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Comment Re:Anything to kill the screen-conquering menu (Score 1) 122

See also the substandard "experience" for Reddit in a mobile browser.

"Do you want to use the app?" "How about now? Do you want to use the app?" "If you don't want to use the app just click this 1 nanometer wide x".

"Do you want to see more replies in the thread? LOL, we can't serve as many impressions if we do that."

Comment Re: What if Dinosaurs never went extinct? (Score 1) 221

At least with RS-232(-ish) serial, once you got the baudrate, parity, and stop bits right, it was pretty bulletproof.

It still is bulletproof!

We have ancient industrial equipment configured using a serial port and 16-bit (Windows 3.1 era) software. It will work natively on 32 bit versions of Windows. It will work with USB-serial adapters as long as they are assigned COM1-COM4. They will work on a 64 bit machine by using a 32-bit VM, and passing the serial port through, which works better than trying to pass-through USB devices, let alone a PCI or ISA card.

Even better are things that can be configured over serial with any terminal software.

Comment Re:Lynx? (Score 1) 158

Off By One is a good Windows alternative. Real good if you need a barebones http client on a shitty Pentium I PC that spends 75% of its time swapping to disk.

Maybe I should move to the old folks home for wanting these kids off my lawn, but has everything post Firefox 3.6 been downhill? I remember lots of excitement for Firefox 3, but after 3.6 (4.0+) Firefox went with a rapid release model and people stopped caring. Then websites figured how to add more and more Javascript to pages. Then Browsers decided people wanted "Notification" alerts on every page. Then Page designers decided that's what's a basic text article with a couple pictures should have more code than an operating system and spin up a quad core processor to 100%, and cause an 8GB RAM machine to swap to disk.

Comment Re:Computers (Score 1) 104

How do they work?

The reinvented computing in the browser.

Now, they are reinventing computing on smartphones.

They finally got the corporate image of a computer right!
-No longer do you the user have unrestricted access and control of your device (even rooting is frowned upon, and certain apps may not run)
-People have no issue with apps running in the background collecting telemetry with apps that have no business running in the background, nor collecting that data.
-People have no issue with apps that show ads. 15 years ago "Adware" was a heinous crime. Now people expect it!

Comment Re:and 20G you get speed capped any ways so it may (Score 1) 71

I'm wondering what the wide appeal of 5G will be?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the 5G wavelength does NOT work and play well with walls, and would therefore mostly only be useful when outside, is this correct?

If so, since most of us tend to be sedentary and indoors in the AC (at least in the US and more and more with any western nation)...what use is the speed of 5G to us, if it can't make it to where we'd be sitting using the signal most often?

Most homes, and a lot of workplaces and stores have Wi-fi. So for a lot of the sedentary customers they don't even need data, and their phones can fall back on 4G for voice and text. Even if they do need data, if frees up congestion on the 5G spectrum for areas that the 5G will shine.

Myself I've hardly "needed" speeds faster than 3G. For 5G the benefit would be that more customers can be serviced in dense outdoor areas moreso than the speed. I've been to a couple outdoor festivals / concerts and the cell service has been shit even with temporary microcells. In the middle of a park in an area with good signal strength, but normally there would only be less than 1000 people in the area, not 50,000. In one case (13 years ago), I could only actually make a call by switching from CDMA-1x to AMPS. Two years I couldn't text, or get any data (even just to send IMs). Strangely when I made a phone call it actually connected, and when the call was active I suddenly got texts and had data (I have unlimited minutes, so I'll just make dummy calls if that's what it takes to get service). If 5G could give that kind of density minimally usable service versus no service it would be a gain, even if it isn't "ZOMG I can go through my plan's data in 2 seconds it's so fast!!!!!!!1111eleven".

Comment Re: because shoved down our throats (Score 1) 107

As I said I have WPS office on my phone, which is my preferred program to open MS documents. I have RadaeePDFViewer that I prefer to use to view PDFs.

However the security settings my company has prevents saving or accessing email attachments outside of the MS suite. That way they can remotely wipe just the office part of my phone. So to even view PDF attachments from my work email requires MS Word.

Comment Re:Biz (Score 1) 73

PC's are still the primary computing tool used by office staff and I don't see that changing anytime soon. There's too much specialized software written for Windows, and the famed MS-Office compatibility issue still lurks. You have to mirror MS's bugs to be fully compatible.

PCs are basically back to what workstations were, though with much broader price-points.

Even ignoring Windows and MS-Office, workstations are better for work than phones or tablets. Even though everyone at work has email on the phone, the vast majority of people send emails from their PC, though they may check their email on their phone. Web interfaces to ERP or other systems is much easier done on a PC, if one is available. Let alone specialized applications like CAD, IDEs, etc.

Phones and tablets fill in a lot of what "Home Computers" were. Significantly lower administrative overhead than a PC or workstation, generally a lot easier to switch on and open an App (technically it's waking from sleep). Plus they are always with you, so you always have all your data and Apps. Though they are really terrible at actually doing real work.

Comment Re: Summary: (Score 1) 57

it doesn't handle multiple monitors correctly. Menus pop open on the primary display even when you click their activation handle on the secondary one...

Is the secondary monitor left of the primary? If so the coordinates for that monitor will be negative, and I've seen a number of programs that won't place objects on negative coordinates, but instead at 0.

Comment Re:Wow! (Score 1) 89

But for a lot of businesses, like our own, we are being encouraged to migrate to Teams from Skype for Business. That's likely the cause for increase usage. We are not a tech company, hardly use group chats, just a company using Office 365.

For simple IM, Teams seems like overkill. Plus basing the desktop client around a web browser ensures for slow and bloated performance compared to an actual native client.

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