And the same will be said of this new toy, I hope :-P.
There's nothing stopping people from setting up their own servers, aside from their ISPs on occasion; but in the end it boils down to users and interoperability. Privately hosted forums and mailing lists have taken out a large portion of what, would likely have ended up on USENET or a local BBS.
I have an e-mail address and can e-mail any other person on earth who has a reachable e-mail address. Why shouldn't instant messengering and related services become likewise? Interoperability between XMPP, MSNP, OSCAR, TOC2, YMSG, and SIMPLE/SIP is somewhat of a mega-bitch and a half.
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My Journal
Thou shalt check the array bounds of all strings (indeed, all arrays), for surely where thou typest ``foo'' someone someday shall type ``supercalifragilisticexpialidocious''.
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