RSSYahoo! Messenger Upgrade Cuts Off Outsiders
By David Worthington | Published September 18, 2003, 5:20 AM
A mandatory upgrade to Yahoo! Messenger may leave some users in the dark. Yahoo! is upping the ante against unauthorized use of its network as a preventative measure to ward off spam and lock down its servers.
As of September 24, Yahoo! is collectively retiring support for legacy versions of its IM client on all operating systems. The end result is an ounce of prevention against spammers. But customers who access the service via popular, yet unsanctioned, clients such as Trillian and Gaim will likely find themselves disconnected.
A Yahoo! spokesperson was careful to point out to BetaNews that an interruption of service via third parties was not the intent of the move, simply a byproduct of ongoing improvements to its own software.
Not all customers are affected by the changes. Only users of Yahoo! Messenger versions 5.0 or older on Windows will be forced to upgrade. Additionally, Mac versions 2.0 and older, as well as 1.02 or older for UNIX will also be phased out.
Late last month Microsoft restricted access to its MSN Messenger network. As of October 15, users must be running at least Windows Messenger 4.7.2009, MSN Messenger 5, or MSN Messenger for Mac OS X 3.5 in order to access the service. Third party clients also face the looming deadline.
At the time of the announcement, Microsoft spokesperson Sean Sundwall told BetaNews, "Security is now the number-one feature" - a much different tune from Redmond's initial push for industry-wide IM interoperability.
Microsoft is offering third party developers recourse through a licensing program for partners. However, few details have emerged on the program's terms and conditions.
While Microsoft is courting developers as business partners, Yahoo! has distanced itself from the role of toll collector.
"Our update is not driven by a desire to establish business relationships with third parties. Our primary reason for this update is to enhance the overall quality of the Yahoo! Messenger service for our users," Yahoo! spokesperson Mary Osako told BetaNews.
...That all these morons would stop with the self-interest and settle on a good, solid IM protocol. The Internet community at large would benefit. IM has been around for long enough that such a thing is long overdue.
Can you imagine if you could only send email messages to people who used the same email client as you? It's insane, it's stupid, and it needs to stop. But of course that's being quixotic... the big players don't give a flying dog dung about the users, or technology per se, or the Internet as a whole... just their own interests.
Maybe we need an open IM protocol, which clients like Miranda IM could support. Yeah, I'm being quixotic again--of course the typical end-user idiot wouldn't bother looking into such a thing, what with that cute "Download Yahoo! Messenger" banner being so inviting.
Morons. You know 'em, you love 'em. And they do make the world go 'round.
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|If Yahoo genuinely had no problems with 3rd party apps connecting, then they would have warned them (at least the big players, Trillian, Gaim etc), and not just shut them off in at a flick of the switch..
Yahoo are onto a loosing game. They cannot force all their users to constantly upgrade, and the smaller outfits are infinatly more flexiable when it comes to releasing updates...
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|On 9/28 easy message posted a new version which works with the Yahoo changes, I'm using it now.
http://easymessage.net
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|2 days ago it started happening... i have 4.7.0041 and they started disconnecting me "You must upgrade in order to continue". I can't upgrade since i need admin access. It's strange thought that on other acounts (of my friends) they still can log in.
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|they have been doing this for years..with AOL and MSN and Yahoo... they find a way to get Trillian to work and then some
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|There is a patch now available for Trillian. Installed and worked like a charm :)
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|Unlucky, no it doesn't. Although Cerulean are working on the problem as we speak.
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|The update for Trillian worked for me.
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|As nice as add-on, or user-created programs can be, I can see how it is neessasary to shut off access to them.
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|first off. https gets bas****ized by vendors and its hurt web based applications for years. part of the reason people liked java is that it is a standard, not a "standard", like mpeg4 or html, where vendors claim compliance but do evil things.
luckily, TCP/IP is very standard.
unluckily, messaging protocols are totally non-standard, making what could be a huge new way of doing messaging, something to augment or deprecate email. but no. they get into ownership wars. no one wants Y!, MSN, AIM and ICQ and IRC on the OS. They want one program, similar to a browser, that being the one you like, being able to see it all. Also, the moron idiots who runs these services act like Macs and *nix doesnt exist.
So, to your idea that screwing over people doing the right thing, which is to bring a coherent interface to something that is IDENTICAL in functionality (only difference being whose messaging server you connect to) is moronic.
No one cares as a user if they hit IIS or Apache for a web page (well, IIS might take a bit longer and get wormed). No one cares if the TCP/IP stack is unix or windows from a user perspective. No one cares about Yahoo, MSN or whoever else. They just want to talk to thier friends. Plain and simple. Y!, MSN et al want to rape you with ads and other crap.
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|Mind you that the Windows TCP/IP stack is UNIX-based.
From,
Francis
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