Skype

7 hours ago, Craig_​Matthews wrote

*snip*

Yes, but one of those premium services is no ads. You might not "need" the premium services, but you obviously *want* one of them -- namely, the part that removes the ads.

That part is definitely not worth $4.99/month (based on an annual subscription).

16 hours ago, swheaties wrote

wkemph, If you keep trying one day you are going to get something right.  I'm rooting for you buddy   The incursion is not advertising itself, rather the invasive gathering of personal information, the extent of which I wont detail because I have neither the time nor patience to do so.  Why do I have to explain that to you LOL.

Having said that, I will explicity say here that the sheer volume of advertising we see in the world has itself has become an incursion.  This is a different statement than what I said in my original post.  I am including all forms of media including the sides of buses and buildings, etc.

Why are you getting personal here? Did I touch a nerve?

Advertising does not automatically equal the "invasive gathering of personal information". You're hijacking the topic here. Seems you have a political agenda.

3 hours ago, FuncOfT wrote

*snip*

That part is definitely not worth $4.99/month (based on an annual subscription).

Then, as I clearly stated, you get what you (don't) pay for. The only thing remotely relevant is not wanting "offensive" ads. However, since different people take offence to different things the only way to do this would be to target ads, and then you upset people like swheaties.

So, I learned another thing today about Skype for Desktop - there is a "Compact View".  I didn't know that - I tried to disable the panel with the big video ads, but if you look at the View menu, there's checkboxes next to Skype Home and Profile, so I thought you should just uncheck them, but the checkboxes actually act like radio buttons, in that you must have one selected.  I didn't even notice the "Compact View" option just a bit further down.  So, now I can tolerate the smaller banner ad in compact view.  Acceptable.  I apologize for not realizing that sooner.

17 minutes ago, wkempf wrote

*snip*

Then, as I clearly stated, you get what you (don't) pay for. The only thing remotely relevant is not wanting "offensive" ads. However, since different people take offence to different things the only way to do this would be to target ads, and then you upset people like swheaties.

I'm a 38 year old male, who doesn't have any interest in ads with kids at a rave or half-naked pop stars, especially at work, so yeah, some targeting - the basics, like age considerations is fine.

1 hour ago, FuncOfT wrote

*snip*

I'm a 38 year old male, who doesn't have any interest in ads with kids at a rave or half-naked pop stars, especially at work, so yeah, some targeting - the basics, like age considerations is fine.

If you're at work, get your boss to pay the $5/mo. The cost of your time when you're watching adverts is more than $5/mo unless you're secretly working in a sweat-shop in the Philippines.

In fact, the cost to your business of you popping your head round his door and asking the question and him saying "yeah - I'll do that now" will cost more than the subscription for the entire year just in raw salary terms.

2 hours ago, Bass wrote

Skype is not going to magically stop sucking because you made a thread about it on Channel9. A better idea is not stop the fruitless bitching and use something better, like Google Voice. Problem solved.

Does Google Voice provide VoIP and Video calling service now? I've been using Google Voice for three years, and the only thing I've ever seen it do is act as an inbound/outbound call broker for existing voice service from elsewhere. If Google Voice has VoIP and Video calling now, Google needs to fire their marketing department because I'm not seeing anything about this anywhere in Google Voice.

Let me clarify something; now that I know how to use "Compact View", my complaints are now a non-issue.  At the moment, there's not even a small banner ad, at least in passive mode.

@Craig_Matthews:

I've used Google+ to do video chat before, and it even supports screen sharing. It's also part of "Google Chat" software. Why Google poorly markets this sort of stuff is anyone's guess.

8 minutes ago, Bass wrote

@Craig_Matthews:

I've used Google+ to do video chat before, and it even supports screen sharing. It's also part of "Google Chat" software. Why Google poorly markets this sort of stuff is anyone's guess.

The problem isn't that they don't market Google Chat as part of Google+. The problem is that nobody wants to use Google+.

@cbae:

That's unfortunate.

LOL! Google has Voice over IP, but it's not part of their Voice product and is instead part of a separate instant messaging program and their video chat is in their social networking page, leaving Google Voice to not really have much to do with voice calling except to act as a telephone operator for existing phones. I wonder if Google and Microsoft share marketing/branding teams.

2 days ago, evildictait​or wrote

*snip*

I remember in the olden days when people paid for stuff they were "the customer is always right", and you were treated with respect because you might buy something from the store.

We seem to have sleepwalked into a world where people believe paying for services and content online is abnormal.

In capitalism, you get what you pay for. If you're not paying, you're either getting a crap product or you are the product.

Skype would be better if it cost you $1 a month to run, because then Microsoft would have a way of making money from it without wasting your time with adverts.

++

Skype is a live messenger, it allows users to communicate with peers by voice using a microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over the Internet. Even that skype users can also talk free through phones.

Jan 08, 2013 at 5:51 PM, wkempf wrote

"If you don't pay for it, you are the product." No one is being conditioned to accept continued incursions. Advertising is a necessary alternative to paid services. Always has been, and always will be. No, what's changing is that we, as customers, are becoming less willing to actually pay for anything. As such, we're getting what we've asked for.

Skype (real time video and audio, at least) is p2p. It costs Microsoft jack to run, except a few login servers.

@dahat: The actual calls (video and audio) are still routed p2p afaik. I think the supernode network just handles locating users and sending ims (which also used to be p2p but were changed to improve reliability and allow offline message and, for those of use with tin foil hats, allow easier law enforcement access).

EDIT: In fact, the MS spokesperson in that article is quoted as saying:

This has not changed the underlying nature of Skype's peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, in which supernodes simply allow users to find one another (calls do not pass through supernodes)

(And quite honestly I don't want that to change...)

10 minutes ago, GoddersUK wrote

(And quite honestly I don't want that to change...)

I don't think MS does either.

If you route the calls through Microsoft servers then

(1) you have to pay for crap-tons of bandwidth to handle all of this increased traffic that is ridiculously latency sensitive,

(2) you add a route to the call (previously me -> you, now me -> MSFT -> you) upping the latency

(3) it's unpopular, because people will assume you are playing shenanigans with their data - so you'll lose customers such as citizens who believe the US government wants to listen to them speaking with their mum and foreign governments who know that the US government wants to listen to them speaking with their mum.

(4) even if you wanted to play shenanigans with the data, it's very high volume, it's all analogue and most conversations over Skype aren't good for generating digital targetted advertising, so it's probably unprofitable for Microsoft to play shenanigans with the data, even if it wanted to.

(5) playing shenanigans with the data would also be at direct odds with Microsoft's whole stance on privacy and would be overtly hypocritical given their ads against Google.

(6 ) it draws unwanted attention from other people who want the conversations for reasons other than targeted advertising (such as the FBI). Although we can debate all day whether it's good or bad for the FBI to have more data to target, the basic fact is that it's bad for Microsoft, because they have to do more work and it doesn't generate money.

Summary: Routing the data is expensive, unnecessary, unpopular and gets unwanted attention from the FBI and police and unwanted assumptions leading to lost sales from other governments and citizens.

So no. I don't think this will happen any time soon.