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It was noted on this list recently that 'invisible' has no meaning in AIM
(and indeed some of the other services as well).
Would it not be possible to simulate invisible, even though it is not
supported?
Consider this. Invisible simply means that you are online and can see
others who are online (except of course others that are invisible) but they
can't see you online.
This could be simulated by logging on as a different screen name. If you
logged on with a different screen name, but your buddy list was the same as
your normal screen name, then you'd be able to see who is online but no one
would be able to see you online.
Wouldn't it be possible to build something like this into the functionality
of fire? In other words, rather than me having to worry about logging on
and off with different names, just build into fire such that when I make
myself invisible, those services that don't support invisibility log me off,
and log me on with a different name automatically.
Ideally the different name would be automatically generated, or random or
something like that, but that might not work, given that automatically
generating a name that no one else has from within fire might be tricky. At
least fire could give me the opportunity to enter a second screen name for
the particular service - one that I never tell anyone about, and thus can be
my name to log in as when i want to be invisible.
Let's take this further... what about the fact that ICQ allows us to be
invisible to some people but not others. ie there's a list of people to
whom I am always visible and another list of people to whom I am always
visible, regardless of whether or not I've set my away status to invisible
or not.
This can be achieved by managing blocked buddies lists, like AIM does.
If all this is built into fire and fire automatically managed logging on and
off the different screen names, and blocking and unblocking different
buddies when I change my away status to and from invisible, then that would
be ideal. But at the very least, why not just allow fire to log in more
than one screen name at once per service? With that flexibility we could
manually simulate being invisible by independently logging on and off the
two screen names as required, and assigning buddies different blocked
status's for each screen name i've logged in under.
Just an idea or two... do they make sense? anyone like them?
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David Thorp, Sydney Australia email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: sorry, doesn't work. AIM, MSN & YahooIM: DaveLovesAust
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"Democracy is a beautiful thing, except for that part about letting
just any ol' person vote."
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{#} ----------------------------------------------------+[ fire ]+---
