Day: August 23, 2005

IM discussion…

D'Arque Bishop1 Comment

Well, it appears that Google might be releasing an IM system after all. I’ll go ahead and link to the Slashdot story here, but it appears that it will be based on Jabber, which is an open instant messaging protocol. This should be interesting, as there are already several Jabber IM clients out there, and most of the multi-IM programs support Jabber. I probably won’t get on it quite yet, as one needs a Gmail account to actually use their IM service, and I currently lack one. (I never needed it.)

I’ve actually been using Jabber extensively, myself. How, you might ask? Well… when V.7 of MK Online was being developed, one of the ideas I had in mind was a private IM system. So, Joe and I worked together and got a Jabber server working on the site. I don’t know how popular the IM system as a whole is, mind you, but it’s worked very nicely for me. It’s tied into the site PM system, so whenever someone sends me a PM on the site, I get it on whatever IM program I’m using at the time (Gaim, Fire, or CenterICQ). There’s been a couple of glitches, but on the whole, I like to think it was one of my better ideas.

On the downside, it appears that AOL has been messing around with the TOC servers for AOL Instant Messenger. For those not in the know, there are actually two protocols used for AIM. The one that most of the clients (especially the GUI-based ones like Gaim, Trillian, and the official clients) use is called Oscar, and has all of the nice nifty features. The other one is called TOC, and is a very minimalistic protocol. However, TOC is an open protocol and last I checked is specifically kept open for the outside clients to use. Anyway, CenterICQ (which is the IM program I use at work) stopped working this weekend, and it turns out the TOC servers are to blame. The program naim has apparently gotten a working version going by using an updated protocol called TOC2, but CenterICQ’s lagging behind. (I don’t even think it’s being actively developed nowadays.) So, what I’ve been having to do is use CenterICQ for ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and MK Online Jabber… and use iChat for AIM. It sucks, but what can I do?

Oh, well… here’s hoping they fix the issue relatively quickly. I’d like to go back to one program for all of my IM needs. In the meantime, I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing and work from there.

… of all the series they could put on DVD…

D'Arque Bishop

Apparently the late 80s TV series War of the Worlds is coming to DVD.

For those not in the know, it wasn’t really an adaptation of the book so much as it was a sequel to the 1953 film. The series did have its moments, but all in all… I don’t know if it was as good as it could have been. I actually considered the book adaptation of the pilot better than the actual show, due to one detail: in the series, humanity forgot about the aliens and doesn’t believe they existed. In the book, humanity remembers the alien invasion; they just refuse to discuss it and try to consciously bury the past. Also, there was one episode that had a few gruesome spots that I honestly still can’t believe they showed on broadcast TV. (For those of you who remember the uproar about the guy’s head exploding in one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation… this episode was worse. A lot worse.)

The second season actually was notable enough due to the fact that almost everything from the first season was casually wiped away. All but three characters were killed off, the aliens and their technology was completely revamped (and now almost nothing like the aliens of the original movie), and the setting was completely changed. In fact, now when we see a series almost completely reinvent itself between seasons, I call it pulling a “War of the Worlds”. (The term was originated by the venerable Jenn.) And no, when a series is referred to in that way, it’s rarely a compliment.

It’s sad, too… the second season was decent enough. It just wasn’t War of the Worlds anymore, and it’s likely that discontinuity that killed it.

Ah, well… I may or may not pick it up for shits and grins. I also see Dracula – The Series made it to DVD, and that might be worth seeing just for pure nostalgia (seeing as the series itself wasn’t all that good). We’ll see.