The other day, AOL “opened” up their AIM system, providing a Software Development Kit(SDK) at http://developer.aim.com/. Unfortunately, their SDK is far from open. Rather, it faces two significant restrictions: 1)it is limited in the number of connections a client using it can have to the server and 2)it cannot be used by a cross protocol client.

Today, more and more users have friends who prefer different IM systems. This is particularly true of those users who are willing to investigate alternative clients. For this reason, the cross protocol clients such as gaim, kopete or trillian are, for many users, the most, often only, interesting ones. AOL does not make money off of AIM directly, but does benefit from it in some way, or it would not be continued. That benefit, whatever it happens to be, is most strongly present if a majority of the world’s users are AIM users. Thus there is a strong incentive to disallow interoperability. This logic flows cleanly from the early blocks preventing the MSN client from connecting to AIM, and later blocks preventing jabber transports.

Seen in this light, the “Open AIM” site, with its SDK, is just another attempt to keep users locked in. “You do not like our client? Fine, you can write your own, but only if you continue to only use AIM, and only if you promise not to become popular.” It is, in fact, nothing more than a marketing ploy, a show of openness designed to mislead users into thinking they are playing nice.

This scam has dangers of its own. Its very existence could be used to mount an attempt to block 3rd parties that do not use the SDK, on the grounds that only users of the SDK are authorized. Conveniently forgotten would be the fact that some of us have been connecting for years without an SDK, and cannot use it now that there is one; that the SDK might as well continue to not exist so far as projects such as gaim are concerned.

The problem with looking at things as evidence for evolution is that you inevitably start from the assumption that evolution did occur. Thus “x is caused by y because y is the only reasonable evolutionary explanation of x,” and “evolution is true because y causes x.” If you read closely, you can see this happening in a recent New York Times article.^[1] The age of genes controlling skin color is at once proof that humans have evolved “recently,” and that they have evolved “recently” proof that there were changes in diet or lifestyle.

The problem here is that such nearly circular logic can only be held as a viable theory if you accept the sole break in the circle as true. In this case, if you accept that a solely material cause must be responsible, then you are good to go. If however, you allow for any non-evolutionary causes, then you are faced with the question “why should I accept that this is in fact caused by evolution?” The answer that it must have been caused by evolution because we see it no longer satisfies.

1. Mr. Nicholas Wade. “Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story” The New York Times 2006-03-07. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07evolve.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5088&en=03aecd6036986b0e&ex=1299387600&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss