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Microsoft To Can Skype API; Third-Party Products Will Not Work
Mark Gibbs writes "If you've recently fired up Skype you may have noticed a dialog box with a warning appear briefly (at least on OS X) then vanish. If you're fast enough to catch it you'll find that it's warning you that some application you're using that works with Skype will stop working in December, 2013. This applies to all sorts of software supporting headsets, cameras, ... you name it."
Cue sad trombone sound for people who are outraged that MS would take Skype and change it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Who still uses Skype? There are better alternatives now, and a lot more open, too.
Seems Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot... again. They're really good at this. Ya think they have special guns specifically designed to shoot downwards into feet? Weighted so that you can comfortably hold them as you fire? With special scopes to ensure you fire accurately and ammo custom-tailored for maximum damage to a foot-shapred target at close range?
I wouldn't be surprised. :)
Microsoft started excelling at this lately. The amount of popcorn needed will actually bring about a new boost in agriculture.
Let's tighten our grip of this dying ship.
I recently got a new Lenovo Android tablet with Jellybean. I installed Skype from Google Play. Google said it was compatable. When I run it I don't have an option to video chat, even though the tablet does have a working front facing camera. At some points I see a camera icon that is marked as disabled, but it can't be enabled. I can try to do a test audio call to the Skype test number, the app shows that I'm connected and a timer starts counting, but I get back no audio. There is no way to know if my audio is getting to them.
So Skype on my Android tablet works pretty well, as long as you don't care about video or audio.
And Yes, other similar applications work just fine.
I'm inclined to think that my tablet is just fine, but Microsoft doesn't like competing in the tablet arena that they came late to.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There's a reason why Skype caught on in the first place, and Microsoft has just pissed it away. I look forward to using whatever competitors emerge with secure, encrypted VOIP products.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Skype is dead. Start looking for alternatives.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What will we do ? Its not like a few developers can get together and create a voice-over-IP service themselves. Oh ... wait a minute.
Please. Microsoft, just kill yourself already, stop ruining everything you touch.
Even Bill Gates left you, you are terrible.
Won't someone kill this now-sentient company out for blood?
Not that I care, fuck skype, worst program I have used in, well, ever actually.
I have never had a program BLUESCREEN as much as it has. Not even crash, straight up bluescreen.
Outside of skype, I can COUNT every single BSOD I have had on 2 hands. From the mid 90s. And 4 of those were me finding a Flash / Firefox transparency bug where I set FF window transparent with Flash in a tab and it crashed. Sent details to both of them, it was fixed within a few months, done, sorted, it wasn't even high priority either, something so niche and trivial for someone to set an entire window transparent.
Skype Devs? "oh what's that, the frame isn't loaded? LOL DRAW ANYWAY LET SOMEONE ELSE DEAL WITH IT, ERROR WHO IS THAT GUY, TELL HIM HE IS FIRED."
You can even SEE it failing to draw the video section of chats as well. The rest of the interface is fine, but the video section they forced on everyone from Skype5 onwards just occasionally, at random in some new call instance, just decides NOPE and doesn't load, then within like 1.5-3 seconds, BSOD.
Hey, Skype Devs, it is called Try Catch, USE IT.
In fact, it still shouldn't even really crash at all, these days you need to deliberately write shitty code in order to crash an OS, like, really seriously bad code. They are thaaaaat bad.
Nothing of value lost, etc.
And to think I was hoping Skype devs would have fixed this error, this whole skype thing sounds kinda neat, they sound smart and dece... oh boy was I wrong.
This was announced back in July, I think.
Okay. So I get they are cutting support to many webcams and headsets on the desktop and competing platforms like OS X as stated in the article and from Android based on the comments posted here.
Crazy theory here. Could they be trying to focus Skype for use with their Windows Phone to try to give people a compelling reason to switch over to their mobile OS?
Thoughts?
I've tried things like ekiga and jitsi, both are confusing to use, compared to skype.
Hopefully tox will be great.
Probably won't buy anything on there again.
Only Microsoft could spend millions buying a company and the after monetising the product they drive away all the customers buy making it completely incompatible.
Then they wonder why it doesn't make any money.
Well done Microsoft, those own goals will surely win the game.
You'll just need to buy and Xbox One to use the new version.
Whelp I guess this is the beginning of the end for Skype, time to find alternatives.
I know it's fashionable to knock Stallman here on Slashdot (including personal attacks about how he dresses), but he has been consistently right over a long period of time about the pitfalls of closed source.
In this case MS is clearly locking out 3rd party apps, and no one really knows why.
It's not just MS. Google does the same thing. Someone pointed out that the typically lifetime of most free Google apps is 4 years. Even when there the apps are not discontinued, the terms of service are often changed. Look at original Gmail vs. Gmail+. Many people, including myself, would not have become dependent on Gmail if they had known what would happen to it.
So when Stallman is being critical, pay attention. He's likely to be right.
Why is Snark Required?
The Skype API was a horrible mess, I bet at Microsoft they did not want to touch it, just let it die.
Really, I am GLAD that Microsoft makes problems for a Skype community. Reason is that Skype is as compromised as any other existing VoIP protocol now, and in post-Snowden era it became crystal clear.
I don't worry about crypto phone per se. With modern crypto protocols creation of a VoIP utility that encrypts the conversation is trivial. Problem is a collection of metadata by 3-letter agencies about the calls which leads to discovery of your contacts and torturing your secrets out of them. You name it "rubberhose cryptoanalysis", we Russians prefer the term "thermorectal cryptoanalysis" meaning a hot soldering iron in subject's anus.
I don't know any such program. There are TOR and I2P messengers but no such VoIP programs. maybe YOU know something about them?
If such a program emerges AND Skype is being undermined by Microsoft itself the transition to the new program will be fast enough.
This would be a good time to begin your boycott of it than.
Since skype started off as a way to communicate securely with loved ones until Microsoft got their hands on it. Upgraded it a version got rid of the p2p
servers; centralized it and backdoored the encryption.
After MSN was killed by Microsoft, my friends and I switched to skype for a few months, until 2 months ago when we discovered Trillian. It's is everything msn was for instant messaging and more, Skype cannot even compare. Can't believe we using that awful IM software that is skype, with it's IP vulnerability and all when there was much better alternatives out there.
Perhaps Apple will grow some wisdom and open up FaceTime in response as they promised to years ago.
I'm not sure if this is score nothing, score funny, or score insightful. Apple to save the day?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
First google shuts down talk by killing the desktop client and closing the protocol.
Now MS kills skype.
What's next?
It seems like this might be the best time to start promoting use of Ekiga to friends that are still back on Skype. I keep seeing less advantages to Skype over the alternatives with each update. What Microsoft considers enhancements seems to be far from what the rest of the community would consider to be providing value. Overtime, I expected Skype to be known as the client needed to interact with Xbox One users. Other than that, it really isn't that great of a communication client.
Embrace Skype.
Extend Skype encryption such that they can MITM it for the Feds and such that 3rd party API breaks.
If you have not already done so, stop using that product now, the final chapter is:
Extinguish Skype.
Now that Microsoft has a whole 4.1 percent of the mobile market and Android 81+ percent they are again
shooting themselves in the foot, thinking that this will turn the tide in the mobile market for them.
If I had the resources, I'd immediately launch a competitive, cross-platform VOIP/video service that plays nice and clean up by poaching Skype customers. It would take a massive, worldwide marketing campaign and lotsa servers and bandwidth, but the market is hungry for a competitor and this is a great catalyst for one.
Transfer calls. Useless for business now.
Old people ask for iPhones too. And Apple isn't going in the right direction market share wise either.
According to the post on
https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12365/what-will-happen-to-my-skype-certified-headset-after-the-desktop-api-has-been-discontinued
Basic functionality for headsets will still work. But certain 'bonus' buttons on the headset will not.
http://www.brosix.com/
I tried Jitsi on windows, wasn't pretty and crashed a ton at first, forget exactly why but it was like 6 months ago. One of the signup websites was down, I think it was for SIP. I'm using it for consolidating several google accounts, a yahoo, but no video/audio chat. For consolidated chat I might as well go back to Pidgin. And 99% of the time everyone just texts me via SMS (google voice) or Skype on Win7 desktop and phone. I've got only a very few people who use google chat or yahoo chat and thus Jitsi.
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Every day millions of open source users violate patents, many of them legitimate patents. They don't get sued. That's been true for many years. Theoretically they COULD be sued, but it just doesn't happen.
Every few years, one suit will be filed against an open source company like Acacia and Novell sued Red Hat a few years ago. Red Hat won handily. If you researched enough, you might be able to find a dozen patent suits involving open source software. While you were digging up those few cases, another million people would be ignoring Microsoft's patents.
As previous posters have mentioned, if you open a web browser page to your Gmail account, there is a telephone option. If you have a suitable headset and microphone you can type in a landline phone number. In the USA, calls are free to USA locations.
I use the Gmail phone for every possible call I can make from my desk because local toll and long distance calls are charged on a per-minute basis. The deep advantage of all the internet communication methods is the connection is per packet, not per minute.
I played with the Asterisk scriptable phone and communications engine (also known as a PBX or private branch exchange). I was looking for a fast local and free communications solution for facilitating just-in-time ride sharing. There are little fragments of the solution scattered around.
At the risk of being a little impolite: Except for amateur radio (which is very circumscribed in its usage), the American communications game consists of continually figuring out more and more mutually incompatible and progressively more expensive ways of selling tiny dribbles of two way communication bandwidth for progressively higher and higher prices.
It seems to me that a series of communication solutions could exist. The key is to change the terms of sale of cell phone bandwidth. Present policy, I guess, sells a radio band x geographic area x population to the highest bidder. What the people would benefit from is selling the reciprocal of that relationship: The federal price would go down as the total bytes transmitted increases. The user charge would be an asymptote like function that as usage increases the price approaches the basic cost: (cost is like: price of transmitter electricity + amortized cost of transmitter + monthly fiber optic access + profit) divided by count of users. Dollar sums point to a cell site: $20,000 per month, 5,000 users; $5 per month each.
At present, jaw dropping sums of money have to be bid by huge organizations of national scope to get a communication franchise. With this fixed annual cost, franchise winners have to charge for every byte transmitted. The franchise winners have to charge a spectrum of prices that avoids the perception they are charging "all the market will bear". Remember all that linear programming you studied in college? The bandwidth is chopped into a blather of services that obscure the basic price per byte. How much does Tracfone pay for a three minute call thorugh an ATandT cell tower? That manufacturing cost recovery reality in turn means no anonymous users and no free data transit. Unlike the land line phone, incoming calls are not free in the cellphone business.
Nobody Will Care
buying (third party) hardware or other accessories/software specifically for use with (or perhaps even _only_ works with) a closed, proprietary system is not without some risk that said service or its "compatible hardware" compatibility would change.
considering the not one, but two ownership changes in skype, and also who the current owner is..... be thankful you got as much use out of your skype hardware or other goodies. you may not have expected things to change when ebay bought skype (and why would you, they had no fucking clue what to do with it).. when microsoft got their grubby paws on it YOU KNEW THINGS WOULD CHANGE.. JUST A QUESTION OF 'WHEN?'.. well, "when?" is in two months. enjoy.
Because apparently, 'instant' isn't quite fast enough.
Developers have already gotten on top of this. There are about a half dozen excellent cross-platform SIP applications out there. Jitsi, IMHO, blows away Skype. There is also Blink, despite the name it's good, too. These are the top two and are cross-platform. Use either to connect to either, they both work well.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Anyone?
I can't believe that most browsers now support it in all major OSs and mobile devices, but nobody is using it.
WTF?
Was Skype just too effective a communication tool that the NSA asked M$ to buy it? Was it still too effective using 3rd party products as well so that M$ killed the API?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
WebRTC breaks the network effect, just give people a URL they can call you on without installing anything new.
Obviously IE are holding out, but more people have modern browsers then Skype.
its seems like microsoft is turning into apple
I think we should all be thankful to Microsoft for taking this crucial step to help promote uptake of WebRTC implementations to replace Skype.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
The meta tag keywords on that page: funny, humor, wah, whomp, waah, waaah, waaaah, sound, office, cubicle, break, joke, bad joke, toy, usb, sound effect, fail, failure, disappointment, lame, you suck, suckage, yahhh trick, sad, trombone.
Where's that "Microsoft" meta tag ?
Skype will now be 'rebranded' and borg-similated as 'BingSkyDriveOpenCloudOfficeShareBlog365RealCommunication for Windows 8.1'
And it will die gasping for air like nearly everything else Microsoft tries to 'innovate'.
MS and other crappy infected companies are in cahoots with the military industrial complex to return our societies to the dark ages as they want us to be more easily tapped and they believe ordinary plebs like us are a waste of bandwidth heavy video chat.
They dumb down each successive version of Windows as much as possible. The push for the metro interface is a good example of this. They want people to not have a lobby any more when they enter a building (desktop) and be herded directly to their minion/pleb quarters.
It's a company that has only now got a de-value-added to your life, and needs to dies. Luckily everyone is realising this and it is indeed dieing. The mobile market is huge and MS languishes behind at about 4% of the global mobile market. I predict demise for any additional mobile companies (like Nokia) that turn to the MS side. There's no hope for that company now. The oaf Ballmer was exactly the kind of minion the masters needed to complete their destruction of MS.
Since Skype will stop working with *_the webcam that is integral to my netbook_*, I have to think that they're trying to limit Skype usage to devices that have full GPS built-in, such that the spooks might locate us more precisely. It's particularly troublesome because I bought the netbook FOR NO OTHER REASON than to do video Skype! Bozos. A pox upon all their houses. And yet... it was not even for this reason that I bought a Mac Mini on Halloween. I got that because my 1GB netbook, which can only be expanded to 2GB, runs Win7 Starter, which will refuse to see more than 1GB unless I give Bill another $90 (or more). Bill's seen me coming too many times. Hello, Mac Mini!
Astro
...and other whatnow?
Headsets and cameras. Software since nineteen-ninety-why does Timothy still have a job?
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"