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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.
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.
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?
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.
Google Hangouts. At least for video conferencing. For voice any decent SIP client will do.
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.
Good point. MS would never create anything so ... oh wait.
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/289219-api-basics/
"The WINDOWS API is technically referred to as Win32, and is a HORRIBLE MESS ..."
Never mind, move along, nothing to see ...
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.
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?
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.
Excuse me but I see the following there at ekiga.org:
Get your personal Free SIP address at ekiga.net.
What does it basically mean: that there is a central repository of ekiga addresses and contact info. It means that every 3-letter agency that possibly controls the repository can collect metadata about ekiga contacts. For instance, if I request a contact info about Osama bin Laden then there are chances that I am Al-Qaeda member and should be checked.
Moreover. In order for people to be able to call me there should be some repository that always knows my address. And the same repository can be queried to discover my real physical position (and direct a drone there).
Google Hangouts. At least for video conferencing. For voice any decent SIP client will do.
Please, correct me if I'm wrong -- because I would like to be wrong, actually -- but you do need google+ to do google hangout(s) , right? I used to use google talk, but it seemed that google+ became mandatory a few months ago and I wasn't interested.
I am not a crackpot.
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.
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.
Ekiga is a freaking mess compared to Skype. I don't understand why they don't simplify it and make it nice to use. It's one of those Opensource programs who refuse to be better, like Gimp. In the meantime, the only good alternative to Skype I found viable is Google.
You were using Skype strictly for IM?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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?
For instance, if I request a contact info about Osama bin Laden then there are chances that I am Al-Qaeda member and should be checked.
Nah, you're probably just a medium.
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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."
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
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'.
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:"
Yes, you have to sell your soul (and all your personal info) to Google+ in order to use hangouts.
That said, I use whatever my clients and customers use - until recently, that was G+ and Hangouts, but I've switched back to Skype again in the past couple of months, and it's been a real relief.
There is no contest as far as reliability of connections and acceptable video and (more importantly) audio quality. Skype isn't as good as we all wish it was, but it really is light-years ahead of Hangouts, which is so bug-ridden that you can pretty much count on wasting 5 minutes every time you use it tying to get everyone connected before finally giving up in disgust and just accepting that some part of it isn't going to work. (We had one developer who was routinely reduced to writing signs on paper and holding them up to the camera as the most effective way to participate in a Hangouts call...)
Skype isn't perfect, for sure, but at least it's usable...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
You can type text on Google Hangouts conferences... Don't see why you would need to resort to things like that. Plus Skype on Linux sucks. Especially since Microsoft bought Skype.