready to put some nails in their own coffin.

"Wait, you mean to tell me that I can't get as many people on a conference call because I bought the wrong brand of CPU two years ago? Looks like I'm going to another service. Bye."

Doesn't mean much...

[theheff]

A restriction on one end is just going to result in a counter-action in another part of the market by AMD... who cares about/uses skype anyways? This sounds like less of a chip issue, and more a of programming/willingness to port issue (which is ridiculous). AMD will continue to do what they do best... there's no marketing scheme that can hide a simply better product from consumers... not in our free market economy.

Processor Mask

[GuyverDH]

So, when will the over-achieving programmer come up with a method, on a per process basis, that will make the kernel calls report a different CPU based on which process is asking?

Skype asks "What kind of CPU are you" - kernel reports Intel.
mplayer asks "What kind of CPU are you" - kernel reports AMD.

Re:Processor Mask

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a little trickier than that since you have to trap the CPUID instruction. But you can set breakpoints on specific addresses, so it's possible...

Re:Processor Mask

[Tony Hoyle]

They just issue a CPUID command. That's damned hard to fake... of course with the virtualisation stuff on the horizon you could easily do it but not with current processors.

Re:Processor Mask

[Lehk228]

on load do a binary search for the machine code that calls CPUID and instead have that chunk return the desired value.

Re:Processor Mask

[heson]

More like (after giving giving Skype.exe a visit to IDA Pro) Skype says "I dont care what kind of cpu you are, number of conference calls goes to eleven"

Re:Processor Mask

[quantum bit]

But... the CPUID instruction is easily recognizable, so it wouldn't take much work with a debugger to find it and replace it with a simple mov that fakes the cpuid info.

In order to counter that, skype will have to checksum/encrypt the binary, but certain groups of people have been circumventing those measures for a loooong time and are quite good at it.

Re:Processor Mask

[Nonesuch]

quantum_bit writes:

But... the CPUID instruction is easily recognizable, so it wouldn't take much work with a debugger to find it and replace it with a simple mov that fakes the cpuid info.

In order to counter that, skype will have to checksum/encrypt the binary, but certain groups of people have been circumventing those measures for a loooong time and are quite good at it.

Skype already takes extreme measures to prevent reverse engineering and to abend the application if you try to run it under a debugger.

Re:Processor Mask

[quantum bit]

Skype already takes extreme measures to prevent reverse engineering and to abend the application if you try to run it under a debugger.

So does World of Warcraft, but people still hack it from time to time. Up until now there hasn't been much of a reason for anyone to want to modify Skype, so it hasn't been in the crosshairs of the reverse engineering crowd.

Example: Attaching a normal windows debugger or using softice isn't the only way to trace execution. Even if the app attempts to detect a virtualized CPU (say vmware), a full emulator can be completely invisible -- just slower. qemu even supports a gdb socket connection.

Trying to prevent reverse-engineering is a never-ending arms race and I'm not sure Skype has the will to stick it out. Just witness sites like game copy world to see how effect anti-reverse-engineering technologies are.

Re:Processor Mask

[complexmath]

I really must wonder how such an arms race can be profitable for Skype. After all, what technology are they trying to secure? Unless they've hidden features in the application that they are't telling customers about, Skype merely performs p2p voice messaging. Who cares if people are able to hack it? Is this an attempt to protect IP from competitors?

Re:Processor Mask

[The Warlock]

It's an attempt to prevent a derivative with features that seem like a good idea but will really cripple the network, like KaZaA Lite and it's "keep searching forever, even if the supernode goes down" feature, back in the day.

One more reason for me to continue...

[perigee369]

One more reason for me to continue using AMD chips in my PC's and Vonage as my provider. Intel and Skype can go on about their business like this and they'll wind up as amoral (sp?) as Microsoft. I guess some companies just don't get it: We want our computers to 'free us' from the mundane, not tied us down to it with bungy-cords.

We'll keep on saying it...

[MoogMan]

... This is what you get for using a closed, proprietory technology. Use SIP (or H.323) and you're not going to get any of this "10 user max" limit crap.

Re:We'll keep on saying it...

[Blakey Rat]

Ok, where's an app running SIP or h.323 that can be installed and used easily, that copes with NAT routers transparency?

Put your money where your mouth is. You can't say "use this" if "this" doesn't exist.

Re:We'll keep on saying it...

[MacJedi]

http://gizmoproject.com

HTH.

Re:We'll keep on saying it...

[Anonymous Coward]

...which is also closed source software AFAIK.

Re:We'll keep on saying it...

[MacJedi]

...which is also closed source software AFAIK.

This is true, but the only requirements of the GP were that it use "SIP or h.323 ... be installed and used easily, [and cope] ... with NAT routers transparency (sic)"

Gizmo is not open source, but it uses open standards (you can use it with asterisk!) and it is a heck of a lot better than skype.

Consequence of a non-free market

[Toby The Economist]

It's plainly self-harmful to Skype to make such a deal, since it opens up their market to competitors; they've made themselves weak on AMD platforms.

Unfortunately, Skype lacks real competition, so they can do this.

They need a viable competitor; right now the market isn't free, because people lack choice of provider, so the provider can get away with stuff like this.

Other industries do this

[Anonymous Coward]

But other companies do this and get away with it.

For example, Itunes requires your portable mp3 player to be Apple Ipod.

I dont see the big deal. It's a similar concept, tie-in value selling.

I don't see calls for Apple to stop preventing people from making Fairplay compatible mp3 players. Or at least licensing out or opening Fairplay reasonably.

Re:Other industries do this

[Sparks23]

For example, Itunes requires your portable mp3 player to be Apple Ipod.

Actually, as long as you are only using non-DRM music in your iTunes, there's actually an API to allow other mobile devices to appear in iTunes (at least under Mac, and presumably so under Windows as well). My Windows Mobile PDA has an option in its synch software to appear in iTunes; I can then synch it just like an iPod, but any Fairplay music is disallowed.

Now, you're right that the iTunes Music Store requires you to have a Fairplay-enabled device, which thus far is only the iPod (and a few iPod-compatible things like phones, where they licensed the tech from Apple). Apple /does/ license Fairplay, I gather... just evidently it's really difficult to find out the terms. :/

Re:Other industries do this

[Nicholas Evans]

I don't see calls for Apple to stop preventing people from making Fairplay compatible mp3 players. Or at least licensing out or opening Fairplay reasonably.

I guess you missed the article on the Apple antitrust suit earlier today?

It's a stupid move for Skype

[Luscious868]

AMD has better and cheaper desktop chips and they keep gaining market share keeps on rising. If a user has an AMD chip and Skype will only support a 5 way conference call on AMD then I'd imagine the user would probably look to another VOIP solution instead of lookinf for a new PC with an Intel chip. It's a stupid move for Skype.

Re:It's a stupid move for Skype

[AndroidCat]

Even if I was using Intel, I'd be thinking "Hmm, Skype, that's the one that doesn't always work depending on which computer you are using. Screw that nonsense!"

They might get some short term cash, but they'll never get back the confidence and warm fuzzy feelings that they're expending on this.

Re:It's a stupid move for Skype

[dr.badass]

AMD has better and cheaper desktop chips and they keep gaining market share keeps on rising.

So? I mean, from Skype's perspective what difference does this make? Intel still has 75% or more of the market, and is willing to throw around billions in marketing dollars to maintain it. If they can make a quick buck by locking out for a limted time the tiny portion of their userbase that both uses dual-core Athlons and needs to host more than 5-way calls, why is that "stupid" for them? They already limit single-core chips from AMD and Intel both to 5-way calling.

Re:It's a stupid move for Skype

[rbarreira]

Even if I was using Intel, I'd be thinking "Hmm, Skype, that's the one that doesn't always work depending on which computer you are using. Screw that nonsense!"

Yep, that's exactly my case, as I've said in this post! Knowing this, I'm not going to even try Skype for the first time.

But, I'm a geek - I doubt a significant number of people will think the same way (or, even worse, they won't even hear about this...).

Re:It's a stupid move for Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

If a user has an AMD chip and Skype will only support a 5 way conference call on AMD then I'd imagine the user would probably look to another VOIP solution instead of lookinf for a new PC with an Intel chip.

OR user might add another AMD CPU to his/hers computing solution.
So, with this deal Intel might be only limping forward.

AMD is eating Intel's lunch

[maynard]

even while being a full lithographic generation behind, and so Intel shifts their market plan to exclusive alliances. Shall we see motherboard bundling next? Perhaps they can make the ultimate deal with both Microsoft and NVIDIA and wrap the whole post Vista market up to themselves.

AMD better watch out. The leading technology innovator always loses!

Re:AMD is eating Intel's lunch

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel already tried the exclusive motherboard thing by suing and threatening all of the motherboard manufacturers when the first Athlon's came out. This hurt AMD for a long time. They failed miserably and if I recall correctly, when Intel went to the chipset makers to find a way to out sell the Athlon this is what gave nVidia the door it needed to jump in with AMD and make a killed CPU and chipset combo that is still beating the snot out of the other vendors. Do I have my history right?

Either way.. Intel has been and is still using highly questionable tactics to *win* market share. Thankfully we have blogs like this for people to find out about these things before its too late. You'd think Intel would be smart enough to know that a good portion of their business comes from smart people. Or maybe they arleady lost all of the smart ones to AMD and now they're stuck with the stupid ones so both companies are now happy? :-)

Re:AMD is eating Intel's lunch

[maynard]

Straight up. However, it was Microsoft's willingness to support third party motherboard manufacturers for both Intel and AMD that put a stop to Intel's prior motherboard / CPU tie-in attempt. Should MS deem such a tie in appropriate - say to counter Apple's hardware and software compatibility engineering - and Intel's tactic might work. Anyway, my larger point that AMD is the better innovator and therefore must worry about losing is both snark and true. When was the last time you bought a desktop Alpha?

If we are to have antitrust laws, now is the time

[jmorris42]

Ok, if we are going to have anti-trust laws on the books, now would be a perfect time to use them. If this isn't anti-competitive behaviour then let he who holds that position define what is.

This is on a par with Ford and Exxon agreeing that unless you are burning Exxon gas your Ford's engine will be capped at half it's rated horsepower.

No conspiracy, there are technical reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype relies on float-point inaccuracies to optimize compression of the voice streams. Since AMD features accurate floating-point math, only 5-way conferencing is supported, while Intels inaccurate floating-point math can support compression of 10-way conference calls.

Re:No conspiracy, there are technical reasons

[Entropius]

Pardon my lack of education, but how does thinking that 5.0 + 5.0 = 9.99999992346712 help you compress data better?

Re:No conspiracy, there are technical reasons

[MustardMan]

Look, up there in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane...

No, it's the joke, whooshing over your head.

Who cares?

[hrieke]

I'm sure that as soon as it's released that the offending code will be found and patched by someone, or someone will write a program that will fool the program into thinking that it's Intel and not AMD.

C'mon Guys...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if Intel ever had ethics but these kinds of backroom business decisions are just another indication that they've clearly lost their edge. I won't be buying Intel anytime soon for the simple reason that AMD offers a better product. Maybe they should focus more on their CPU line and less on monopolizing software applications.

monopolizing practices

[jdwclemson]

Personally I think that practices like this should be flat out illegal, as they incourage monopolies while they hinder fair competition. That is not necessary though as we all have the right to let go of any unethical developers who choose to participate in such practices. I will avoid purchasing any software vender who does anything like this, and I think it would benefit us all to stage boycotts where ever this kind of mafia mentality is being used. Can anybody here start a Slashdot section dedicated towards staging boycotts against organizations wh odo this?

Re:monopolizing practices

[Lehk228]

it's called ting and it is illegal

Did someone say...

[Anonymous Coward]

anti-trust lawsuit?

In a related announcement...

[kclittle]

Intel has announced a deal with 3D Realms that Duke Nukem Forever will only run on their Viiv IV platform. Said Intel CEO Paul Otellini, "2009 will be a great year for us, I can just tell!".

Re:In a related announcement...

[Alioth]

Is it just me or is Viiv a really stupid name?

Re:In a related announcement...

[kclittle]

No, it's brilliant!! They can go through *EIGHT* generations of clever product names and tag lines using only *two* characters: Viiv I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII and VIII. Think of the savings! It's, it's... REVOLUTIONARY! (lol!)

Sigh... How do great technology companies, founded and nurtured by really smart engineers and scientists, come to this? How do the marketing dweebs slowly, silently lobotomize these bastions of rational thought and clear, concise communication? Ah, Intel, I'm glad I knew ye...

Re:In a related announcement...

[Chatsubo]

> 2009 will be a great year for us,

Nice to see there are still some optimists left on slashdot.

Another stupid company

[c0d3h4x0r]

This is just another example of a company not understanding the only real path to long-term successs (pleasing customers) and foolishly being tempted by the path that has been proven many times to lead to failure (forcing your own unwanted agenda upon customers).

In the end, market forces will teach Skype (just as they have taught so many other companies) that you can't place your own motives over customer satisfaction and survive in the long term.

We can beat this

[y86]

Isn't there a way to set a CPU Info flag in memmory to whatever the hell we want it to be?

Even better, Virtual PC......running whatever the heck i say it's running, while also running my Skype client.

Whatever the solution is, it can be rolled into a 2-5 MEG executabe library that'll just rape skype for all it's worth. I'm counting on Box.sk!

Stupid Rabbit!

[blueZhift]

Stupid Rabbit! Tricks are for kids! I mean really, this is a stupid move for Intel. Do they really think that most computer users know or care who makes the cpu in the box? This will just end up being a headache for users and Skype as people complain when they run into this stupid artificial limitation. And the people who actually know and care who makes the cpu will be annoyed by Intel's heavy handed tactics and Skype's shortsightedness. This is just lose lose all around. When will tech companies realize that most consumers don't care about the branding of things that they fundamentally do not understand. People know the difference between Fords and Toyotas, but don't care one bit about the companies that make the crankshaft cams.

For me it's a boomerang.

[marcello_dl]

From this kind of news I infer that:
- Intel fights AMD with trade agreements, so it must be lagging technologically.
- Skype is not to be trusted for serious communication needs. A company that accepts such dirty tricks is likely to have already sold sensitive communication to national governments or big business or both.

E is for Ethics

[Cyphertube]

So, given these practices, I get I can now see why they lowered the "e" in the logo... It's a stylistic hint at their lowered ethical standards.

Re:E is for Ethics

[pclminion]

You do know that Intel's logo no longer look like that, right?

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[boog3r]

Ebay is getting pretty big for its britches. Legal/financial problems with paypal, losses from skype (once everyone figures out skype is irrelevant), and niche/innovative competition will eventually lead to ebay's demise.

not so sure it'll backfire on Skype

[Marsmensch]

A lot of people are commenting that this is harmful to skype, but I'm not so certain. After all, Joe Sixpack will only know that he can conference call with all of his buddies with a intel machine, while AMD "can't handle it". The whole concept of software limitation is totally incomprehensible for the majority of the non-slashdot crowd.

AMD better start a massive PR campaign RIGHT NOW to make this backfire on Intel and Skype.

Re:not so sure it'll backfire on Skype

[Tony Hoyle]

How are they going to reason AMD "can't handle it"?

Say it in an advert? There would be lawsuits before the advert had finished its first run - that's even if it would be allowed to be broadcast.
Say it in Skype? Similar situation, except AMD would probably get an injunction stopping skype distribution at the same time.

Re:not so sure it'll backfire on Skype

[rbarreira]

Well, they could put a message box in Skype saying something like "Your CPU doesn't support adding one more contact to this conversation". That would be an outright lie, but could they get away with it once people found out? "Oh sorry, that was a bug. Fixed on the next version!"

Re:not so sure it'll backfire on Skype

[MightyYar]

They could word it like: "We're sorry, adding more than 5 contacts requires a Genuine Intel Pentium Processor."

That would be totally legit, and would make Joe Sixpack mad at whoever told him to get a machine without Intel Inside on it.

Re:not so sure it'll backfire on Skype

[rbarreira]

But then, it would be a small step away from obvious that it's just an artificial limitation, and people would be pissed off!

Re:not so sure it'll backfire on Skype

[John Nowak]

I think you're overestimating Joe Sixpack. If I told someone to get an AMD system and they hit this limitation, do you know where their anger would be directed? AT ME.

What if...

[ioexcptn]

What if I have an SMP AMD box? Do I get 5 x nCPUs conferencees?

Used to like Skype but that is just atrocious. Vonage gets my business.

Who's to blame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gatta start watchin Intel's sucker punches.

Intel is definitely playing an evil card here but, the real culprit is Skype/eBay. Intel alone cannot force this deal. The most that Intel can do is offer Skype/eBay some money to restrict the software and see if they will bite. Well, it looks like Skype/eBay has bit hard! It is Skype/eBay's software so, they are the only ones that can restrict it based on CPU or any other hardware.

Sure, it smacks of price fixing and collusion on Intel's part but, Skype/eBay are the root of this evil.

Libjingle

[Midnight Thunder]

I am just waiting for Libjingle to be finished up and find its way into all the popular Jabber clients, and servers. Once done we won't need Skype!

Re:Libjingle

[cibyr]

I'm waiting for vv-gaim to be merged with gaim proper... in the meantime aMSN does my video chat and teamspeak does my "conference calls" (admittedly mostly while playing WoW but I play with RL friends and we use teamspeak to plan for LANs, talk about assignments etc).

STUPID.

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Ok, when I had a Pentium II 366 in a laptop a year or two ago, I was able to do VoIP Calls with Yahoo Chat and we had many more the 10! Why limit it at all?? Limiting it by CPU??? I'd imagine that the SEC would like to hear about this...

What do I care?

[Nevtje(hr]

Skype is troublesome enough as it is; everytime I start it, it for some odd reason resets my internet connection... So go ahead Skype, I have l33t skillz at uninstalling stuff!

I wonder though, is this a limitation for the host of a conference or for any party wanting to partake in it? Would bring a new twist to the "hey your machine is better, you host" spin- w/out actually being a consequence of CPU while still being a consequence of CPU :)

*pats his AMD 3200+*

Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the big deal with skype anyways? Who would actually use skype? People do understand that this software is brought to you by same company that gave us spyware infested Kazza, right? These guys are the last people that I would trust with my communications.

Skype just pulled a Harry Whittington ...

[MikeSty]

... but got shot by Intel instead of Dick Cheney.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

AMD has greater new market share now though

[lawaetf1]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't AMD now account for > 50% of new desktop sales? Perhaps business sales are metered separately, but I rather doubt that many business PCs run Skype. It seems like this is a bad move for Skype on many levels.. Not only do they look crooked but they now have alienated greater than half of new PC owners from making full use of their service.

Also, feel free to give Skype a piece of your mind. They deserve it. http://www.skype.com/feedback/contact/

Re:AMD has greater new market share now though

[Shadyman]

IIRC, it was that AMD had the majority of new desktop sales in big-box chains over the holiday season

Oh well

[mitymidget]

Oh well, skype and vonage are probably good services but I'm never next to some sort of a wireles signal or internet connection when I talk to anybody. Intel will not lose in this decision as others think. Why would they? Skype will be the ones who take a dive before they realize that although intel is paying them alot, most people who would use skype run amd anyway (just a guess). oh and maynard, you said: "AMD better watch out. The leading technology innovator always loses!" So your saying Intel will lose, they are the leading technology innovator when it comes to processors, just because they may not be as advanced as amd chips become, they still develop much of the technology before amd starts. Thats the perk of massive amounts of funds

Am I the only one wondering...

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a Viiv ad doing in the middle of the second page of the article?

RTFP

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that is exactly why he differentiated between Asterisk and Free World Dialup as one being for the end-user and one not.

Eeeewww.

[nickptar]

Does anybody who IAL know if this would be adequate grounds for an anti-trust suit?

Hmmm... now let me think about this....

[pandrijeczko]

I can either:

a. Buy a more expensive, lower power CPU for my PC and tell 9 buddies simulataneously about it

or

b. Buy a more value for money CPU for my PC and tell 4 buddies about it

Nope, still gonna buy AMD - try harder Intel.

more FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the main reason is to spread FUD in the future.

Joe Sixpack: "Oh but look, the AMD processor can only handle 5 conferences at the same time. It must not be as powerful as the Intel processor. I think I'll go with the Intel processor."

Whereas the main reason for this limitation is in the software, not hardware.

This is the death of Skype

[WillAffleckUW]

and I'm saying that as an Intel shareholder (can't remember if it's 200 or 300 shares).

Now, if they'd just said "we will support unlimited on Intel chips and, once we test it out with AMD, will release an AMD version in six months that supports their most popular chipsets", that would have been workable.

But not supporting AMD means my laptop would be included.

And that means I'll switch.

Too bad.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[Anonymous Coward]

I like (and agree with) your comment, but what's with the "'goign open'" part, seems like you're getting defensive and insulting over this.

Ads

[hakan2000]

I can imagine the ads:

'Intel ViiV will let you talk twice as much with twice as many friends!'

Reverse Marketing?

[LiquidSYS]

Doesn't anyone else see that this is like a reverse marketing situation? This is more like an attack against Intel rather than anything that could help, marketing wise. This just shows me that I need to support AMD even more, as Intel is looking out for Intel, not for the consumer.

Ethically Questionable, Economically Short-Sighted

[Kurt Wall]

If Microsoft does something like this, we'd call it an anti-trust violation. I realize AMD won't be overtaking Intel in market share this week or even next year, but does Skype really want to limit their potential base this way?

Oh wow.

[RoffleTheWaffle]

This is low even for Intel. 'Leap Ahead'? More like 'Leap Back', or 'Get the hell out of Dodge' if you'd prefer. This is just another example of a classic industry cheap-shot - if you can't defeat the market, gang up on the consumer.

Simple solution: use something other than Skype

[Trejkaz]

On Gizmo, you can have a conference call with as many people as your system and bandwidth can support. Supposedly someone once set up a 28-way conference.

Cool

[rbarreira]

Well cool... Since I'm about to go working abroad, I was currently deciding whether to buy 10 euros of conversation money from Skype or not - now they have decided for me :)

Big Picture?

[StaticFish]

What person viewing Slashdot has 10 friends anyway!

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[hackstraw]

eBay knows product marketing

How? eBay is a service company. The only marketing I've seen is singing about buying crap off of eBay on TV and every single noun that I search for on Google, I can buy on eBay as well.

Back on topic, this is a _very_ bad move on Intel and Skype. I doubt that MS would even stoop so low.

A) Why would Skype agree to this? What is their benefit by limiting their customer base by splitting hairs on commodity CPU manufacturers?

b) Why would Intel do this when they are already being sued by AMD?

Is Sony involved in these decisions?

Skype will live to regret this decision...

[Newer Guy]

Right now, the chip maker that's coming on strong is AMD! In a few years, INTEL might well be the also ran - and Skype with them! I used to work for a radio station in Boston. The promotions director set up our station as the OFFICIAL radio station of HQ Hardware (does anyone remember them?). In the manager's meeting, I mentioned that there was a new up and coming mega hardware store called Home Depot. I was told that I knew nothing about promotions and that Home Depot was irrelevant compared to HQ. NOW..12 years later BOTH HQ and this station are gone - having become completely irrelevant themselves. Never hook yourself up with a "leader" if there's an up and comer right on their tail...that's what I say!

Re:In other news...

[PhreekyMikey]

Surely that's fair. It's not quite the same, I don't think Apple would of made the switch to Intel if it meant that people didn't have to own a Macintosh computer in order to run Mac OS X. If you were able to run Mac OS X on a regular personal computer, there would be practically no reason to buy Macintosh computers.

Perhaps its reasonable

[pammon]

From TFA:

> Intel executives believe they can use their considerable software resources to improve the performance
> of processing-intensive applications such as VoIP and home entertainment by working with software
> application developers to help them understand how Intel's chips process data.

If Intel is dedicating their own resources to helping software vendors meet performance goals on their own chips, it's reasonable to only enable features that require that performance on the chips that have been verified to reach that performance. Presumably, it took some work to reach that performance on Intel's chips, and there's no reason to believe that the unmodified code would run as fast on AMD's chips. Why should Intel go out of their way to help AMD?

Others in this thread are arguing that "it's completely artificial." How do you know that? It's up to Skype to validate what hardware configurations support their software's features so that they know when to enable them - if Intel does that work for them, and AMD doesn't, then it's not surprising that the features are only enabled under Intel's chips.

Re:Perhaps its reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

> How do you know that?

Because we're programmers and geeks and we know tech.

90 90 90 b0 01 c3

Re:Perhaps its reasonable

[imsabbel]

We know that because any current desktop cpu can handle as much audio streams than you can fit in any normally available upload.
5 audio streams was somthing you could be proud of... back when we were all running pentium 133 with 32MB RAM

In fact, it would be an utter shame for skype if this limitation were NOT artificial.

The fact that they DID this thing...

[Svartalf]

...should be indicative that they're THAT clueless in the first place.

Stupid idea

[plusser]

I can see a number of problems with this lock-in that could cause more problems than they solve:-

1) Four Intel users and one AMD user are on a conference call. An Intel user joins the discussion. Does this mean that the AMD user gets booted out of the conversation?

2) Where do non-wintel platforms stand? say if I'm running a Power Mac with a G5 processor? would the same happen if I was using an Intel based MAC?

3) Surely Skype is now owned by Ebay? If this is so, don't they realise they stand to loose out when the users in the "know" stop using them as a protest to stupid software lock-ins?

4) What is to stop other features being restricted to certain platforms and operating systems in future?

Only corporate America could come up with something as stupid as this.

Re:Skype: Missing The Opportunity!

[mpapet]

You are missing the opportunity to buy new SIP compatible network hardware that so many hardware companies want to sell to you!

Of course, the software vendors want you to use their STUN and probably their 2006 version "SIP compatible" firewall.

Port 5060 appears to be the standard port to open. It's not clear to me if you open it for tcp/ip and udp or one instead of the other. I would prefer it to open dynamically, but haven't looked into it enough on my setup.

Can someone tell me if skype is generating profits?

wow

[akhomerun]

skype's coolness just went down from 9/10 to 0/10

i'm going to go out of my way just to find an alternative to skype because I refuse to use the current generation's Intel chips (I like my processors fast and cheap)

Re:If we are to have antitrust laws, now is the ti

[PitaBred]

What would happen to Ford in that scenario is that they wouldn't sell any cars. Hopefully that happens to Skype and Intel.

Google

[Martindale]

Google Talk won't have CPU limitations when they release their VoIP solutions for the home consumer.

Meanwhile

[Rac3r5]

Somewhere in the Carribbean, a parrot sitting Pirate Black Beard's shoulder is screaming "Idiota", "Idiota".

Seriously though, this is a stupid move for skype and a cheap move for intel. Limiting the consumer because he bought an AMD won't really encourage them to use skype, they'll just use something else.

Re:In other news...

[theStorminMormon]

Yeah, and when Intel designs their own conferencing software...

Oh wait, they didn't.

-stormin

Gizmo Project

[tecker]

Look to the Gizmo Project founded by Linspire man Michael Robertson. Here is a blurb from one of his emails:

Gizmo Project voice calling and IM is booming on Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, and Linux computers because Gizmo Project works well and connects with every type of device like wifi phones, other VOIP and IM directories like GoogleTalk and even the popular open source Asterisk PBX software. I think people are beginning to understand the difference between Skype who walls their customers in and won't play nicely with anyone and SIPphone who connects to everyone making it possible to have just one address. Next week SIPphone will announce closing of a major venture capital deal which will help the company grow even faster.

I doubt this will be the end of skype and it will swing few people but it does show a disturbing trend in what could come.

BTW: Gizmo project will connect to Google Talk but i dont think it does voice.

Re:Gizmo Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow I can't believe I had to read this far down before somebody mentioned Gizmo Project.

I just installed Skype 2 about a week ago, but now I'm going to uninstall it and use Gizmo.

Re:In other news...

[karnal]

I know Intel is working on HMP (host media processing), which would allow for media bridging and conferencing on a cpu, rather than dedicated hardware....

IDA Pro to the rescue

[TheDracle]

Nothing a lil' patch can't solve...

patch it

[Anonymous Coward]

disconnect the network; run internally only; initiate conference call on intel, tracing binary; repeat on AMD tracing binary. Patch the decision point that differs.

Legality?

[dtfinch]

I have a sneaking suspicion that this behaviour is very extremely illegal.

Intel/Skype

[PigIronBob]

collusion: A secret agreement for an illegal purpose; conspiracy. Wiktionary fits, apart from the secrecy

I'm bored, somebody skype me

[Anonymous Coward]

My name: MagnumOpus_

Go nuts :)

Fake CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to fake a AMD chip as an Intel chip?

I can see this happening in a free operating system (as in freedom) like FreeBSD, Linux, OpenSolaris, etc...

But Windows or Mac/Intel?

Primus offers a much better deal that Skype

[kawabago]

YooHoo Inteeeeellllllll, the entire IT industry is moving towards open standards. Don't you think it's probably not a good idea to try to pull a Microsoftie and lock computer users in when they are already fed up with this kind of tactic from Microsoft?

Um, that's bizarre.

[Anonymous Coward]

And maybe not a wise move considering, last I checked, Intel and AMD were still in an antitrust battle. Or considering Skype is just one player in an emerging market, and switching to Vonage or Gizmo or whatever is still effortless at this stage.

What I'd wonder is, exactly how does skype know whether it's on an Intel or an AMD chip? Differing SSE/3DNow implementations or what? I mean, is it actually doing something that an AMD chip couldn't, or is it just asking the chip "hey, what kind of chip are you" and running a different code path? Becuase if it's the second I don't see why you couldn't just fake out Skype and tell it "yes, you are running on an Intel chip" when you actually have an AMD.

Intel can no longer compete on a technology basis.

[QuietLagoon]

So now they have to start to use monopolistic lock-in practices to gain and retain customers.

It's the sign of a company that is falling behind in their core markets.

This is just sick

[deangelo]

Disgusting, I used to use and recommend Skype, gonna have to move on now, any suggestions?

      deAngelo

Re:This is just sick

[Anonymous Coward]

any open-standards (sip/xmpp) compliant software. ie google-talk or gizmo.

They need to make back that $4b somehow

[finnif]

Undoubtedly Intel is paying for this. eBay has to figure out every way possible they can make money with Skype, which could be the most overpriced acquisition since Time Warner and AOL.

Please for my sanity

[gcranston]

Anyone.. ANYONE explain how this is legal. How can you possibly make a product so blatantly anti-competitive? I mean, this stuff used to be done quietly behind closed doors and even then it was still sketchy. It's disturbing to know that everyone's soul has a price.

Intel optimizations

[Kaldaien]

If you actually read the article, as part of the deal, Intel plans to optimize the code for their processor. Intel is paying money to optimize the third-party Skype code for their chips, presumably utilizing SSE3. Though, I don't know why the deal extends to Duo chips only - I could understand if Intel had to optimize the code to efficiently utilize Hyper Threading, but Duo chips have two discrete cores; perhaps they're taking the shared cache into account, but AMD's dual core chips have a shared cache too.

If the code were optimized for SSE3, it would only run on recent Intel chips to begin with. I did not read anywhere in the article that said Intel paid to exclude AMD from approaching Skype to optimize their code for "AMD64" (x86-64). That said, the number of phone calls allowable should really be licensed on a per-CPU/core basis. If Skype honestly believes that Intel Duo chips with Intel's optimizations are truly twice as efficient as AMD's dual core chips, a license for 10 calls should be available for quad core AMD products. I have never been a fan of licensing by the number of CPUs, specifically disabling features if a host machine has fewer than X processors, but it has been in use for years.

It's absurd to assume that a machine with fewer than X processors/cores or of a slightly different architecture is not/will not be powerful enough to run suchandsuch a feature within a product's lifespan. They said that the exclusive 10-way calling feature will only be exclusive for a limited time, however. It may be in recognition that AMD64 chips will eventually be able to outperform even SSE3 optimized Intel code, if they cannot already.

Re:Intel optimizations

[Sebastopol]

It may be in recognition that AMD64 chips will eventually be able to outperform even SSE3 optimized Intel code, if they cannot already.

Wait, SSE3 is FP, which is 80 to 128bit, or 64bit integer packed using the FP stack. How can AMD64 matter when *64 in AMD marketing refers to integer? AMD only has FP performance advantage.

Unless it Skype is pure integer, I don't see how your argument is valid on the bases of 64 bits.

Re:Intel optimizations

[leathered]

If the code were optimized for SSE3, it would only run on recent Intel chips to begin with.

All AMD chips manufactured since around the middle of last year support SSE3. And even if they didn't, it would most certainly run, just not take advantage of those instructions.

Re:Intel optimizations

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD64 is just a vague term to apply to the various lines of their new architecture. I cannot think of any term more appropriate.

Re:Intel optimizations

[QuietLagoon]

If you actually read the article, as part of the deal, Intel plans to optimize the code for their processor.

Why the need to optimize the code? Are you saying that the current Intel processors are too slow for the task at hand? Or is this more of a marketing lock-in type of situation?

I haven't seen anything in this article or any other article that even remotely indicates that the current processors are unable to handle the processing tasks presented. Let's face it, aside from the gamers (and I say this with the upmost of respect for the gamers) I'd say that more people need higher bandwidth than more optimized CPU power. Of course, that's just my opinion.

I am sure that Intel, who has been losing major marketshare to AMD, may have a different opinion. And I do not have their marketing budget to buy the ink to say otherwise.

Re:Intel optimizations

[GauteL]

"If the code were optimized for SSE3, it would only run on recent Intel chips to begin with. "

This is not true. Recent AMD Athlon 64 processors have SSE3 support.

Anti-Competitive Practices As Usual

[wolff000]

It is extremely anti-competitive to lock in software on specific hardware. I understand Intel is fighting for market share but bully tactics on consumers don't work too well. Then again MS does it all the time and people do allow them too. If you want examples go buy Age of Emnpires III and try to run it on Windows 2000.

I would just like to say...

[Bryansix]

I hate Intel. This just adds to the ever growing list of why. Some reasons include:
1) Higher priced chips that perform worse
2) Manufacturers who are locked into using thier crappy chips
3) Hints that Intel wants to offer non-standard hardware and screw the competition
4) Stupidest commercials in the industry including but not limited to some dumbasses walking around in pink isolation suits.

Let's exclude Skype and Intel.

[at_slashdot]

Simple proposal: if that's true let's not use Skype and Intel products. Why should we uses cripled products when we have better choices?

Work around

[snakecoder]

How hard would it be to create a dll that overrides getCPUId() and put that in front of skype's library path.

This really seems like a foolish way to conduct business.

"We don't offer you more, but we beat our competitors down with a stick so they offer you less"

Re:Work around

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be quite hard, in fact. There's an opcode, CPUID, that on an Intel processor, and only an intel processor, assigns the following values to the following registers:
EBX = 756E6547 ("Genu")
EDX = 49656E69 ("ineI")
ECX = 6C65746e ("ntel")
How are you going to override that?

Re:Work around

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be heaps easier just to modify skype.exe

Goodbye Skype/Intel

[Nosnam]

I have been a very big proponent of Skype's services. I like the fact that I can use skype-out as much as I need, or as little as I need, not getting locked into any obligation like traditional phones. I have also been quite content with my Intel systems over the years, and haven't taken AMD into consideration lately. Once my pre-paid skype time is up, I'm definitely not going to be refilling the account any more. Once I'm ready to buy a new system, it's not going to have an Intel. Sure, neither company is going to be shedding tears over me - but I hope I am not alone here.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[Anonymous Coward]

every single noun that I search for on Google, I can buy on eBay as well.

I didn't know Bill gates was for sale...

It makes me sad

[SpecBear]

Illegal or not it's pathetic.

What this says to me is that the powers that be at Intel feel that striking exclusivity deals to lock out the competition is a more effective use of capital than innovating. I have doubts about the potential for growth in such a company.

And what the hell is Skype thinking? I want to see how they'll spin this to customers. So what you're saying is that someone paid you to give me crappy service? Yeah, that's some great PR there.

Re:It makes me sad

[stuuf]

I want to see how they'll spin this to customers.

What makes you think they'll say anything? AMD customers will read about this on slashdot and other places, bitch for a while, then realize that they never even have a use for a 5-way conference call, let alone 10-way. Intel users simply won't notice. For the people who actually need this feature, if they really want to use Skype they'll just buy Intel, and if they really ant to use AMd chips they'll look for another software, which they probably won't find.

Boycott!

[Roadkills-R-Us]

When I buy systems for our compute farm here at work, I tend to lean towards AMD. At least that was the case in the past. Now I simply will *not* buy anything with Intel in it-- processor, chipset, whatever-- if there is any rational alternative.

I encourage others to do the same.

Re:Boycott!

[jsight]

And boycott Skype for being so foolish as to go along with this foolishness.

Re:Boycott!

[conureman]

Yep, that does it for me. I am not a great big consumer, however Skype and Intel just decided not to get any more of MY money. Solves the platform question on this year's upgrade. Dual core Opteron- yesss!

OpenWengo!

[corychristison]

After I learned how evil Skype is, I went searching for an open source alternative. The best alternative I could find is OpenWengo. Anyone else know of anything worth taking a look at?

One more reason to use AMD

[popo]

... as if faster processors wasn't enough

Oh come on...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

That's just an asinine (and what a cliché, as well!) answer and the one that is at the root of why Enterprise will never move to applications like this without a solid commercial fork that comes with support. At which point, cost wise, they have no incentive to migrate away from proprietary. My company flies air planes, we are not in the business of PBX development, nor are we in the business of writing drivers for common peripherals.

Re:Oh come on...

[Anonymous Coward]

That must explain why top companies are using Open Source all over, huh?

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[hackstraw]

I didn't know Bill gates was for sale...

The top ad off of this search, http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en& q=bill+gates&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 yields the text ad that says, "Bill Gate, Looking for Bill Gate?" with the following ad URL: http://www.google.com/url?sa=l&ai=B-L2WiAvxQ7iWKqT iqQK0wf3XAqmhmRLdltOJAvvIjLUIwJoMEAEYASC5VCgHSJI5U J3b-KIDmAG9jgaqAQJlbsgBAZUCHXFKCg&num=1&q=http://a dfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/711-33994-2056-0%3Ftype% 3Dsearch%26mpre%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fsearch.ebay.c om%252Fsearch%252Fsearch.dll%253Fquery%253DBill%25 20Gate%2526krd%253D1%2526newu%253D1%2526xpufu%253D x%26keyword%3DBill%2520Gate

Close enough for me, Mr. AC.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[cortana]

Try it.

Bill Gates
Aff. Everything to do with
Bill Gates.
eBay.co.uk

is circumvention is possible?

[kn0tw0rk]

If you have your AMD machine run a session of a virtual intel machine, wouldn't the call from the skype application to check processor version hit the virtualised processor and think it was intel? Else, i'm sure some hacker would come up with some application that waited for the call to check the processor version and intercept it and return the preferred result.

Re:is circumvention is possible?

[Tony Hoyle]

The cpuid instruction is not privileged, so a virtual machine wouldn't necessarily catch it (they do some amount of rewriting AFAIK but no for that.. no need to normally).

With the new virtualisation technology coming out you'll be able to catch any instruction which will make replacing it fairly trivial (and breaking into it fairly trivial too.. can't wait for the first debuggers that use virtualisation...).

Anti-Trust?

[Temsi]

IANAL but isn't this a clear case of two corporations conspiring to push out a competitor?

I mean... I guess the more appropriate question would be: "is this legal?" which of course begs the next question "can they get away with this even if it is?"
Or would this be considered "unethical but technically not illegal"?

Whatever it is, it smells really bad, and is IMHO a terrible PR move.

Re:Anti-Trust?

[stud9920]

It's only illegal if the culprits have a dominant market posting (true in 1992 ?)

Re:Anti-Trust?

[Temsi]

It's only illegal if the culprits have a dominant market posting

Intel still dominates the chip market, despite AMD's meteoric rise of late.
Skype pretty much owns the pc-based-voip market.

I'd say they qualify.

0d warez!

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the amd__proc_cloaking.patch on sf.net. 'nuff said.

( ( ( Insert scrolltext and greets here ) ) )

Re:0d warez!

[Compumyst]

Would you mind posting a link to the project?

I will still

[suezz]

buy and recommend amd cpus - they blow intels away

Semi-alternative to Skype

[Khyber]

It doesn't have multi-user conference yet unless you're in a server, but Camfrog will catch up, and then It's going to be a big rivalry, as Camfrog is quite good, reliable, and stable, with a much better video codec for compressing and decoding video. Skype using video runs my 1.8 ghz p4 to 100% CPU, Camfrog, in a chatroom with 30+ windows, only 43% CPU. No contest.

Sounds like it should be illegal

[Espressoman]

Isn't this a bit anti-competitive? Imagine a major gas station company doing a deal with an automaker whereby the gas station will give you a full tank for your money if you are driving a Ford, but only half a tank if you come in a Dodge...

So?

[leaping_laughter]

If they wrote the software, and want to limit their own market, ... so?

Open source advocates: get over it.

Product marketing realists: get over it.

It happened. Move on.

Re:If we are to have antitrust laws, now is the ti

[birge]

Why should that be illegal? Neither Ford nor Exxon are monopolies. Why shouldn't they be allowed to tie-in their businesses? It would be stupid, and it would hurt them, but it isn't, and shouldn't be illegal. Damn, why do I always get sucked into this statist crap?

So contact Skype and voice your opinion

[pat_trick]

Leave feedback on their product at their feedback page. Tell them that you're not going to support it due to their business decisions to lock features to a certain part of the market.

Just stupid; games on certain video cards

[PhYrE2k2]

This is a stupid partnership, as there is just no reason at all to do it.

This is like some cars going faster on certain roads (ignoring speed limits here of course, I'm talking capability). Maybe one 'supported' platform for tech support, but why would anyone possibly want to tie an application to a specific processor? Who knows what the road may bring.

Next: Games that run on ATI-only video cards versus NVidia

-M

Skype alternatives?

[fbg111]

I use Skype are b/c its data is strongly encrypted, and it is transmitted via P2P rather than via central server. Are there any SIP-based alternatives that meet these criteria that I can evaluate and possibly switch to? I hate it when companies do stupid deals like this.

Re:Skype alternatives?

[Cyno]

This looks interesting:

http://www.tipic.com/node/view/139924

Won't Renew SkypeOut anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't blame Intel for trying to get a competitive edge.. But Skype giving in and putting artificial restraints is beyond unacceptable. Skype has been using there closed platform to do strange thing reminiscent of cell phone companies, such as charging for different rings... Well I guess this goes to show that once a closed source company has control of the market they can do whatever they please... even if it is not in the consumers' best interest. I wonder what they will do when they are even more established or have a monopoly....
I guess I will have to start promoting gizmo or google talk, and start shifting away from skype... This is just unacceptable.

I don't get it

[billdar]

How exactly is this to benifit skype? It appears they are volunteering to cut out a section of their possible market.

Especially in the mobile and home entertainment devices.

Re:In other news...

[rodgster]

I remember using Intel Internet Phone back in the mid 90's (95-97ish). I had a 28.8 modem (in California) and my brother (who was in Florida) had a 14.4 and (dialup) and it ran pretty good. Just had to use it more like a walkie talkie than a phone.

Now I honestly don't remember if they bought it or develpoed it, but they had that almost a decade before skype.

Suspicious, fishy, bad... a desperate attempt

[ruibjr]

I can tell you this: intel has always been a name of respect, to me. I worshiped them, until today. Since the days I worked with 8080's to this very day, the name Intel always made me feel comfortable. But, after this, I feel that they became cheaters. Cheaters that must rely on this kind of poor, fishy strategy, because they can no longer deliver a competitive product. Too bad, Intel.

Bullshit...

[Anonymous Coward]

That must explain why top companies are using Open Source all over, huh?

All over what? The Interweb? OK, true, the basic LAMP set-up is pretty mature, and there are a number of seriously geeky utilities that are in common use. Any LARGE SCALE deployments other than LAMP? Care to enlighten us all?

Doesnt make sense

[tfcdesign]

How does this benefit Skype? To intentionally limit someones use of IP telephony seems extremely un-Skype-like.

Watch - Vontage will make it unlimited!

No Digg.

Just makes me not want to buy Intel or Skype

[olddoc]

What sleazy marketing. Poor Intel looks desperate to get their market share back up.
This just makes them look bad.
Google tries to stay non-evil. Why don't Intel and Skype?

Time for ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Open SKYPE !

Re:Time for ...

[corychristison]

Yup. It's called OpenWengo. :-P

What's next? eBay restictions for AMD users?

[Aokubidaikon]

"Invalid bid. We have detected you are using an AMD processor. You are limited to five bids per month. Click here to find good deals on PCs running Intel chips on eBay!"

Intel chips seem to be optimized

[MikePlacid]

There is some history in this announcement. From http://news.com.com/When+Intel+calls%2C+Skype+list ens/2100-7352_3-6036896.html?tag=nl:

Intel approached Skype with its plan to optimize code on its chips for Skype's software so users would have a good experience while hosting a multiperson conference call, Crooke said. In recent years, Intel has increasingly touted its software development resources as a competitive advantage over AMD, which also trails Intel in the marketing budget category.

Other processors based on the x86 instruction set, such as AMD's chips or Via's, obviously will not come with the same optimized code found on Intel's chips. Intel and Skype announced a partnership at the Fall Intel Developer Forum last August to make sure Skype's products would run well on Intel's chips.

If this is true, I see nothing bad in the current announcement.

Somebody's going to sue somebody

[Sgt. Joe]

I put the over/under for filing a restrain of trade lawsuit at 15 days.

Count my next purchase to be AMD!

[turkeyfish]

First we have M$ trying to use a monopoly position to extract extortion money from consumers, even when they attempt to purchase a Linux system by locking in vendors. If Intel is able to get away with similar behavior, we will all wind up paying more for other kinds of "lock in deals" as well. While there may be good technological reasons for going with Intel in some circumstances, as one consumer I'm goint to vote with my wallet to make the point that I am displeased with this kind of "herding" of its customers. This is sad as until now I have alway been an Intel customer.

I don't use the service in question, nor do I expect I will, but I want to be sure that Intel understands that I don't approve of marketing efforts that lock customers to a limited range of options. If more buyers send Intel such a message, maybe they will think twice about deals that ultimate restrict customer options. Let them do this successfully and you will see more and more similar deals, video-cards, gaming software, etc.

Vote with your wallet!

Oh brother! Now we have to hack free software too

[presarioD]

... where has the world gotten to? Hacking proprietary software for "free rides" was normal judging from the quality/price ratio of most of them (not to mention ideological reasons). Now there will be a need to hack "free-to-download" software to circumvent their stupid market decisions...

Oh well, who cares?

ebay has used toilet paper

[Anonymous Coward]

Try http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=used.toilet.p aper and you see this ad: "Looking for Used Toilet Paper? Find exactly what you want today www.ebay.com"

Another sink-the-company idea from Intel.

[Futurepower(R)]

Consider how this may have happened:

An Intel marketing person thought this was a good idea. He is one of those who knows nothing about technical things; he's just a marketing drone. What could he possibly do to advance the strength of his company? Nothing. So, to pretend that he was contributing he turned to evil. He made a deal that looks good to other know-nothings like himself, and is really, really offensive to the people who matter.

This is a violation of the anti-trust laws, I think.

New Intel mottos:

Intel: When you can't compete, be adversarial.

Intel: We're on the way down.

Intel: A technical company controlled by people with no technical knowledge.

Intel's present adversarial behavior is part of a gradual decay of the company that is more than 10 years old, in my experience. Perhaps 10 years ago, Intel arranged a pay cut for employees just before they began to do record business. During that time, Intel has done some really, really disgusting things, like trash their consumer products division by not paying enough attention to it.

Re:Another sink-the-company idea from Intel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can a lwayer comment and say if this really is legal or not?

But does it matter?

[dmdb]

Leaving aside the fact that this is still a bad thing and I will probably write a letter to Skype to complain (not that it'll have any impact). How many of you actually hold conference calls of more than 5 people? The most I have ever done is 4 and thats not that common an occurance, I suppose for those of you involved in large software projects it may be a different matter. Just wondering...

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[StikyPad]

Ebay is A++++++++++++++++plusplusplusplusplusplusplusplusp lusdoublegood!!!!!!!!

Or not. Actually, they suck at customer service. What they are good at is doing absolutely nothing, having good uptime, and marketing their "service." Honestly, this article is pretty spot on. It's over five years old, and things haven't changed much.

Goodbye.

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodbye Skype. I had already said goodbye to Intel long before you met them.

no customer wanted

[SebNukem]

Obviously Skype is not looking for new customers nor they want to keep existing customers.

I am not using Intel CPUs therefore I will stop using Skype and stop recommending it to my friends and family. I am not willing to sacrify computing performance for any reason. What a smart move!

Goog luck skype, you'll need it.

Re:In other news...

[masklinn]

Fail, Apple is mainly a hardware maker, and has always been. OSX is part of a package that involves Apple hardware, it perfectly makes sense that Apple software runs only on Apple hardware since that's where the bucks come from (iPod is Apple hardware too, btw).

Had Intel built a VoIP application that could only run on Intel hardware, most people would've called fair game, but that's a cheap shot.

Re:If we are to have antitrust laws, now is the ti

[ChrisA90278]

Antitrust only applies to monopolies. None of the parties involved in this are monopolies. I would avise people to use open stanards telephony. But your avarger PC user is dummer than a rock and you can't exvent get them to stop downloading random e-mail attachments and now we are ging to tell then to be sure and check out what protocols some free phone sevice uses?

Does it even work?

[rs79]

By the time I've added a 3rd or 4th conference caller I can't hear anybody very well. Anybody else notice this?

If it's not just me then this means the AMD ones may work and the Intel ones are unusable.

Golly, now there's a shock.

Real phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype already sucks so much, that I and most people I know of are using regular (fix net) telephone calls. Not really expensive either, and far easier and better quality.

Re:Maybe so...

[symbolic]

But Intel is going to have to try a LOT harder to get me to buy their chips. I think I've only purchased ONE intel-based box, and that was back when the Pentium first hit the market. Ever since, it has been AMD all the way- and there are no plans for any changes.

Intel: feel free to sit on your Skype/10-way-calling and rotate.

Patch?

[Kaioshin]

It's a software "solution", it only checks if the processor is Intel's. Can't that be patched?

Re:Patch?

[fishbowl]

>It's a software "solution", it only checks if the processor is Intel's. Can't that
>be patched?

Of course. Whatever key it uses, is available to anyone with an intel chip. No matter how hard the crypto behind it may be, the key has to be in the wild.

Good thing

[tomstdenis]

I use vonage...

What a bullshit useless deal. What about mac users who are preintel?

I don't see what this benefits anyone. If anything it just makes more people hate Intel for even thinking of a ridiculous business proposal.

I mean what if Ford struck a deal with Shell and made all oil more expensive [or less useful] for competitor vehicles?

At what point do people just say "fuck you" and find alternatives. Vonage is one of them. There are other VoIP programs out there and this deal is likely to make them even more known then they would through the natural selection process of software.

Tom

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No, If you read the review again you will see that the AMD in green color wins more benchmarks than the Intel Yonah. How come all Intel fanboys are liars?

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's you who need to read it again. His comments was that the Core Duo compared to a desktop part was amazing....

protest in skype forum!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=46569

Easy Solution: AMD Sponsors O.S. "Skype"

[FFFish]

Mais non? Throw money into the kitty as an incentive to have the open-source community develop a rival to Skype. I'll bet that for as little as fifty thousand dollars chump change, really AMD could destroy Skype and simultaneously put an end to this proprietary, CPU-locked bullshit.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

So what? As long as you can run every application on competing chips, there is practically no reason to buy an Intel chip. They are trying to change this.

Don't think this will affect linux users...

[stuuf]

I use skype on a linux AMD system. They can't even give us a fscking emoticon menu, so I don't expect them to implement anything really useful like 10-way conferencing, even for Intel. And didn't I hear something a while ago about a webcam-enabled Skype they said they wouldn't be porting to linux?

when i grew up...

[yoink23]

Back when big corporations didn't get away with murder? Oh wait, that has always happened and will always happen.

Doesnt this sound illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it?

Re:Doesnt this sound illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Restraint of Trade to me. Yes, I would think it's illegal, but who knows with the current US administration?

Re:Doesnt this sound illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

As Will Rogers said of the Republican Hoover administration's policy: "I'm turning my head now boys -- grab it while you can!"

Good by Skype and Intel

[chosenken]

I have now uninstalled Skype, and will NEVER go to Intel. I was already boycotting Intel for varius other reasons, but now with Skype in the deal, its just even worse. I don't make any conference calls anyway, so I think I will stick with Google Talk for all my VoiP for now. Good by Skype, wasn't nice knowing ya!

Instant bad karma Intel and Skype.

[Anonymous Coward]

way to manipulate public opinion against you.

here's you, "errr, people are dumb, they are like sheep.. bah bah"

here's the universe, "um, wtf? i h8 skype & intel. give me a reason to use another product and i will gladly do so."

IT'S TRUE!!!

[douglips]

and every single noun that I search for on Google, I can buy on eBay as well.

I didn't believe this, but it's true!

Re:IT'S TRUE!!!

[patio11]

I searched for "beef" the other day, and eBay offered to sell me beef. The thought of buying beef from eBay frankly scares me (only 1 week left on the auction for this hamburger patty! Ooh, sign me up!).

Uh, yeah...

[Eggplant62]

Fuck Skype. Fuck Intel. Neither of these companies needs my business.

Evil

[hobbes75]

They turned evil when they were bought by eBay. Before, I was quite confident their encryption was sound, now after they sold their souls and released skype 2 I have to assume NSA can tap in.

Re:Skype: Tomorrow's Napster. - NOT QUITE

[woolio]

I doubt that MS would even stoop so low. Oh they will.. For this one case, Intel happened to beat them to it.

Way to go, eBay!

[SEE]

You just deliberately undercut trust in Skype in order to make a short-term profit! There's no way that Google and its federation partners like the Gizmo Project will be able to take advantage of this!

how long

[xmodem_and_rommon]

how long till we see hacked versions of skype available on bittorrent that do not enforce these stupid restrictions?

Dropped Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Gooood, That just means Skype has one less shop that supports them.

Customer: For some reason my Skype Software only works with 5 people at a time.
Me: Here is Skypes 1800 number.
Customer: Can't you help me?
Me: Sorry, we don't support Skype, and recommend against using it.
Me: Let me give you a site where you can download "insert 3rd party client here" where you can talk to 50 Skype users at a time.

This vs. Windows-AMD

[St. Arbirix]

They say Intel has been outright pissed with Microsoft for their years of ignoring what their chips could do.

An appropo response, I think.

Intel and Skype are hurting their own reputation

[SwiftWind]

I admit, I may not be speaking for everyone. To my eyes though Intel is hurting itself more than it is AMD. I lost all respect for Intel and have decided to blacklist their products. My friends & Co workers in the IT field all feel the same.

If you want to compete then do it with competitive pricing and high quality products. Don't try to compensate for it by trying to monopolize the market with down right dirty tactics.

I used to respect Intel and its products. Now with this I really am disappointed to see where they are heading.

I also have to say, I lost respect for Skype. They were the rebels out there going against all Telcos and showing them that Land Lines are a thing of the past. Now they are no better than the monopolizing Telcos.

GoogleTalk & AMD - here I come.

Several enemies in the form of other chip makers

[Anonymous Coward]

... who can collaborate and make their own better product.

Skype is crap and the sooner it's revealed the better.

AMD has gifted Intel a whole year to catch up.

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD has pushed back their move to 65nm to Q1 2007, which is a year and a half later than planned. They've only just started the process to even getting the money for the 65nm equipment for their foundary. All they're doing for 2006 is changing to DDR2 which won't bring any performance worth mentioning(and in some cases, worse). All the DDR2 based chips expected to hit the very end of June are just going to be the speeds out now with a DDR2 interface slapped on. The only thing interesting is a feature, virtualization. The only speed improvements are a for a couple of mid range chips in March to speeds that are looong since old hat(2.6 & 2.8GHz). They recently leaked a rumor of a 3GHz Opteron part to look busy. To still be on 90nm. If actually released, it'll be near vapor in quantity and priced high to keep demand down for what they won't be able to deliver. Intel was already close to catching up from their Pentium-M chips and now AMD won't be giving them any opposition. AMD screwed up; it's going to be a train wreck in slow motion as they loose what gains they made and then some.

Re:Final Solution..

[Anonymous Coward]

hahaha

SIP isn't adequate

[Julian Morrison]

Encryption and NAT tunneling are important. Yes, even to ordinary people. Everyone has secrets!

FWD is vapourware

[Rizzer]

I had a look at Free World Dialup. I kept coming up with pages saying "This product will be offered soon!" They have a star system to rate FAQ questions, but you press on "No, this answer was not helpful", and the star rating goes up!

Not much bloody use if it ain't working. Vapourware.

Regarding "Skype" being the "Napster" of tomorrow.

[js92647]

This is generally concerning the "Skype will be like Napster in 5 years time...". I am not sure how many people are aware that the core engine developer of Skype is none other than Priit Kasesalu, the same man behind Kazaa, along with Janus Priis, one of his older friends, who works at Skype as well, and Niklas Zennström, another person behind Kazaa. Therefore, it shouldn't come as a suprise.

Uninstalling Skype in Windows

[Akaihiryuu]

If you uninstall Skype from a Windows machine, it directs you to a survey page that asks you why you are uninstalling and invites you to provide comments. 1 of my machines is Windows, so I filled out the survey and explained that I was uninstalling it because of their policy to only enable certain features on Intel processors. Under Gentoo it's as simple as emerge -C skype, they don't ever even find out about that. Anyone using Windows should immediately uninstall the program and fill out the survey. Maybe if they lose 10,000 customers on the day of the announcement they will think twice about future actions like this.

Alternatives?

[^DA]

So...now that Skype has gone to the evil side, what are the alternatives?

Re:Alternatives?

[sconest]

Maybe OpenWengo ?

Idiots.

[dascandy]

cat executable | sed -e 's/GenuineIntel/AuthenticAMD/g' >newexecutable; ./newexecutable

Do you really think it helps? Ok, it might claim I have an AMD Pentium 4...

Re:In other news...

[Acts of Attrition]

"If you were able to run Mac OS X on a regular personal computer, there would be practically no reason to buy Macintosh computers."

Sounds like Apple shouldn't be in the hardware business then.

Intel==SkyPE==Microsoft==Sony==Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Some more equalities?

What about ebay?

[Karem Lore]

Considering Skype is owned by ebay, what does this tell you about Intel/Ebay? Should we be boycotting ebay (yeah right)?

This tactic is underhanded and one of the reasons why I never recommend Intel processors (apart from their power consumption, heat generation etc. etc. etc.)

I would suggest AMD contact microsoft and attempt to make them limit the number of connections to their server to 5 for Intel chips...See how they like that (not that MS would ever do that considering their allegiance).

Karem

Low Blow

[john666seven]

Guys, it is now only "unfair", it is illegal to make agreements like that. It will be taken to court I'm sure.

EU should buy AMD and use it to crush Intel + USA.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the European Union should buy the entire AMD and invest a few billion euros in the firm and then they would gut Intel in under a decade, just like Airbus slaughtered Boeing. AMD already has a huge fab in Dresden, Germany. It would be a perfect way for Europe to humiliate America.

Simple Solution -- Boycott Skype

[Juiblex]

Why in the hell would a software have different features for similar processors??? Tip: $$$.

Even if an AMD could handle 15 users in a conference call, they are hard limiting it to 5. This is so shameful to Skype. I'm sure this is one of the things Google means with "do no evil".

I'm sure that this will eventually be circumvented with a 'crack', but, after all, why support a company that does this. Switch to other software...


Google Talk does conference call:

http://www.lpahome.com/call.html


TeamSpeak did conference call way before Skype:

http://www.teamspeak.org/


And many other softwares too:

http://www.google.com/Top/Business/Telecommunicati ons/Services/Conferencing/

Re:In other news...

[steeviant]

"If you were able to run Mac OS X on a regular personal computer, there would be practically no reason to buy Macintosh computers."

Sounds like Apple shouldn't be in the hardware business then.

Why, Because you don't like their business philosophy?

Using the same logic, and my telepathetic powers I determine that you aren't a hot chick, therefore you do not deserve to live.

The reason...

[Ice Wewe]

Hey Intel, if you must know, the reason I dumped my P4 3Ghz for an AMD64 3200+ (2Ghz) is because AMD has karma, look it up sometime.

What this tells me ...

[the bluebrain]

... is that Skype is anything but intent on making the best product they can. Quite the opposite in fact: a year after they gain brand recognition (at least in this neck of the woods), they go sell it to the highest bidder.
Let me put it this way: right now, I personally believe that Skype is less focused on making really neat machines (i.e., The Utmost In Goodness) than Sony. /hey, I heard that the only reason Skype is limiting their products on some architectures is because they don't know how those architectures work

Practical Effect

[Tellalian]

With the huge number of VOIP providers, and the many faster cooler-running AMD chips out there, does this really matter? We don't have any technical reason to buy Skype or Intel. Now we have a moral reason not to as well. They've both definitely lost me as a customer.

One reason not to use Intel .. or Skype

[GerardM]

When this is done for "strategic" reasons, than it is clear again why open standards are relevant. It is also once more clear why proprietary standards are in danger, they are because they have to compete..

I am a heavy Skype user and I will move slowly to something else like Google talk if this is what must be.

Thanks,
      GerardM

The licensing part

[archeopterix]

...that said, the number of phone calls allowable should really be licensed on a per-CPU/core basis. If Skype honestly believes that Intel Duo chips with Intel's optimizations are truly twice as efficient as AMD's dual core chips, a license for 10 calls should be available for quad core AMD products. I have never been a fan of licensing by the number of CPUs, specifically disabling features if a host machine has fewer than X processors, but it has been in use for years.

I don't bash per-processor licensing, at least not as being anti-competitive, but I don't want Skype to judge what my processor is fit for. Just f.cking use the best compiler for each architecture and let me decide which processor I want. And if they want to extract more money from the big guys, they should licence per-concurrent-phone-call, as this is what they sell!

Anything other than that is just anti-consumer bullshit, with weak pseudo-techological excuses.

Marketing-by-Harassment is for Monopolies

[rdmiller3]

What if Mobile stations limited you to 5 gallons of gas unless you're driving a Ford?

What if EBay limited your transactions to $100 unless you're paying with MasterCard?

What if Expedia limited your trips to 3 nights unless you rent a car from Hertz?

So Intel made a deal with Skype, to limit your conferences to 5 users unless you're using an Intel processor. I'm wondering what the other side of that deal was. What is Intel giving to Skype?

This sort of harassment can only be effective in monopolized markets. When people have a choice, they will usually choose the options which have fewer restrictions.

Direction of effort

[felis_panthera]

What would happen if intel put as much energy and resources into bringing out the next generation of processor as it did trying to put the screws to AMD (et al)?? This is hot on the heels of the first time I ever saw an intel mac commecial on TV... dire tidings and dark omens indeed...

Easy enough find another VOIP client...

[Mantrid]

Skype obviously needs a whack with a clue stick...they don't own VOIP, there's lots of other options - heck you can just use MSN. A big FU goes out to Skype.

I just put Intel and Skype on notice....

[Rinzai]

I just left messages with both Intel and Skype regarding how, thanks to this deal, I'll no longer be buying, using, or recommending their respective products. (Okay, I wasn't recommending Intel anyway, but they didn't know that.)

Direct feedback works, and few things are more compelling than a looming tide of negative brand image. I suggest everyone else write in and do the same; the sites have clearly-marked contact links.

I'm still not convinced a pure democracy (as opposed to a republic) makes sense politically, but it sure makes sense economically. Let the rat bastards hear you. It'll matter.

This is outregeos

[Anonymous Coward]

This is outrageous. What about mac users? I have a powerpc mac and an amd desktop. amd will always be better than intel because it is cheaper. and arguably faster. intel sucks. intel intel intel. they suck.theres nothing special about intel. the intel motherboards have no special features like 4 IDE ports or 4 sata ports. i have yet to see an intel LGA775 mobo with 4 IDE ports! thats why they suck. i have my Socket 754 K8NS Pro with 4 ide and 4 sata! and i sue skype over this too

Software market != free market

[The Conductor]

The market is free with the exception of copyright law, which is a classic mercantile regulation that enables the pursuit of monopoly rents. The fact that Jefferson tolerated it (grudingly) does not make it a free market principle. That is not to say that it is wise to attempt to mitigate the deleterious effect of one regulation (copyright) with another (anti-trust). Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, and certainly some approaches are better than others. But don't confuse the market for software with a free market.

Well that just adds another company to my list...

[Lodragandraoidh]

Intel and Skype are now at the top of my 'do not buy' list.

Anticompetitive activities should not be rewarded.

Intel Compilers/Libraries and AMD CPUs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel does use the CPUID checking everywhere in its compilers and libraries and is eager to turn off SSE/SSE2/... optimizations whenever seeing non-Intel CPU.
Nothing new here.
http://www.swallowtail.org/naughty-intel.html
http://fahwiki.net/index.php/FAH_%26_QMD_%26_AMD64 _%26_SSE2

Re:If we are to have antitrust laws, now is the ti

[Doctor Faustus]

Why shouldn't they be allowed to tie-in their businesses?
Because it's still anti-competitive behaviour; it's just less effective. Yes, it is legal, though.

Fuck Intel

[16777216]

I got an AMD Athlon64 on order now.
Intel can suck my ass.

Ouch Whats Skype thinking??

[What me a Coward]

This isn't any good at all and can only end badly for both Intel (well intel was going to end badly anyway) and Skype.

    For me i use Vonage unlimited plan as my landline (cut the local phone company off ahh that was a glorious day) over cable $24.99 a month unlimited calls to anywere in the US canada and now recently added porto Rico.

    Skype doing things like this just can't help them and at a time when others are trying harder to become the voip of choice making choices like that can be suicide from a buisness prospective.