Skype reports on the conditions which led to the company discovering a flaw in its P2P networking code.
If you believe the official story, Skype's code wasn't prepared for a massive restart of PCs caused by the standard Windows patching process.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070...okes-skype.html

Reboots caused by Patch Tuesday and Skype goes down on Thursday / Friday?

Skype's own blog entry:
http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/what_ha..._august_16.html

The article leaves you seriously pondering why previous Patch Tuesdays didn't do the same thing.
And what was it that caused their self healing functions to stop working?
So are we all sure it has nothing to do with wiretapping?
Are we sure it wasn't the NSA installing their software to monitor calls?
Are we to believe such a suspect response from Skype?

To prevent Windows from restarting after updates, do this:
Start ->> Run ->> gpedit.msc
In Computer configuration, Administrative templates, Windows components, Windows update
Do a properties of ->> No auto-restart for scheduled automatic updates installations, and enable it.

Let me be the first to say that yes, I am a little bit paranoid, and I think not without good reason:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/23/washingt...ad2&ei=5124

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/08/wiretap

The most obvious reason why I didn't happen on previous patch tuesdays is because the self healing system didn't fail because the conditions weren't there to reveal the bug.
About the NSA, you're a bit paranoid you know, it seems very far fetched imho

A bit too much paranoia, I agree, but I still disagree with those who claim it's more secure than yahoo messenger. Perhaps only because bugs haven't been discovered in it yet, but security through obscurity hasn't ever come out on top.

I would certainly consider running an open source voice-over-IP server on my PC, opening a port on my NAT router and having my friends connect to me with headsets and a VoIP client / widget, but I ran a Google search using keywords "point to point VoIP" and nothing interesting came up. Googling is a skill I don't quite seem to have.
Is anyone aware of a piece of software like this? Ideally my friends should not be required to create an account anywhere, since I would be running my server out of my home.

I heard about this, as mostly I use Skype for my things Today, due to most of my friends moved there from IRC, but on the outage, I wasn't home and didn't even feel it.. I don't really care about it, as I don't speak anything serious or something from what I could loose money or my home etc. I don't even do the calls, it takes the download speed down, so I prefer chatting, even though I chat much less than I used to in the past..

Well about the NSA, I think that it is to paranoid, everything can happen, but I don't care to much until my computer isn't infected with something besides skype keeps getting bigger and bigger with more useless features for me, I would like it to be light as it used to be or at least have a light version without the stupid stuff, but of course eventually people might stop using it, due to software needs updates and new stuff to keep alive..

Have you checked out Asterik? Not sure how it all works, but I compiled it once for some reason. I think we were looking into a click to call system and eventually decided it was easier and cheaper to go with a company that offered plans for like $50 a month.

thanks alot man

Theres black thursday, when people release all the bad stuff they kept till just after the update, could just be the worst of that.

Skype is a revolutionary internet software that is changing the industry, if not crippling it. It offers its users with free telephone calls to others using Skype also. From the makers of Kazza, Skype too capitalises on p2p (peer-to-peer) technology. Skype has a very clean interf ...more

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i'm just wondering what would happen now since Microsoft bought Skype... would there be updates still for Linux and Mac versions? I hope Skype will still be made available and updated to Linux... what's your opinion? ...more