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Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

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201–210 of 461 posts

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

I re-read that piece just a week ago. It's magnificent and now even more true than eight years ago. Spoke to friend this week, she told me she doesn't have a computer. That's increasingly common. People get by with their phones.

But smartphone is a computer, personal computer with telephony hardware. And Android is Linux with different userspace, mainline Linux can boot quite a lot of smartphones. Terminology is so wrong.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#202
post #14

There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation since the days of dial-up.

I'd consider stickies a decent jump.

My past self never would have predicted the world has moved to a form of hieroglyphics of fuzzy animals to talk to each other.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#203
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daughter (who teaches math at HS) asked me to create educational videos for her kids who don't know how to work a computer. They only know phones.

Kids can't use computers. http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

I'm not sure I share the concern. They really expect people to understand or care about things like proxy settings? Everyone doesn't share these interests.

Yeah kids can't use computers, because they don't come with knowledge pre-installed, but the ones who are interested will figure it out. It's not like there's a shortage of resources. And if you're concerned about your own kids, then teach them and they'll have a nice advantage in school.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there E2EE support for Matrix? Edit: Nope. https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix/issues/18

Nigh all of the protocols have incomplete support. I purely use it as a chat client and avoid most of the more complicated features, since I don't use them.

Yeah, that's why I asked, because if you use only 1 chat protocol, a dedicated client is almost always better (now that ICQ and AIM are dead). Pidgin really shines if you need to aggregate multiple protocols in a single client.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#205
post #14

There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation since the days of dial-up.

I'd consider stickies a decent jump. My past self never would have predicted the world has moved to a form of hieroglyphics of fuzzy animals to talk to each other.

it's semantics without slavish adherence to syntax. it's really not that much of a stretch to see that the imbuing of ambiguity is a net positive to some people in some circumstances, and is a natural evolution of formalized language systems in a non-optimally constrained environment.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#207

still using finch (libpurple text ui client coming from the same corner) on a daily basis. Easy to keep it running on a tmux session on my server, ready for a ssh/mosh + tmux attach. Prevents all the syncing of chat histories everywhere...

I For example: https://inconsolation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013-01-24...

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#209
post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

Does not everyone still use it? I and most of my friends do. They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever: https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890

I stopped using it once ICQ stopped working with it. By that time, I only had 1 friend that was still using it, and we just switched to Discord anyways.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#210
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest they never knew how to use computers. Computers are general purpose devices, which is lost on the general population who only ever need to check emails and post on social media. Smart phones fit this perfectly. Let's leave the general computing devices for people who actually need that power, just like the early days.

Awfully condescending opinion. How about making _general_ computing devices more accessible via UI/UX to the _general_ public? That doesn't seem like such a crazy idea.

But most people don't need or even want an actual general computing device?

It doesn't matter how much you improve it's ui/ux... if it's not a desirable feature to the general population, few will ever use it.

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