Hubert Chathi

Apparently, both AOL/ICQ and Yahoo! have been doing some stuff with Jabber/XMPP. It seems that AOL has set up a test server so that you can log into AIM/ICQ with a Jabber client (Jabber Wiki instructions). It's just a small test server, so it may not work all the time (I haven't been able to log in yet), but it is a positive sign. Who knows? Maybe by next year, AOL will federate, meaning that AIM/ICQ users will be able to chat seamlessly with any Jabber user. That includes Google Talk, Live Journal, etc. That means that we'll be one step closer to having one single instant messaging network, instead of ... well, over 10.

The most common analogy people use is the email network. You can send an email from GMail, to Hotmail, or AOL, or Yahoo!, or any other network, without any problems (modulo spam filtering, etc.) But you can't chat from Google Talk, to MSN, or AIM, or ICQ, or YIM. If all the networks used Jabber and allowed federating, like Google does, then we would be able to chat between the networks.

AOL is, surprisingly, becoming more open to open standards recently. First, they're trying out OpenID (although it seems that ICQ accounts don't have an OpenID), and now Jabber. Or perhaps, it's not too surprising. AOL used to be the big boy on the Internet, but they're losing market share. Perhaps they're hoping that embracing open standards will help them regain some position. I hope that they do, so that they can set the example for others.

Yahoo! is also experimenting with Jabber, but in this case, they're just using it to power their chatrooms at their live.yahoo.com site. This means that they're much farther away from using Jabber for their instant messaging service. But it's still encouraging.

It makes sense to use an open protocol, rather than invent your own. There are many already-built tools that you can use, rather than having to write everything from scratch.

Neuros technology has reached a milestone: they have reached the beta of the Neuros OSD. The Neuros OSD is a media recorder/player that can record and play video and audio files from removable memory (e.g. compact flash or SD cards). It’s kind of like a digital VCR. A VCR that you can used to transfer media to your cell phone, iPod, PSP, laptop, etc...

What’s most interesting about this device is that it was designed in part by the community, and it’s an open platform. That means that if someone comes up with a wacky new use of the OSD (or just wants to include new media formats), you won’t have to wait for the vendor to support it. Anyone can upgrade the firmware. And the vendor actually encourages people to do wacky things with it. This makes the OSD almost a cross between a general purpose computer and a consumer electronics device.

If I had $300 (CAD) sitting in my wallet waiting to be used, and I was more into media, I would probably be pre-ordering one of the Gamma units (since the Beta is sold out). As it is, though, I don’t have that kind of money, and media isn’t a priority for me (I haven’t even used my VCR for maybe about a year).

What I’m looking forward to, though, is the Neuros III, which is the third revision of the Neuros Audio Computer. I currently own the first revision (it was the first portable audio player to support the Ogg Vorbis format). The Neuros III will run on similar hardware to the OSD, and will go through a similar process of community-based design. And the preliminary specs look pretty nice so far. I guess it’s time for me to start saving up...

(By the way, I’m currently using Darren Smith’s gapless ogg firmware on my Neuros, and it’s working wonderfully.)

Yet another large player has decided to embrace Jabber. LiveJournal is integrating Jabber into their system (stpeter), which means that every LiveJournal user now has a Jabber account (although it’s still being tested). In addition to straight chat, it will also allow users to post new entries via Jabber, as well as to receive notifications of new posts via Jabber. It’s nice to see that they’re not only supporting Jabber, but also trying out new things with it.

LiveJournal also supports OpenID, an open identification system (so that you can sign into sites that support OpenID, you don’t have to fill in yet another registration form, or worry about your username being already taken). So if anyone is interested in starting a blog, I’d recommend LiveJournal over something like Blogger.

The LiveJournal folks have also implemented their own Jabber server, written in ... Perl?! It seems like a pretty neat system (despite the Perl) — everything is implemented as a module, which should make it pretty flexible.

This looks neat. (stpeter) Make phone calls using Jabber. It has decent rates too (0.022 USD/min, for Canadian numbers). Now, I’m just waiting for the Psi Jingle branch to be merged in.

(I’m hoping for an XMPP/SIP transport, too.)

Google has finally opened their Google Talk servers to support server-to-server connections. (ralphm, melo, stpeter, pgmillard, 3pBlog) This means that Google Talk users can talk to the rest of the Jabber world (which means I can now recommend Google Talk to people). Users of Google Talk can now add me to their roster: my Jabber ID is hubert@uhoreg.ca.

As a followup to my previous post about Jingle, Jingle (and Jingle audio) are now official JEPs (albeit experimental status) (stpeter, Hal Rottenberg) Psi has pledged to support it, although probably it won’t happen for a while. But I’m still looking forward to it. (IMHO, Psi is the best Jabber client out there.) And of course Google, being a co-author of the standard, is supporting it. Interestingly, Digium (the guys behind Asterisk telephony) also pledged support, which probably means we will be seeing a Jingle/IAX gateway at some point. Although I’m sure the Digium guys are more creative than me when it comes to figuring out what Jabber can do for Asterisk.

Update: (at 19:29 -0500) The Google Talk blog also mentions Jingle, and Google has released libjingle, their implementation that they use in Google Talk, and released under a BSD-style license. With libjingle released, this should help speed up Jingle support in Jabber components. (Now I’m just waiting for Google to support s2s communication in their servers.)

Update: (at 21:18 -0500) Apparently, there is now a development version of Psi that supports Jingle voice chat. It’s not yet stable, but it’s a start.

It looks like Jabber is finally getting (standardized) voice chat. (Hal Rottenberg) And it seems to be based on GTalk’s voice chat. (Thanks Google!) The JEP editor has announced two new submitted JEPs: Jingle Signaling and Jingle Audio, which are co-authored by Google staff. Hopefully, these will be implemented soon in the clients and servers, and someone implements a Jingle/SIP gateway.

Pretty much anyone who’s been paying any attention knows that the big record labels are trying to prevent people from copying CDs (and anyone who really cares already knows that the methods used by the labels are easy to get around). Most recent ones install software on your computer (usually only on Windows) and only allows you to play the music through their software (denying Americans of their “fair use” rights). The software installed by Sony actually compromises your computer’s security. (Washington Post, Schneier, Schneier followup, The Register, Freedom to Tinker, /., /. followup, The Inquirer, PC Pro, Wikipedia, Muzzy).

Mark Russinovich discovered a rootkit on his system; further analysis revealed that it was installed by a CD published by Sony. The rootkit, among other things, hides files whose names start with $sys$, and apparently, trying to remove the rootkit, or other parts of the software that they install, kills Windows. In response, Sony releases a service pack that claims to remove the software, and claims that the rootkit does not pose any security threat. (But any software that is able to hide files from the system is an open door to malicious use.) However, despite claiming that the service pack removes the software, it simply installs a newer version that has the $sys$-masking disabled. (The Inquirer, Freedom to Tinker, /.)

The whole thing has resulted in lawsuits from California (/.) and Italy, and an investigation from the Italian police.

And despite Sony’s claims that the software poses no threat, a trojan has been discovered that uses Sony’s rootkit to hide itself. (/.)

And their service pack for uninstalling the rootkit opens up another security hole. First of all, in order to obtain the service pack (which Sony seems to intentionally make it hard for customers to do), you must install an ActiveX control, which gathers information about your hardware, which has serious privacy implications. Next, it turns out that the ActiveX control actually allows any webpage that you visit to install and run any code it wants. (Washington Post, Schneier, /.) It sounds like the cure is worse than the disease. Fortunately, some people have written a tool that secures your computer against the software.

Finally, Sony decided to stop production of CDs with the rootkit, ( /.) and pulled it from store shelves and offer exchanges to anyone who bought a CD with the rootkit on it. ( /.) This happened two weeks after the rootkit was initially discovered. And Sony has still offered no way to properly remove the rootkit if you already have it installed.

Sony has been criticized by the Department of Homeland Security, and Microsoft, who have said that they will remove the rootkit.

It has also appears that Sony’s software may also infringe on other people’s copyright. (/., /.) Oh, the irony of infringing on other peoples’ copyright in an effort to protect your own.

Freedom to Tinker has instructions on how to remove Sony’s software. But to play it safe, it’s probably a good idea to stop buying CDs from Sony, because you never know what they’re going to try to pull in the future. In fact, it’s probably best to stop buying Sony products at all.

Schneier has a more detailed column in Wired.

And remember, the next time you put an audio CD in your Windows machine, hold down the Shift button. That will prevent software from being automatically run on your computer. Then you can use a program like CDex to copy the music onto your computer and listen to it at will.

This Sunday, we will be setting our clocks back an hour. In two years, Québec and Ontario (and maybe other provinces as well) will be doing it a week later, as both provinces have decided to follow the U.S. lead in extending Daylight Saving Time (assumably for business reasons). (/.) This means that "standard" time will now be observed for less of the year than daylight time. Surely there must be better ways of dealing with energy consumption that making these ridiculous changes to timekeeping.

A group, organized by Britain’s Royal Society, has released the Adelphi Charter on creativity, innovation, and intellectual property, which outlines principles for how patents, trademarks, and copyrights should be handled. (Royal Society press release, Economist, Guardian, /.) The charter calls for a return to balance between ensuring that ideas are publicly available, and rewarding authors and inventors.

It appears the USPTO has dropped the requirement that patents be under “technological arts” in a 3-2 decision by the Board of Patent Appeals. (/.) This greatly widens the scope of patents in the U.S. It looks like patent law in the U.S. will just get worse, before it gets better. Hopefully, the patent situation will become completely ridiculous, so the government will be forced to reform the system.

There is now a second player in the Jabber+VoIP arena, and this one is open source. First, there was Google Talk (which still doesn’t communicate with other Jabber servers), who say they are eventually going to document their protocol, and have recently hired the main Gaim developer. Now Tipic has announced an open source Jabber+voice+video software. The software is said to be able to interoperate with SIP and H.323 software, and uses speex as the default audio codec and theora as the default video codec, but is not yet available for download (despite the first line of the press release claiming that it is immediately available).

Two questions that aren’t answered is what protocol it uses for VoIP (hopefully TINS to set up an RTP connection, but maybe something different), and whether or not it will interoperate with Google Talk’s protocol (probably not).

Hopefully this means that we will soon have voice/video capabilities in Jabber clients and servers. Although it wouldn’t be good if it used a nonstandard protocol, which would just confuse things even more.

A few instant messaging news items and links:

Microsoft and Yahoo! may be merging their IM networks. (/., Sneakin’s blog, Peter Saint-Andre) This will allow users of MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger to communicate with each other. Why not just go all the way, and just use Jabber? (Because then they would lose control of their networks, and they would actually have to play nice with other people.)

This guy is complaining about the lack of modern features in Linux IM clients. (/.) Modern features such as nudging. <shudder> On the other hand, I do agree with the fact that the free IM interfaces are missing certain important features. None of the Jabber transports support file transfers yet. Jabber doesn’t yet have an established voice/video protocol, or whiteboarding protocol. Or even end-to-end encryption and signatures. Or even a standard way of setting avatars. One bad thing about being an open standard is that adding new features takes longer.

Apparently, there’s a Christian IM network now. (Sneakin’s blog) As a Christian myself, all I can say is: huh? Why do you need to create a separate Christian IM network?

Update @ 17:15 -0400: Google has hired the main Gaim developer. (Gaim news, /.) Apparently this means that work is being done on making Google Talk’s voice features accessible to other Jabber clients. (gaim-vv is also being merged into the mainline Gaim tree.)

IBM Research celebrated its 60th anniversary on Tuesday. (/.) IBM is one of the few big computer companies still investing in research. Most have turned into just product manufacturers.

Remind me not to go to London any time soon. (Schneier, /.) I guess the Americans aren’t the only ones capable of overreacting.

Switchfoot’s latest CD recently hit the shelves. Unfortunately, Sony got their hands on it and slapped their copy control software on it, which prompted Switchfoot to apologize and offer instructions for circumventing the copy control. (/.) The workaround is simple: for Windows, just disable autorun, which can be done temporarily by holding Shift when you pop in the disc. Or you can disable autorun permanently (which is probably a good idea to do anyways, because you never know what copy-controlled CDs you’ll have in the future). For Mac or Linux users, nothing special needs to be done; you can copy from those operating systems without problems.

The purpose of record labels is so that artists do not have to worry about the nitty gritty of distributing music. The labels should be working for the artists; the artists shouldn’t have to be fighting the labels. Otherwise, what’s the point of having a label?

Unfortunately, it may be too late for Switchfoot, at least for this album, unless they can get out of whatever contract they signed with Sony. Most of the other major labels also have a policy of putting copy control on their major CD releases. Fortunately, there are some labels that aren’t evil, but they are much smaller, and can’t offer the same exposure as the big guys.

This situation also puts American Switchfoot fans in a questionable legal position. By circumventing the copy control scheme, fans are violating section 1201(a) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Google has officially launched its long-rumoured instant messaging service. (Google press release, /.) As expected by most in the industry, it is based on the Jabber protocol (a.k.a. XMPP), which is an open protocol that, like email, allows users to communicate with people on other servers.

Unfortunately, at the current time, it looks like Google Talk can’t communicate with other Jabber servers. With Google talking so much about interoperability and choice, I hope that this is just a temporary problem, and that they will open it up to other Jabber servers. If that happens, you Google Talk users out there can add me to your contact lists: uhoreg@amessage.info.

Google Talk also features voice chatting, using a custom Jabber-based protocol. However, Google says that they are planning on documenting the protocol, and hopefully they will make it into a JEP so that other Jabber clients can use it.

In short, it’s exciting news that a big company like Google is embracing an open instant messaging protocol. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of the interoperability problems that we have with all the different protocols — Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, MSN, Gadu Gadu, etc. But we’ll have to see if Google really is open to other Jabber servers (which I would expect to be the case).

The FCC has announced a new rule that will require broadband providers and device manufacturers to provide the FBI with a backdoor. (/.) Now we just have to wait for someone to figure out the backdoor (or a disgruntled Cisco employee to leak it), and we can enjoy watching the panic that happens when supposedly secure data becomes public.

Stallman was right. Several publishers are now introducing textbooks that are restricted using DRM. (/.) For a mere 33% discount off the print-copy price, students will be able to download an electronic version that expires after 150 days (or a little under 5 months). That means that students won’t be able to refer to their textbook later on, or to resell the books (which can be better than a 33% discount). The publishers are essentially saying that their books are useless for anything outside the scope of the course. (Of course, I have some textbooks that I will never refer to again — and several textbooks that I have never looked at, even when I was taking the course.)

Parents are increasingly using technology to monitor their children. (Schneier) As Schneier says, “This is security based on fear, not reason. And I think people who act this way make their families less safe.” Society has become much more insular and fearful. Instead of raising our kids to be able to fend for themselves, and to be able to make good decisions, we may be raising a generation of hermits, who are afraid to talk to anyone for fear of what may happen to them.

Some sanity has returned to the Canadian copyright situation. The Supreme Court has refused to hear further arguments, which means that the levy on digital audio players has been struck down CBC. (/.) Now we just need to get rid of the levy on recordable digital media like CD-Rs.