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A First Look At Gaim 2.0
surgicaltubing writes to spotlight the progress towards vesion 2.0 for Gaim, the open source, multi-protocol IM client. "The Gaim 2.0 release is nearing its home stretch. The Gaim team released beta 4 last week, with a number of new features and UI improvements." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
1. I can't wait to try it out a year after it's release when it hits portage (stable)
2. Maybe by then I'll have someone to talk to and actually get to use it...
Mr. Universe: "They can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal."
The article claims that Gaim 2.0 doesn't have Google Talk support . . . however, in this case TFA is quite wrong.
Google Talk is done on the Jabber protocol.
To set up Google Talk, set up a Jabber account, your S/N is your gmail username, and the server is talk.google.com. I have it set up right now myself, and it works fine.
The gaim people could, of course, make it easier to set up GT, but the support is in fact there.
Nope, they definitely didn't have a news article about this problem on the GAIM site.
Oh wait, yes they did.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I see you're making jokes already; do you think this is some kind of GAIM?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I have just tested the new gaim (2.0 beta4) and there is one annoying thing they have yet to fix: If you send messages using MSN fast they will get refused at the server level by micro$oft. MSN messenger stores your messages and only sends like one per second I seem to recall. Gaim does not have this feature, thus if you are a fast writer or write small messages and send them quickly after one another they will NOT go through.
This bug has been present for ages. I had hoped this would be fixed in 2.0beta4, but no. I hope this is fixed in the final version! Other than that gaim 2.0 seems very cool!
-pug
Are passwords encrypted in the later versions of the beta?
No they're not, and no they're not likely to be.
The GAIM team explain the reasons behind this on the website and they seem like good reasons to me.
"Whenever a programmer thinks, 'Hey, skins, what a cool idea', their computer speakers should create some sort of cock-shaped soundwave and plunge it repeatedly through their skull." ~ JWZ
> Surely it's not too much of a hassle to encrypt the passwords? Are passwords encrypted in the later versions of the beta?
Encrypting passwords would be (almost) pointless. In order to use them, Gaim would have to decrypt them first. Which means either:
1) You would have to give Gaim the decryption key in order to login - which defeats the point of storing passwords in the first place, or
2) Gaim would use its own key - in which case, anyone else could use that key to decrypt your passwords.
The only solution would be to use some kind of a wallet (like KDE's) - but it's still a hassle.
That said, it would be nice to encode the passwords in some way - in hex, whatever. Just imagine that you use some word in your password, and then search for that word in Google Desktop / Beagle / whatever...
I used to use GAIM, but now I greetly prefer meebo ( http://www.meebo.com/ ), an IM embedded in your browser (with AJAX).
But no files transfer, nor video or audio! But freakly useful!
Do you know how many wierdo gay programmers would be into that? Totally beats cyber! Better yet, you know how many 12 year old girls would miss-use that on their MySpace page in ways that were truly horrifying? Like, oh my god, skins! And then the sonic dildo pops out..... I'm totally with you here. Great idea. Sonic Skull-fucking. The next non- open source OS I pay for had better have that feature or I'm not paying for it.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
From TFA:
"File transfer seems to be improved in this version as well. I've tried file transfer before with Gaim, between Gaim and other folks on the AIM network, and it never has seemed to work. This time around, the file transfer seems to work fine. I logged two accounts into AIM at the same time and sent a few files back and forth, and then tried it with a user on the AIM network using the Windows AIM client. The files went through just fine each time."
So yes, I guess. This is also the feature I'm most looking forward to. I'm not going to hope for folder transfers, because as I understand, that's part of aim's more proprietary featureset.
Oh... I once wrote a plugin (for 1.5) that would allow you to send people files from the commandline. I found it handy to send a list of files, like *.mp3 or `grep -i -l "that thing we talked about" *`
If anyone is interested in this, maybe I'll work on this for the 2.0 release.
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Incite and flee.