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Hey people, now because I do the actual updating of the site, and I on occasion post some message about some random topic (that and Annie told me I could whenever I wanted *smile* thank you sweetie)...I thought I would go off for a little bit. I hope that you at least read my little rant, what I like to call: Response to the entire AIM vs. the world, in terms of instant messaging.
For the past 4 years, I've been a 'user' of the AIM service. This is mostly because I have friends who use it, who have had AIM user names since when they were subscribers to the AOL service. Now, I've also been using the ICQ service for even longer, roughly 5 years, and have an ICQ number in the 1.5-1.6 million range (for perspective, I've recently gotten spam from the 149-151 million range). More recently, I got on to the MSN IM bandwagon because of other friends exclusively on that service as well.
Now you may be thinking "damn, that's a lot of different IM services/programs he's running". Well, yes and no (I could be running Yahoo! IM as well). For a couple years, I had been using Odigo with decent success (a multi-IM client). Of course I had to find a non - Internet Explorer browser to use because Odigo liked to crash, but I found a love for both Opera and K-Meleon, which appeased the Odigo gods. My biggest problems with Odigo was that it was unreliable, settings were spread all over the place, it felt clunky...oh, and it was ugly as fuck. Sure, you can skin it to change colors, but it had a fundamental flaw in that it limited your viewing space of your own contact list, unless you seperated the window, adding another item to your taskbar. It also had a problem with reconnecting occasionally causing a crash as well. Too damn buggy for me. Anyways...
For a little while, I tried different versions of the Jabber IM client, connecting to various Jabber IM servers. Each one had it's quirks, and for each Jabber IM server, there was always that one service you couldn't connect to (that you needed). Not to mention that for each server, you had to enter your entire contact list. That was a bitch. I tried running my own Jabber IM server...but six hours of attempted configuration...well, that's around 5 hours too long for setting up a basic server of any kind. I set up my ssh server in less than 15 minutes, web and ftp server with custom user names and path information in around 25. You get the idea. It's not for the faint of heart.
I then happened upon Trillian through a Slashdot link. Damn. I downloaded it, and within 5 minutes, my entire contact list was there. Imported from ICQ (last ran in 1999), downloaded from AOL's own servers, as well as MSN from the MSN server. Rockin'. Right out of the box the mofo worked like a beauty. Around 2 days later it stopped working with AIM. I headed to their site's forums, and there was apparently a patch, which fixed the issue. Great...worked for a day. Then there was another 2 days later, worked for a week. Now here I am, getting a message from "AOL Instant Messenger" stating that I've been disconnected for using an unofficial client, and that I can download their version somewhere else.
What the fuck? Who'se business is it that I'm running Trillian rather than the official AIM client? What right do companies have to alter their server software so that it only runs with certain clients? Shit, when Microsoft tried to do this to one of their sites (I think it was microsoft.com), by displaying a message saying that non IE browsers are not supported, and nothing else. Everyone was outraged, and within a few hours, it was back to normal.
I use AIM, ICQ, and MSN (others if there were any more really big ones) because it allows me to keep connected to friends. Any corporation running an IM server needs to realize that keeping connected to friends/relatives/colleagues is the user's primary concern. Running multiple IM clients simultaneously gets to be annoying (I've done it before when Odigo was working like shit, and am doing it now thanks to AOL being a bunch of corporate assholes).
Of course we have options. We can all (the users of the internet as a whole) opt for a single instant messaging client, one which is available to everyone, and has all the features people like. Unfortunately, the '800 pound gorilla' as it were, AOL, already has a serious foothold in the IM standards community (every AOL user has AIM installed as part of the AOL software). They also have decided that only their own software will be officially supported, and all others will be summarily hunted down and annhiliated (or at least disconnected). But AOL is trying to 'Open IM' standards according to this url? If they really want to commit to being open, let other IM clients connect to your network.
I don't know what AOL is thinking...or maybe I do, they do have that little advertisement window in their software, and apparently that's what they care about the most (when an employee of the Nullsoft division of AOL released a winamp plugin that allowed visualizations to appear in that advertisement window, AOL nearly shit themselves, and in around an hour, the download was removed). I can't imagine the ad-revenue would be that good, I mean the majority of the ads are for AOL itself (and the one I'm using merely has a 1/4x1 inch bar promoting AOL, but that's an 'old' 4.3 version).
To tell the truth, I want the FCC to fuck AOL. I want them to pass legislation making it illegal to produce or alter person-to-person instant messaging software to specifically deny unofficial products, just because they are not produced in-house. The law would apply to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, or any others. Oh wait...no one but AOL has been overtly against this anyway.
Yeah. So that's my rant.
- web guy Josiah
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Today's comiken, as you may (or may not) have noticed, is a funny of a rather different color and composition. In fact, I am more than willing to bet that 95% of the males that viewed it wear an expression somewhat similar to the guy to the right.