- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Also, fuck xfinity and their BS. Can’t even change wifi password without downloading an app.
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Lol you clearly weren’t actually using the internet years ago. If you didn’t have Microsoft internet explorer and flash plugin loads of sites wouldn’t work.
I’ve been using the internet since around 2015 with both Chrome and Firefox (I switch in between frequently), I never have to install plug-ins except for like flash games, but normal sites work fine without any plugins.
Ahh. So a newbie. There was a short time which was as you described, which you seem to have started your internet journey during. Before then it was IE and plugins otherwise loads of sites wouldn’t work right, after that is now with everything claiming it needs chrome.
Jezus, 2014-2015 was my first year at university. I feel old now.
That’s around the time I got my first phone, I feel too young to be here.
I’ve been on the internet since the 90s and I think you’re missing the point.
The point that op is rose tinting the past when all that’s happened is we’ve moved from one evil megacorp dominating the internet to another?
“any browser you like” back then, eh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.At least there was antitrust lawsuits, google has been getting off scot-free with chromium
With a lot of things. Antitrust is dead.
The EU is still fighting monopolies. The US needs to too, but it’s such a deeply unhealthy democracy now, it may be a while before it gets back to it.
I’ve been using the internet since 1996. Newsgroups is about all that was good back then. Oh and email.
Chrome has become the new IE6 and Google the Microsoft of the internet.
Today is a bit of a low point, but I don’t think there was any perfect time.
Flash was a major issue during a lot of the “golden years” people are romanticizing. ActiveX was also, and still is, an issue for some parts of the world. Silverlight as well to a lesser extent
If there were any golden years, they probably were when the big three had similar market share between 2009 and 2014. But it was clear what was happening over those years, Chrome was eating IE and waning FF.
Yes apps are bad news.
What drives me mad is that 99.7% of the time you should be able to do everything through the browser without installing the 107th app. But they REALLY have to access your camera, microphone, files, location and body temperature in order to use the same shitty HTML wrapper just to show two input fields and some text.
Yep. Phone have gone horrible wrong and ended up in a duopoly. It is hard for new phone platform to get started. Hell, it’s a pain in the ass just have Android without Google services installed. It’s such anti-competitive and anti-privacy mess.
You speak correctly.
You are wise beyond your years. In respect I look at the late 90s as maybe my favorite period when the Internet was mostly run by (and used by) smart engineers and techies and not corrupted by misinformation and data mining. IRC was great at doing what discord does today. The web still had fun stuff and shareware was great to explore. Broadband was ramping up so speed was good for people who had it.
Thank you, but I’m getting on a bit now. I’d settle for my wiseness approaching my years!
I’m not sure I have favourite internet decade. Even today has it’s upsides. Probably more open code used running and accessing the internet now than ever. But we now have new problems!
I know smart people, who have used the internet to achieve a high technical skill set, who also believe some pretty crazy conspiracy stuff. Infectious miss-information is everywhere and no one is safe.
I think people romanticize Flash because of all the fun games you could play at Newgrounds, ArmorGames etc, that’s where nostalgia hits hard. It’s easy to forget the hoards of very shitty sites that didn’t need Flash at all, but were entirely made in it because fuck you. Adobe buying Macromedia definitely didn’t help with performance or security.
I heard it rumoured it was written in 32bit x86 and was a mess. That meant porting it to ARM was basically a rewrite. There are open source rewrites. But nothing would ever play everything the same. Flash was riddled with security flaws of both format and implication. Adobe joined im killing it became it was a risk to Adobe not at an asset. Despite it’s dominance at the time.
Shouldn’t use the Xfinity router anyway, that thing is fuckin garbage.
Internet years ago:
Site optimised for internet explorer 4.1, resolution 800x600
To view this website you need macromedia flash
This is the first thing I thought of as well. It’s never been “just use what you want”. It got better for a while as JavaScript and CSS normalized. Now it’s trash again.
800x600?! Thats way too much
640x480@256 colors master race
If you go bigger than that the table layout falls apart.
I very delicately crafted those 743 pixel wide rectangle .gif headers to work with our futuristic rounded corners, but when you increase the browser width then gaps appear around the fixed width corner cells.
Honestly, this was the reality. Half the shit couldn’t even be accessed without flash. Does nobody remember the flash on mobile drama?
Flash games were still awesome though.
Now I want to play Robot Unicorn again.
Main issue with flash was that it potentially could have been used to circumvent the App store on the iPhone. Or at least from what I’ve heard.
ActiveX
Or Silverlight. None of these lockin attempts are new and they always failed. Might just take a while.
Companies don’t like being beholden to other companies.
It’s because an app allows them to collect all kinds of telemetry and usage data that they can’t get from a browser. Browsers inherently limit what kinds of data they can collect by walling them off, while an app gives them full control over what they collect.
Yep…I use rethinkDNS to filter some, and App manager (require root) to disable some tracking components. It helps when u have to use an app
and allows them to incorporate any bullshit code they like in fashions no sane browser would accept in a thousand years.
And send you (usually completely useless) notifications.
And the app icon acts as an little ad for their company / brand
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Spectrum and Xfinity are both comcast
If you have good 5G service in your area with Version or T-Mobile you can do a 5G at home service with them (it is inexpensive and pretty solid).
Let me introduce you to the mighty Ctrl+W.
Ctrl+W? Am I too much of a computer noob to understand?
Edit: Oh, just searched it, it closes a window? I don’t normally use shortcuts so I don’t know what most shortcuts are.
It’s a bit like alt f4
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closes a tab
The Ctrl+W salute!
But they run unnecessary JavaScript Frameworks just for a page which redirects you to the download.
I would gladly go back to 1990s Internet, if I could avoid all the ads, tracking and spam.
Good ol 90s internet, home to Bonzi Buddy, browser toolbars, and referral click to collect Windows toolbars
It’s like if they were a physical location and trying to dictate what car you drive to get there. What business is it of theirs?
pLeAsE uSe cHrOmE fOr tHe bEsT eXpErIeNcE
looks at IE6
Time is a flat circle
I was gonna post IE6. Internet technology was stagnated for a few years until Firefox lit a fire under everyone’s ass.
Firefox defeated the ie monopoly hope it does the same to the chormium monopoly
I’m skeptical that a FF with a majority market share would continue to be as user-centric as it is now. Honestly I sort of hope that a third option comes out, but FF is my go to option for now.
I’ve lost faith in Google (nod to your username) for sure - in general I miss disruption, everyone used to believe they could do it better so no one shied away from the idea of building a better browser engine or any other technology for that matter.
Google stopped making decisions in the best interest of anyone other than their shareholders a long time ago.
I don’t really think the current setup is too bad. Chromium being open source means anyone can fork it and make their own better browser without having to write everything from scratch.
Personally, I use Vivaldi. To the best of my knowledge Google can’t spy on me, they have plans for mitigating Manifest V3, and it has many useful extra features such as tab splitting and separate workspaces. It’s made to be super customizable and from my experience the interface stays mostly the same between updates - something that annoyed me a lot about Chrome/Firefox. It can be a little rough around the edges sometimes, but I love using it.
Mozilla is funded by Microsoft so they can point to it and say “we’re not a monopoly look at this other browser”. Literally the same reason apple exists. We aren’t getting an open market we’re getting bought and paid for fake competition.
“You must install Real Macromedia Java Player in order to view this video, then allow ActiveX controls.”
but Safari is the new IE6, it doesn’t support the non-compliant Google Chrome only API I want to use and that’s tyranny!
Not at all. If you know a bit about networking, you can log into the modem/router and set whatever you like.
Already tried:
Options all greyed out with a message telling you to go to xfinity.com/myxfi which just tells you to download the app
It is FAR cheaper to buy and maintain your own modem and router. I’ve bought an $80 cable modem less than once a decade. Last I checked, Comcast charges you about $8 a month to rent a modem. That modem I bought paid for itself before the first year was up and has kept on trucking since. Just make sure Comcast hasn’t decided to bill you the modem rental for your own hardware, because they will try and they will not refund your money for their mistakes.
Oh wow, they really closed it down huh?
Not too long ago you were able to change it.
This dumbing things down to prevent customers from fucking themselves over and using up CS resources is getting ridiculous.
Say you need to change some settings but your modem/router isn’t online then you’re SOOL.
Cox, who uses the same gateway, is even worse. They won’t even allow you to enable legacy mode (802.11b) for IoT devices that cheaped out on WiFi cards, not even on a separate network and their customer service can’t enable it either.
I dread moving into a Cox region where there’s no fiber competitor available.
I would call and see if there’s a way to turn off automatic management.
Yikes. I would get my own modem and router then.
Just buy your own modem and router / access point like a normal person.
Speaking of normal people, learn how to talk like one to others, prick.
Calm down, no need to get offended over a comment that contains zero insults.
You implying that OP isn’t normal for getting their own router shows how puny your world view is.
Best of luck to you, I’m not at all offended, just felt like calling out a gadfly sitting on his throne of shit.
Also, you’re the only one using insults in this conversation. You’re clearly offended if you feel the need to use insults for no valid reason.
Holy shit, all I did was use a tiny bit of sarcasm.
For most cases, yes, people should get their own equipment, but for me, I’m on a government subsidized internet plan and my equipment is free.
But if we no longer qualify for this in the future, then yea, we’ll get our own equipment.
Understandable, Xfinity’s equipment still has no valid excuse to suck.
