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Flat ICQ

 or, "The version I'm cool with"
  (+5, -1)
(+5, -1) 		  [vote for,
against]

Is anybody else sick to death with ICQbloat? Feeping creaturism at it's finest, ICQ was once a fine little net-based messenger, but now it's grown into a mangy mongrel of uselessness. The problem is, lots of people have an ICQ id, and that string of random numbers is something of a de facto standard for locating/communicating with people on the net.

I propose that mirabilis make a new, stripped down version of ICQ - no file transfer, no UDP ports, no security, no voice chat, no birthday reminders, no active lists, no bs. Just plain ol' plaintext from A to B on the net, and none of the recognizability of <mockingly> Consumer-Friendly-Big-Corp-Crap(tm)</mock>.

—absterge, Dec 19 2000

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       Agreed. Too many folks trying to follow MicroSoft down the intuitive innovation road. Less is more, particulary in utilityware.
—wasraw, Dec 19 2000
   

       Keep It Simple Stupid!   

       Miraballis has forgetten the age old answer to programming! The KISS method. They have so much stuff in ICQ now that I dont know what 3/4 of all the crap does, nor do I want to know. Its all useless eye candy. All I use it for is to message back and forth to friends. Do I need a search engine on it? Do I need 50 buttons linking to other crap I dont use...Nope...
—elsicko, Dec 19 2000
   

       The ICQ protocol has been fairly extensively hacked and is available for download on the net if you look hard enough, so I'd imagine that anyone with the inclination and a bit of programming know-how could write a bloat free client - There are many 'unofficial' versions available for Linux, their main purpose being to provide a more usable non Windows client than Mirabillis' pathetic Java attempt, but most of them also do away with the crap in the process.
—pjc51, Dec 19 2000
   

       If you're going to mock an "American-Big-Corp", you would do well to pick one which is American.   

       Mirabilis is headquarted in Israel, doofus.   

       Now, they were acquired by AOL some time ago, but the feature creep you speak of existed well before the acquisition. (AOL's own instant messenger, AIM, is lean and simple by comparison.)
—egnor, Dec 20 2000
   

       *is shamed*; *takes a lesson*; *edits his idea*
—absterge, Dec 20 2000
   

       Actually, what I've thought would be cool would be a telnet "server" which would open up a chat window; then two people could chat simply by having one telnet to the other.
—supercat, Dec 20 2000
   

       There are many such telnet chat servers. I'm going to pull a PeterSealy on this one, though, unless you're seriously interested and can't find one.
—egnor, Dec 21 2000
   

       Peter - you know it's getting bad when your nick develops etymology.
—Detly, Dec 22 2000
   

       All you have to do to find a telnet 'chat' thing is search for MUD, MUCK, MOO, etc...
—StarChaser, Dec 29 2000
   

       I run EveryBuddy on my FreeBSD box. I love it. It is a stripped down chat program that has support for ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and Jabber. I imagine that it will get more bloated as time passes, but for now it does exactly what I want it to and nothing else.
—geekpride, Feb 10 2001
   

       [I propose that mirabilis make a new, stripped down version of ICQ - no file transfer, no UDP ports, no security, no voice chat, no birthday reminders, no active lists, no bs. Just plain ol' plaintext from A to B on the net]   

       there is one, of sorts, its called mIRC :). pure text and a few colours, it rules.
—monolithix, Feb 15 2001
   

       Baked! It's called Miranda and can be found at http://miranda-icq.sourceforge.net/ It really is the answer.
—Tubby!, Dec 16 2002
   

       egnor: Are all of the telnet chat servers out there things that run remotely? I'm thinking of having it built into something like Hyperterminal (you open up a copy of Hyperterminal, tell it to "connect" as an open telnet socket, and then anyone with a telnet client can chat with you directly and do anything else normally allowed in Hyperterminal (log to disk, upload/download, etc.)
—supercat, Dec 16 2002
   


 

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