12:43:32 <WG9s> my feeling at the time and still going on is hardware might have survived if they did not wont their own proprietary OS instead of supporting UNIX as the OS for this platform.
12:43:45 <WG9s> I still think that should have been the driection
12:46:21 <WG9s> oops somehow switched channels ther
14:44:01 <wyatt8750> WG9S: Talking about IBM?
14:44:21 <wyatt8740> (Z systems)
14:46:15 <WG9s>  well I worked for Control Data  back in the day was IBM and what whas known as the BUNCH based on first letter of thier name (Burroghs, Univac, National Cash Register, Control Data ANd HOneywell)  I am not sure nay fo the BUNCH are any longer in the computer business somehow IBM survived.
14:46:43 <wyatt8740> ooh.
14:47:01 <wyatt8740> NCR *might* be... I don't think any of the others are
14:47:46 <wyatt8740> yeah NCR still makes point of sale and ATM machines, things like that
14:51:11 <wyatt8740> i know honeywell isn't because i looked into that before. univac is unisys now and it looks like it migrated to x86 in 2014 (including OS 2200)
14:51:40 <wyatt8740> burroughs is also unisys now
14:52:15 <wyatt8740> CDC is basically gone from what I can tell.
15:14:53 <WG9s> i worked for cdc I know they are gone
15:16:01 <WG9s> actually my wife and i both worked for cdc and she arranged for a job with one of our customers for me so that we did not have a 2 income dependent on cdc,  she was very samrt
15:17:30 <WG9s> was easier for me to move although if she could have she made more money that I did.
15:18:19 <WG9s> but, like I  said, she was so much smarter than me!
15:42:46 <therube> thank you :-)
19:02:52 <msiism> I've just read the release notes for the latest SeaMonkey today and the first sentence kind of gave me pause.
19:03:19 <msiism> Let me quote it: "The Mozilla backend code SeaMonkey is based on, now usually incorporates breaking changes in every release."
19:03:57 <msiism> So, doesn't this, in effect, mean that SeaMonkey is playing catch-up with Mozilla firing out breaking changes?
19:05:15 <msiism> And isn't this kind of undermining the point of SeaMonkey a bit?
19:17:14 <wyatt8740> msiism: correct, but there's nothing we can do about it but soldier on
19:17:39 <wyatt8740> or give up, which I'd rather not see happen
19:18:17 <msiism> Hm… is there really no other way?
19:18:37 <wyatt8740> well, not unless you want seamonkey to become a crippled shadow of its former self
19:18:44 <wyatt8740> (e.g. a firefox reskin)
19:18:58 <wyatt8740> or chromium reskin
19:19:30 <wyatt8740> it's similar to the problems other classic mozilla derived software faces
19:19:43 <wyatt8740> *face
19:20:02 <msiism> I was wondering whether it would be possible to, maybe, reduce the dependence on Mozilla's code base, at least in the long run.
19:20:36 <wyatt8740> that'd be awesome, but it's also asking a lot since gecko is sort of the core of rendering anything in seamonkey
19:21:51 <msiism> I see. So, this all mainly concerns the rendering engine?
19:21:57 <wyatt8740> Well, sort of?
19:22:09 <wyatt8740> It's not just that really, the build system and stuff is also a disaster
19:22:14 <wyatt8740> (for modern firefox)
19:22:37 <wyatt8740> and the rust dependencies, node.js dependency, etc.
19:22:59 <wyatt8740> disclaimer: I am not really a seamonkey developer
19:23:16 <wyatt8740> I do make my own builds though so I have picked up things here and there
19:23:32 <msiism> I was wondering, for example, if there would have been a way to avoid those changes concenring the bookmarks manager and download manager.
19:24:20 <wyatt8740> ah, I didn't build 2.53.11 yet.
19:24:39 <wyatt8740> my guess is "no," not without taking on a significant maintenance burden by forking gecko again
19:25:00 <wyatt8740> usually these things change because mozilla upstream has removed functionality we needed
19:25:06 <wyatt8740> and whatever we get is "the next best thing."
19:25:12 <msiism> I see.
19:25:21 <wyatt8740> If the download manager got updated, though, that makes me very sad.
19:26:00 <wyatt8740> "The extensive modifications were needed because of Mozilla Gecko platform API changes."
19:26:02 <wyatt8740> ah, yep.
19:26:28 <wyatt8740> so basically, if we want to keep seamonkey viable for "modern" (bad) websites we need to make tradeoffs
19:26:49 <wyatt8740> btw, this is mostly unrelated, but modern web development is a disaster
19:27:05 <wyatt8740> imo
19:27:10 <msiism> Yeah, I'm beginning to wonder whether that's actually a reasonable goal.
19:27:35 <wyatt8740> things like palemoon (lol) are facing similar questions right now
19:27:53 <msiism> I can imagine.
19:28:03 <wyatt8740> might be worse for them because tobin had a falling out at last
19:28:32 <wyatt8740> also they were on an older codebase than seamonkey currently is
19:29:10 <msiism> I see.
19:29:17 <wyatt8740> seamonkey has been playing catch up for a while, while certain palemoon people tended to criticize it for trying to keep up with mozilla
19:30:01 <wyatt8740> I think (and it rankles me to say it) the pragmatic route that seamonkey has taken so far was a wise decision
19:30:16 <wyatt8740> (I'm a strong idealist when it comes to a lot of things)
19:30:40 <msiism> Hm… I mean, I don't really mind modern web sites breaking for me. I can afford just not to use them
19:30:52 <wyatt8740> agreed. and often there are things you can do to make SM work
19:31:09 <wyatt8740> I made an addon that just adds a taskbar button to toggle webcomponents on/off through about:config
19:31:17 <wyatt8740> that fixes some websites that don't use it too heavily
19:31:22 <msiism> That's nice.
19:31:47 <wyatt8740> there's the github/gitlab webcomponents polyfill addon too
19:33:03 <wyatt8740> but yeah if SM had stuck on an old version of gecko until now, it'd be in a worse situation than it already is because we'd have to do everything that's been done in the last couple years but starting now in 2022
19:33:37 <wyatt8740> (older, i should say)
19:34:21 <msiism> Maybe the Web is really kind of done.
19:35:08 <wyatt8740> i've kind of felt that way for a long time, but honestly the web is doing fine
19:35:12 <wyatt8740> it's options for users that are done
19:35:21 <msiism> But then, you can create useful sites that are not terriible.
19:35:41 <msiism> And most browsers render them quite nicely…
19:35:54 <wyatt8740> https://wyatt8740.gitlab.io/site/blog/
19:36:00 <wyatt8740> that renders properly in dillo
19:36:10 <wyatt8740> (and thus everything else)
19:36:33 <msiism> Good stuff. I also like grey.
19:36:35 <msiism> ;)
19:36:43 <wyatt8740> easier to read than white :\
19:37:08 <wyatt8740> I kind of want to make it colorful, but I think that the legibility is more important at the end of the day
19:37:31 <msiism> Though color can aid readability.
19:37:37 <wyatt8740> yeah it can
19:37:52 <wyatt8740> I have done a dark green background before and it looked good with white text
19:37:55 <wyatt8740> but anyway.
19:38:14 <msiism> That's one problem with the web: It wasn't made with user-side preferences in mind right from the beginning.
19:38:18 <wyatt8740> web developers CAN make good stuff, but it seems that things like bootstrap and extensive use of javascript have taken over for common sense
19:38:47 <wyatt8740> msiism: it sort of was, though. Netscape had plenty of options, and there was the whole mantra that sites should still be readable without any CSS
19:39:31 <wyatt8740> netscape was also expansible just like SM/old firefox
19:39:51 <msiism> Yeah, they still should be readable wihtout CSS.
19:39:59 <wyatt8740> the wide reach of ad blockers is evidence that customization/preferences still matter
19:40:10 <msiism> I mean, if a web page is not readable without CSS, then something went terribly wrong.
19:40:18 <wyatt8740> go to youtube
19:40:19 <wyatt8740> go to google
19:40:25 <wyatt8740> go basically anywhere on the 'modern web'
19:40:45 <wyatt8740> github, too
19:40:51 <msiism> Yeah, I use w3m sometimes.
19:42:47 <wyatt8740> The increased commercialization of the web, prevalence of unnecessary "frameworks," and SaaS in general have contributed to the embaddening of the web imo
19:43:52 <msiism> "They" are trying to create a bad, evil version NLS with HTML, CSS, and JS.
19:44:34 <wyatt8740> by NLS, you don't mean engelbart's on-line system, do you?
19:44:46 <msiism> I do.
19:44:49 <wyatt8740> ah ok
19:44:52 <msiism> :)
19:45:08 <wyatt8740> i sort of agree. especially with things like windows becoming "services"
19:46:05 <wyatt8740> will be back in ~3 minutes, taking out trash
19:50:13 <wyatt8740> msiism: i mean, with the exception of video conferencing, emacs  basically does everything NLS did
19:50:24 <wyatt8740> especially paired with something like an X server
19:50:50 <msiism> Yeah, sure. I just discussed this with someone yesterady.
19:50:58 <wyatt8740> haha.
19:51:02 <msiism> :)
19:51:16 <msiism> It's just that NLS was built the right way around, so to say.
19:51:37 <msiism> But I've been told Emacs developers will get that fixed until about 2030.
19:51:39 <wyatt8740> Could be that it's nostalgia speaking (I'm 25, so I was just discovering the web in 2005 or so), but I think pre-2010 was the peak of the web (even though IE6 is a disaster... or perhaps because of it?)
19:52:07 <wyatt8740> heh
19:52:43 <wyatt8740> I know that I only use a fraction of what emacs can do, mostly because I'm too lazy to figure out SLIME
19:53:17 <msiism> I'm not sure about peak of the Web. I've been using the Web since, maybe 2003. It just seeems to be peaking constantly.
19:53:33 <wyatt8740> I haven't liked the direction of the web since around 2012 or 2013
19:53:52 <wyatt8740> of course, that's around when firefox 4 came out/3.6 was EOLed, so that might have something to do with it
19:55:02 <wyatt8740> ironically, even though it's awful, flash was a boon for individual creators. It feels like the barrier to entry has gone up since it died for non-commercial uses of the web
19:55:45 <wyatt8740> also it kept 'rich content' constrained in most cases to a small frame on a website
19:55:51 <wyatt8740> ignoring some sites that were entirely flash
19:56:12 <tomman> blame Google
19:56:50 <tomman> seriously, we seem to be into a unwinnable war because Google rewrites the standards every single month, and every single month webdevs jump into the shiny without asking
19:57:14 <msiism> Maybe using older standrads is one way to avoid that.
19:57:20 <tomman> life would be easier if Google and friends hadn't deemed the web into a "living standard"
19:57:46 <msiism> I write my web pages in HTML 4.01 because I can't make sense of HTML 5.
19:57:55 <tomman> also doesn't help that developers these days just use frameworks which relies on transpilers and other junk that autogenerate Chromeisms™
19:57:59 <wyatt8740> I can make sense of (much of) html5 as long as you don't mention webcomponents
19:58:21 <wyatt8740> tomman: definitely. especially annoying that mozilla is using nodejs to build spidermonkey now
19:58:34 <tomman> https://github.com/emberjs/ember.js/issues/19968 Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, ExhibitA
19:58:36 <tomman> -- Exhibit A
19:58:45 <tomman> wtf
19:58:54 <tomman> the Javascripts have invaded build systems too?!
19:58:58 <wyatt8740> yes
19:59:04 <wyatt8740> modern ff uses node.js to build
19:59:18 <tomman> we're doomed
19:59:21 <wyatt8740> agreed
19:59:41 <wyatt8740> msiism: I actually like flexboxes (mostly)
19:59:51 <wyatt8740> although I explicitly avoided using them on my site
19:59:58 <tomman> BTW, what exactly did happened to Tobin? Haven't seen him harassing people everywhere lately
19:59:59 <wyatt8740> mainly for dillo
20:00:04 <wyatt8740> tomman: he had a falling out
20:00:13 <wyatt8740> i have a link, one second, it's a fantastic thread
20:00:34 * tomman looks for the barf bag
20:01:39 <wyatt8740> fuck, they require registering to read it now
20:01:41 <wyatt8740> but it's https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=28003
20:01:51 <wyatt8740> sorry, i'll watch my tongue
20:02:14 <tomman> aww~
20:02:24 <wyatt8740> http://web.archive.org/web/20220322141859/https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=28003
20:02:56 <tomman> oh wow!
20:03:00 <wyatt8740> it's a real gem of insecurity and what I will dub "administrative fascism"
20:03:10 <tomman> so it seems he finally snapped off and dropped the tactic nukes
20:03:45 <wyatt8740> https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/know.your.sysadmin.html
20:04:01 <wyatt8740> yeah, nuked every server related to PM that he had logins for
20:05:05 <wyatt8740> also it makes me sad that he's from indiana
20:05:14 <wyatt8740> (another reason to not like my state)
20:07:30 <tomman> ah well, that episode is finally over
20:07:36 <tomman> now back to "us vs. Google" war
20:09:02 <msiism> wyatt8740: Re flexboxes: I've come to realize that side-by-side placement of elements is not how web pages are supposed to work, actually.
20:09:44 <msiism> It's all a top-down affair, as far as block elements go.
20:12:29 <tomman> is centering stuff on a page still a PITA?
20:15:36 <msiism> Not really.
20:16:27 <msiism> `margin:0 auto` should take care of that.
20:34:38 <msiism> I mean, that's for horizontal centering.
20:35:02 <msiism> Vertical centering doesn't really make sense, I'd say.
23:08:48 <njsg> (/me reads backlog) now if autogenerators could be at least designed to generate manageable, readable, hackable output... say, meaningful class names instead of cryptic strings...
23:10:21 <njsg> oh, and multiline stuff
23:19:57 <vord[m]> Seamonkey is the best
23:54:29 <tomman> 2.53.11.1 is real?!