M$ & Skype

I have been using MS Communicator on both my Mac and my PC. I must admit that it works really well. My company actually supports the use of communicator outside of the firewall so I can access the SIP server and have my desk phone travel with me where ever I need it to. The one downside of Communicator is that it only seems to like Outlook address books and I don't run that on my Mac.
 
The latest version of Skype was buggy and a disaster that have everybody downgrading to the previous version, so obviously Microsoft saw an immediate fit.
 
mikea said:
The latest version of Skype was buggy and a disaster that have everybody downgrading to the previous version, so obviously Microsoft saw an immediate fit.
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???? Really? I use it all the time on Windows 7 and Android and don't have any problems.
 
Henning said:
???? Really? I use it all the time on Windows 7 and Android and don't have any problems.
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The new version 8(?) It's unusable - at least on OS X - and I thought on Windows, too. Leo LaPorte had everybody back down to the previous version to get them on TWiT shows and they use it all day long.
 
mikea said:
The latest version of Skype was buggy and a disaster that have everybody downgrading to the previous version, so obviously Microsoft saw an immediate fit.
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LOL, Mike. :rofl:

Plus, they overpaid for it.
 
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Can't quite figure out how they're going to get their investment back. The last owners figured out a good way, sell it to Microsoft.
 
murphey said:
Wonderful. Just wonderful. This pretty much puts into question any further development on the Mac side.
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I wouldn't count on it going away - Microsoft has been selling MS Office for the Mac forever. In fact, Microsoft Word was originally written for the Mac, before Windows even existed! (I was even using it back then, too...)

BTW, that investor group made out like bandits... $1.9 billion to $8.5 billion in 2 years? That's a pretty nice ROI...
 
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Henning said:
???? Really? I use it all the time on Windows 7 and Android and don't have any problems.
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My biggest issue with the latest version is I can't share *part* of my screen - It's all or nothing. Seriously, they took OUT features?!? :dunno: That was dumb.

They also moved everything around for no apparent reason, which was probably another thing that attracted Microsoft. :rofl:
 
murphey said:
Microsoft buying Skype.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/10/technology/microsoft_skype/index.htm?hpt=T1

Wonderful. Just wonderful. This pretty much puts into question any further development on the Mac side.
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Oh, they'll continue development. They're just planning to add secret hooks to let them record and modify your conversations without you knowing about it.

Patent application penned in 2009 and submitted this week to USPTO

Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to silently recording communications. In aspects, data associated with a request to establish a communication is modified to cause the communication to be established via a path that includes a recording agent. Modification may include, for example, adding, changing, and/or deleting data within the data. The data as modified is then passed to a protocol entity that uses the data to establish a communication session. Because of the way in which the data has been modified, the protocol entity selects a path that includes the recording agent. The recording agent is then able to silently record the communication.
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And maybe your XBox Live transmissions, among others:

As mentioned previously, traditional techniques for silently recording telephone communication may not work correctly with VoIP and other network-based communication technology. As used hereafter, the term VoIP is used to refer to standard VoIP as well as any other form of packet-based communication that may be used to transmit audio over a wireless and/or wired network. For example, VoIP may include audio messages transmitted via gaming systems, instant messaging protocols that transmit audio, Skype and Skype-like applications, meeting software, video conferencing software, and the like.
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Sometimes, a government or one of its agencies may need to monitor communications between telephone users. To do this with POTS, after obtaining the appropriate legal permission, a recording device may be placed at a central office associated with a selected telephone number. Electrical signals corresponding to sound to and from the telephones at the selected telephone number may be monitored and transformed into sound. This sound may then be recorded by the recording device without the telephone users being aware of the recording. With new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other communication technology, the POTS model for recording communications does not work.
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Briefly, aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to silently recording communications. In aspects, data associated with a request to establish a communication is modified to cause the communication to be established via a path that includes a recording agent. Modification may include, for example, adding, changing, and/or deleting data within the data. The data as modified is then passed to a protocol entity that uses the data to establish a communication session. Because of the way in which the data has been modified, the protocol entity selects a path that includes the recording agent. The recording agent is then able to silently record the communication.

This Summary is provided to briefly identify some aspects of the subject matter that is further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.
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Well-entrenched already. Lots of RFPs asking if my former employer's products provided appropriate tapping points.

(And the answer was no, we're customer premise gear that gets installed in Central Offices. Tapping is handled upstream of our devices. Have a nice day.)

Circuit-switched and core VoIP routing gear has had CALEA taps for quite a while now. Most of it flows full-time since it's expensive for carriers to switch only the traffic requested to the taps. Far simpler to just provide a full-time feed.

Customers are, of course, never told about any carrier's specific implementation of how they comply with these laws, nor given any warning that the equipment even exists, let alone that it operates 24/7.

This works to one small advantage. It's a flood of data like no other. The assumption is that the government will only have time for looking at some subset of it.

NSA runs datacenters out of power and space all the time, though. They built a nice new one in Utah for more capacity. New Mexico has some interesting stuff too. All you need is a lot of land, a direct feed from the power grid for your own substation, good access to lots of long-haul fiber optics that have extra capacity available, and oodles of money. The carriers are required to send you whatever data you want.

We happily provide government the money from our paychecks. The land, they've got. The rest is a data processing problem.

How many video cards have they bought this year? Video cards used as custom parallel processors do a great job of cracking encryption as part of a Linux supercomputing cluster.

GPU vs CPU was a game changer for the spooks years ago. Now it's already going mainstream. Here's an article on how passwords are cracked, and thinking it through logically, they're probably on the verge of being useless...

http://hackaday.com/2011/06/01/gpu-password-cracking-made-easy/

Just point that same tech en masse at weak encryption or have it sifting through VoIP traffic stored in a massive storage array, and you'll get the idea.

When they confiscate a hard disk, it probably doesn't even matter if you encrypted it with a tool like TrueCrypt. It's just going to take "them" longer to read it.
 
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