The Computer Thread

I have waterfox - I just don't fully trust it yet as it's version of NOSCRIPT is an earlier one.

But I may switch to it as F Ire Fox has showed to be a flaming ball of broken at times.

FWIW, I'm currently using Waterfox 64bit (Win7-64), and have for at least a few years now. It does seem to work better than FFx, but I haven't used that since well before the v57 release so I don't know what's been fixed or broken (though my Inner Cynic[tm] is more willing to bet on the latter ) since then.

Edited by Nohbody on May 9th 2019 at 10:59:56 AM

57 itself was Firefox Quantum, wasn't it? So, since you stopped... uh... they rebuilt the entire browser in another language and made it faster and more memory safe? So if it's been independently developed since before then, possibly quite a lot of basic performance things. Though I wouldn't know exactly without spending a lot more time looking.

They also disabled a bunch of addon types, which is why I switched myself.

Assuming that this is on topic here, there is currently a research project in Europe (but also involving Brazil and Australia) to elucidate the Internet habits of children in the countries described. In Switzerland the results have already been published and interpreted by this newspaper article (German link):

• Internet problems are an issue already from a young age. Apparently as much as 9% of all 10-year olds were victims of discrimination on the Internet, 5% of cybermobbing.
• Exposure to sexual content is quite common especially among older teenagers; 68% of 15-16 year olds have seen such and almost 20% violent sexual stuff.
• About 40% of all 15-16 year olds were asked for sexual stuff, and about 2% of 11-16 year olds ended up being extorted after sending sexual material themselves.
• 33% of all youngsters asked has online contact with strangers, and a full 15% afterwards encountered them IRL. Apparently the experiences were mostly positive in these cases.
• Slightly more than half of all teens did encounter problematic content such as hate-mongering, drug-related stuff and violence online, especially after 12-13 years.
• Excessive Internet use is a problem, but apparently much less than some of the problems described before. 1/3 of the people questioned did observe that they spend too much time online.

It seems like one of the suggestions made is to more clearly establish to which degree such issues are a school's or a parent's responsibility; apparently many parents prefer for schools to pick up this topic.

Me, what I find particularly noteworthy is how many teens meet someone unknown online and then also in real life. That was something we were told in Germany one should never do.

That last concerns me, too. In the U.S., that's one thing children are always told not to do.

Its something children are told in every country on Earth "Do not meet with strangers online or give them your real name" its common sense for Christ sakes

However, about a solid third to a half of kids are hardwired to do the opposite of what their parents and teachers have banged on about when it comes to "common sense". What area they pick to be especially determined to be risky in, however, varies. Some of the risk-takers will really push the boat out; most, however, will still apply a little sense. If not as much as their caregivers might wish.

And, for all it can go very badly, it can also go surprisingly well. <shrugs>

Edited by Euodiachloris on May 25th 2019 at 1:05:55 PM

A more useful statistic would be how many have seen it and weren't trying to see it...

It's a fool's errand to assume that you can age-gate the internet without going full China worldwide and destroying all the technology that exists to avoid internet censorship, so just saying who's seen sexual content is fairly... meaningless.

According to the report for Switzerland (page 7) the most common path of exposure is - wait for it:

Advertisements. Pop-ups, specifically.

Note also that especially younger teenagers consider sexual stuff as uncomfortable. Makes sense, unsolicited anythings are often an annoyance.

(According to pages 15-17 about 2/3 of all children who meet strangers know these through friends, and that most of the 1/3 who encounter wholly unknown people are 15-16 years old. I presume this is why it doesn't end badly as frequently as one might assume)

Crosspost:

What is a good Ebay/Craigslist alternative to can sell broken phones and tablets? Also can anyone tell me where I can get someone to repair this tablet I have and at a good price?

Try the Rossman group. Yes they are in NYC, but if they can't fix it it can't be fixed. Try flea markets or donate your used electronics.

A question about pagers: do they keep conversations that took place like you do with cellphones or not?

Are pagers even still a thing? Yes, they do keep a history of pages received, but how long would depend on the model and/or service. And, of course, the service itself would maintain records even if the device doesn't.

Edited by Fighteer on May 28th 2019 at 12:08:33 PM

I guess there are environments where they have a leg up on, say, smart phones (I'm guessing pagers in hospital dramas is a thing cos pagers don't interfere with hospital equipment as much?)

They are not, the last holdouts of pager service ended this year (The UK, and Japan).

Which annoyed the hell out of emergency services, because like you said, they prefered them over cellphones.

Edited by Imca on May 28th 2019 at 1:23:43 AM

There will come a time, if it hasn't arrived already, when nobody who watches those hospital dramas will have any idea what those beepy things are.

Heh like how you have to explain to some people why the save icon is a floppy disk?

Yeah I have heard doctors/nurses say pagers are more convenient for the specific role they are/were used for in hospitals. Cheap, low maintenance, no distractions in the form of apps...

Edited by akanesarumara on May 28th 2019 at 6:22:23 PM

Their radio frequency won't make grandma's EKG meter go haywire...

Jesus on a motorcycle, I HATE WINDOWS 10 ENTERPRISE.

We just had our "migration" to Windows 10 from Win 7. What should have been easy was a migration more akin to WatershipDown than Winnie the Pooh:

• Apps that were broken due to Microsoft Edge not parsing java like IE.
• IE in Windows 10 not recognizing the certs for web applets we need to use -back to the shop my work laptop went.
• Google Chrome - how I loath the way you process tabs. That's why I use Firefox and Waterfox at home.
• Outlook - there is a special place in HELL for whoever wrote Outlook. The "improvements" in Windows 10 don't justify the bloat and Outlook's ability to crash if someone has too much HTML in their signature.

For the first one, the real blame lies with the people who are still, basically, invested in 20+ year old javascript (not Java) that wasn't even any sorts of standards-compliant back then... that Edge actually IS compatible and makes them not work says a lot.

Though I recall there being a version of IE on Win 10 specifically BECAUSE of that obsolescence. Odd.

Yeah, it's really on the app developers to make their stuff compatible with modern OS's. It's not Microsoft's fault that people use crappy coding techniques.

I will say this: for a while, my own company was demanding that users keep a really old version of Java on their computers because our own enterprise software required it. That's apparently been fixed now.

We also recently switched from Lotus Notes to Outlook, and aside from a few teething pains, it's been smooth and easy for everyone. Although I don't know why it would crash because of a signature, I can say that people who bling up their sigs with lots of HTML deserve to drive for eternity behind a car that's got fifteen million LEDs and a 2000 W sub.

I will say that nobody uses Edge, not even Microsoft anymore. You can use IE in Windows 10 for backward compatibility, but almost everything is in Chrome these days. Even Edge is being recoded with Chromium.

Edited by Fighteer on May 29th 2019 at 6:51:26 AM

When it comes to hacking computers and related devices, can they be discussed here or elsewhere?

Well, we do have a topic about privacy and information security. I suppose it would depend on the exact subject. Also, we don't want any discussion of detailed hacking methods, as that could run afoul of the forum rules.

I think it's just schadenfreude-a-tastic that Micro$oft had to throw in the towel in Internet Explorer and Edge - the next Edge will be based on Chromium.

Micro$oft gets spelled that way because they took what was an open standard (Javascript) and made the digital teratoma that is JScript.

The "best viewed with" tag divided the internet as Bill's fork of Javascript took over the internet and some developers even used it in shareware (or used other Micro$oft scripting languages).

AS long as House Redmond doesn't try to make their own version of Chrome V8. If they do that, we all forked