What it says in the title. InsideMacGames posted an article with an overview on what's there, what isn't, and what's likely to be.

VOIP. Who cares ???

Absolutely nobody. Go back to sleep.

~D.
"Nigel"

(Heh heh... that's another person that will be caught by surprise with coordinated battle tactics.)

I am not asleep "Nigel." I politely suggest that you are. The next time you have a
ping of 300 or 500 or whatever, ask yourself how much better it might be if there
wasn't a bunch of VOIP calls, IM chatter and spam sucking up the bandwidth.
(I consider VOIP, IM and spam to be of about the same importance) And with the
Telcos wanting to charge a "premium" for high-speed access and "guaranteed
delivery" the price for your degraded service will increase. We already have an
excellent voice network in place, and it should be used for that purpose. The
Internet was designed for data applications, and should be used for those purposes.
Two "old sayings" come to mind here: first: "Just because you CAN do something,
SHOULD you?" Second: "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket."

What the fuck, dude?

Voice IS data. Electronic communications is the processing, compression, coding, decoding, and decompression of ALL forms of data. If you want to go on a crusade about something, why don't you start bitching about the fact that 73% of all internet email traffic is unwanted UCBE: Unsolicited Commercial Bulk Emails? Or you might consider being a little concerned that every search, no matter how banal, turns up a link for pornography, meaning YOUR KIDS are constantly exposed to it, because no child filter is 100% effective.

Instead of worrying about the extra bandwidth used (and paid for, I might add) by a couple of gamers using voice comms to heighten their game experience, why not worry about a REAL problem? Spammers don't contribute one whit to the internet. They clog it down, and most of them don't even pay for the email accounts they use.

Of all the things to bite my head off for, making a joke isn't one of them, and of all the things to twist your panties about your delicate little sack, one of the few aspects of internet communications that is actually PAID FOR by the user isn't even high enough on the list to be on the flippin' paper.

I guess we should go back to the 1980s when it was all BBS communications, and the networks had to shut down every night to make a long distance call for email. That would leave you plenty of bandwidth for... whatever you use it for.

Besides, the only thing an average user needs a fast network response for is gaming. So your video game experience is more important than Billy's call to grandma? I think not. Voice over IP communications is expanding. Two phones hit the market in the last two months that use EXCLUSIVELY VOIP, and four more are on the way, including at least two that will offer cellular/VOIP use. (See this month's Popular Science.)

Get used to it, or go live in a shack in Montana and start writing your manifesto against technology.

~D.
"Nigel"

Wow Nigel, maybe you should go back and read my post again. I was not attacking you or making jokes. (Except for the comment about being asleep.) The whole thrust
of my post was that VOIP is unnecessary, like spam and IM. Voice is data? Well, yes
at least in the last couple of decades. My point was that the telcos have their own
networks for voice. Why should we put up with having the internet dragged down so
Vonage (or whoever) can make a few bucks trying to bypass the telcos? I'm worried
about the bandwidth consumed by gamers because I AM a gamer !! I don't want my
Vendetta playing time screwed up by spammers and IMers or VOIP. I WAS bitching
about UCBE and all the other crap (including VOIP) that clogs our pipes !!!

As for pornography, well it's been around for thousands of years. Who cares? The thing about the porn industry that is really interesting is that they have always been
"early adopters." If it wasn't for the porn industry the state of home video would not
be as advanced as it is. Oh...bye-the-way, I have little concern about porn because
I educated my daughter about the "facts of life" in an open and honest way when she first started asking about it. She is now a well adjusted 34 year old with two
college degrees, a high paying job and a family of her own. Porn is not the problem,
it's only a symptom. Get over it.

As for myself, I have been in the telecommunications industry since 1968 and have
worked for most of the major telcos. Almost needless to say, where would we be
now if not for AT&T and Bell Labs?? The worst thing that has happened to the telecom industry is deregulation. Now the telcos are re-forming. AT&T/Bell Telephone is reborn. General Telephone (Verizon) has been back in business for
some time now. The monopolies are back, and without regulation. Beware.

Dammit. And here I was all set to argue with you, then I read your post and found myself agreeing with you. Stop that. It's off-putting.

Seriously, I'm down with almost everything you said, with the sole exception of the monopolies. Although most people refuse to recognize it, monopolies are self-regulating. The 1929 stock market crash was caused by over-regulation, and it was deregulation, not WWII, that pulled us out of it. ("The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.")

All of which is beside the point. VOIP will clog down the internet, but it's here and not leaving any time soon, so we need to hope for technology's next big leap forward.

I don't have a problem with porn, per se, except that you really can't seem to fit as much on a 300GB hard drive as you used to. The big problem is, aw hell, I'm getting old, but it's parents that don't do what you did: talk to and educate their children. Kids are raised by video games, TV, and the internet. You're absolutely right, it's a symptom, not the problem.

Man, I was all set for a good argue. Stop being reasonable! (This is off-topic, anyway, but what the hell, every thread needs a little of that.)

~D.
"Nigel"

Yes Nigel, I was gearing up for a good debate too. But I had this feeling that we were
really on the same page all along. But don't despair !! I can be rather cantankerous.
We may have another opportunity to cross (verbal) swords again !!

You say that you are "...getting old..." I'm 60. You?

Now what did I do with that 1TB hard drive.....

And here I was merely reporting the state. I shudder to think what'll happen when I mention Apple's new prosumer line komputarrs.

Just leave the thermonuclear arsenal in your basements, k? ;)

Would you believe that I'm only 32? I'm already starting to make comments about these kids today and where the best park benches are for feeding pigeons.

~D.
"Nigel"

As the only gamer in my household (hey, what do you expect in a house with a single 18 year old?) I personally don't care (yet) about the IM/VOIP/spam bandwidth sucking people. However, in a few weeks, I'll be starting my freshman year of college and I'll have to put up with that stuff.

However!

Most colleges are nice enough (hehe, "nice") to block the ports used by some VOIP clients/codecs (iChat AV's codec is a prime example for me and my fellow Mac users) so some of bandwidth loss goes away. Of course, I'm also going to college, and college campuses are notorious for being some of the biggest file-sharing networks around. That'll be most of my bandwidth issues.

Yeah, but, let's be honest, that's also where you're going to get most of your porn, so it all balances out in the end.

Oh, and good luck in college.

~D.
"Nigel"

Let's be reasonable...
Being able to vocally coordinate operations would be of great significance. The only real problem for me is that I don't really want to hear other people's voices or other people to hear mine. I'm that paranoiac. Oh, and the fact that my poor little powerbook is at its limits just playing VO, so VOIP wouldn't really work out well.

I've heard that a lot of guilds in WoW use VOIP for the 40 man raids.

used to play world war 2 online and was in a squad, we would get panzer columns of about 30 people online and call out targets through teamspeak, it made us very very effective at taking over towns. but thats about the extent of it, voice throughout a whole game would be silly, its only good for squads of relatively small groups of players.
and once you start talking once and not being the guy that everyone has to shout at to speak up you get used to it, and it becomes no different than talking with a group of people face to face... depending on the codec used :P

How I see that VOIP would work well in VO

Prerequisites: VOIP support integrated in the VO code.

Ideally, a player could selectively speak to other players, perhaps by some ingenious user-guidance, something like 'open channel to target'.
There would be a way to completely block voice communication as well, for those who do not wish to sacrifice bandwidth for such petty things. For these players, the 'open channel' command would not work, in either way.

Maybe group voice chat would be enabled, as well, and you could still have 'secure' channels to the single group members, perhaps even via hotkey (of course, I'm not talking about scripting geniuses, but the average new player here).

Talking to people not within the sector would be impossible.