Indeed, I am. That was the topic of discussion. SIP is certainly useful for a number of other things, and is actually an official RFC. However, SIP for IM is simply not a reality. SIMPLE is not RFC-ready. XMPP is, and on top of that it has working implementations and users.
Sure you could wrap voice packets in XML... but why would you want to?
You wouldn't want to. This kind of information would clearly be sent out-of-band over a separate channel than the one used for IM. The same would apply to SIMPLE. It wouldn't surprise me if Jabber clients of the future were to use SIP for voice calls.
Well, XMPP is orders of magnitude more popular, or at least more visible, among small businesses and end-users. There are clients for every platform you can name, and quite a few server software offerings. Many of these projects are open source. Search around on the web and you'll find a great number of fun Jabber-related projects, such as the Jabber World Map, or the multitude of mailing lists and user communities dedicated to Jabber. Even Trillian and Gaim support XMPP/Jabber. There are thousands of Jabber servers running today. Who the heck uses a SIP/SIMPLE client for IM?
Recently the Jabber Software Foundation announced that the Jabber userbase has surpassed that of ICQ. While ICQ is now the least popular of "the big 4" proprietary IM networks, this is still a significant achievement towards open & standard IM. SIMPLE isn't even on the map.
It should also be known that IBM and Apple are fence-sitters, as they both back XMPP also (IBM is a JSF sponsor, and Apple uses a form of XMPP in iChat).
Bluetooth keyboards and mice are new, give it some time and we will have more designs to choose from, I'm sure.
For a good and inexpensive bluetooth phone, get a Nokia 6310i. B&W display, long battery life, no frills, but has the stuff you actually want, like bluetooth and GPRS.
Bluetooth device pairing is necessary for security. There are some functions that don't require pairing for convenience sake, such as sending business cards, and there was an earlier/. story about how this can be abused. I can imagine it would be much worse if pranksters could use your phone for dialing out!
I do agree that most bluetooth devices are much too expensive. I think this is mostly an issue with sales and not the cost of making the chips. Remember when USB was a premium?
I think Bluetooth's saving factor will be Apple. Recently they have started embedding the support into their computers, and even created a wireless mouse. I've seen their software interface, and it is very easy to use. Don't you love it how Apple always steps in and says, "Dammit people, you do it like this!" and it becomes a huge success?:)
And you don't necessarily need to recompress to a lossy format. For instance, AAC -> WAV -> Ogg FLAC would retain as much quality as you purchased. The Apple DRM is essentially non-existent.
It appears the only real problem with the service is that you can't buy a higher-quality song that would be better for ripping to your own lossy format (or that Apple doesn't simply supply Vorbis/MP3 in the first place). But this is a problem of quality, not DRM.
Try reading the submission or the article next time. There is more here than just a protocol upgrade. Microsoft is setting up licensing arrangements for third-parties that wish to continue accessing the network. This is a huge issue if you don't use the official MSN client.
They used some code, and now they have to abide by the licensing rules of that code. This is no different than if it were some proprietary code like Windows. I don't understand this "GPL-creep" bullshit, as if these companies are using GPL code by accident. There is no way such code can wind up in your program unintentionally. Anytime you pull code from the internet, check the license. If there is no license mentioned, don't use it! Only use code if it says you can, not because it doesn't say you can't.
Forbes may be making the FSF look like the bad guys here, but really, what are the alternatives? If this were Windows or some proprietary software, you'd have the BSA breathing down their neck.
Interestingly enough, both X and Windows have almost identical mechanisms for sending data other than text
This is true. Qt, for instance, is just as capable on X11 as it is on Windows. You can do drag-and-drop, clipboard, and selection (described nicely by you as the original drag-and-drop:) ), of pretty much any data. I don't know what hoops Qt has to jump through to get this to work consistently between platforms, unless they really do operate nearly the same. I have code that allows me to copy/paste and drag images between apps, and it works on both X11 and Windows. The fact that the clipboard generally sucks in X is not because we don't have the tools, but because most developers haven't considered using them properly.
Haha, actually I'm very much a coder. I'm pretty sure the clipboard idea did cross my mind at the time, but the setup didn't easily allow for it. The server was Linux, and I was logged into it using putty in Windows. So there wasn't an easy way for the server to access my local clipboard (had there been some X11 involved, this may have been possible). The other idea would have been to simply copy the remote jabberd database file to the local machine and do the entire processing there, but I don't think I had a compiler on the Windows system.
This begs the question of what you were doing snooping around other people's old data? Ethics is not a dirty word, you know. It's up to people like us who know more about computers to protect the privacy of the less well informed.
I agree. Most folks really have no idea about computer security, but this does not mean we should take advantage of them (I don't think the parent was implying this though). Personally, I don't snoop around in anyone's files / homedirs, or sniff any traffic, even though as an admin I am perfectly capable of doing so. Heck, when someone is entering a password in my presence, I turn my head. It's just polite.
At the risk of going overboard here, I'd like to share a little story. I was running a Jabber server some time ago, and jabberd 1.4.x normally saves passwords in plaintext. For some reason I needed to log in as a particular user (I can't remember if it was for a test or what), but I refused to learn the person's password. To solve this, I wrote a program to extract the password from the jabberd database, and hide it in some grid of 30x30 random chars or so (kinda like those wordsearch puzzles). The password was in a horizontal direction starting at some random coordinate, and the program would tell me the coordinate as well as length of the password. Then I pasted this chunk into a text editor, and blindly pressed the Down and Right arrow keys a number of times to match the coordinates, held Shift and pressed the Right arrow key 'length' times, and hit Ctrl-C. I then closed the text editor and pasted the text into the application that I needed it for (which obscured the text as asterisks in the input field). Phew!
And, of course, the keyfob could take a fingerprint input on the device itself as a form of passphrase. Combine this with the ability to exchange keys by touching two keyfobs together somehow, this could make PGP quite usable for the masses.
I have a keyfob, you have a keyfob. We exchange keys one day (via some physical interaction), then I go home, plug the keyfob into my computer, and send you some information securely. Then I unplug the keyfob. This is so easy to understand that even my mother could use it.
I think the best part is the ability to have the keyfob on a real keychain. This takes the "key" metaphor all the way home, and it will be easy for people to understand that they must protect their PGP key just like they protect their house key. It is no different.
So it seems PGP's adoption hurdle is that it lacks a good keyfob.:) Somebody, please make this device. Or give me some capital and I'll start a business to make it, seriously...
If I recall, however, I didn't really get along with the transport system. I'd much rather not have to rely on a remote computer for communicating through other mediums.
Well, this really has nothing to do with using Jabber for Jabber. Would you fault HTTP because it cannot send your email?;-) If we are to band together and create a super-ultra-end-all-IM-system, then you can bet the spec won't contain the words AIM, ICQ, MSN, or Yahoo. I think the IETF standards body would convulse at the thought.:)
Decentralized message transfer. I don't want my message going in whole form off across the network, to run into any old stumbling block like a central server or network outage.
Jabber is as decentralized as email, which is about as decentralized as you can get without running into peer-to-peer problems. Users are referenced in "user@host.com" format, typical of every other internet protocol. If you really wanted peer-to-peer email, you could set up a domain pointing to your personal computer and run mail server software there. Jabber is the same way. In practical use, of course, you would connect out to a dedicated server.
I want it to be encrypted
You can do this today. The standard Jabber specification includes SSL to secure the client session to the server, and OpenPGP to secure messages sent end-to-end. The Psi client can do this on all supported platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac), and there are other capable clients too, such as JAJC, Gabber, Tkabber, and possibly more. Of course, PGP is probably too complex for your non-techie friends, but there isn't really a good solution otherwise. Even AIM, which grandma is supposed to be able to use, relies on x509 certificates for security.
Even so, there has been talk lately about coming up with a way for Jabber clients to do on-the-fly security, like Trillian's SecureIM, and just as vulnerable. See JEP-102. Still, it is probably better than nothing at all.
Easily integrated other types of data through use of a paralell decentralized stream
Fortunately, you can send pretty much anything over Jabber, and the structured XML system keeps things from ever conflicting. So while the things you mention are not yet standard in Jabber, they easily could be. Basically you'd just have the clients exchange some data over Jabber to decide something out-of-band. I suggest you head over to jabber.org and look up some of the enhancement proposals (or "JEPs").
The "free for linux not for w32" is of course a valid point
I don't even think this is a valid point. What if there wasn't a Qt/Win32 port at all? I don't see how the existence of a win32 port makes the X11 version any less free. And it's not like Windows portability makes or breaks a toolkit. Portability wasn't even the focus of his article.
You know, there was a time when gtk didn't have a win32 port. So some good folks ported the x11 version. In fact, some folks are doing that now for Qt! Isn't freedom wonderful? Qt/X11 is GPL. Just because Trolltech has an uber-cool win32 port of their own doesn't change anything about the freedom of Qt.
Maybe with a financial donation? Perhaps the GNUcash people could set up a pledge system where a bunch of folks can promise to pay some money and then when a certain number of pledges are made, everyone donates their part. The "keep GNUCash alive" fund or something.
And before anyone says that paying for open source software is backwards, remember that you're paying for software freedom. That is, you could spend $100 on a commercial accounting program for one copy, or you could spend $100 on GNUCash and have unlimited copies, plus way better support (you get to talk to the developers themselves, they actually listen to your feature requests, etc). Which would you rather have?
Most folks can't hack code. And even if they can, most projects have enough coders (remember what they say about too many cooks). However, the remaining 99.99% of the population can easily help by simply donating money. Not code. It's ok that you can't code. In fact, they'd rather you didn't. OSS projects need m-o-n-e-y.
Question I can't get out of my head is this. All of this equipment already ships with an OS that works and that was custom designed for that piece of hardware...so why rebuild it with linux?
Well, it depends on the PDA. OPIE is largely Qtopia, which the Sharp Zaurus already uses. As far as I know, you can even upgrade your Zaurus to use OPIE and not lose compatibility with existing Sharp apps. Of course, only a niche would desire to do this. I'm a Linux guy, but I'm happy with what Sharp provides. I don't feel the need to go dicking around further, and I'm a programmer!
What I'd really like to know, and this is more in line with what your question was really about, is why people go through all the trouble of hacking their iPAQ or other non-Linux device to run Linux/OPIE/foobar, when they could just get a Zaurus that already has Linux on it. C'mon guys, support Sharp for their efforts..
But anyway, I think the answer is something like, "because you can." As long as you can, people will do.
You should be donating money to all open source projects.
If everyone gave a dollar to each project they find useful, then we wouldn't have to wait so long for these projects to finish. If every user of my project gave me a dollar, I could quit my day job, work on it full time, and be done in a matter of months. Instead, it will be years before it is completed. It's pathetic, really.
A dollar a project is not much money from each of us. I could probably name 50 relevant projects that I benefit from. That's $50 out of my pocket. Think about it. Certainly it is a better investment than commercial software. Look at the differences:
1) Get 50 completed fully free programs. You can make unlimited copies, and you have full source code access if you ever care about that.
2) Buy one commercial product. Only 1 copy allowed. No source.
The sad fact is that most of us will spend our money on the commercial product instead of investing in open source. Oh well, unlimited copies of incomplete and broken free programs is good enough, eh?
To say that the Zaurus is a Linux platform, is like saying that the Macintosh is a BSD platform. In both cases, it is technically correct, yet wrong in practise. In both cases, your software requires an additional front-end (Qtopia or OS/X) in order to run. In both cases, you are locked in to one company's platform, because your software will not run on other versions of Linux or BSD.
What exactly is a "Linux platform" then? Linux by itself is just a kernel, RMS will tell you this all the time. Do you prefer the GNU "platform"? Or maybe KDE? These are all different platforms atop Linux. How is Qtopia "less" of a platform? It certainly can't be licensing, as GNU, KDE, and Qtopia are all Free Software. Maybe it is about popularity? True, Qtopia is a newcomer to the scene, but maybe this is a sign of good things to come.
Re:I had a feeliing it would get posted to slashdo
on
Linux Router Project Dead
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Everyone's slamming you right now for some reason, so I figured I'd throw in my opinion, which is that I'm sympathetic.
It is true, the reason to start a "free collaborative work" or whatever you want to call it, is for fun. However, as time goes, it is easy for the project to become more important. By that I mean you have a lot of users and developers, and it seems to take more and more of your free time. You then conclude that the project is an important part of computing, and must be completed. That is, it has moved beyond the hobby phase. Folks are using your project in real businesses, users are using it for real uses. It would be a sad state of the human race if such a useful project were not to finish, and so before the green alien in the flying saucer has a chance to laugh at humanity, you fart in his general direction and press on. Your project is now more important than your real job. You contribute a valuable effort to society, and you're broke off your ass. WTF?
Folks will tell you that this is because you made a stupid decision of participating in a "free collaborative work". I don't think this is true. It's wonderful to begin a project to scratch an itch, and in the beginning you weren't hurting for cash, so it's all good. Fine, they will then tell you that you made a stupid decision to continue the project, to waste all of your time on something when not enough is coming back to you in order to sustain it. Well, now you have given up on the project, so you will satisfy these critics. You are finally 'sane', now get a real job, right?
Wrong. At least I'd like to think so. Maybe it doesn't make economic sense, or maybe it doesn't fit with typical capitalist society, but this is what I see: I see a useful project dead. Certainly the project was useful for people, otherwise it wouldn't piss you off that no one is returning the favor. So now this project, which is surely useful, has been discontinued. Someone else could pick up the project and continue, sure, but would they be any more successful?
If you ask me, "that ain't right" (to quote Chris Rock from "Head of State"). In a better society, this useful project would be sustained somehow. I don't really have a solution for you. All I can say is that I understand your pain, and there are others out there that feel the same way, too. Unfortunately, the green alien is laughing.
1. AIM 2. All other proprietary IM. I only met one person who used Yahoo, and just a few that use MSN and ICQ.
This list is a lot different from 6 years ago. Back in the day, everyone I knew used ICQ.
While I don't actually use AIM, it is by far the most popular one I encounter. Everyone I met at college used it, everyone in southern California here seems to use it. ICQ is pretty much gone here. I guess it really does vary by region.:)
Personally, I use Jabber. I didn't list it above because I can't easily determine any regional usage of it. I have over 100 contacts, but they are either converted friends (most of us are "tech-savvy" and have migrated away from AOL) or folks I met online. I have yet to meet someone in person who used Jabber without my advocating it.
Hi, I'm the author of Psi. If you are interested, it would be great if you could pass me any details about your system setup (OS, Psi version, etc) and the error you encountered. Throw an email to justin-psi_at_affinix.com if you can. Thanks!
Trillian is an IM client, Jabber is an IM standard. By the way, Trillian will support Jabber in its next release, so they are not mutually exclusive or anything.
Eliminating cables everywhere can be somewhat handy, but you're right, a wireless printer has very limited purpose. In my opinion, bluetooth is mostly useful for when you are traveling. I can keep a PDA in one pocket and a cell phone in the other, and use them together with bluetooth and zero hassle.
I've been through it all. I used to use a cable, but it was dorky to be carrying that also. Then I finally got to use infrared, but that totally sucked when in a moving vehicle, and was also a bit of a pain even when I was sitting down (can't pick up my PDA otherwise I lose my 'net. so much for turning my screen around to show someone something). To solve the infrared problem, I made a silly velcro contraption to bind both devices together to stay aimed at all times. As you can probably guess, Bluetooth has been a holy grail for me.
The next thing I want is a bluetooth mouse, so that it will work easily with my laptop. Currently I have to drag around either a wired mouse, or my logitech wireless RF mouse and base (but having to carry the stupid base sort of makes it pointless).
One other nice part about bluetooth is that one transceiver is all you need. You don't have to worry about running out of ports, which is especially nice on a PDA where you have a limited number of interfaces. For instance, my Zaurus can not only connect to my cellphone, but also to my laptop, and hopefully someday to a GPS device once they come down in price. No need to swap out cables or cards, or for my PDA to have 3 input jacks.
Well, I was mostly exaggerating, but I would say it depends on your device. My VAIO 505 laptop battery was so shot, that using 802.11 made it nearly unusable without a power cable.;-) But then we're talking about a laptop that has 45 minutes on a full battery...
I have a Zaurus myself, and while I've never done any power benchmarking with it, I certainly have noticed a significant difference in battery life used between my Linksys 802.11b and Bluetooth+GPRS.
Adjusting the transmitter power seems like a bad idea when you consider that there could be multiple devices to talk to (and what happens when you add a new one?). While I'm no hardware engineer, I doubt bluetooth does this.
I believe the power savings come from the fact that bluetooth only transmits about 10 meters at best, while 802.11 can go down the block. Also, bluetooth is much slower, maxing out at around 700kb/s.
The best reason to use bluetooth is to link your cellphone with your PDA or laptop. 802.11 is total overkill for that. Your batteries will die in 20 minutes trying to power a 2-foot link.
I agree that syncing a PDA over the internet or larger distances could be useful, and in that case 802.11 is your man. Bluetooth's goal is to replace short range connections, such as the near-useless IR (ever try aiming a PDA at your phone while as a passenger? I did, and I used velcro for the occasion...)
I was hoping this article wasn't going to be another Bluetooth vs 802.11 non-argument. guess I was wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because you're only thinking about IM
Indeed, I am. That was the topic of discussion. SIP is certainly useful for a number of other things, and is actually an official RFC. However, SIP for IM is simply not a reality. SIMPLE is not RFC-ready. XMPP is, and on top of that it has working implementations and users.
Sure you could wrap voice packets in XML... but why would you want to?
You wouldn't want to. This kind of information would clearly be sent out-of-band over a separate channel than the one used for IM. The same would apply to SIMPLE. It wouldn't surprise me if Jabber clients of the future were to use SIP for voice calls.
So who are the "everyone else" who want XMPP?
Well, XMPP is orders of magnitude more popular, or at least more visible, among small businesses and end-users. There are clients for every platform you can name, and quite a few server software offerings. Many of these projects are open source. Search around on the web and you'll find a great number of fun Jabber-related projects, such as the Jabber World Map, or the multitude of mailing lists and user communities dedicated to Jabber. Even Trillian and Gaim support XMPP/Jabber. There are thousands of Jabber servers running today. Who the heck uses a SIP/SIMPLE client for IM?
Recently the Jabber Software Foundation announced that the Jabber userbase has surpassed that of ICQ. While ICQ is now the least popular of "the big 4" proprietary IM networks, this is still a significant achievement towards open & standard IM. SIMPLE isn't even on the map.
It should also be known that IBM and Apple are fence-sitters, as they both back XMPP also (IBM is a JSF sponsor, and Apple uses a form of XMPP in iChat).
So yeah, 'everyone else' really means just that.
Bluetooth keyboards and mice are new, give it some time and we will have more designs to choose from, I'm sure.
/. story about how this can be abused. I can imagine it would be much worse if pranksters could use your phone for dialing out!
:)
For a good and inexpensive bluetooth phone, get a Nokia 6310i. B&W display, long battery life, no frills, but has the stuff you actually want, like bluetooth and GPRS.
Bluetooth device pairing is necessary for security. There are some functions that don't require pairing for convenience sake, such as sending business cards, and there was an earlier
I do agree that most bluetooth devices are much too expensive. I think this is mostly an issue with sales and not the cost of making the chips. Remember when USB was a premium?
I think Bluetooth's saving factor will be Apple. Recently they have started embedding the support into their computers, and even created a wireless mouse. I've seen their software interface, and it is very easy to use. Don't you love it how Apple always steps in and says, "Dammit people, you do it like this!" and it becomes a huge success?
And you don't necessarily need to recompress to a lossy format. For instance, AAC -> WAV -> Ogg FLAC would retain as much quality as you purchased. The Apple DRM is essentially non-existent.
It appears the only real problem with the service is that you can't buy a higher-quality song that would be better for ripping to your own lossy format (or that Apple doesn't simply supply Vorbis/MP3 in the first place). But this is a problem of quality, not DRM.
Try reading the submission or the article next time. There is more here than just a protocol upgrade. Microsoft is setting up licensing arrangements for third-parties that wish to continue accessing the network. This is a huge issue if you don't use the official MSN client.
They used some code, and now they have to abide by the licensing rules of that code. This is no different than if it were some proprietary code like Windows. I don't understand this "GPL-creep" bullshit, as if these companies are using GPL code by accident. There is no way such code can wind up in your program unintentionally. Anytime you pull code from the internet, check the license. If there is no license mentioned, don't use it! Only use code if it says you can, not because it doesn't say you can't.
Forbes may be making the FSF look like the bad guys here, but really, what are the alternatives? If this were Windows or some proprietary software, you'd have the BSA breathing down their neck.
Interestingly enough, both X and Windows have almost identical mechanisms for sending data other than text
:) ), of pretty much any data. I don't know what hoops Qt has to jump through to get this to work consistently between platforms, unless they really do operate nearly the same. I have code that allows me to copy/paste and drag images between apps, and it works on both X11 and Windows. The fact that the clipboard generally sucks in X is not because we don't have the tools, but because most developers haven't considered using them properly.
This is true. Qt, for instance, is just as capable on X11 as it is on Windows. You can do drag-and-drop, clipboard, and selection (described nicely by you as the original drag-and-drop
Please, somebody, make a *simple* Jabber client.
Rhymbox ?
The client should also be able to sign into other messaging services on the client side...
Trillian ?
Haha, actually I'm very much a coder. I'm pretty sure the clipboard idea did cross my mind at the time, but the setup didn't easily allow for it. The server was Linux, and I was logged into it using putty in Windows. So there wasn't an easy way for the server to access my local clipboard (had there been some X11 involved, this may have been possible). The other idea would have been to simply copy the remote jabberd database file to the local machine and do the entire processing there, but I don't think I had a compiler on the Windows system.
This begs the question of what you were doing snooping around other people's old data? Ethics is not a dirty word, you know. It's up to people like us who know more about computers to protect the privacy of the less well informed.
I agree. Most folks really have no idea about computer security, but this does not mean we should take advantage of them (I don't think the parent was implying this though). Personally, I don't snoop around in anyone's files / homedirs, or sniff any traffic, even though as an admin I am perfectly capable of doing so. Heck, when someone is entering a password in my presence, I turn my head. It's just polite.
At the risk of going overboard here, I'd like to share a little story. I was running a Jabber server some time ago, and jabberd 1.4.x normally saves passwords in plaintext. For some reason I needed to log in as a particular user (I can't remember if it was for a test or what), but I refused to learn the person's password. To solve this, I wrote a program to extract the password from the jabberd database, and hide it in some grid of 30x30 random chars or so (kinda like those wordsearch puzzles). The password was in a horizontal direction starting at some random coordinate, and the program would tell me the coordinate as well as length of the password. Then I pasted this chunk into a text editor, and blindly pressed the Down and Right arrow keys a number of times to match the coordinates, held Shift and pressed the Right arrow key 'length' times, and hit Ctrl-C. I then closed the text editor and pasted the text into the application that I needed it for (which obscured the text as asterisks in the input field). Phew!
And, of course, the keyfob could take a fingerprint input on the device itself as a form of passphrase. Combine this with the ability to exchange keys by touching two keyfobs together somehow, this could make PGP quite usable for the masses.
:) Somebody, please make this device. Or give me some capital and I'll start a business to make it, seriously...
I have a keyfob, you have a keyfob. We exchange keys one day (via some physical interaction), then I go home, plug the keyfob into my computer, and send you some information securely. Then I unplug the keyfob. This is so easy to understand that even my mother could use it.
I think the best part is the ability to have the keyfob on a real keychain. This takes the "key" metaphor all the way home, and it will be easy for people to understand that they must protect their PGP key just like they protect their house key. It is no different.
So it seems PGP's adoption hurdle is that it lacks a good keyfob.
If I recall, however, I didn't really get along with the transport system. I'd much rather not have to rely on a remote computer for communicating through other mediums.
;-) If we are to band together and create a super-ultra-end-all-IM-system, then you can bet the spec won't contain the words AIM, ICQ, MSN, or Yahoo. I think the IETF standards body would convulse at the thought. :)
Well, this really has nothing to do with using Jabber for Jabber. Would you fault HTTP because it cannot send your email?
Decentralized message transfer. I don't want my message going in whole form off across the network, to run into any old stumbling block like a central server or network outage.
Jabber is as decentralized as email, which is about as decentralized as you can get without running into peer-to-peer problems. Users are referenced in "user@host.com" format, typical of every other internet protocol. If you really wanted peer-to-peer email, you could set up a domain pointing to your personal computer and run mail server software there. Jabber is the same way. In practical use, of course, you would connect out to a dedicated server.
I want it to be encrypted
You can do this today. The standard Jabber specification includes SSL to secure the client session to the server, and OpenPGP to secure messages sent end-to-end. The Psi client can do this on all supported platforms (Windows/Linux/Mac), and there are other capable clients too, such as JAJC, Gabber, Tkabber, and possibly more. Of course, PGP is probably too complex for your non-techie friends, but there isn't really a good solution otherwise. Even AIM, which grandma is supposed to be able to use, relies on x509 certificates for security.
Even so, there has been talk lately about coming up with a way for Jabber clients to do on-the-fly security, like Trillian's SecureIM, and just as vulnerable. See JEP-102. Still, it is probably better than nothing at all.
Easily integrated other types of data through use of a paralell decentralized stream
Fortunately, you can send pretty much anything over Jabber, and the structured XML system keeps things from ever conflicting. So while the things you mention are not yet standard in Jabber, they easily could be. Basically you'd just have the clients exchange some data over Jabber to decide something out-of-band. I suggest you head over to jabber.org and look up some of the enhancement proposals (or "JEPs").
The "free for linux not for w32" is of course a valid point
I don't even think this is a valid point. What if there wasn't a Qt/Win32 port at all? I don't see how the existence of a win32 port makes the X11 version any less free. And it's not like Windows portability makes or breaks a toolkit. Portability wasn't even the focus of his article.
You know, there was a time when gtk didn't have a win32 port. So some good folks ported the x11 version. In fact, some folks are doing that now for Qt! Isn't freedom wonderful? Qt/X11 is GPL. Just because Trolltech has an uber-cool win32 port of their own doesn't change anything about the freedom of Qt.
Maybe with a financial donation? Perhaps the GNUcash people could set up a pledge system where a bunch of folks can promise to pay some money and then when a certain number of pledges are made, everyone donates their part. The "keep GNUCash alive" fund or something.
And before anyone says that paying for open source software is backwards, remember that you're paying for software freedom. That is, you could spend $100 on a commercial accounting program for one copy, or you could spend $100 on GNUCash and have unlimited copies, plus way better support (you get to talk to the developers themselves, they actually listen to your feature requests, etc). Which would you rather have?
Most folks can't hack code. And even if they can, most projects have enough coders (remember what they say about too many cooks). However, the remaining 99.99% of the population can easily help by simply donating money. Not code. It's ok that you can't code. In fact, they'd rather you didn't. OSS projects need m-o-n-e-y.
Question I can't get out of my head is this. All of this equipment already ships with an OS that works and that was custom designed for that piece of hardware...so why rebuild it with linux?
Well, it depends on the PDA. OPIE is largely Qtopia, which the Sharp Zaurus already uses. As far as I know, you can even upgrade your Zaurus to use OPIE and not lose compatibility with existing Sharp apps. Of course, only a niche would desire to do this. I'm a Linux guy, but I'm happy with what Sharp provides. I don't feel the need to go dicking around further, and I'm a programmer!
What I'd really like to know, and this is more in line with what your question was really about, is why people go through all the trouble of hacking their iPAQ or other non-Linux device to run Linux/OPIE/foobar, when they could just get a Zaurus that already has Linux on it. C'mon guys, support Sharp for their efforts..
But anyway, I think the answer is something like, "because you can." As long as you can, people will do.
You should be donating money to all open source projects.
If everyone gave a dollar to each project they find useful, then we wouldn't have to wait so long for these projects to finish. If every user of my project gave me a dollar, I could quit my day job, work on it full time, and be done in a matter of months. Instead, it will be years before it is completed. It's pathetic, really.
A dollar a project is not much money from each of us. I could probably name 50 relevant projects that I benefit from. That's $50 out of my pocket. Think about it. Certainly it is a better investment than commercial software. Look at the differences:
1) Get 50 completed fully free programs. You can make unlimited copies, and you have full source code access if you ever care about that.
2) Buy one commercial product. Only 1 copy allowed. No source.
The sad fact is that most of us will spend our money on the commercial product instead of investing in open source. Oh well, unlimited copies of incomplete and broken free programs is good enough, eh?
To say that the Zaurus is a Linux platform, is like saying that the Macintosh is a BSD platform. In both cases, it is technically correct, yet wrong in practise. In both cases, your software requires an additional front-end (Qtopia or OS/X) in order to run. In both cases, you are locked in to one company's platform, because your software will not run on other versions of Linux or BSD.
What exactly is a "Linux platform" then? Linux by itself is just a kernel, RMS will tell you this all the time. Do you prefer the GNU "platform"? Or maybe KDE? These are all different platforms atop Linux. How is Qtopia "less" of a platform? It certainly can't be licensing, as GNU, KDE, and Qtopia are all Free Software. Maybe it is about popularity? True, Qtopia is a newcomer to the scene, but maybe this is a sign of good things to come.
Everyone's slamming you right now for some reason, so I figured I'd throw in my opinion, which is that I'm sympathetic.
It is true, the reason to start a "free collaborative work" or whatever you want to call it, is for fun. However, as time goes, it is easy for the project to become more important. By that I mean you have a lot of users and developers, and it seems to take more and more of your free time. You then conclude that the project is an important part of computing, and must be completed. That is, it has moved beyond the hobby phase. Folks are using your project in real businesses, users are using it for real uses. It would be a sad state of the human race if such a useful project were not to finish, and so before the green alien in the flying saucer has a chance to laugh at humanity, you fart in his general direction and press on. Your project is now more important than your real job. You contribute a valuable effort to society, and you're broke off your ass. WTF?
Folks will tell you that this is because you made a stupid decision of participating in a "free collaborative work". I don't think this is true. It's wonderful to begin a project to scratch an itch, and in the beginning you weren't hurting for cash, so it's all good. Fine, they will then tell you that you made a stupid decision to continue the project, to waste all of your time on something when not enough is coming back to you in order to sustain it. Well, now you have given up on the project, so you will satisfy these critics. You are finally 'sane', now get a real job, right?
Wrong. At least I'd like to think so. Maybe it doesn't make economic sense, or maybe it doesn't fit with typical capitalist society, but this is what I see: I see a useful project dead. Certainly the project was useful for people, otherwise it wouldn't piss you off that no one is returning the favor. So now this project, which is surely useful, has been discontinued. Someone else could pick up the project and continue, sure, but would they be any more successful?
If you ask me, "that ain't right" (to quote Chris Rock from "Head of State"). In a better society, this useful project would be sustained somehow. I don't really have a solution for you. All I can say is that I understand your pain, and there are others out there that feel the same way, too. Unfortunately, the green alien is laughing.
Just to offer my experiences in the USA here:
:)
1. AIM
2. All other proprietary IM. I only met one person who used Yahoo, and just a few that use MSN and ICQ.
This list is a lot different from 6 years ago. Back in the day, everyone I knew used ICQ.
While I don't actually use AIM, it is by far the most popular one I encounter. Everyone I met at college used it, everyone in southern California here seems to use it. ICQ is pretty much gone here. I guess it really does vary by region.
Personally, I use Jabber. I didn't list it above because I can't easily determine any regional usage of it. I have over 100 contacts, but they are either converted friends (most of us are "tech-savvy" and have migrated away from AOL) or folks I met online. I have yet to meet someone in person who used Jabber without my advocating it.
Hi, I'm the author of Psi. If you are interested, it would be great if you could pass me any details about your system setup (OS, Psi version, etc) and the error you encountered. Throw an email to justin-psi_at_affinix.com if you can. Thanks!
Trillian is an IM client, Jabber is an IM standard. By the way, Trillian will support Jabber in its next release, so they are not mutually exclusive or anything.
Eliminating cables everywhere can be somewhat handy, but you're right, a wireless printer has very limited purpose. In my opinion, bluetooth is mostly useful for when you are traveling. I can keep a PDA in one pocket and a cell phone in the other, and use them together with bluetooth and zero hassle.
I've been through it all. I used to use a cable, but it was dorky to be carrying that also. Then I finally got to use infrared, but that totally sucked when in a moving vehicle, and was also a bit of a pain even when I was sitting down (can't pick up my PDA otherwise I lose my 'net. so much for turning my screen around to show someone something). To solve the infrared problem, I made a silly velcro contraption to bind both devices together to stay aimed at all times. As you can probably guess, Bluetooth has been a holy grail for me.
The next thing I want is a bluetooth mouse, so that it will work easily with my laptop. Currently I have to drag around either a wired mouse, or my logitech wireless RF mouse and base (but having to carry the stupid base sort of makes it pointless).
One other nice part about bluetooth is that one transceiver is all you need. You don't have to worry about running out of ports, which is especially nice on a PDA where you have a limited number of interfaces. For instance, my Zaurus can not only connect to my cellphone, but also to my laptop, and hopefully someday to a GPS device once they come down in price. No need to swap out cables or cards, or for my PDA to have 3 input jacks.
Well, I was mostly exaggerating, but I would say it depends on your device. My VAIO 505 laptop battery was so shot, that using 802.11 made it nearly unusable without a power cable. ;-) But then we're talking about a laptop that has 45 minutes on a full battery ...
I have a Zaurus myself, and while I've never done any power benchmarking with it, I certainly have noticed a significant difference in battery life used between my Linksys 802.11b and Bluetooth+GPRS.
Adjusting the transmitter power seems like a bad idea when you consider that there could be multiple devices to talk to (and what happens when you add a new one?). While I'm no hardware engineer, I doubt bluetooth does this.
I believe the power savings come from the fact that bluetooth only transmits about 10 meters at best, while 802.11 can go down the block. Also, bluetooth is much slower, maxing out at around 700kb/s.
The best reason to use bluetooth is to link your cellphone with your PDA or laptop. 802.11 is total overkill for that. Your batteries will die in 20 minutes trying to power a 2-foot link.
I agree that syncing a PDA over the internet or larger distances could be useful, and in that case 802.11 is your man. Bluetooth's goal is to replace short range connections, such as the near-useless IR (ever try aiming a PDA at your phone while as a passenger? I did, and I used velcro for the occasion...)
I was hoping this article wasn't going to be another Bluetooth vs 802.11 non-argument. guess I was wrong.