Skype Expresses $1 Worth of Sorrow
Skype is sorry that their house of cards collapsed. Sorry, to the tune of $1. That's the amount of "Skype Credit" that they are offering to their paying subscribers. As far as I can tell, that is the amount offered, regardless of the type or magnitude of the user's subscription, and there is no provision for users who have annual subscriptions already paid to be able to cash in on this bonanza. In my opinion this is just another indication of Skype's total disregard of their users.
They have also posted a "http:="" blogs.skype.com="" en="" cio_update.html"="">"technical explanation of the outage" on one of their blogs. What it boils down to is that they have built a house of cards, and a couple of the cards near the bottom got pulled out, so the entire house collapsed. Big surprise. Because the vast majority of the resources used in building the house of cards do not belong to Skype, and are not under Skype's control, there is very little they can do (basically nothing) when the structure starts to collapse. The moral of this part of the story is, do not depend on Skype services for anything that is critical, such as your life, your communication or your business. If you value your money, do not under any circumstances give money to Skype for services which may or nay not be available at the time that you want or need them.
Finally, what Skype has been forced to say publicly this time, which they have tried to avoid saying at all costs in the past, is that their software may silently decide to set itself up as a "supernode" on an ordinary user's computer. If it does so, it will then start to use computing power and internet bandwidth on that computer to service the Skype network - and it will do all of this without either asking for permission in advance or announcing what it is about to do, or has just done. The moral of this part of the story is if you are paying for your Internet connection in some limited quantity, whether it be volume-based, time-based or whatever, then you should stay completely away from Skype, or you might find yourself unknowingly paying for supporting Skype's house of cards.
jw