Travis Cole wrote: >On 30-Jul-97 Riku Saikkonen wrote: >>To tell if someone is online: >> - finger >> - rwho (but rwhod isn't installed in most places) >> - talk (try to talk...) >Now if my friend runs Win95 and his ISP doesn't support shell accounts or >finger, then how is finger going to do any good? You defeated your own point
Have him run a finger daemon on the Win95. I think those already exist; at least I've heard of one. (I don't use Win95, so I don't know for sure... But fingerd is easy to write.) >of rwho. And I think there are some Win95 talk clients but you need to know >your friends IP which can present a problem. > >And I fully realize that ICQ at this point is only good if all parties involved >are running Windows. I am trying to defent my point that ICQ for Linux would >be good. Well unless I had to pay $10 a month for it. What I'm trying to say is that ICQ for Linux would be no better than fingerd+talkd+... for Win95. ICQ has nothing new; it's just MS's proprietary implementation of things that finger, talk, IRC, and friends have done for years. And ICQ is not free, and likely never will be. The client may be free of charge right now, but an ICQ server isn't. Not all want to use MS's centralised server; for example, if you're on a network not connected to the Internet (or MS's ICQ server has crashed, or MS has shut it down in favour of some newer, cooler, and more expensive "invention"), ICQ doesn't work at all, but finger and friends do. And it looks like even the (use of the) ICQ client won't be free for long... (Not to even speak of the other, usually more important, meaning of "free": free with source code that anyone can modify and distribute.) >>To message: >> - rwrite / rmsg, if installed (it's not in most places) >> - e-mail >> - perhaps ytalk (I seem to remember that ytalkd had a feature for this, >> but I'm not sure) >> - IRC, if he's on there (tell him to be [1]) >>To chat: >> - talk (ytalk for more than two people at a time) >> - IRC >> - one of the voice chat programs for voice >Once again same points. Most of these are not supported for someone with Win95 >and a dynamic IP. The IRC networks are terribly unreliable and who whants to >keep an IRC clent open all day just to receive messages that you may not see >unless you can setup your IRC client to give you some kind of notification when >you are send a message. I will admit I don't fully understand the feasablity >of your IRC suggestion, that may very well be possible. Unreliable IRC networks are solved by running your own reliable IRC "network" (one or two servers are enough for quite a few people), or finding a reliable IRC network (EFnet probably isn't a good choice :)). (But I think (y)talk would be better than IRC for this kind of thing, at least if you can find out the IP somehow (see below).) >And the problem with email is how many people check their email every 2 >minutes. With ICQ the message when you send someone a message they are made >immediatly aware of it. The also have the option of turning that notification >off. If you run an e-mail notifier such as xbiff (I'm pretty sure those exist for Win95 too), you get the same thing with e-mail. If you write a procmail (or equivalent) script, you can do much more, for example playing a tune on the sound card when a certain friend mails you. >>The major problem with these is that they're not installed everywhere. But >>neither is ICQ. And if we're going to get a system that's in common use, I'd >>much rather have it be something free, decentralised and tried-and-true >>(like IRC or fingerd+talkd+smtpd) than something proprietary like ICQ. >I also would much rather have something like IRC, finger, talk, or email but >finger and talk do not work well if at all with non Unix computers. In light >of this a multiplatform program like ICQ may be better. finger, talk, and e-mail are _much_ more multiplatform than ICQ. And a major point: It is much easier to write a fingerd, (y)talkd, and IRC client for Win95 than to port ICQ to Linux. (Actually, a fingerd, some form of talkd, and IRC clients for Win95 already exist. Tell your friends to use them!) (It seems to me that ICQ isn't multiplatform at all, but supports only Windows on Intel. Am I missing something?) >You still seem to be assuming that every one has a static IP or that I can >easily find my friends dynamic IP and this is usualy not the case. For email >notification if you are not directly on the network your email goes to (dial up >connection) then that may be a little to slow for what I would like. E-mail can be just as fast as any other kind of connection, if set up properly. (You probably need to run an SMTP daemon on your machine; but those exist for both Linux and Win95.) SMTP does work with dynamic IPs too; just route it through the ISP's mail server (most ISPs do this). (If you know the IP of the receiver (and he runs an open smtpd), you can also send mail directly, bypassing mail relays.) Dynamic IPs are somewhat problematic, though; to figure out the IP, either the ISP has to have a service for finding online customer's IPs (finger would be good for this, e.g., so that fingering the mail address gives the IP if the user is online; I think some ISPs have this), or you need a system like the ICQ server (or an IRC network, or you could even use (automatic) mail to transport IP addresses). The problem, I guess, is that there simply isn't a general way to find dynamic IPs. ICQ tries to offer a way; but it's not general, and it's proprietary... >As for privacy and security I am not really too concerned, but probably should >be. Probably. Just think of the number of security holes found in MSIE and Netscape... >Also AOL just released a beta version of AIM, an ICQ like program. There is a >java version out that works well in Linux. Take a look at AOLs web page. It's not free either, I would assume... -- -=- Rjs -=- [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
