Re: Skype access cancelled for Debian versions before 7

[Bret Busby <bret.busby@gmail.com>]

On 04/08/2014, Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Bret Busby <bret.busby@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 03/08/2014, Joel Rees <joel.rees@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sun, Aug 3, 2014 at 7:42 AM, Bret Busby <bret.busby@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 03/08/2014, Andrew McGlashan
>>>> <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On 3/08/2014 4:39 AM, Brian wrote:
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> And the reason I decided to respond was to ask your reason for not
>>> wanting to use wheezy. Or, rather, if your reason is more important
>>> than your need to communicate cheap.
>>>
>>
>> It is not a matter of communicating cheap.
>>
>> The ADSL/landline phone package that we have, includes free calls
>> within this country, and, free landline calls to the countries that we
>> are most likely to call.
>>
>> It is the videocalls facility - a technology that is way underused -
>> "I don't want people to see what I really look like".
>
> There are other reasons for not using video. (In my case, about a
> thousand yen a month to raise my fundamental bandwidth, which won't do
> much good because so many of the home routers here are, shall we just
> say, cheap, and lately there has been a lot of low-level-protocol
> amplified noise. (Assumed intentional, as in skriptkiddies trying to
> prove their cred, but I'm not going to lay all the blame on the
> skriptkiddies when the routers shouldn't have been vulnerable in the
> first place.)
>

Yeah, okay.

But, some people with whom I have communicated, do not want others to
see them, when they are talking to them.

And, to me, Skype was a wonderful facility - video calls are a
wonderful opportunity, of which people who do not have bandwidth
issues, have been reluctant to take up.

And, yes, they were free, but, what landline telecommunications
service, offers video calls as part of its service (and, without
phenomenally high fees)? And, that are platform (and, network)
independent, thus allowing a person subscribed to one
telecommunications provider, the ability to freely (without
obstruction, rather than free of charge) communicate with anyone the
person wants, regardless of what equipment (including software), and,
telecommunications service provider, the other person is using?

Okay, Skype is proprietary software, and, it is now owned by one of
the most disreputable companies in the world, which is now shown to
have taken it over, for malicious reasoning, including disrupting
communications and attempted forcing assimmilation, but, while Skype
2.2 was usable, it was a wonderful thing.

And, with the video-conferencing facility (whilst the new Skype, is
apparently, limited to 10 nodes, it should be able, with development,
to be expanded), is a wonderful opportunity to allow virtual, visual,
attendance at distant meetings, and, here in Australia, with its
distances, we have local, state, and federal governments ( a massively
over-governed, in terms of levels and chambers of governments, and,
far too many bludging members of each level of government), that could
hold their sittings, using video-conferencing, if it was adequately
developed, instead of costing the country, thousands of millions of
dollars in unnecessary travel with little worthwhile outcome.

>> I assume that wheezy is Debian 7.
>
> Yeah.
>
>> I have Debian 6 set up, and, whilst I have a more powerful computer
>> with Debian 7 installed on it, Debian 7 appears to be "not up to
>> scratch" when compared to Debian 6.
>
> As in, ...

I believe that I previously said, it does not have iceape, and, other
functionality, that Debian 6 has (had). See reference below, to the
lack of iceape, in Debian 7.

>
>> I have now managed to get the Debian 7 computer working with LXDE -
>> GNOME 2 is not available for Debian 7, but, LXDE wil probably do - it
>> is the best desktop environment (insofar as suitability for me, is
>> concerned) that I have so far found.
>
> I feel your pain. Gnome 2 was useable.
>
> XFCE is not unuseable, however. Well, not entirely.
>

I tried it, and, did not like it, so tried LXDE, and, much prefer LXDE.

>> But, Debian 7 does not have iceape, and, Seamonkey is too dificult to
>> get working.And, so, I will likely continue to use Debian 6, as my
>> primary operating system, until an acceptable version of Debian, is
>> available, with iceape (iceape seems to be excluded from one version,
>> then reappears in a later version, then is excluded, then
>> reappears...).
>

There its is - I was sure that I had mentioned it, somewhere....

> I like sylpheed, sort-of, but google's filters that don't really do
> what I want, but make it a little easier to just ignore the arcanities
> of e-mail filtering, well, they are addicting, I guess.
>

I use alpine (formerly known as pine) - very powerful filtering, as
long as a user keeps within its limitations ( a filter cann not exceed
2kb, form memory, and, some of my ((few hundred or so) filters, have
pages of field values). From what I understand, alpine is the safest,
and, most powerful, email application. I just haven't managed to get
return receipt requests (one of the reasons for my liking for iceape),
and, the spell-checker (another reason for my liking iceape), working.

The email facility in Opera, is good, for sending email, and, I
sometimes use that, but, iceape has its distinct advantages.

> I admit that I have a lot of mail archives in various formats sitting
> around, waiting for me to write a good program to decode them (much of
> the mail contains a lot of shift-JIS characters) and automatically
> layout a good set of directories so I can search through them
> reasonably.
>
>> So, I will continue to use Debian 6 for most of my stuff, and, may use
>> Debian 7 from time to time.
>>
>>>> With the Skype 2.2 (beta), running on Debian 6, I was able to connect
>>>> successfully, and, successfully make videocalls, with people running
>>>> Linux, and, with people running MS Windows.
>>>>
>>>> It worked, so Microsoft broke it.
>>>> [...]
>>>
>>> And you knew that was going to happen. Or you should have known.
>>> Anyway, you definitely know now.
>>
>> No, I had no advanced warning, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
>>
>> But, I know now, and, have lost access to videocalls.
>>
>> Annoying.
>
> I guess you didn't really want to believe that Microsoft's management
> will never, ever let engineering put out good product, and if they do,
> will absolutely never let them maintain it? (The OS, of course, is not
> good product. Maintaining it is one of their revenue streams, even
> though home users sort-of get the updates for free.)
>

A thing that gets me, about that, is that I found Windows 8, to be
simply, too difficult to use. It seems to have been designed to be
left turned off (although, there is the famous Microsoft Windows
security paradigm - "The blue screen of death, is a security measure -
once the operating system has crashed and is inoperable, it is
unusable, so, no-one can "hack" into it", so, the simple way to make
MS Windows safe, is to leave it turned off).

>>> So, you can build your own chat application if you want, including
>>> video and audio. The entertainment and communication industries are
>>> trying their hardest to prevent you from getting hardware that isn't
>>> roped and tied to IP-laden standards, but you can still do it. All you
>>> have to do is convince the people you need to communicate with to use
>>> your application.
>>>
>>
>> I do not have the skills.
>>
>> And, I am now too old, and past it, to learn skills like that.
>
> Can you wire up a web cam? Show the person you want to talk with how
> to do the same?
>

I have managed to be able to do that.

> Take it a few steps at a time, get the connection working, then play
> with basic authentication, then add https into the mix, with
> self-signed certs. And if you're planning on monitoring an elderly
> relative, maybe you'll need to write a little filter that does a
> little byte-order scramble of the data stream, eventually.
>

It is the scripting, that would be beyond me. I am getting to close to
being "the elderly relative who needs monitoring".

> How many different people do you want to be able to video chat with?
> What's your purpose? Figure out what you want to do, and you probably
> don't need skype at all.
>

Relatives and acquaintances (for me), would be good, and, some people
of whom I have no knowledge. I have immediate family members in a
couple of countries, that I might not even recognise, now, not having
seen them for a while, and, distant relatives (I have been into
genealogical research), in various countries around the world.

I had tried, when I was allowed to use Skype, to make contact with
possible distant blood realtives, in multiple countries. Whilst, so
far, I had only achieved "chat" (I think it is now named "instant
messaging", and, is a bit like "talk" or "write" was, in UNIX, I think
- I had, years ago, used it on AIX, I think, on a system that had elm
and pine,, and, possibly, about 35 years ago, on BSD 4.2)
communications, with some of the people with whom I had tried to make
contact, using Skype, video calls, could have shown possible
similarities in appearance, which, with possible distant relatives,
could be quite interesting.

I believe that video calls, whilst an "unrealised" resource, have
great potential for comunicating with both people known to a person,
and, with people unknown to a person.

For about 40 years now, I think, video calls have featured in Sci-Fi
movies and programs, and, whilst the technology has been being
developed, it is one of those things that I believe people still have
difficulty accepting, and, apparently, regard it like the "that magic
box is stealing my soul - destroy it and burn the evil witch
(including both male and female genders) using it" approach to
photography.

Unfortunately, when I now have my ADSL access changed to unlimited
quota, thus allowing unrestricted use of Skype, at, more or less the
same time, Skype (Microsoft) has said "screw you, we are not allowing
you to use Skype any more, now that you could otherwise use it,
extensively".

>>> Or update your OS or get a separate machine to dedicate to an
>>> "ordinary user" level OS or something.
>>>
>>
>> I have another computer, as mentioned above, that runs Debian 7, and,
>> it gets powered up, sometimes. Using that, for something like Skype,
>> is a bit like having a landline, and, plugging the phone in, for an
>> hour or so, each week, or each month.
>
> Skype wasn't originally a bad company. But good companies don't last
> in this world. They tend to get bought by the Microsofts, et. al., who
> always ultimately need revenue streams to skim. That's why RMS
> invented the GPL.
>

Ah, yes, but it is best that I do not, here, go into what happened to
Star Office 5.x . Wonderful thing, that was, with its functionality.

> And why the big companies work so hard to pervert it.
>
>>> (I don't use skype, in spite of my sister's hints, because, as much as
>>> possible, I don't want anything Microsoft touches on my stuff. When
>>> wheezy goes unsupported and the only upgrade path contains systemd,
>>> I'll have a hard choice to make. Hopefully, I'll be ready to use
>>> openbsd on a daily basis by then. If not, I may decide to use skype
>>> after all.)
>>>
>>
>> I will likely continue to use Debian 6, long after its support ends. I
>> have a Debian 5 computer, running, as it runs an application upon
>> which I rely (although, no doubt, the wisdom of my continued use of
>> the unsupported application, which is not available on Debian 7, and,
>> I think, on Debian 6, running on the unsupported operating system
>> version, would likely be challenged)
>
> I had Mac OS X 10.4 hosting my personal web site for about six years
> after apple quit supporting it. It was behind a firewall, but I
> decided to quit pushing my luck and just took the site down. Saves
> about 300 yen a month in power bills, to quit hosting myself. Makes it
> hard to do things that used to help me make a living, but haven't
> really helped in the last about ten years, I think.
>
>> I had tried PC-BSD, but, could not install it, and could not get any
>> support from the PC-BSD people or their mailing list. No
>> acknowledgement of , and, no response to, the critical problems.
>
> Life is an engineering problem -- trade-offs. It's also a dynamic set
> of problems. What worked before won't work in the future.
>
> I'm going to try installing openbsd again. Probably blog about it later.
>
> --
> Joel Rees
>
> Be careful where you see conspiracy.
> Look first in your own heart.
>

Regarding the perception of conspiracy, I like the proverb attributed,
I believe, to Napoleon Bonaparte -
"Do not always attribute to malice, what can be attributed to incompetence"
- the problem, I believe, is in the ability to differentiate the intent.


-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

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