sad really. skype is a prime example that people dont care about freedom as long as its free beer...

People care much more about "just works" than abstract concepts of "freedom". And Skype "just works" through firewalls, across routers, around proxies, etc... without having to fiddle with opening ports on your router or anything. That's what people want. Easy, and Just Works.

yep. we are lazy, if we can be...

makes me wonder what kind of freedoms we would give up if we could sit on our asses all day, having food handed to us as needed and having entertainment available at all times...

tso,

can you say "ALL OF THEM!?"

and the sheeple will inherit their rule...

tso, I'm not sure that this is an issue of laziness so much as it's an issue of time and priorities. Should I as a physician spend my free time figuring out ports and proxies, as qole said, or rather use my limited resouces (e.g. time) keeping up on the latest medical research? I certainly wouldn't call my patients lazy for not researching and managing their own health, that's my job. Specialization is an inevitability of an increasing knowledge base, not a sign of laziness.

heh, maybe i like being somewhat independent, and its coloring my vision?

Perhaps you're just an idealist

with a streak of nihilism a mile wide...

program has A LOT of potential......10$ for 10,000 minutes + free texting....not bad, not bad at all

But it's not the only one that "Just Works".
Take all the betamax offerings: their proprietary client just works, their rates for landline/mobile calls are better than skype, and you can use sip (with many ATAs or ADSL routers with phone ports that, again, just work) if you don't like/can't run the propietary program.
And nowadays most sip clients "just work", especially if they're branded/preconfigured by a sip provider.