They do think of things like this...for example, see this document, which was a speech prepared for President Nixon (by William Safire) to make to the nation in the event of a disaster on Apollo 11 (presumably one that would have left Armstrong and Aldrin marooned, to die when their oxygen ran out). I can't imagine that they don't have contingency plans tucked away in case something bad happens to one of the guys on the ISS (or on the Shuttle, for that matter). And imagine what could happen on a future Mars mission...
Bush takes Florida, and wins. Poof. Just like that.
And it looks like Nader did play the role of the spoiler after all, in Florida at least. Well, Ralphie boy, hope you're proud of yourself; now you're going to have to live with the consequences of your actions. If someone doesn't run you over with a Corvair first:-).
I hope Bush remembers that he has no real "mandate" as a result of this election. If he tries to pull anything too radical, he may face a wholesale housecleaning of Congress, giving it to the Democrats. It happened to Clinton in '94 (after his "health care reform" proposal basically scared the piss out of everybody); it can happen to Bush in 2002 just as easily.
Now I think I'm going to go down a shot of something while my wife wonders if she should leave the country...
This is going to be like that NHL playoff game at the beginning of this year that went into quintuple overtime...it's worse than all the Star Trek cliffhanger episodes that ever were.
11:44 PM MST: Bush 246, Gore 242. Florida is still way too close to call, and Gore has to win Florida to win. He's been coming up fast though. (And there are 2300 absentee ballots that were sent overseas from Florida, I just heard...it may not be over even when it's over...)
Here in Colorado, there wasn't much doubt; this state went for Bush. But we had a number of entertaining statewide issues, such as a medical marijuana initiative (looks to be passing...I voted for the California measure, and I voted for this one, too), the well-publicized "gun show loophole" measure (passing, much to my chagrin...the way that measure defines a "gun show," it could apply to garage sales and estate sales), an anti-growth measure (going down--it was way too broadly worded and extreme), a measure mandating a 24-hour waiting period for abortions (also going down...someone said it best on the radio this morning, "A man has no business getting in between a woman's legs unless he's invited!"), and a measure that would let Colorado join Powerball or another multi-state lottery (seemed to be hanging in there, last I saw).
To all you Gore supporters out there, let me just say..."You gotta believe."
That happened to me when I was in high school. They voted me as Freshman Prince for Homecoming, seemingly as a joke. But I went through with it, and was praised afterwards for my poise and attitude. (Someone from the school's underground newspaper conducted an interview with me by phone afterward, in which he said, "People thought you kind of looked like JFK, waving to the crowd there." The resulting story was very complimentary to me.) No, I never went out with the girl that was elected Freshman Princess, but she and I did become good friends for the rest of my time at that school.
If the same thing had happened to me as a senior, I don't know if I would have had the same response as Griffiths, but I commend him for having the cojones to do what he thought was right, and expose the utter idiocy of his school's administration for all to see.
Actually, in my mind, I think of the ISS as being kind of like "Babylon 0.5"...the international cooperation that's required to get it functioning can be thought of as a parallel to the interspecies cooperation required to build B5 and keep it running.
Of course, in terms of the technology involved, it's probably closer to "Babylon 0.05"...
And, in addition to SSL from client to server, we have support for end-to-end message encryption using PGP or GPG.
And we already unify support for AIM and ICQ (and Yahoo!, and MSN, and IRC), with our server-based "transports." Your client speaks one protocol--the Jabber XML protocol--and the server handles the translation. This can make Jabber clients much smaller than so-called "universal" clients; we're working on Java applet clients that'll be small enough to download over dialup connections without great pain.
And Jabber can definitely be used for more than just instant messaging; we've been experimenting with a Jabber-controlled MP3 jukebox program recently. In conjunction with another Jabber-based "remote control," you can control the songs that are played on another computer across the room, or across the continent. You can even have two or more remotes controlling the same jukebox. All the specialized messages required for controlling the jukebox and getting its status are just XML extensions to standard Jabber messages. (It's just a little demo we whopped up, written in Perl; it's not too sophisticated, but it does act as a proof-of-principle.)
Actually, ICQ is both peer-to-peer TCP and client-server UDP. You need the client-server stuff, obviously, but some features (like chat and file transfer) can only be done peer-peer. In many ways, it's the most screwball IM protocol in use today. AIM is client-server TCP and a bit more straightforward, but still can require multiple connections (as I understand it; though I've gotten intimately familiar with ICQ, I've only looked at AIM's protocol in passing--it's not my transport:-). )
You should; the assortment of Jabber clients is growing by leaps and bounds. There are now at least two Linux clients (Gabber, for GNOME people, and Jarl, written in Perl/Tk...plus I've heard about Pybber, a Python client, that's up-and-coming), two Windows clients (JabberIM and WinJab) with more being worked on, Java applet clients under development, a Macintosh client (Jabbernaut), and it goes on and on...
But Jabber can do more than just instant messaging. We're actually demoing a little application that consists of an MP3 jukebox program and a separate remote control program, both written in Perl and logging into a Jabber server as clients. The remotes send messages to the jukebox indicating which songs they want played, and the jukebox sends back, in its "presence" message, information about what song's currently playing. And all done via the standard Jabber protocol, extended in a standard fashion, because it's XML. (We wanted to do a Jabber-controlled robot, but we only had four days to rig up a demo:-). )
Right. See, for instance, the description of the Intellivision System Changer, which made it possible to play Atari 2600 games on an Intellivision II. The thing was actually a complete clone of an Atari 2600 that only used the Intellivision for its power supply and RF modulator. (Intellivision IIs had an external video input pin on their cartridge port; original Intellivisions could be retrofitted to have one as well.)
Mattel was, it appears, the first company to do this; Atari threatened to sue them, but the 2600 contains no copyrightable software (as the Intellivision and Colecovision did) and all off-the-shelf hardware (basically, three chips), so they really had no grounds to sue. Afterwards, other manufacturers began making 2600 clones.
The rest of that site is also very good; it provides some interesting insights into, not only the Intellivision game system, but the people behind it and the dynamics of the early-80's video game market. Recommended.
Last night on the local news (KCNC, local CBS affiliate), I heard that the University of Colorado has decided not to ban Napster, but to adopt a "wait and see" attitude. Kudos to them for not caving in...
See this article. Wired apparently had another technology for automatically jumping to URLs from magazine pages (which involved using a digital camera to take a picture of the magazine page and run the image through some special software) that was, if anything, more wacked-out than the:CueCat. Obviously, it was so unworkable that they dropped it like a hot rock two months after they introduced it, and started with the barcodes instead.
The article points out that, as designed, the:CueCat is a solution in search of a problem, and DigitalConvergence.com (where the hell does the silly colon go in their name anyway?) must have an unbelievable burn rate at the moment. The latter factor could explain why the DC people are so anal about people fooling around with the Cats in "unauthorized" ways even though the number of people doing so is undoubtedly a tiny percentage of the people who actually have the devices...
Duct tape and velcro are holding our space program together? Seems somehow appropriate.
Remember Apollo 13? Duct tape was essential for assembling that temporary CO2 filter that helped keep the astronauts from choking to death.
Don't you keep a roll of duct tape around your house "just in case?" The astronauts sure do - they can't just run out to the hardware store for some when they're in Earth orbit...
Not only that, even if no one breaks SDMI as a result of this contest, the RIAA still wins; they get to issue press releases saying "we offered real hackers (oo!) a chance to break our secure music system, and they couldn't do it, so that means our system must be really secure, therefore give us money."
You and I know that's a fallacy. The general public doesn't. And, if anyone comes along and tries to break it later, RIAA can just call them "evil pirates" and rattle the DMCA saber at 'em to shut 'em up...
Sorry, RIAA, I won't be your stooge, no matter how much money you wave under my nose, and no matter who wants to call me "chicken" as a result. See Figure 1.
...it seems that several folks have taken to using [AIM] as their primary form of interstate comunication between departments/facilities. This forced our upper management to look into creating our own "chat thingie" without the file transfer (this is buisness after all). AOL is a closed standard, preventing us from acomplishing that.
Might I (modestly) suggest Jabber? Its decentralized nature and open XML-based protocols make it a great choice for companies implementing "internal" IM communications...you can run your own Jabber server, just the way you run your own email server. There are several excellent Jabber clients available now for different operating systems, and, if your employees absolutely have to talk to people on AIM (or ICQ, or other systems), there are server-based "transports" to bridge the gap.
Have a look at Jabber.org for the project's home, JabberCentral for info on clients, and Jabber.com if your company needs custom client or server programming done, or commercial-grade support for your Jabber needs. (Disclaimer: The latter entity pays my salary...)
Hey, I'd want to go, too, but I'm too tall to fit in a Soyuz. Seriously, a Soyuz can't take anyone taller than 5'10" or thereabouts; I forget the exact height, but I know that, at 6'3", I'd never fit.
And don't even suggest that I go lop off my feet or something like that; I'd still like to have a decent life back on Earth after the trip:-).
I wonder if the producers of this show know about the height restrictions...I'd hate to see someone become the winning contestant and then get told, "Oh, sorry, you won't fit into the capsule. Tough luck."
So, use ICQ! Check out www.icq.com...I don't think it would be hard to write a version for *nix...
Already been done. Check out Licq, Micq, GnomeICU, and a host of others, as well as (he said, modestly) the Jabber transport for ICQ.
Slightly off-topic comment to the "I don't think it would be hard..." remark: ICQ isn't a particularly easy protocol. It uses a combination of client-server UDP and peer-peer TCP that's tricky to get right. That also means that it's tough for one process to manage lots of ICQ connections, which is one of the reasons I'm rewriting icq-t...
Funny...I tried a comparison myself just this past weekend, using some freshly-ripped.WAV files. I encoded them to MP3 with LAME 3.70, and to OGG format with oggenc -m2 (to get similar bitrates, approximately 128 Kbps). They sounded pretty much the same when played back over both XMMS and WinAmp (with appropriate Vorbis plugins installed in each case)...and I was listening over headphones to check them out. The file sizes were very similar, too.
Now, I'll grant you this is a bit unscientific (hell, it's not even in the same ballpark with "scientific"), but it seems to me that the Vorbis guys have done a hell of a job thusfar, even considering the format and tools are still "beta." If there were a little better support for comment tags in the player tools, I would probably be switching everything over from MP3 to OGG format right now...
This sounds a little like the classifications of civilizations by energy consumption, originally described by the Soviet astrophysicist N.S. Kardashev:
Kardashev Level 1 - civilizations using the entire power output of a planet
Kardashev Level 2 - civilizations using the entire power output of a star
Kardashev Level 3 - civilizations using the entire power output of a galaxy
Our own civilization is still somewhere under the K1 level. Getting to K2 would require something along the lines of a "Dyson sphere" to collect the energy output from the Sun, especially that above and below the plane of the ecliptic (which is currently radiated away from anything in the solar system which could use it).
Oddly, Kardashev did not extend his analysis beyond galactic scale. Perhaps he thought that getting to K3 level would be a big enough challenge:-).
Relating the Kardashev scale to Kaku's scale...a K1 civilization would probably be somewhere between 0 and 1 on the Kaku scale. K2 civilizations would probably be between 1 and 2, and K3 civilizations would probably score between 2 and 3. So there's a good correlation. (I agree, a civilization that scored 4 or 5 on the Kaku scale would probably be so far beyond our comprehension that it would be impossible for a mere 21st-century human to comprehend...)
To mark the occasion of the telescope's dedication, the NRAO Amateur Radio Club will be operating special event station W9GFZ from the observatory grounds over this weekend. (W9GFZ was the call sign that Grote Reber held in 1937, when he built the first dish antenna for radioastronomy in his Wheaton, IL backyard...kind of a cool tribute to history there.) More details in this week's ARRL Letter.
It is quite possible that M$ has several motives in mind for porting Office (and other apps). For example:
The Hedge Hypothesis: If M$ is forced to split into M$Windows and M$Apps, this gives the "apps" part of the company a leg up in breaking into a new market.
The Appeals Hypothesis: Office for Linux could give M$ a new argument to use in the Appeals Court or the Supreme Court: "see, we make Office for these other two operating systems, and we sell decent amounts of them, so we're not really a monopoly." Mac Office alone might not cut it, but Mac Office combined with Linux Office may tip the scales.
The Standard M$ Hypothesis: Shut down StarOffice, WordPerfect Office, the Gnome Foundation and their backers, etc...what do you bet that M$ gives out a "crippleware" version of Linux Office free?
The Poison-The-Well Hypothesis: Once you get Linux users (maybe recently switched from Windows) to embrace Office, use this as a lever to move them (back) to Windows. How? Proprietary file formats, faster upgrades available for Windows, etc., etc.
The FUD-Factor Hypothesis: If Linux Office turns out to be buggy, slow, etc., M$ can turn around and tell developers, "see? Linux really is hard to develop for, you should really develop for Windows instead."
The If-You-Can't-Beat-'Em-Join-'Em Hypothesis: This is actually a stepping stone towards a Microsoft Linux distro, which will be a replacement for one or more existing M$ operating systems. (Farfetched, I know, but...)
Dunno what your comment had to do with WinNT, but I'll help fill in...
Many of the internal concepts of VMS (such as the scheduler and priority system, deferred and asynchronous procedure calls, interrupt handling, and memory layout) were made part of Windows NT, probably due to the fact that Dave Cutler, the chief architect of Windows NT, had previously done VMS for DEC, and brought a bunch of ex-VMS people with him when he jumped to M$. (There's a longer story behind this, you can get it here.)
I n fact, there's a joke that you can tell that NT follows VMS by just adding one to each letter of "VMS" - you get "WNT," or "Windows NT." (This is similar to the "HAL vs. IBM" joke that people pointed out around the time of 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
Of course, then M$ had to go crapping up the design, as they usually do...but that's hardly VMS' fault:-). And, as the referenced aticle will show, some of NT's better-known misfeatures, such as the Registry, were "backported" to VMS later...dunno what that says about DEC/Compaq...
the problem I have with Winjab is that the MSNagent still has some glitches.
It's likely that this is a problem specific to the MSN transport itself, rather than WinJab. The MSN transport is relatively new code.
I'm also curious whether there is a list of Jabber servers, in the FAQ and Howto's are some references to Jabber servers that use the http port (could be usefull for chatting behind a firewall;-) But I can't find any others than jabber.org and jabber.com.
We can't necessarily find them either--Jabber servers aren't required to advertise:-). There are also Jabber servers at jabbercentral.com and hotjabber.com that I know of. Don't forget, though, that the server you're on doesn't really matter, as you can communicate with Jabber users on other servers; just add their Jabber ID (username@server.domain) to your roster, and the Jabber servers handle the details of communicating between themselves.
One important advantage Jabber has over Everybuddy is that its support for "foreign" IM protocols (such as AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN) are implemented as "transports" that run on the server, instead of as part of the client. That way, if AOL mucks around with their protocol, or someone implements a new IM system, the server administrator can install the necessary transport, and it is immediately usable by all Jabber clients. No update to the client is required, it just works.
Our open protocol is implemented using streaming XML, which is easy to understand and easy to extend for new purposes. I've even heard of a simple Jabber client being implemented using a combination of shell scripts, sed, and awk (though how it works I've no idea...)
Slashdot Mirror
Eric
--
And it looks like Nader did play the role of the spoiler after all, in Florida at least. Well, Ralphie boy, hope you're proud of yourself; now you're going to have to live with the consequences of your actions. If someone doesn't run you over with a Corvair first :-).
I hope Bush remembers that he has no real "mandate" as a result of this election. If he tries to pull anything too radical, he may face a wholesale housecleaning of Congress, giving it to the Democrats. It happened to Clinton in '94 (after his "health care reform" proposal basically scared the piss out of everybody); it can happen to Bush in 2002 just as easily.
Now I think I'm going to go down a shot of something while my wife wonders if she should leave the country...
Eric
--
11:44 PM MST: Bush 246, Gore 242. Florida is still way too close to call, and Gore has to win Florida to win. He's been coming up fast though. (And there are 2300 absentee ballots that were sent overseas from Florida, I just heard...it may not be over even when it's over...)
Here in Colorado, there wasn't much doubt; this state went for Bush. But we had a number of entertaining statewide issues, such as a medical marijuana initiative (looks to be passing...I voted for the California measure, and I voted for this one, too), the well-publicized "gun show loophole" measure (passing, much to my chagrin...the way that measure defines a "gun show," it could apply to garage sales and estate sales), an anti-growth measure (going down--it was way too broadly worded and extreme), a measure mandating a 24-hour waiting period for abortions (also going down...someone said it best on the radio this morning, "A man has no business getting in between a woman's legs unless he's invited!"), and a measure that would let Colorado join Powerball or another multi-state lottery (seemed to be hanging in there, last I saw).
To all you Gore supporters out there, let me just say..."You gotta believe."
Eric
--
If the same thing had happened to me as a senior, I don't know if I would have had the same response as Griffiths, but I commend him for having the cojones to do what he thought was right, and expose the utter idiocy of his school's administration for all to see.
Eric
--
Question: "Why is the Universe here?"
Answer: "Well, where else would it be?"
Food for thought on a Friday afternoon...
Eric
--
Of course, in terms of the technology involved, it's probably closer to "Babylon 0.05"...
Eric
--
Hey! There's the first two sponsors for the program! :-)
Eric
--
And we already unify support for AIM and ICQ (and Yahoo!, and MSN, and IRC), with our server-based "transports." Your client speaks one protocol--the Jabber XML protocol--and the server handles the translation. This can make Jabber clients much smaller than so-called "universal" clients; we're working on Java applet clients that'll be small enough to download over dialup connections without great pain.
And Jabber can definitely be used for more than just instant messaging; we've been experimenting with a Jabber-controlled MP3 jukebox program recently. In conjunction with another Jabber-based "remote control," you can control the songs that are played on another computer across the room, or across the continent. You can even have two or more remotes controlling the same jukebox. All the specialized messages required for controlling the jukebox and getting its status are just XML extensions to standard Jabber messages. (It's just a little demo we whopped up, written in Perl; it's not too sophisticated, but it does act as a proof-of-principle.)
Check out Jabber.org, JabberCentral, and, of course, Jabber.com.
Eric
--
Eric
--
But Jabber can do more than just instant messaging. We're actually demoing a little application that consists of an MP3 jukebox program and a separate remote control program, both written in Perl and logging into a Jabber server as clients. The remotes send messages to the jukebox indicating which songs they want played, and the jukebox sends back, in its "presence" message, information about what song's currently playing. And all done via the standard Jabber protocol, extended in a standard fashion, because it's XML. (We wanted to do a Jabber-controlled robot, but we only had four days to rig up a demo :-). )
Check out Jabber.org, JabberCentral, and, of course, Jabber.com Inc.
Eric
--
Mattel was, it appears, the first company to do this; Atari threatened to sue them, but the 2600 contains no copyrightable software (as the Intellivision and Colecovision did) and all off-the-shelf hardware (basically, three chips), so they really had no grounds to sue. Afterwards, other manufacturers began making 2600 clones.
The rest of that site is also very good; it provides some interesting insights into, not only the Intellivision game system, but the people behind it and the dynamics of the early-80's video game market. Recommended.
Eric
--
Eric
--
The article points out that, as designed, the :CueCat is a solution in search of a problem, and DigitalConvergence.com (where the hell does the silly colon go in their name anyway?) must have an unbelievable burn rate at the moment. The latter factor could explain why the DC people are so anal about people fooling around with the Cats in "unauthorized" ways even though the number of people doing so is undoubtedly a tiny percentage of the people who actually have the devices...
Eric
--
Remember Apollo 13? Duct tape was essential for assembling that temporary CO2 filter that helped keep the astronauts from choking to death.
Don't you keep a roll of duct tape around your house "just in case?" The astronauts sure do - they can't just run out to the hardware store for some when they're in Earth orbit...
Eric
--
You and I know that's a fallacy. The general public doesn't. And, if anyone comes along and tries to break it later, RIAA can just call them "evil pirates" and rattle the DMCA saber at 'em to shut 'em up...
Sorry, RIAA, I won't be your stooge, no matter how much money you wave under my nose, and no matter who wants to call me "chicken" as a result. See Figure 1.
Eric
--
Have a look at Jabber.org for the project's home, JabberCentral for info on clients, and Jabber.com if your company needs custom client or server programming done, or commercial-grade support for your Jabber needs. (Disclaimer: The latter entity pays my salary...)
Eric
--
And don't even suggest that I go lop off my feet or something like that; I'd still like to have a decent life back on Earth after the trip :-).
I wonder if the producers of this show know about the height restrictions...I'd hate to see someone become the winning contestant and then get told, "Oh, sorry, you won't fit into the capsule. Tough luck."
Eric
--
Already been done. Check out Licq, Micq, GnomeICU, and a host of others, as well as (he said, modestly) the Jabber transport for ICQ.
Slightly off-topic comment to the "I don't think it would be hard..." remark: ICQ isn't a particularly easy protocol. It uses a combination of client-server UDP and peer-peer TCP that's tricky to get right. That also means that it's tough for one process to manage lots of ICQ connections, which is one of the reasons I'm rewriting icq-t...
Eric
--
Now, I'll grant you this is a bit unscientific (hell, it's not even in the same ballpark with "scientific"), but it seems to me that the Vorbis guys have done a hell of a job thusfar, even considering the format and tools are still "beta." If there were a little better support for comment tags in the player tools, I would probably be switching everything over from MP3 to OGG format right now...
Eric
--
Kardashev Level 1 - civilizations using the entire power output of a planet
Kardashev Level 2 - civilizations using the entire power output of a star
Kardashev Level 3 - civilizations using the entire power output of a galaxy
Our own civilization is still somewhere under the K1 level. Getting to K2 would require something along the lines of a "Dyson sphere" to collect the energy output from the Sun, especially that above and below the plane of the ecliptic (which is currently radiated away from anything in the solar system which could use it).
Oddly, Kardashev did not extend his analysis beyond galactic scale. Perhaps he thought that getting to K3 level would be a big enough challenge :-).
Relating the Kardashev scale to Kaku's scale...a K1 civilization would probably be somewhere between 0 and 1 on the Kaku scale. K2 civilizations would probably be between 1 and 2, and K3 civilizations would probably score between 2 and 3. So there's a good correlation. (I agree, a civilization that scored 4 or 5 on the Kaku scale would probably be so far beyond our comprehension that it would be impossible for a mere 21st-century human to comprehend...)
Eric
--
To mark the occasion of the telescope's dedication, the NRAO Amateur Radio Club will be operating special event station W9GFZ from the observatory grounds over this weekend. (W9GFZ was the call sign that Grote Reber held in 1937, when he built the first dish antenna for radioastronomy in his Wheaton, IL backyard...kind of a cool tribute to history there.) More details in this week's ARRL Letter.
Eric
--
- The Hedge Hypothesis: If M$ is forced to split into M$Windows and M$Apps, this gives the "apps" part of the company a leg up in breaking into a new market.
- The Appeals Hypothesis: Office for Linux could give M$ a new argument to use in the Appeals Court or the Supreme Court: "see, we make Office for these other two operating systems, and we sell decent amounts of them, so we're not really a monopoly." Mac Office alone might not cut it, but Mac Office combined with Linux Office may tip the scales.
- The Standard M$ Hypothesis: Shut down StarOffice, WordPerfect Office, the Gnome Foundation and their backers, etc...what do you bet that M$ gives out a "crippleware" version of Linux Office free?
- The Poison-The-Well Hypothesis: Once you get Linux users (maybe recently switched from Windows) to embrace Office, use this as a lever to move them (back) to Windows. How? Proprietary file formats, faster upgrades available for Windows, etc., etc.
- The FUD-Factor Hypothesis: If Linux Office turns out to be buggy, slow, etc., M$ can turn around and tell developers, "see? Linux really is hard to develop for, you should really develop for Windows instead."
- The If-You-Can't-Beat-'Em-Join-'Em Hypothesis: This is actually a stepping stone towards a Microsoft Linux distro, which will be a replacement for one or more existing M$ operating systems. (Farfetched, I know, but...)
I'm sure you can think of other possibilities.Eric
--
Many of the internal concepts of VMS (such as the scheduler and priority system, deferred and asynchronous procedure calls, interrupt handling, and memory layout) were made part of Windows NT, probably due to the fact that Dave Cutler, the chief architect of Windows NT, had previously done VMS for DEC, and brought a bunch of ex-VMS people with him when he jumped to M$. (There's a longer story behind this, you can get it here.)
I n fact, there's a joke that you can tell that NT follows VMS by just adding one to each letter of "VMS" - you get "WNT," or "Windows NT." (This is similar to the "HAL vs. IBM" joke that people pointed out around the time of 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
Of course, then M$ had to go crapping up the design, as they usually do...but that's hardly VMS' fault :-). And, as the referenced aticle will show, some of NT's better-known misfeatures, such as the Registry, were "backported" to VMS later...dunno what that says about DEC/Compaq...
Eric
--
It's likely that this is a problem specific to the MSN transport itself, rather than WinJab. The MSN transport is relatively new code.
We can't necessarily find them either--Jabber servers aren't required to advertise :-). There are also Jabber servers at jabbercentral.com and hotjabber.com that I know of. Don't forget, though, that the server you're on doesn't really matter, as you can communicate with Jabber users on other servers; just add their Jabber ID (username@server.domain) to your roster, and the Jabber servers handle the details of communicating between themselves.
Eric
--
One important advantage Jabber has over Everybuddy is that its support for "foreign" IM protocols (such as AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN) are implemented as "transports" that run on the server, instead of as part of the client. That way, if AOL mucks around with their protocol, or someone implements a new IM system, the server administrator can install the necessary transport, and it is immediately usable by all Jabber clients. No update to the client is required, it just works.
Our open protocol is implemented using streaming XML, which is easy to understand and easy to extend for new purposes. I've even heard of a simple Jabber client being implemented using a combination of shell scripts, sed, and awk (though how it works I've no idea...)
Eric
--