Skype

[eRentgenc]

Do You Skype?

[Randy S.]

Skype kicks ass. We use it in our business as well as at home. My partner used to spend $35-40/month on phone calls to his relatives in South Africa. Now they spend zilch. I'm randysalzman on Skype. I'm running the Mac beta version. It works very well. My partner runs it on his PC and its even better on that platform.

Randy

[Jack Michaud]

but that's pretty cool. sort of. if you subscribe to the Marxist theory of everything-you-can-do-with-your-computer-should-be-free.

I would use skype, but I have voice-over-IP phone service, so paying by the minute is a thing of the past already.

If I had friends/relatives overseas I would.

[johann]

so Jack, does that mean you're a supporter of the everything-you-do-on-the-computer-should
be a microsoft product, or a microsoft standard and that RFCs, GNU, and OSS/FSF/copyleft are bad for the industry?

horray for government support of capitalistic monopolies! </sarcasm>

[Jack Michaud]

Originally posted by johann
so Jack, does that mean you're a supporter of the everything-you-do-on-the-computer-should
be a microsoft product, or a microsoft standard and that RFCs, GNU, and OSS/FSF/copyleft are bad for the industry?

umm.... no. I'm just someone who makes a living by programming. I like to think that what I do has some monetary value.

[Mellow Yellow]

I'm a capitalist pig.. and proud of it!

Goooooo Walmart

[joecarve]

Originally posted by Mellow Yellow
I'm a capitalist pig.. and proud of it!

Goooooo Walmart

Is Wal-Mart Good for America? (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/)

joe...

PS. Code pays for gear.

[Mellow Yellow]

NPR STILL DOESN'T GET CAPITALISM

(nor does PBS)

In another hit piece today, NPR reports from its basic assumption that Wal-Mart is destroying the country and its wonderful, friendly, hometown culture. Funny how when NPR can long nostagically for the 1950s America. Today's report was about a small town in Wisconsin called, I think, Viroqua, that was able to preserve its downtown and keeps its small businesses from getting "rolled over" by Wal-Mart. Nice loaded terminology about the results of efficiency and competition. How did this Wisconsin town survive? By repairing "dilapidated" buildings and studying the market to determine what are the customer's needs and figuring out how to fill them. They discovered that they were a farming town and a little agricultural expertise in their "variety" store was a good thing.

But what NPR doesn't undrestand is that the local businessmen were operating out of dilapidated buildings and failing to serve the needs of their customers (not to mention the high prices), and this complacency did not end until Wal-Mart came to town and forced these people to compete and stop.

Tomorrow, NPR promises to look into "whether Wal-Mart's price cutting has gone too far"? Shocking question, isn't it. I guess NPR doesn't count a lot of the working poor among its listeners.

[philw]

I took a hard look at Skype a while back for some investors and irrespective of what you guys use to buy your boards, the business case is a bit kind of important. If you're trying to borrow money from people then you really need to figure out how to pay it back in most countries. Even your churches need money to run.

There are a few other interesting features of Skype, principally the claimed "distributed" directory and the proprietary tunnel approach to the VOIP protocol. When I tried it the directory didn't work (it was all hosted in Norway IIRC) the tunnel was an interesting hack, but I'd kind of rather they fixed H.323, SIP etc than go down any proprietary route. Plus there are some potential security issues with hosting other people's tunnelled communications on your machines.

Sorry, I was looking to talk about bindings...

[Baka Dasai]

Originally posted by Jack Michaud
but that's pretty cool. sort of. if you subscribe to the Marxist theory of everything-you-can-do-with-your-computer-should-be-free....I'm just someone who makes a living by programming. I like to think that what I do has some monetary value.

Seeing as approximately 90% of programmers are employed to write code for in-house applications rather than the general market, your programming employability is unlikely to be affected by the rise of Free/Open Source software.

To the extent that it is affected, your loss is the software user's gain. You're using scare words like "Marxism", but what you're really afraid of is raw capitalism being applied to your industry, i.e., cheap products and cheap labour undercutting you, just like Walmart undercuts its competitors.

As for Skype, I'd never heard of it, but it looks pretty cool and just the thing for me to keep in touch with people overseas. Gotta go out and buy a headset now...

[Hagen]

...90% of us writing applications for in house applications? Where did you get that number from? What is considered an in house application?

I myself write embedded software for consumer electronic devices. And we shure have to charge for that kind of software.

We also use GNU software and give back the sources for that software.

...the interesting thing though about GNU software is that it is not necessarily for free. E.g. if you want support for your Linux system you will have to pay for that - that's how companies in this market make some money.

I guess skype makes there money through the skypeOut service - even though they don't charge much for it...

...and last but not least IP telephony is not really free. It's more like a flat rate since you (or someone else) still have to pay for your internet access.

Just my 2 cent...

...oh and I didn't know that Marxism is a scare word.

[Randy S.]

Originally posted by Hagen
...
I guess skype makes their money through the skypeOut service - even though they don't charge much for it...

Bingo. It is cheap, but if they can get millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of users to pony up minimum 10 Euros into a debit account, they'll be doing great. I've spoken with a number of folks who use the skypeout service. Interestingly, both intend to hook up their relatives computers to the internet when they visit at Christmas so they won't have to do this any more. One is in South Africa and the other in India (I live in a part of the world with a lot of computer-literate immigrants)


...oh and I didn't know that Marxism is a scare word.

That's because you grew up in East Germany you Pinko! :p

Baka: if you have a mac, you'll need a USB headset. For PC, you'll probably need one with seperate headphone and mic jacks on it. Just thought I'd try to help.

[Baka Dasai]

Originally posted by Hagen
...90% of us writing applications for in house applications? Where did you get that number from? What is considered an in house application?

I remembered the 90% figure from an <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/ar01s03.html">article by Eric Raymond</a>, where he actually states that it is closer to 95%. But he does have a fairly loose definition of in-house. For example, I think he'd consider your embedded software as "in-house".


...oh and I didn't know that Marxism is a scare word.

It doesn't scare me, but I was thinking of the predominantly US audience.

[Hagen]

That's quite an interesting article - even though he simplifies quite a bit in there. I have seen that kind simplification quite a bit in management/marketing for the kind of products that I'm working on. That makes it sometimes hard to get products out in time because they tend to underestimate software efforts...

But I also would not agree that open/free software is bad for the software market. And there is some really good software out there that you can get for free or really cheap.

On the other side in my opinion illegally copying and using software can be bad for the software industry...