Best FOSS alternative for skype?

[Joe Zeff]

On 05/11/2011 11:05 AM, James McKenzie wrote:
> There are only two
> standards that have existed over the years:  ISA (created by IBM) and
> the connectors that are in use.

Ha, ha, ha.  It is to laugh.  Clearly you don't remember "the connector 
conspiracy."  For those of you lucky enough not to go back that far, 
there was a time when every company had its own proprietary connector 
and you couldn't connect one company's peripheral to any other company's 
computer without some sort of adapter, usually sold by a third party.

   Everything else is a "Request for
> Comment" type document.  This is how we ended up with the mess we have
> today.  Back in the 'simple' days, one port ->  one product.  SMTP is a
> good example, HTTP is another.  Look at the number of ports needed for
> some of the products I work with on a daily basis and they use dozens
> if not hundreds.

You think that's bad?  I remember hearing, once, about an on-line game 
that connected to your computer using an *arbitrary* port (over 1024) 
which means that in effect you had to drop your firewall for it because 
you never knew what port it would want.  I've always suspected that 
their programmers didn't understand that just because they *could* do 
something like that didn't mean that they should, or that it was a Good 
Idea.