it's software that's worth the amount they're asking
That's true of all commercial software, though. How is Trillian different.
the open alternatives aren't quite there yet
Oh, might as well throw out everything with a similar standards status because they're not ready yet. That's right, TheDauthi thinks HTTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, and XMPP aren't ready yet, you heard it here first.
I recently switched from Trillian to GAIM, and kept all my contacts no problem. Although I may be misunderstand what you mean by "sort".
Save for Jabber, I've had zero luck getting IM networks to keep my IM list for me no matter what client. If I had to change clients, all my metacontacts were gone, and groups weren't sorted right, etc. Jabber just works without fucking around. The fact Jabber Just Works with everything should be reason enough to convince anybody to switch.
The only problem I had during my experiment with Jabber and using it to connect to the Big-Three services is that it's tough to find a very stable Jabber server that offers all the reflector services that you need.
It's not hard if you look. Don't sweat finding one in your area.
And that means redundant servers housed in datacenters, not a box in somebody's basement connected to their cable modem.
Either way, don't expect open infrastructure any time soon. Closed standards with proprietary front ends means companies can jam banner ads on people's desktops. If you hate ads as much as I do, use an alternative: GAIM, Trillian
BZZT! Wrong! If you hate ads as much as you do, use an alternative: Not AIM, not MSN, not Yahoo, not ICQ. Jabber.
One solution is like Trillian which consolidates everything into one interface.
...poorly. You have to resort your contacts every time you reinstall it, you have to log into each network seperately. What a load of crap. Check out Jabber and the Jabber transports: Register once. Sort your contacts once. Never worry about it again. Install wherever, get the same settings.
Which is why I like to use Trillian. It's pretty convenient, and you don't have to have 3 separate programs. It works well with AIM, MSN, Yahoo, and a host of other protocols/clients/whathaveyou.
But you still have to have three seperate logins to get on all the networks and if you change computers and install it on a new system, you get to resort all your contacts again. You don't have these problems on Jabber, and it lets you talk to the Obsolete Three (AIM/ICQ/Microsoft-Yahoo Messenger) networks just fine. It's also not shareware, and any time proprietary software is not involved is a great thing.
(Not to mention Trillian's got a user interface only a crackhead could love...)
Nope. I ran Windows 3.0 on an 8088 with a CGA monitor. 3.1 required at least a 286, 95 raised the bar to the beefy end of the i80386 run (but in reality, usually the low end of the 486).
You realize Kopete is pronounced the same as the spanish word "copete," right? It sounds closer to pig latin and doesn't even come close to rhyming with "compete" in English.
Yes, they're working on making it on a blacklist basis, not a whitelist one from what it's sounding like. Look who you're talking about, here: The first company to piss off damn near every publisher by making the most aggressive effort to get a digital library competative to the real thing off the ground. A company trying to absorb everything gains nothing by deliberately excluding everything.
Take "Fox" News with a grain of salt, for real reporting see CNN, Bloomberg, or international news if you can get it.
Not sure anybody actually gets Bloomberg (usually on some public affairs premium lineup in most areas), so I don't know about them. But CNN? Wait, what? E! runs more news than CNN does now, and CNN covers more of the meaningless pop star filler bullshit than E! now. Surely you really meant NWCN, right?
Google need to play the good guys, and open up their Talk servers so that other Jabber servers can connect with them.
You don't read the Jabber mailing lists or, for that matter, comments about google talk on Slashdot, do you? This is going to happen. They've said so many times.
I had to use my CC to allow my son to enable advanced online fucntions like friends lists and joining of clans in Socom3.
Cute. They do know there's a large segment of the population that won't get a credit card on the principal that the credit card companies wouldn't issue one when it was actually needed, right? And that any kid with a jar full of change can get a Mastercard at the grocery store's Coinstar, right?
Seriously, it's not that hard. All you need maybe a few dollars and a trip to your local Fred Meyer general store unless you boxed yourself into a corner with a CD player stereo. Here's what worked for me, and not just with an iPod:
One 1995½ Kia Sportage slightly used (and actually off road like it was designed for)
Email, TCP/IP, and HTTP also all came about when the majority of Internet users were still bearded geeks who understood and cared about these issues, and also before commercial interests discovered it. There's a vast difference between then and today.
OK, well, there's two ways you can handle this situation, and you always have a choice:
Persuade them to care. Help people make the switch, get to know a couple good clients and show people how to get started and use the transports. Do the footwork you know the Obsolete Three (formerly Obsolete Four) networks are doing, because you are the caring, user oriented face of the free software/open source/open standards movement.
Whine, piss and complain, then wonder why your world is a corporate hell while waiting for your daily IT diaper change.
I recall seeing in the jabber mailing lists Google folks asking questions on how to implement s2s. It's just a matter of time. They're not confusing the protocol and the networks, people who have actually been watching this closely enough to count have known that Google and the rest of Jabber is more like Google starting off in a netsplit than a deliberate act. They're reinventing the wheel because nobody's implemented Jabber on the scale Google is before.
Don't insult the 4th graders, it takes several more years of schooling in America to get that bad at English.
Glad I got my education in Oregon instead. Now if Canada would call the fraud in the election at Champoeg already and demand the US cede Oregon, Idaho and Washington to proper Canadian rule now that the US has not the manpower to stop them...
If the market consolidates to MSN IM as you suggest, what makes you think that it won't become the standard instead of Jabber, rather than the other way around?
Email, TCP/IP, and HTTP won over everything else because they were an open standard. There is no evidence supporting the theory that anybody can win against an open standard.
Yeah, the Jabber.org guys got tired of whipping the transport developers and told all their users to use the transports on other servers a couple years back, they haven't run transports in a couple Moore generations now.
Except I didn't think that GoogleTalk was on the Jabber network?
I'm reading the future on this one, since they're already working on it, and at this point we're talking sometime around now or soon rather than sooner or later.
Google may seem a nice company, and it may be convenient not to have several different networks, but a single network controlled by one company is not a good thing.
Google would control Jabber in about as much sense Microsoft controls email: They don't.
The better solution by far is an open network that anyone can add their servers (ie, exactly what the Jabber network is, but it's not clear whether GoogleTalk will be part of this).
You're only missing what they've been saying on their website about this for weeks now.
Slashdot Mirror
That's true of all commercial software, though. How is Trillian different.
the open alternatives aren't quite there yet
Oh, might as well throw out everything with a similar standards status because they're not ready yet. That's right, TheDauthi thinks HTTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, and XMPP aren't ready yet, you heard it here first.
Save for Jabber, I've had zero luck getting IM networks to keep my IM list for me no matter what client. If I had to change clients, all my metacontacts were gone, and groups weren't sorted right, etc. Jabber just works without fucking around. The fact Jabber Just Works with everything should be reason enough to convince anybody to switch.
It's not hard if you look. Don't sweat finding one in your area.
And that means redundant servers housed in datacenters, not a box in somebody's basement connected to their cable modem.
Apparently you forgot about Google.
BZZT! Wrong! If you hate ads as much as you do, use an alternative: Not AIM, not MSN, not Yahoo, not ICQ. Jabber.
But you still have to have three seperate logins to get on all the networks and if you change computers and install it on a new system, you get to resort all your contacts again. You don't have these problems on Jabber, and it lets you talk to the Obsolete Three (AIM/ICQ/Microsoft-Yahoo Messenger) networks just fine. It's also not shareware, and any time proprietary software is not involved is a great thing.
(Not to mention Trillian's got a user interface only a crackhead could love...)
Nope. I ran Windows 3.0 on an 8088 with a CGA monitor. 3.1 required at least a 286, 95 raised the bar to the beefy end of the i80386 run (but in reality, usually the low end of the 486).
As if. Random sampling seems to put the number at around 80% and falling over time.
You realize Kopete is pronounced the same as the spanish word "copete," right? It sounds closer to pig latin and doesn't even come close to rhyming with "compete" in English.
Yes, they're working on making it on a blacklist basis, not a whitelist one from what it's sounding like. Look who you're talking about, here: The first company to piss off damn near every publisher by making the most aggressive effort to get a digital library competative to the real thing off the ground. A company trying to absorb everything gains nothing by deliberately excluding everything.
Not sure anybody actually gets Bloomberg (usually on some public affairs premium lineup in most areas), so I don't know about them. But CNN? Wait, what? E! runs more news than CNN does now, and CNN covers more of the meaningless pop star filler bullshit than E! now. Surely you really meant NWCN, right?
Show me the last time Fox covered any social or consumer issues in a positive light and tell me they aren't anti-American.
You don't read the Jabber mailing lists or, for that matter, comments about google talk on Slashdot, do you? This is going to happen. They've said so many times.
Cute. They do know there's a large segment of the population that won't get a credit card on the principal that the credit card companies wouldn't issue one when it was actually needed, right? And that any kid with a jar full of change can get a Mastercard at the grocery store's Coinstar, right?
OK, well, there's two ways you can handle this situation, and you always have a choice:
Now which did you choose, hmm?
Sure they can. "Just start using your MSN Passport password for your passport ending in @yahoo.com instead of your previous Yahoo Messenger password"
Please see 13771302 for why precisely that would be a huge win.
I recall seeing in the jabber mailing lists Google folks asking questions on how to implement s2s. It's just a matter of time. They're not confusing the protocol and the networks, people who have actually been watching this closely enough to count have known that Google and the rest of Jabber is more like Google starting off in a netsplit than a deliberate act. They're reinventing the wheel because nobody's implemented Jabber on the scale Google is before.
Glad I got my education in Oregon instead. Now if Canada would call the fraud in the election at Champoeg already and demand the US cede Oregon, Idaho and Washington to proper Canadian rule now that the US has not the manpower to stop them...
Email, TCP/IP, and HTTP won over everything else because they were an open standard. There is no evidence supporting the theory that anybody can win against an open standard.
Come on, I know you've been saving some bad-taste one-liners for lower forms of network life...
And digitalsurgeon demonstrates the apparent intelligence of a 4th grader failing English while writing his post. No wonder he's on MSN...
Yeah, the Jabber.org guys got tired of whipping the transport developers and told all their users to use the transports on other servers a couple years back, they haven't run transports in a couple Moore generations now.
I'm reading the future on this one, since they're already working on it, and at this point we're talking sometime around now or soon rather than sooner or later.
Google may seem a nice company, and it may be convenient not to have several different networks, but a single network controlled by one company is not a good thing.
Google would control Jabber in about as much sense Microsoft controls email: They don't.
The better solution by far is an open network that anyone can add their servers (ie, exactly what the Jabber network is, but it's not clear whether GoogleTalk will be part of this).
You're only missing what they've been saying on their website about this for weeks now.