o.t. skype??

As far as photobucket no. I'm relatively new with only about 50 pictures in photobucket. I looked at my account last week and my food porn photos had 1,000 hits.

A close friend in Sydney, Australia, introduced me to Skype a few years ago. We've been communicating on it ever since. We also use Skype to talk with my wife's relatives in the Netherlands.

My friend is a commercial properties developer and has used Skype for conference calls regularly over the past four or more years. Sez it saves him a bundle. He has never mentioned that he has had a security issue.

The video can be switched on or off. It was a novelty at first, as he and I have not seen each other in a few years. But the quality of the voice component is often compromised when video is turned on. Now days, we just leave it off most of the time.

It's not perfect. Sometimes the voice quality gets really scratchy. On occasions when it does, we just end the call and call back. The call clarity always returns.

HTH.

DD

Thanks and Convinced, it's now private. No reason to take a chance.

A friend in France got me into Skype and now I use it to chat with him as well as with friends in Germany. If they're not near their PC when I call I can use Skype to reach them on their cell phones for about 21 cents per minute. Before that a 15 minute call to Europe with Verizon would costed me over $40.

greetings,
i am not into skype but if you are looking for a cheap dependable phone service then check out Magic jack. i have used it for a while now and it is 19.99 per year with a broadband connection you can get your own number with all of the extras and it works really well with any USB port. once you sign up and get assigned your number it is portable anywhere you go in the us as long as you have access to a usb port. you can call and receive from both cell and landline.

Bill I have used Skype now for 2 years. Skype is simply Voice over IP. Furthermore all Skype transmissions are encrypted.

If you make your Skype profile private then no-one will even know your on.

I heard this information a looooong time ago and I remember going to the skype user agreement and at that time verified that the claim was factual.

For that reason I never used skype.

If you read the Skype user agreement, sorry I can't remember which page. You are giving permission for your computer to used as a 'super node'.

As I recall the user agreement is very long. So for your safety on this product simply fully read the user agreement and know your agreement. Look for anything that talks about super node/node/collective computing/distributive computing/Distributed.net and such.

Super node, collective computing and several terms are where users, you and me, agree to allow some project, company, school or who ever to use your computer's cpu and resources when you are not using them or even a limited amount of use when you are using your computer. I don't recall what resources but it was said you can give up 90% (you don't decide) of your computing power for over the net services.

I am pretty sure eBay's user agreement has the usage permission in it also.

This is not hidden in the agreement, it is just that people don't read or don't read that far into the agreement.

In simple terms, if your computer is on and connected to the internet, and you are not using the computer Skype can use (or give away) your CPU computing power and possibly memory.

Skype can save information on your computer and Skype can use and give out some of your personal information.

I believe there is a way one can run skype from memory only and lock out use of the hard drive. I am not sure about personal information and I do believe there is a hack to the windows registry to lock out super node usage.

Skype is not the only product that does this. Some of the terms and agencies are...

Collective computing/distributed net/node/super node is used by many, many projects, SETI, Berkeley - (BOINC)Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing.

Now someone is going to say GG that is Bull Sh. Well, there were 1,760 hits for the exact query "skype supernode" on google. The term "supernode' was found on 144 pages in the Skype sit itself.

On the google there is a hit that tells you how to tell if you are a supernode (not sure if this 2 words or 1 word. I searched as 1 word).

If you know how to hack you registry there are supposed to be some changes that block some of their usage of your out.

GG

I haven't looked at the BOINC at all. I did look at seti and thought, why not, but never did follow through.

I don't think many people here would have or even know about a hardware fire wall, you are in a whole different league than most of the rest of us.

Opening one’s self to peer to peer can be pretty risky. There sure is a lot of crap that gets onto a computer even with trying to be careful.

There sure are a lot of people using Skype and love it.

I think eBay pay something like 2.5 billion for Skype. Ebay has a net income growth of something over 20%. We can get the service essentially for ‘free’ and ebay is making money. You probably know much better than I, bandwidth isn’t free.

It never stops amazing me to see how many jobs, companies, and how much money has been made over and over from basically 3 individuals. Jobs, Wozniak and Gates.

GG