

Gmail adds video chat for Linux - SandB0x
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/use-linux-now-you-can-video-chat-too.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+OfficialGmailBlog+(Gmail+Blog)

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mjgoins
This package installs a cron job that affects how apt functions on your
system. You're basically giving google root on your machine.

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macemoneta
Yeah, a closed source application installed as root, with the express purpose
of accessing your webcam and microphone. What could go wrong?

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foenix
Here's the header of the /etc/crontab.daily/google-talkplugin file. I'm not
that ninja with my cron-tabbing, but doesn't this do exactly what it says?

<http://pastebin.com/4etPxNWC>

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mjgoins
Yes, and it's pretty much harmless in itself, but since when does installing
one package (esp. from a third party with no verification beforehand) install
a new apt key into your keyring (thus allowing all packages signed by that
key, no matter what they are) and reconfigure the package manager itself? It's
ludicrous.

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mkr-hn
It's probably a mistake, and they'll put some prompts and options in once they
realize Linux users don't like giving root so freely.

They're probably accustomed to trusting their own software with root, so
didn't even think about it.

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yungchin
It's not a mistake: the development deb for Chrome did exactly this -
installed the repository key and a cron job to "protect" the apt-sources
entry. Of course it's not really doing this secretly, in that you can read
about it in the post-install script before you run dpkg, but I agree it
doesn't feel right.

Also, can't this be said of any package you install through the package
manager? If you install it as root, then in principle you're giving root
access to whatever is in the package. If you don't like it, there's always a
way to run it with ordinary permissions (but the extra fiddling to get that
working may be hairy) or under mandatory access control (definitely hairy).

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mgunes
Video chat via Google credentials has already been working for some time using
the Empathy messaging client, without the need for a dedicated one.

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ZeroGravitas
Unless I'm mistaken it's not a dedicated client. It's a dedicated web plugin
that enables video chat within your browser at gmail.com.

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duck
Does anyone know why this took so long?

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obsaysditto
Tried it out and works very well on first run. Installed the .deb package and
restarted Chrome.

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daleharvey
I cant quite tell from the posts, but with gears they got to experiment with
creating new web standards through a plugin, have they tried to do that with
this and html5 devices? that would be awesome news.

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yanw
How would you go about accessing the mic and cam with html5?

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daleharvey
Its very barebones, but <http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-device/> is in the
works, google could / hopefully have made progress towards making that more
solid.

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patrickaljord
They are working on it but it's still a long way to go. html5-device depends
on other standards that don't even exists yet (as you can read on your own
link).

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daleharvey
yeh thats pretty much what I said, thats why I was asking if anyone knew if
this work made its way into contributing to the standard?

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Locke1689
Cool. What codecs and streaming protocol do they use?

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stanleydrew
I think everything runs over XMPP just like Google talk.

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mstevens
Doesn't work for me - crashes every time I try to start a video call.

Problem reported to google, will see what happens.

