Jamie's Random Musings
Various thoughts and adventures, including but not limited to Linux, Windows XP and Widows Vista, and assorted bits of hardware new and old.
Wednesday 11 November 2009, 7:33 AM
Taking Out the Skype Garbage
1. The recent "settlement" of Skype's supposed legal problems. If you have read my blog before, you know what I think about that whole situation. If you believe those "problems" were real, or that the whole thing was anything other than a pre-planned and carefully orchestrated campaign to get a maximum amount of free publicity, I believe that you have been duped. Now that it is all "settled", the world is supposed to breathe a collective sigh of relief and absolutely everyone, from your great-grandmother to the world's largest corporations, should all immediately start using Skype. Right.
2. If you do choose to use Skype, make sure that you keep an eye on the performance of your computer and your internet connection. I have just heard again from someone who noticed that whenever he had Skype running on his (very powerful) system, the CPU load and the internet bandwidth use went up dramatically. Massively. He did a lot of research to determine why, and everything led clearly and without doubt back to Skype. It would appear that Skype decides to use his computer as a "Super Node" in their P2P network, of course without asking permission or informing him of that decision. But what does that actually mean, and what is Skype actually doing when it takes control of a computer in that way? No one knows. The bottom line is, if you have Skype running, be very alert for changes in the system performance, and keep eye on your internet use. If you have a router with activity LEDs on it, position it so that it will catch your eye if they start to blink madly, especially when you are not otherwise doing anything of significance on the internet.
Oh, and one last note. I am sad to report that Skype marketing's campaign to foist the bogus "XXX million registered users" number on the world has been totally successful. That garbage number is now parroted with question by any and every reporter, "analyst" and blogger who writes anything about Skype. This is clear and indisputable proof that no matter how outrageous your claims, if you repeat them often enough, they will be accepted as truth.
jw 11/11/2009
PreviousComments on this post
Hey Jamie,
I do find Skype to be very useful in practice, so don't have too much of a problem with it. Although I agree with you that they are surely an organisation that would not shirk at the opportunity to orchestrate some PR using the 'any publicity is good publicity' technique.
It's a shame, but it's probably only users who are aware of issues such as CPU binning that would look for the negative effects of this kind of thing upon their system. What can we do to raise the general awareness of these topics among relatively non-technical users?
AdrianB
Hi Adrian. You are certainly not alone in finding Skype useful, and I am certainly in an extremely small minority in finding them objectionable, disgusting and disgraceful. Ah well.
Raising the awareness of non-technical users to these issues, especially of Skype stealing resources from their users without warning or notification, is exactly what I was thinking about, and trying to do, with the suggestion about positioning your router so that the LEDs are visible. To be honest, that was exactly the way that I noticed that something was going on the first time that Skype decided to use one of my systems as a Super Node - I happened to notice the router blinking like crazy when I thought everything was idle.
What else can be done? I considered trying to explain how to get to the Windows Task Manager / Performance meter, but even I am not silly enough to think that many people would do that. Subjective evaluations of "sluggish performance" are generally not very good either, with one noteworthy exception - serious gamers. Going all the way back to when I was very active in the Skype forums, it was almost always gamers who came in saying "I loaded Skype and my computer slowed way down". It was also a serious gamer who just wrote to me about Skype problems.
I'm afraid there isn't much else that can be done to raise awareness of this. The days of pay-by-volume internet connections are gone, and that was the one area where this kind of thing would get people's attention quickly, because it would hit them in the wallet.
jw
P.S. Speaking of any publicity is good publicity, I think that is particularly true of the entire dire-sounding scenario is orchestrated and has a pre-ordained "happy ending"
This comment has been deleted at the users request
Hey guys, I've just downloaded googles video talk set up, but not installed yet. Is this a viable contender?
Hi Roger, At the moment Google is a viable alternative in certain places and situations, most commonly when you want to be able to communicate with a known circle of friends and contacts. But it doesn't yet have the overall range and flexibility of the more mature video chat programs. That is very likely to change with Google's recent acquisition of Gizmo, though.
This is pure speculation, but I don't think Google is done with acquisitions in this market yet. With Gizmo they got excellent SIP and VoIP technology, but the video chat was not one of the best. I suspect that Google will eventually pick up one of the few remaining independent video chat products.
If you do decide to give Google video a try, let us know what you think of it.
jw
There'a no alternative to Skype in Linux
Of course there is, it's just a question of how much you want, and how flexible you and your contacts are. If you only want text chat, there are LOTS of alternatives. If you want audio chat, there is Gizmo5 for example. If you want audio and/or video chat, Ekiga is an alternative. Also, both Pidgin and Ekiga are undergoing continuous development and improvement and are adding important features with each new release.
If you absolutely have to talk to people who are only on Skype, then for the time being there are no reasonable alternatives on Linux that I know of. But that is Skype's fault, not Linux. Skype are the ones who refuse to open their communication space to other clients (and then are continuously whinging about "network neutrality" when it comes to wireless carriers). Don't bother to bring up the latest B.S. issued by Skype about an "open source" Linux client.
jw
Hi Jamie,
I use only Linux. I need to do video calls with some people. I don't know whose fault it is, but only Skype just works on Linux.
I tried Ekiga. Most times it doesn't work. Pidgin, Amsn, Kopete don't work. I tried Empathy with Google Talk, it doesn't work. It has a lot of bugs.
If there was an opensource alternative, I would use it for sure. But let's be realistic. There isn't. Even if it's not open sourse, I can only say "thank you" to Skype. Because it covers a huge gap in Linux.
And I don't think that it's Skype's fault. Open source world hasn't been able to develop an independent alternative so far.
There are a lot for Windows. Msn, Yahoo messenger etc. Nothing for Linux. It's sad.
