What about all the people—and there are many of them—not using the regular, official, Messenger client for Windows?

Third-party clients such as Pidgin, Adium, Digsby, and Trillian use one or the other of these protocols to allow chat with Messenger users.

On March 15th, the Windows Messenger client will be blacklisted and unable to connect to the network, informing users that they must install the Skype client instead.

For instant messaging functionality, the Skype client is not the best thing going. It lacks any good equivalent to the tabbed chat windows that Messenger (and virtually every other instant messaging client) sports, and its support for media sharing is inferior to Messenger's.

A previously unknown and currently unpatched security hole in the latest version of the Java software framework is under attack online, according to security researchers and bloggers.

According to researchers at Alienvault Labs, the exploits work against fully patched installations of Java. Attack files are highly obfuscated and are most likely succeeding by bypassing security checks built in to the program.

Confirming earlier reports, Microsoft officially announced today it would be retiring its Windows Live Messenger instant messaging service in favor of Skype.

For those who grew up in the pre-Facebook, pre-smartphone era, the news is bittersweet. Some of our first social activity online took place using instant messaging programs like AIM, ICQ and Windows Live, once known as MSN Messenger.

In the last days of November, Israel’s top military commanders called the Pentagon to discuss troubling intelligence that was showing up on satellite imagery: Syrian troops appeared to be mixing chemicals at two storage sites, probably the deadly nerve gas sarin, and filling dozens of 500-pounds bombs that could be loaded on airplanes.

While chemical weapons are technically considered a “weapon of mass destruction” — along with biological and nuclear weapons — in fact they are hard to use and hard to deliver.

The World Food Program (WFP) says it is helping 1.5 million Syrians, but continued fighting and an inability to use the port of Tartus to deliver food mean many people are not receiving aid.

Opposition forces have been making considerable gains in recent weeks, but their efforts to take control of areas around major cities including Damascus have met with stiff resistance and increasingly destructive air strikes.

Within days of filing his “PHE, Inc. v. Does 1-105 (Case No. 1:12-cv-03342)” lawsuit against 105 defendants, U.S. District Judge William Martinez killed the lawsuit by severing and dismissing defendants 2-105.

This lawsuit would have been PHE, Inc.’s first attempt to extort thousands of dollars from each defendant who would have been accused of downloading “Buffy the Vampire Slayer XXX: A Parody.”

CERN has revealed that the world's largest and most powerful atom smasher – the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is going into hibernation and will be shut down for a period of two years for upgrade purposes.

Gillies told AFP on Friday that the shutdown will enable engineers to lay superconducting cables in huge numbers thereby bringing the machine up to "full design energy."

Turns out the TSA goes to NFL games and political conventions and all kinds of places that have little or nothing to do with air travel. It even has a special division called VIPR -- an unfortunate acronym for Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response team -- that conducts these searches.

They don't realize that these VIPR teams can show up virtually anytime, anywhere and without warning, subjecting you to a search of your vehicle or person.

It's a scene straight out of a dystopian novel and a direct affront to the Fourth Amendment values we take for granted in the United States.

If we don't say something about the TSA's uncontrollable spread into almost every aspect of the American travel experience, we could one day soon find ourselves answering to someone in a paramilitary blue uniform whenever we set foot outside our door.

The folks over at the CATO Institute have put together a short five minute video on the rush by the federal government to renew the FISA Amendments Act, with no changes, which effectively has sanctioned warrantless wiretapping on millions of Americans.

It seems likely that the NSA, in particular, has used this bill and its secret interpretation to sweep up huge databases of information about Americans, even as most people (including many in Congress) believe the bill only is used to spy on foreigners.

The NSA claims that it must keep secret whether or not it even has an estimate of how many Americans' have had their data sucked up by this secret program because of, well, a secret reason.

In an open letter, he said he loved Russia, calling it "a great democracy".

Mr Depardieu had recently announced he would give up his French passport after the government criticised his decision to move abroad to avoid higher taxes.

Mr Depardieu's highly publicised tax row began last year after Mr Hollande said he would raise taxes to 75% for those earning more than 1m euros.

Mr Depardieu, described by Mr Putin as a successful businessman and friend, has developed close ties with Russia, which has a flat 13% personal income tax rate.