[dundee] 'Win32 is the path to the dark side. Xp leads to anger. Anger leads to Vista. Vista leads to suffering.'

[Andrew Clayton]

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 13:43:31 +0000, Colin Brough wrote:

[snip]

> Did anything ever come of this research? I wasn't able to be there on
> the night you met - Thursdays aren't good for me. A friend of mine has
> a projector that I often borrow, and could conceivably let us have
> from time to time. Churches are one place who sometimes have cheap
> hall lets - depends on how central you want to make it. Internet
> access is trickier, especially broadband.
> 
> Topics
> 
>  - getting skype up and running! Another friend in China wants to chat
>    to me using skype and I've never used it...

I must point out the problems with Skype (Lets face it, it is from the
people behind Kaza!), closed source, proprietary protocols. An extensive analysis of Skype has been done:
http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-europe-06/bh-eu-06-biondi/bh-eu-06-biondi-up.pdf

There are much nicer means available. SIP probably being the main one.
On Linux there is at least, Ekiga (formally gnomemeeting), Linphone and
Kphone.

There is X-Lite for windows as well as netmeeting (H.323, works with
Ekiga)

Mac likely has similar things available.

Of course you could just use some hardware SIP based VoIP phone.

A cheap option would be
http://www.sipgate.co.uk/voipshop/sipgate/sg-hs100b

A more expensive option would be a full on phone (no pc/laptop/etc
required). Personally I have a Cisco 7960 (with the SIP firmware)
with a sipgate.co.uk account.

So for example if you both had VoIP phones with sipgate (or some
other provider) accounts then you'd talk for free basically, other than
your usual ADSL/Cable/etc fees... of course you can also make and
receive PSTN calls (UK and Internationally).

You could also use Asterisk and basically just create a closed loop
between yourselves. Your SIP phones (hardware or software) would just
register with your asterisk server.

>  - the old window manager / desktop environment is good - especially
>    if we can demo a few and let people play with them with someone who
>    knows how to do stuff around.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Colin
> 


Andrew


-- 
Jack Bauer once won a game of Connect 4 in 3 moves.