Anyone Using Skype?

There were some rumors lately that Google could acquire it from Ebay but I have not seen anything official. Currently I am not such a fan of Google anymore. They even seem to scour web sites nowadays so I receive email from people looking for work. Google robots obviously "thought" my web site is a job posting site and the folks receiving those "alerts" don't seem to bother reading. Where will it a lead?

BTW, does your filter still catch lots of Google spam? I directed mine to dump gmail and such into the trash file so I could take an occasional peek but no matter what I do it just dumps them all to lalaland. I wonder if it's time to ease up or do we have to ditch gmail for good?

[snip] I'll be using it fro overseas stuff.

E-mail: Website (with filters) -> GoDaddy Relay (with filters)->

Eudora Pro v7.1.0.9 Pre-identified spam sources go straight to Trash, "scored" spam (by Eudora) goes to "Junk". I see NO spam in my E-mail InBox... occasional new inquiries go to Junk. Then I declare them NOT Junk... meaning Eudora creates its own whitelist.

News: nfilter (NewsProxy) -> Agent (v4.2) I use nfilter to "Flag" (i.e. Label the subject with "GOOG") all googlegroups posters except those that are white-listed, then Agent deletes all messages with GOOG in the subject... so I see NO googlegroups spam in Agent. I also kill postings from AIOE and UAR and various messages with "remailer" or "anonymous" in the headers. I also have EYOR, JERK and TURD (you can guess ;-) categories which not only kill the original posts but any follow-ups... I LOVE nfilter ;-)

TURD is the punk in San Diego who thinks he can jump IP addresses fast enough to get through to me... he can't (I talked to my son Aaron, quite the communications expert, and he helped me set it up ;-)

Any responses you see me making occasionally are only because I'm presently watching all the labeling to make sure it's working properly, and to add white-listing as needed.

What E-mail and news clients are you using?

...Jim Thompson

I call it a 90% service, 90% of the time. line delay is the biggest problem, you could hardly use it for a professional business.

I got a cheap VoIP router, and subscribed to a cheap provider. No one knows I am using VoIP, even I forget. Just another good quality phone call.

Don...

--
Don McKenzie

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My email hardly receives any spam either. I've got some filters and it does a similar thing, once you "un-trash" something it's white-listed. Currently it's Mozilla, I wanted to migrate to Thunderbird but when filtering newsgroups because of all this Google junk it didn't do as good a job as Mozilla does. So maybe I'll leave my email with Mozilla. It's also older so it crashes less.

I just use the Thunderbird filter. It's quite rocky but after a few reset attempts it works fine. Nice and clean newsgroups again. But because I cannot coax it into sending to trash I can't whitelist. Oh well, if somebody really needs to ask me something they can always email. Or get a domain more reputable than gmail.

Most people and small businesses are on a lower cost broadband package and then they don't give you a fixed IP. It'll be dynamic IP, meaning everytime it went down or you turned it off and then switch Internet back on you've got a fresh IP address. This works and even helps against hackers but it does become problematic if they overbook, IOW sign up more clients than they have IP addresses.

Email Mozilla, for NGs Thunderbird. And I don't want to change again just because some formerly nice domain has become rogue. I never plonked anyone but I had no chance other than ditch the whole gmail, googlemail and whatever.

So, does nfilter spit out stats about whether the gmail barrage is letting up or is gmail toast? Maybe someone sans filter can chime in since I don't see it anymore on my screen.

Oh, BTW, you can shop around and subscribe to one of the discount overseas plans. I use that for overseas clients, works fine. I've had phone conferences where one party used VoIP. Horrible, mostly. POTS rulez :-)

I use AT&T for overseas. A bit pricey but super quality lines. Some Europeans use the best deal du jour, changes a lot. When they call it's often pop, crackle, hiss. Sometimes it does work though. If you only need the occasional call CostCo carries an overseas phone card. Lots of minutes for $30, IIRC. Depends on whether the country you call still has a monopoly, then it'll be expensive no matter what.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

No, but my cousin who was visiting from Europe has it on his IBM laptops. Pretty cool, he could make free phone calls home from anywhere there was a wifi hot spot. That included my various neighbors' unprotected wireless routers.

Tam

[snip]

"TURD" is on Cox. He can change IP's by being disconnected long enough... but I have my ways ;-)

[snip]

The only stats are for "Dropped Articles". If you "drop" an article it's left on the server until it expires, thus you see the same article dropped multiple times. Not much use statistically. That's why I use the "Flag" operator, and let Agent do the deleting.

Statistics would be useful. Since Aaron is a new father he needs money... maybe I can bribe him to write our own news proxy with the features I'd like to see ;-)

...Jim Thompson

AFAIK they are only free if to another Skype participant.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

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, Because of the Brave

Having used 2 VoIP services (the now defunct SunRocket - thank you very much for running off with our money), and now Packet8, I can pretty much agree that VoIP has not really come of age yet. At least, not for business use. Still a little unprofessional with the occasional delay, and la-la land operation. Also, with Packet-8 at least, sometimes the phone does not actually ring, though it will go to voice mail....

But for personal use, VoIP is probably worth it. Price-wise.

A friend of mine runs a VoIP service out of his house. I "think" he's running it on an Asterisk/Trixbox (Linux), but he's also in paging (you remember beepers, right?, so it could be interfaced with some Glenayre horsepower?) Oh, nevermind, forgot who I was talking to.! You probably remember spark gap transmitters!!? :) Just kidding, Jim.

Anyway, on his system, the quality is actually better than we experience with Packet-8. I'd give VoIP another year or two, before giving up the copper/DSL/ Cable approaches.

My 2-cents. -mpm

90% x 90% = 81% which is exactly how many "good" connections I hear at our weekly business teleconference. While I still use a "POTS" copper connection, a lot of folks on our weekly teleconference calls are using Skype and other VoIP services. At times it can be tedious listening to those calls. Sometimes it is great, other times it is quite terrible. I really hate talking on the phone when there is any sort of delay or echo. Most times when someone calls me at home on my PCS cellphone, I will call them right back on the "landline".

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"©

"Treason doth never prosper: what\'s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

"Follow The Money"  ;-P

I use it a fair bit now. generally the voice quality is a lot better than most cellphone calls, and the price is very agreeable. I also use googletalk.

Cheers Terry

Wow! Just got off of my very first Skype call... nearly 30 minutes with my Australian client... sound quality like he was in the same room... MUCH BETTER than the land-line!

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: "skypeanalog" | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Jim, I use it rather often. Many companies and universities restrict the reach of the telephone, meaning the employees have to ask the operator of the company for a call. And others count the minutes on the phone as unproductive and add them up to hassle the employee. With all of them I talk with skype, since skype bypasses this system. Remember the hotels with exorbitant telehone charges ? Some of the them have free WLAN or WLAN for a moderate price. I use skype there. Skype allows to call a fixed number for a really moderate fee. Not the calling country counts, but the called country. So a Skype call to home from US to Switzerland is in the order of 3 cents per minute.

recommended.

Rene

--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

Joerg, I came across a firefox plugin called customizegoogle. From

. It allows to filter the google searches such as

[CustomizeGoogle] * * * * * *

Those guys litter the part searches. Which improves the quality quite a bit.

Rene

--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

Thanks! This might also help avoiding all those "patents" and ieeexplore hits. I am an IEEE member but it irks me that the search results are plastered with results you can't get to unless you pay them big bucks.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
Use another domain or send PM.

I really like my SPAMP idea. Moreover, it can be tested with nfilter and leafnode proxy servers.

[snip]

JosephKK, I somehow missed your "SPAMP" idea. Can you repeat? Thanks!

...Jim Thompson