Windows Live Messenger Signing Out After 15 Years

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
4,646
As a former MSN Messenger user, I'm pouring one out for the venerable service. The last bastion for the chat service was China and is finally being replaced there by Skype at the end of October.

A number of Chinese Windows Live users received emails from Microsoft on Thursday, Chinese newspapers reported, informing them of the planned closure. The emails told users they would get free Skype credit when they migrated over to the new service, the newspaper said.
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And they just started killing support for third party messengers for Skype. Skype client blows. Guess I'll be using Google?
 
Anyone know what happened with the recent China-MS debaucle, where apparently the Chinese government was upset at MS for dropping XP support (65% of Chinese users are still running XP), so they accused MS of spying, raided one of their offices and then threw them out of the country. So unless they kissed and made up, I think China will be dropping as many MS products as they can in the future.

Just as well imo, the sooner we stop pretending capitalism can do fair business with Communist socialism (i.e. our current trillion dollar annual trade deficits with China etc), the better our chances of avoiding eventual (at this point I'd call it impending) bankruptcy of our federal government.
 
JeffDC said:
Anyone know what happened with the recent China-MS debaucle, where apparently the Chinese government was upset at MS for dropping XP support (65% of Chinese users are still running XP), so they accused MS of spying, raided one of their offices and then threw them out of the country. So unless they kissed and made up, I think China will be dropping as many MS products as they can in the future.

Just as well imo, the sooner we stop pretending capitalism can do fair business with Communist socialism (i.e. our current trillion dollar annual trade deficits with China etc), the better our chances of avoiding eventual (at this point I'd call it impending) bankruptcy of our federal government.
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Why do you keep calling China as a communist socialist country? They are a fascist totalitarian oligarchy.
 
JeffDC said:
Anyone know what happened with the recent China-MS debaucle, where apparently the Chinese government was upset at MS for dropping XP support (65% of Chinese users are still running XP), so they accused MS of spying, raided one of their offices and then threw them out of the country. So unless they kissed and made up, I think China will be dropping as many MS products as they can in the future.

Just as well imo, the sooner we stop pretending capitalism can do fair business with Communist socialism (i.e. our current trillion dollar annual trade deficits with China etc), the better our chances of avoiding eventual (at this point I'd call it impending) bankruptcy of our federal government.
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I am going to agree with you on the first part though, although for different reasons.

Xi Jinping (the current guy in charge, half-jokingly called the "Emperor of China" by none other than the Chinese themselves since he's amassed more power in his hand than any other party secretary since Mao Zedong) has been trying to gain leverage as he consolidates his rule, and one of the things that he's been doing is to root out the connections and arrangements that were made by major businesses with rivals that are now retired but not out of the game. Dealing with MS is only natural here, as it is one of the companies that have made arrangements with affiliates of the old party elite Jiang Zemin (party secretary of 2000s, retired behind the scene, a major head honcho of the 'Shanghai gang')


I will rant on the second part later since I've had it with people trying to say that PRC is socialist in any stretch of imagination.
 
Reimu said:
Why do you keep calling China as a communist socialist country? They are a fascist totalitarian oligarchy.
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Personally it doesn't matter what name is used for it. I think it does qualify as socialist in basic structure, the state owns and controls virtually everything. Even our religions aren't immune from control, e.g. the Communists have now installed party-loyal "bishops" in the Roman Catholic Church in China. Drop a RMB in the basket on Sunday and it's in the government's hands on Monday.
 
JeffDC said:
Personally it doesn't matter what name is used for it. I think it does qualify as socialist in basic structure, the state owns and controls virtually everything. Even our religions aren't immune from control, e.g. the Communists have now installed party-loyal "bishops" in the Roman Catholic Church in China. Drop a RMB in the basket on Sunday and it's in the government's hands on Monday.
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China PRC is where the state exists for the sake of the party, so money doesn't go to the "state", it goes to the "party." Socialist system does not presume that the party is the state in that sense.

This is not just a matter of semantics, JeffDC. This is a fundamental operational difference.
 
JeffDC said:
Personally it doesn't matter what name is used for it. I think it does qualify as socialist in basic structure, the state owns and controls virtually everything. Even our religions aren't immune from control, e.g. the Communists have now installed party-loyal "bishops" in the Roman Catholic Church in China. Drop a RMB in the basket on Sunday and it's in the government's hands on Monday.
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I am taking this rather strongly since it's tiring to see people getting the Nordic social states mixed up with what you have in the PRC. PRC is basically run as a mafia, where rival factions and the army are only united by pilfering profits off of the 'nation'. The people chosen as party secretary and so forth tend to be compromised candidates that the factions could tolerate and keep in check with, and who in turn would not spoil the patronage networks that keep the factions running.

Power is centralized because of the experience with warlords during the first half of the 20th Century. The fall of the KMT nationalists taught that lesson about decentralization to the Communist party rather well. This is why regional power bases aren't allowed to go about and do their own thing, and are rather playing the cutthroat magical chair game at Beijing.
 
Reimu said:
Why do you keep calling China as a communist socialist country? They are a fascist totalitarian oligarchy.
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Communist oligarchy is probably most accurate. I wouldn't call it fascist as the economy is centrally planned and mostly government run (fascist regimes try to avoid this when possible), especially as there is no dictator, which is instead a hallmark of socialism. Socialism with totalitarianism is communism. Ergo, communist oligarchy.
 
Maxx said:
Communist oligarchy is probably most accurate. I wouldn't call it fascist as the economy is centrally planned and mostly government run (fascist regimes try to avoid this when possible), especially as there is no dictator, which is instead a hallmark of socialism. Socialism with totalitarianism is communism. Ergo, communist oligarchy.
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Their economy is centrally planned and kept in check by the central government, but each province does its own thing when it comes to growth target and whatnot. Massive debt financing is done on initiatives at township level for that matter, with the central government keeping the tap of credit through their control of the banks.
 
Been using Trillian with the msn plugin for awhile. Its been working even after the official cut off date. Now i guess its going to be done away with for good after this October.
 
Reimu said:
Why do you keep calling China as a communist socialist country? They are a fascist totalitarian oligarchy.
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You say that as if those are two different things. The other 'communists' of the last century fit your descriptions quite well.

The reality is that hyper-socialism or communism can only survive under a totalitarian fist and corruption under such a situation is inevitable.
 
jpm100 said:
You say that as if those are two different things. The other 'communists' of the last century fit your descriptions quite well.

The reality is that hyper-socialism or communism can only survive under a totalitarian fist and corruption under such a situation is inevitable.
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I suppose I am taking it srs because China's definitely no welfare state. They operate with the same kind of nationalistic lingo that you see in the 20th century fascist states that you've just pointed to. They dropped the pretense of everyone's equal with some more equal than others for two decades by now, and that's why they don't fit the socialist criteria at all.

Returning to the topic here. From what I've gathered so far, Xi Jinping's grasp on power since the failed coup by Zhou Yongkang (Shanghai gang, Jiang Zemin's pally) last year is quite good, but he's now out to root out the Shanghai Gang, whether it'd be through financial links or military ties. His crackdown against major MNCs are partly directed as a smokescreen of sorts to what he's been up to domestically, but it does play into a tit for tat against US.

He's been tightening control of the press as well as social media as well. In a way, killing two birds in one stone is what's he's been out to do.
 
I personally have had no issues with Skype itself. I did however use live messenger for one things and Skype for another so when they combined the two I had to decide how to deal with merging my accounts so that I had both worlds in one program since I could no longer log into both separately.

I am actually surprised they kept the service running in China since everyone else had this happen last year.
 
Was sad to see it go. I preferred it to Skype; better text options with a better layout and less RAM usage while also featuring push to talk.

I get by with Skype, but it doesn't do anything better than LIVE did for me while taking a few steps back.
 
callmaster said:
Stopped using MSN since March last year! Never really replaced it.
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Yeah i was forced to stop using it to a while ago. Perhaps around the same time you state (it was when MS stopped me from signing in). And i'm the same. Nothing to replace it with. It sucks. I like a minimal but feature ful IM client. it just fits. Unfort. Skype sucks balls and altho i use it now because i have nothing else... i don't call it replacement even though if they really fixed it *properly*.. it would be fine. But ther eare far to many things wrong with it!!! (like the fact it'll use your CPU/Internet to do "something" at random/ads/pathetic UI/limited UI to name a short few!!
 
Have not used MSN messenger since i met my wife less than 10 years ago.
anyways i wanted to access my contacts list last week and found out about this Skype crap , then found my hotmail was changed to outlook.com then found that my entire account (messenger contacts + emails i had there ) was deleted due to inactivity

damn.
 
Skype's desktop client at least isn't as outright intrusive as the Windows 8 version of it. That thing's just disgusting.
 
I used to use Live Messenger but use google chat now. They really made it a bloated and I just couldn't stand using it anymore. Not to mention all the spam messages I would get.
 
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