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Microsoft IM Blocking YouTube Links
A number of readers are sending word that the blogosphere and Twittersphere are alight with reports of Microsoft's new block on messages containing YouTube URLs. Both MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger reportedly implement the block. One blogger sniffed the network to discover that such messages receive a NAK from Microsoft's servers. Microsoft has been blocking messages by keyword, as an anti-phishing measure, for some time, but *.youtube.com would not seem to provoke much worry about phishing. Instead, as B.E.T.A Daily speculates, "This block seems to be related to the recent launch of Messenger TV in 20 countries which allows for sharing video clips from MSN Video on Messenger." Hard to get away with in an arena where you don't enjoy a monopoly.
Well, this is clearly designed to prevent Rickrolls.
In all seriousness, I've been sending YouTube links around (and receiving them) just fine. Dunno where the problem is.
Of course, if bloggers and Twitter users say it, it MUST be true.
I write bullshit
When its a private company ...
Oh but we have to sound sensational to get attention, don't we?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is deeper than Rickrolls, folks. Microsoft has absolutely no reason to block an entire website because of such a phenomenon. However, there's not much of a way of getting around it other than using a URL shortening service or complaining like mad to MSN.
It's reasons such as this that make me prefer AIM/ICQ and Jabber.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
It's Microsoft. "What can we get away with today?" Enough said.
Refusing to carry the links of one of THE most popular web pages on whole internet seems like a poor business decision. If you can't share the links you want then many people are just going to switch.
I mean who doesn't share youtube videos over IM?
Sorry but this just seems ridiculous
It's Microsoft's app, they can do what the fuck they want with it. Use something else.
if you can. in almost EVERY sh@t microsoft pulled in the last 6 months, you have been inventing lots of excuses. what is the reasonable excuse for this ? why shouldnt google censor keywords like microsoft, windows, xp, vista now ?
Read radical news here
Ever heard of AIM, or Yahoo Instant Messenger? (I'm leaving Google's IM service out for now - oops - I just mentioned it). As I understand it, both AOL and Yahoo have more IM users than MS does, so this has NOTHING to do with a monopoly.
A number of readers are sending word that the blogosphere and Twittersphere WTH is a Twttersphere? A new form on the R5 space?
--- "When you gotta do something wrong. You gotta do it right. (Fighter)"
DeviantArt is blocked too, which is really bizzare.
Messenger TV will have vastly superior anti-Rickrolling capabilities. The service that the article describes is a demonstration of the feature that will be in Messenger TV!
That is very easy to test. I tested it yesterday with a friend and also today and in both cases the url send failed.
If I remove the http and www it works, it also works if I change the youtube domain name...
Just tried it. They are indeed blocking Youtube links; You'll get an error immediately if you try to send someone a message including a URL with youtube.com in it.
If the best source of news you can find is a blog with two columns devoted to ads, more ad space in the page that actual content, and that awful attempt at "web 2.0" design, then you probably shouldn't post it to /., or at least not on the front page.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
Mod me down. They literally must have implemented it in the last 15 minutes, because as of right now, they are blocked, but weren't (for me) right before the I posted the first time.
I just tested with a friend, the same youtube URL failed to go through twice (and not a rickroll or anything, just a cat on a treadmill). Went through fine on yahoo chat, though. And she just tried sending one back, getting a message that it couldn't be delivered.
deviantart.com
googlepages.com
mediafire.com
ebuddy.com
xanga.com
Workaround: don't add the "http://" in front of the address.
I don't see any change to the monopoly position or behaviour, do you?
Nope, still the same old MS. And stories like this confirm - as hostile as ever to any whiff of fair competition.
Dear AC -1: your love letters notwithstanding, we're not going to rest till your beloved criminal monopoly is history. :)
you had me at #!
... Use something else.One of the best is pidgin, which runs a wide range of protocols. That's a step in the right direction and helps wean people off of MSN and into better services and more useful technologies.
However, from the article it looks like the problem is at the MS servers. So staying on MSN, even with a better client, is still helping feed money (via ads and such) into more anti-competitive behavior and barriers to interoperability.
What should also be mentions is that MSIE now gives 'security' warning messages when accessing Google's Gmail. No. I neither use nor condone use of MS in any way shape or form, but I do check up on those who claim they feel compelled to do so and use them to check periodically. Now that MS is going after Google, Gmail gets the errors. Now that MS is going after Youtube, it gets MS errors, too.
The courts don't won't can't keep up with all these illegal/unethical anti-competitive tactics. The only effective option is to just stop funding it. And that boils down to not using the products, formats, protocols or services tied to that company.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Thank you MS, for handicapping the only online service you had that i found useful. Now I can switch in peace...
"This block seems to be related to the recent launch of Messenger TV in 20 countries which allows for sharing video clips from MSN Video on messenger."
sigh.
When in doubt, the simplest explanation is correct. In this case, it's "somebody did something stupid" - nothing more. When you have a URL filtering system, somebody's bound to screw up and do something stupid. How would blocking youtube drive traffic to MSN TV?
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
The article didn't claim it was censorship. It made the (purely factual) claim that links to youtube were being blocked by msn messenger. Which they are.
Sounds like you're the sensationalist one out for attention.
Your bosses read:
"In fact, I sometimes get no work done because we spent a few hours checking out youtube clips"
and decided to act.
Now get back to work.
I'm on my laptop which is an XP laptop with Windows Live Messenger version 2008 (Build 8.5.1302.1018) and it won't send Youtube URLs.
There is absolutely no legit reason for them to do this.
The empire is striking back! Everyone, brace yourself!
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
posting a link in the folowing form works: /www.youtube.com/watch?v=V79owj81p0o
NAK is negative acknowledgment, which means that the sender recognized that it received an incorrect packet / missed a packet.
RFC 4828
Read and Comment at my BLOG
!!!
People with email@msn.com addresses never receive YahooGroups.com invites. I get them bounced back to me routinely.
This IM blocking is just another reason to boycott msn.com, hotmail.com & live.com.
[Of course, YahooGroups now adds spaces in URLs I try to send to my groups. I have to TinyURL everything these days.]
I come here for the love
Doesn't MSNM and YIM share a network now? Does Yahoo Instant Messenger block YouTube links as well? If not, why not just ditch MSNM completely and use YIM now that the networks work with one another?
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Oh well, if they want to incur further fines then pulling stunts like this is a perfect way to go about getting them.
One email to Neelie Kroes on its way....
Ms has the habit of getting into troube. This time they performed exceptionally well.
We have a legislation here (italy) that state that tampering with electronic communications with the aim to impede or modify the contents of the messages is a felony. This is because the same legislation for standard mail has been applied to emails, phone conversations and IM.
By my point of view MS is getting sacked really bad in EU. (And they fully deserve it!)
Wow, a URL block fails to catch it if you change the URL's domain name? What happens if you change the TLD? Jesus christ, someone alert... the someone in charge of this madness! It must be stopped!
I tried to send someone a mediafire download link the other day, and it was blocked every time i tried to send it to them. I had to tinyurl it just to get them the link, which is a PITA. This is total nonsense >.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sorry. I meant "Leaving the http:/// in results in an error". Actually:
/watch?v=something: not blocked if you omit the host
www.youtube.com/: blocked
youtube.com/: not blocked
http://www.youtube.com/: blocked
http://youtube.com/: blocked
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." I'm having a hard time believing that stupidity stretches this far. My guess is that the MSN block list is maintained automatically and somebody found a way to feed bad data into the system.
Yes, that's right, youtube links ARE blocked.
This seems like a good time to convince everyone to switch to jabber. Write something nice about why msn is so bad and jabber is so much better and send it to your MSN-only-friends. It's just a matter of reaching the critical mass of switchers.
Well, the link has nothing to do MS, but I sure as hell would like it to be blocked.
This is just another reason that people should be encrypting their chats with something like OTR so that not only can companies not filter anything but they also can't see the content of your IMs.
It's easier to just pretend you are a monopoly than it is to come out with a better product. If MS-TV was a better product than YouTube it might have a chance. Instead MS decided to make its IM services worse by blocking YouTube. That drives more people to use other IM's. This is the kind of corporate thinking that brought us Vista and will ultimately be the doom of MicroSoft unless they change their ways.
Download.php, a phrase which is obviously solely used for malicious purposes, is also still blocked. More on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Messenger#Filtering_controversy Useless fucking company.
No problem posting spewtube links here .. with or without the http / www.
Gotta be some kind of selective filtering involved. Or someone's looking for attention.
PPN
If you can't mod them join them.
I am sending and receiving youtube links perfectly. I am in the UK.
Earlier today some youtube links were being blocked.
Friend in Belgium alerted me to the issue, as trying to send a link across the room to her friend would even fail.
After some investigation...
It looks like it was a temporary error in the server response, so instead of saying yes, it would just deny the link out of default, suspecting an attack or a bot.
The server responses are now working correctly and so are the links.
Back to your tinfoil and OFFICIAL MS IS ALWAYS EVIL CLUB of the insane...
PS - How come when Google/Firefox re-routes or blocks URLs, (in error or for questionable reasonss) it never makes it to the front of SlashDot?
Get over MS, they dumped you or you them, they are your ex girlfriend, you have a new girlfirend(OS), quit stalking her... (Wait, bad analogy in a geek forum.)
Star Wars Episode III screwed you, get over it... (Better analogy?)
I'm one of the seemingly many who submitted this to Slashdot, and it certainly annoys me, however... I was thinking, what if Microsoft are doing this because of Youtube having rather a lot of unauthorised copyrighted content? You can often find whole episodes or even whole seasons of TV shows on Youtube, split up into 10 minute segments in Youtube's fantastic, high resolution better-than-bluray quality, and perhaps Microsoft had some legal paranoia that if they allow links to potentially copyrighted material, they could get in legal trouble... either that or they're in so deep with the media companies that they want to act as "Copyright Cops". In favour of this theory, there's that whole story posted recently about the Zune potentially refusing to play "pirated" content. On the other hand, I've not heard anything about them blocking popular torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, and if they're setting up a competing service I can see them pulling this sort of crap. Whatever the truth turns out to be, this whole thing is very, very weird.
http://xmoogle.org
... they don't block tinyurl.com.
Have gnu, will travel.
What if you use TinyURL.com, is that blocked as well?
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.
I love Microsoft. They give me something new to laugh at almost every day now. I really have /. to thank to keeping me informed on the comical goodness.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
It's back, is there a press release or are they denying this?
Never seen Google or Firefox blocking an URL, but i read Google does something in China. So it is false that it doesn't make to the headlines.
Truth is, i have never seen M$ blocking one either, but it is because i don't use M$ IM.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Who's been a naughty boy then?
Where are you and your friend?
Just testes this in Brazil (sender and receiver) with the url "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Fbk52Mk1w" and it worked. The traditional http://server.com/download.php is still blocked.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Other clients like pidgin should fix this by transforming youtube.com to something else like you0Xf675xctube.com then when another client that supports this workaround receives this special url it changes it back to youtube.com
Quite simple: profit
They've been convicted of monopolistic practices. They keep up at them. They get fined for each time they do, but the fines never address the problem.
I would see one solution: if their online services get caught trying to participate in monopolistic practices, make sure the court orders them to sell the online service to a hostile party. Not just a third party, it has to be someone who has a fiduciary responsability to make microsoft shares worth zero. Tell them right now that's the next penalty for this, and we'll see if they do it again.
I can just imagine msn being owned by a consortium of ibm and aol(ok ok I need a better example...)
Mactrope, willeyhill, inTheLoo, Erris and gnutoo (among others) are sockpuppet accounts of twitter. He uses them to game the moderation system. This whole thread is just twitter replying to himself to see if someone thinks there's an interesting discussion going on and gain karma to get his accounts out of the -1 posting default he's at for trolling.
Microsoft once again proves they are more stupid than AOL... nuf said.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
I'm in Brazil, just tested and it does work now.
what am i doing wrong ? - humour
Once again, Twitter, Slashdot's most maniacal anti-Microsoft troll, beats on the truthout.org dead horse. Of course, Twitter and Marc Ash are cut from the same cloth. They both believe that they are so noble, and their causes so righteous, that they can freely stoop to any depth, and engage in whatever underhanded behaviour they please.
Marc Ash was caught spamming totally unrelated Yahoo! Groups by joining and blasting emails through group addresses.
Twitter threadjacks a story, then shills his comment with three of his army of sockpuppets, including two accounts that are impostors of his critics.
And Slashdot does nothing.
Instead, Rob Malda posts this gem to the front page, claiming that Microsoft "prefers" Flash to Silverlight because Microsoft doesn't have some super-special-secret transmogrifier that could spontaneously transform each and every Flash animation on each and every web site Microsoft owns into Silverlight content, and didn't use it the very minute Silverlight 1.0 was released to the public.
Slashdot has turned reason and common sense and honesty against its own readers.
Delete your bookmarks, people. Redirect slashdot.org to 127.0.0.1 in your hosts file, in case you get the urge to go back. There's no point.
There are plenty of places where advocacy of Free and Open Source software is done without the community being exploited. Slashdot is no longer one of those places. Their hatred of Microsoft has become all-consuming, and they're proud of it. Time to leave them shouting into empty space.
...though I don't think it's a mousedown javascript. Rather, a javascript - or something - sets the browser status bar to the correct site - but when you actually click the link...
For example
1. go to www.google.com
2. search for "slashdot"
3. hover over the very first link
3-1: The status bar reads "http://slashdot.org"
4. right-click on the link
4-1: The status bar changes to reflect the actual URL
5. Copy the link location
6. Paste it somewhere
6-1. The actual URL turns out to be: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org%2F&ei=GARBLE&usg=MOREGARBLE
( 'weird' stuff substituted - who knows wtf that information is )
I'm pretty sure they didn't do this in the past, as I remembered looking at the source of the page and thinking "that is some lean html right there". Now, however.. they must be wasting gigabytes a day thanks to links like that. But I suppose they can afford it, and for them it's a nice metric to see which links got clicked, etc.
First, let me say that most of the people I know in Canada use MSN. It used to be ICQ, people switched and I have no idea why.
Second, getting people to switch from MSN to something else and trying to explain to them how/why Microsoft is "a bad idea" is simply impossible most of the time. They either call you an Apple fanboy or a Linux zealot.
Third, even if they'd want to switch to something else, they can't because their friends also use it. So unless you can convince everyone on everyone's list (basically, the whole internet), you can't make these people switch.
In my defense, I had my HotMail account way before they were bought by Microsoft. And these days this account is only used to talk to my friends on MSN.
Remember when vertical integration and vendor lock-in could be excused by laziness or incompetence rather than maliciousness?
Good times.
Of course, vertical integration always ran the risk of losing the market share you leveraged rather than gaining the market share you tried to win.
It didn't work for me before, but now it does, the block seems to be lifted for some reason and i have checked with a few people on msn and they also confirm that the block has been lifted!
Is it possible they've fixed it already? I just sent a youtube link from one of my accounts to another, and it went through just fine. I was also able to receive a youtube link from my other account. Furthermore, TinyURL seems to work just fine as well, so even if youtube is being blocked it's not as if there aren't work arounds for it. I'm guessing some MS engineer borked their servers accidentally.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
How long do you think a phone company that didn't let you connect to Verizon would last? Especially if that company were number 3 or 4 in the market? Does MS not understand that they are selling a service?
As for whether it's censorship, I don't think that's the point. The point is, it's stupid. It degrades their own product to the point that no one will want to use it. Kind of like Vista....
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
The latest versions of Vista Genuine Service Pack Premium are able to tell that when you type domain name X, you really meant domain name Y.
For example, it knows utube.com means youtube.com (and should be blocked) and it knows that google.com means "live.com" and so on.
Their brilliance brings a tear to me eyes.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I'm pretty sure these over-the-top moves by MS are calculated to fail. No one in her right mind thinks people will actually *stand for youtube being filtered.
The game is: filter it, then when you bring it back you can stump about how willing you are to interoperate and play ball. What was formerly understood as basic Net behavior now seems like a nice gift that MS gave you.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
You can't use words that are copyrighted, product names, or even "Windows", and (oddly enough) "Linux" in an Xbox Live Gamertag or description...
Step 0: M$ blocks youtube
Step 1: Someone creates an add-in that intercepts youtube links,creates tinyurl links and automatically replaces them.
Step 2: M$ blocks tinyurl
Step 3: .....
Step n: M$ blocks all sites they don't own
Step n+1: The 3 remaining people still using M$ messaging clients abandon them
See? Simple
the point is that it's VERY specificly looking for "youtube.com" in the domain. That's a fairly popular site so why would they block it?
I can't wait for the day Google starts abusing it's power and directs all searches of Microsoft.com to Ubuntu.com!!! Microsoft's own search tool is poor at looking up their own support site. IF google really wanted to hurt Microsoft, they'd simply stop indexing their sites!
Microsoft is trying to lessen the stupidity of YouTube comments by blocking the posters of said comments at the source.
Microsoft has nothing to do with this twitter, it's your own toxic brand of "evangelism" that turns people off. There are plenty of people on Slashdot that criticize Microsoft and do it in an intelligent, composed way that is well-received. I mean, even here you continue to do it - can you provide proof that Windows Update deletes Netscape bookmarks? Of course you can't. Why do you make things like these up? How does that help you or free software? Heck, you don't even see the problem, do you?
Maybe one day you'll understand why people like you are so damaging to free software and open source.
-JC (posting anon because the moderation on this thread is punishing anyone who disagrees with you, or points out your team of sockpuppets, as usual)
throw new NoSignatureException();
(and not a rickroll or anything, just a cat on a treadmill).
Won't somebody think of the dumb animals?
While I warmly recommend OTR (and use it myself whenever possible), the right solution is to switch to a peer-to-peer model for IM, where the clients connect to each other directly without going through the server. The server then only serves for locating clients, and for off-line messaging.
This can be done in addition to end-to-end encryption, as done by OTR.
We are getting tired of this twitter....
"We are..."?
Are you always referring to yourself as we?
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I thought this was a ridiculous and trolling post, but then I go back in my RSS and find this...
Gee , it's kind of hard to decide which side to root for on this one.
A pox on bother their houses.
I'm pretty tired of it too, he was just talking about me and him of course! Well - me, him and everyone on slashdot who has been paying attention ;)
which is totally what she said
Order a company to sell their product to another company as punishment, and make sure it's somebody that doesn't like them? I can't see this going very well.
Monopolies aren't inherently bad; abuse of monopolies is. While we're on the extreme solutions front, a more fitting punishment might be to force Microsoft to shut down its MSN video service for a year. Thing is, such punishments don't work if you don't actually solve the original problem, which is that they are unfairly blocking YouTube links.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Hehehe.. should have their own personal twitter parody..! I may call mine twoddle if I ever get the urge.
which is totally what she said
the authorization of a computer's owner, or in excess of the authority granted
to him
(1) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, or a
program or data;
(2) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, or a
program or data, and obtains data or services
(3) Accesses or causes to be accessed a computer or any part thereof, or a
program or data, and damages or destroys the computer or alters, deletes
or removes a computer program or data. Doesn't look like it to me.. for one thing you have to choose to use messenger (I won't say you have to choose to install it because there is an old version of messngers that comes with XP by default). There's probably even something in the Messenger EULA that they can do whatever they want with your messages
which is totally what she said
You could always get them to use one of those multi-protocol clients. Personally I just use MSN. And I did have ICQ for a while before that.. also had a short time of AIM alongside MSN, and quite a while of using Skype too.
which is totally what she said
On a serious side the micro-softies should expect it, after all those years from windows 3, windows 95, windows 98, windows NT etc. where they flooded forums with, windows runs perfect, windows never crashes, you have configured windows wrong, you are an anti-windows zealot, seriously what do they expect but to be taken the piss out of at every opportunity, it is fun, it is humerus, in fact it chair throwing, monkey boy dancing, developers developers developers, hilarious ;).
Is anybody surprised that M$ would block a competitor to try to gain a competitive advantage, here's betting they lose more users who wanted to see the youtube videos than they gain going to their video site, next thing you know you will be forced to install and run 'silverfish' in order to view videos on that site ;D.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
that makes no sense. if they participate in monopolistic practices in an area where they don't have a monopoly, then they get punished real quick by the consumers. It's their online messaging service, they can block what they want. What right do you have to force them to sell anything? If you don't like ms communicator, go use aim, yahoo, jabber, whatever.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Nothing that M$ does to beat down competition should surprise anyone anymore.
They are after all M$. Its what they do.
My point is, the people who chose to use MSN last year had no idea this year they'd engage in monopolistic practices. But at this point, everyone seems to be on msn. I'm looking for a way to punish them THROUGH the network effect of their own network, and affecting their bottom line by doing so. By switching to some other network(that doesn't have 40 million people on it) I contend I'm punishing myself more than Microsoft, which is a far from ideal solution. On the other hand, as long as they have the monopoly, and as long as they don't fear it being taken away, they can just abuse it every chance they get. They'll just get piddly fines. If you don't like "force them to sell", you could substitute "nationalize". Several years ago, they've been found guilty of anticompetitive practices, and while IANAL, I do believe that doesn't just make them a monopoly, but an illegal monopoly. They keep abusing that monopoly, I think it should be taken away. When AT&T's monopoly got broken up, they didn't leave the company and network intact and say "consumers, please use something else". And that was a legal monopoly, as I understand it.
Does anyone else get the urge to choke users of this term? It's somehow even worse than "blogosphere."
Dammit! Strangle!!!
My grandmother used anecdotal evidence all the time, and she lived to be 120 years old.
that you use the google bar and/or have enabled google history? This is not normal behavior.
I do use a multi-protocol client (Adium). However, getting my friends to use a multi-protocol client is usually met with resistance ("it doesn't look exactly like MSN Messenger") or with a question mark ("why would I want to sign up for other things if all my friends are on MSN?").
I do have an idea: try to ditch MSN and tell my friends that if they want to contact me, they'll have to use something that's Jabber/XMPP compatible (with a link to compatible clients).
you have all that that already,
offline messages exists for many years
file transfer have both p2p and via server proxy
webcam and voip, there is no standard in xmpp yet, but its being made and many companies already use then
you may not know, but MANY products use xmpp (aka jabber), they just dont call it by its name, they just brand it...many of the jabber deploys are for internal use only
one of the best examples is the messenger from sapo, a ISP from Portugal
http://messenger.sapo.pt/
then have their own client (but of course, accept others jabber clients) with webcam and voip support, including free voip to land phones and paid for cell phones and international (ie: out of Portugal) phones, SMS support and other (useless) things that people from MS messenger like... the windows client isnt gpl nor open source, but there is some hope that this could change.
the best thing is that they paid psy author to work for then in psy, to add missing features, so that Mac and Linux users could use it as easily as in windows... of course, you can also use the psy in other servers.
both sapo and gmail might define the standard for voip and webcam in xmpp
as for users, AIM is still the king, but MSM gained alot... ICQ almost disappeared, absorver by AIM, and yahoo is slowly following... jabber is increasing, specially with gmail. AOL is testing a xmpp version of AIM (and so ICQ also)
and yahoo can only save it self by doing the samething, migrate to xmpp. there is no douth that xmpp will be the standard for IM, just like SMTP is for email... jabber can talk with MSM, AIM, ICQ, yahoo, and of course, other jabbers, and so is the only universal IM protocol
Higuita
Chuh - maybe they're trying to block this video: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fuS0dEfDjTo :)
Your best bet is Jabber (XMPP). You'll be familiar with it as Google Talk, but it's a standard protocol that's been around a lot longer than Google's service.
Jabber doesn't seek client-to-client connections. This is a nightmare to achieve with "modern" IPv4 networks, which are full of flakey firewalls, NAT setups of varying levels of insanity, etc. What it does do is let you control your own server or use one you trust.
There actually is a
direct client to client facility for Jabber, but I don't know how widely the extension is implemented.
Jabber/XMPP also supports encryption - both at the transport level using SSL (for if you trust the server but not the network) and at the message level using various public key schemes.
That's one way of finding out who your friends really are ;) I've downloaded extra clients just for one friend in the past, but it didn't last that long because I could already speak to them in a MUD.
which is totally what she said
The Openfire server seemed quite nice, and Spark supported many platforms aswell, but I have no idea if the gateways support what I want. Are those common among the clients so the feature sets are the same or does each server implement their own so some can support more functionalites?
Sorry for my spam of replies to your post, but I guess this can help more people out.
:), if file transfers worked aswell it would be close enough for me :)
;)
Seems like Openfire did indeed had support for avatars thru transports aswell!
"1.2.0 -- October 31, 2007
Improvements
[GATE-10] - Buddy icons are now retrieved from AIM/ICQ, XMPP/GTalk, and MSN"
Seems like file transfers aren't there, but atleast the server doesn't crash:
http://www.igniterealtime.org/issues/browse/GATE-310
And there are support for offline messages (I don't understand if there was for MSN aswell but maybe:)
"1.1.1 -- August 19, 2007
[GATE-196] - ICQ offline messages now working properly"
So atleast they do something
Cool with server in Java aswell, thought most people here don't like Java but I don't like them
Maybe, the fact that you don't get your URLs blocked whereas some people do, is linked to the fact that Adium supports Off-The-Record encryption out of the box, and thus microsoft can't use filtering on something that's end-to-end encrypted ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They speak about freedom of speech, but see what is happening: everyone is against letting a competitor to be present on their market. It is even more interesting as Microsoft was going to absorb Yahoo, but the latter struggled against it. I hate competition that strips users off the right to use anything in their posts or entries. Microsoft does not let us use Yahoo links now, what it might come up with next?
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