Skype: HOLY SHIT.

I totally fell for that Skype internet ad where the kid breakdances for his army dad and buddies. Sweet specifically because it doesn't tug TOO hard at the heartstrings.

Fuck a torrent-powered internet telephony service. At least, quit the fucker when done.

I am saddened to learn that it is not pronounced Sky Pee.

i <3 skype, just wish i'd discovered it sooner. saved us a fortune in international calling cards before i came to the US. sucks if you're on a slow internet connection, tho.

Video skype is pretty damn amazing, especially when you're on a laptop. "Here, come into the kitchen with me! Oh wait, let's go outside!" It's like the other person is actually inside your computer. Total Max Headroom weirdness.

totally. i phoned my friend in toronto and he was showing me round his studio and talking about his new paintings while i looked at them. my other friend (his gf) gives me fashion shows of all the new stuff she bought at thrift stores. i love skype!

video calling is so much better than regular ph-talk: you can't really just 'hang out' on the ph with someone while you do other shit, but me and my bf use to hang out for hours and hours on skype, just playing on the net, reading, pottering round.

That's sweet! I am amazed by how much different video calls feel from phone calls, but I've never thought of using it to hang out that way.

The thing most people don't realize about Skype is that its architecture is distributed: When you have Skype open and aren't on a call, Skype may be sucking up YR bandwidth for other peoples' calls:

Any skype client can become a supernode if it has good bandwidth, no firewall and adequate processing power.

In other words, if you use Skype w/o a NAT box or a firewall or what have you, yr bandwidth is going to go to shit as long as it's open. "Free" my ass.

On the flipside, Skype has provided the telephony context for some funny vids lately.

I didnt know about the distributed bandwidth, hm. That may go some way to explain some of our customers ridic excess usage (I work at an ISP and we get dumbfucks who get excess bills and swear blind "no one uses the internet except for email and stuff!".)

whoah, i did not know that, lib! might explain why my parent's internet is so slooooooooooooow. moms has skype open pretty much all the time, so she can chat with her family back in Engerland.

I've never noticed a problem.

If you have a firewall, even something as simple as an internet-sharing "router", then you are less at risk for becoming a supernode and having yr bandwidth sucked up. Also, if you use a router that isn't STUNnable (or something similar), then you are probably at zero risk.

If yr router opens up ports when hit with UPnP requests, then you are a sitting duck.

Surely very few people connect via DSL/Cable these days over a direct bridged connection with no firewall or router, do they?

what is STUNnable

I use SkypeOut, but when I'm not on a call, Skype is off. If someone wants to A/V chat with me, they can go with AIM (which has a whole set of issues on its own).

xp:

My feeling is that there are likely quite a few folks -- perhaps the majority -- who have one computer (maybe a $300 cheapo). These people don't want to buy a "router" that they don't understand and can't really see the usefulness of.

xxp:

STUN is a method of creating incoming connections to a computer that's behind a firewall. Essentially, it's this: There's a 3rd computer that figures out how the firewall works, and it tells other computers how to "hijack" connections made from it to the STUN "server". It works best with UDP, but I hear that it does TCP with very non-stateful firewalls.

Skype is widely understood to use STUN for computer-to-computer connections. Skype isn't OSS, tho, so it can't be verified (as Skype is silent on the topic).

Can someone point me in the direction of this Skype bandwidth sucking malarky in non-nerd jargon and how to prevent it please? My dad has just started using it and thinks it's the greatest thing ever.

wait he has a wireless router with a WEP password (who doesn't?), is that all you need?

i tried to install skype to get some video between my mom and my kid going but it doesnt like it at all

Yeah I'd say if he's running a firewall he'd be fine and most modem/router DSL units come with that all built in and ready to go out of the box, from what Ive seen (Netcomm, DLink, Linksys etc)

S-, the wireless router provides an automatic level of protection. It IS a firewall. Unfortunately, it seems likely that this protection isn't as good as a condom. A good level of protection for yr dad would simply be to have a slow Internet connection in the first place. Skype isn't going to turn a crappy connection into a supernode. A better protection would be for yr dad to TOTALLY QUIT Skype when he's not in a conversation. This won't let him accept incoming calls most of the time, which probably defeats the whole point of Skype, as far as he's concerned.

If dad can't deal with those, then he can

a. Just deal with the possibility of getting less bandwidth than he's paying for,
b. Stop using Skype for incoming calls: AIM does everything that Skype does except drill you an extra anus, or
c. Have people IM him before Skyping him, so that he doesn't have to keep it open all the time.

i don'tunderstand a word of what y'all are saying. I love skype.

me too, but i normally keep it off to avoid calls from people i don't feel like talking to anyway. people wouldn't call my phone for a long conversation without asking if i'm available first, but being on skype implies availability i guess, like you're sitting around at your computer doing nothing. (wow, i am kind of a jerk, talking about friends and family this way! or maybe just more hermitlike.)

ok - how the fuck do i stop this thing automatically opening every time i turn my macbook on??? FUCK OFF I DON'T WANT TO USE YOU AAARGH

I like how the 'HOLY SHIT' impulse has gone completely 180.

lex - "right-click" icon, then uncheck open on login

AHA

fiddling about in its settings for so long aargh! hate that that was the default, whoever designed it to be like that is a cunt

and thx!

haha i know the feeling - general default also being set on visisble and then suddenly computer starts ringing and you wonder what is the polite way not to pick it up...

shout-out to this program

jagilly has a girlfriend

it's a general message of thanks and goodwill to something that makes the previously-impossible possible

<3

Skype: HOLY SHIT. piiiiiiissssssss

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/06/skype_for_mac_critical_vulnerability/

does this mean i have to finally stop using 2.x?

haven't even read this yet, but wow

WSJ: Microsoft Near Deal to Acquire Skype

hmm. i don't imagine that's gonna be good for skype.

Why the fuck do I even have a telephone?!

i just used skype for the first time two days ago, late adopter. it's very star trek. suppose we can kiss it goodbye and bet on that mac bug never getting fixed if microsoft really buys it.

fwiw the mac business unit makes among the better non-kinect things microsoft do, and the unit is pretty autonomous

announcing the deal later today y'all

http://www.techmeme.com/110509/p78#a110509p78

looking forward to seeing how m$ (seeeeeee?) will completely fuck skype up?

not sure what the MBU do except produce broken ports of office every few years :)

Skype is totally irritating anyway. Is there any hope of an "open standard" video call technology, so that it doesn't matter which actual program you use?

afaik mac office isn't fundamentally broken (right now), and there was a longish period in the early/mid-2000s when the mac version of word was much better than the windows version.

worth noting they do much more than port the windows version too. they make a pretty good faith effort to rethink the UI, for example. i get the impression there's very little shared code, even at a low level.

ha, but i guess "one of the better things microsoft do" is relative. they do make very good end user apps by m$ (lol) standards.

hey guyz btw i'm on this bitch under my full gov name separated by periods

playing amplified instruments via skype -- has anyone tried this?

Skype just started a Zoom-like service called Meet Now: https://www.skype.com/en/free-conference-call/

The 3 bullet points at the top of that link...

1. Free conference calls
2. No sign ups
3. No downloads

My sister and I just tried it, and the first two things it made us do were...

1. Download
2. Sign up

We were hoping for something relatively foolproof so we could talk our mother through installing it.

*sigh* Off to look at Zoom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Hangouts

Skype is terrible and if sky meet is based on lync/Skype for business then it will cause nothing but pain and anguish.

Skype is yet another thing Microsoft bought and are just going to neglect until it's dead. If you want to see a real disaster zone you should see the Chinese version of it, it has fucking pop up ads.

Goodbye Skype, never got a chance to check you out but I know a lot of folks who loved you twenty years ago

Skype has been my go-to for making international calls for *years*... bummed about this.

One nice feature of Skype was that you could call 1-800 numbers from anywhere for free.

I use Skype maybe three times a years, but when I need it there's no real equivalent.