rottingleaf

Yes, as a part of userbase I don't want to be on sale, thank you very much. Hence the comment above.

Not exactly what I said. I think these two were bad, but the idea of plugins was good.

Especially the uncertainty of whether a user has a plugin for the specific kind of content.

One could use different plugins, say, that plugin to show flash videos in mplayer under Unices.

It's worse when everyone uses Chrome or something with modern CSS, HTML5 etc support.

The modularization was good. The idea that executable content can be different depending on plugins and is separated from the browser. I think we need that back.

And in some sense it not being very safe was good too. Everyone knew you can't trust your PC when it's connected to the Interwebs, evil haxxors will pwn you, bad viruses will gangsettle it, everything confidential you had there will turn up for all to see. And one's safety is not the real level of protection, but how it relates to perceived level of protection. That was better back then, people had realistic expectations. Now you still can be owned, even if that's much harder, but people don't understand in which situations the risk is more, in which less, and often have false feeling of safety.

One thing that was definitely better is - those plugins being disabled by default, and there being a gray square on the page with an "allow content" or something button. And the Web being usable in Lynx.

Ukraine does have units with neo-Nazi symbolic. Just not any further at that than Russia.

those could easily be authenticated with a key provided at signup both to make filtering and easier and to be able to revoke authentication

That's what Tox links had for spam protection, an identifier of user plus an identifier of a permission. Agree on this.

More structured ... I'm not sure, maybe a few types (not like MIME content type, but more technical, type not of content, but of message itself) of messages would be good - a letter, a notice, a contact request, a hypertext page, maybe even some common state CRUD (ok, this seems outside of email, I just aesthetically love the idea of something like an email collaborative filesystem with version control, and user friendly at the same time), a permission request/update/something (for some third resource).

Where a letter and a hypertext page would be almost open content as it is now, and a notice would have notice type and source, similarly with contact request (permission to write to us, like in normal Jabber clients, also solves those unannounced emails problem, sort of), and permission requests.

If so, then the password reset and such fit in well enough. Spam problem would be no more, at the same time all these service messages could be allowed, and having only ID and basic operational information wouldn't be used for spam.

You would be delusional to think a web browser should be worth as much as an IMAP client.

This is a problem with web browsers and that set of protocols, not with my comparison.

You still ultimately run networked sandboxed applications in a web browser and view hypertext, it's an unholy hybrid between two things that should be separated.

And it was so 20 years ago.

For the former Java applets and Flash were used a lot, as everyone remembers. The idea of a plugin was good. The reality was kinda not so much because of security and Flash being proprietary, but still better than today. For the latter no, you don't need something radically more complex than an IMAP client.

I think Sun and Netscape etc made a mistake with JavaScript. Should have made plugins the main way to script pages.

Speaking of such things, an email client or an email server are never as monopolistic as Chrome.

So maybe email is a good candidate for something that should be torn down and built anew right after the Web.

Also email doesn't have to be destroyed entirely, it's very modular.

Where they had UUCP paths, and now have addresses in some services, just need to have John Doe <3cec7f8c438fa578dbd3a1557b822df469490a12>, with 3cec7f8c438fa578dbd3a1557b822df469490a12 being a hash of "johndoe" here and a hash of his pubkey in reality, and his pubkey can be retrieved from some public directory.

And have the letter signed by it (and encrypted possibly, though this of course would hurt server-side solutions of spam problem).

Frankly they can have a common replacement, in my humble opinion. When separating identities from servers, one can do the same with websites. How is a newsgroup fundamentally different from a replicated website collaboratively edited? If a letter can have a universal identifier, what prevents one to put a hyperlink to it? If we need scripts, what prevents us from having them in a letter's content? If we need to reach a server by hostname and IP, what prevents us from doing just that from a letter, just the letter being the primary point of entry?

I just think that the old "vector hypertext Fidonet" joke is not so dumb, if you think what it could literally mean.

Steam is not the only means of distribution anywhere, and you can often buy the same game both from Steam and directly.

It's too early to hate it.

(Well, I mean, I want a FreeBSD native Steam client with native Proton and all infrastructure, but I can understand that it's a small percentage, even if not that different from Linux support.)

Chrome shouldn't be worth more than an IMAP client. If it is, then the web should be torn down and built anew.

as long as its secure and 100% recoverable by the user

These two are fundamentally incompatible.

And having a central authority obviously compromises security.

I dislike this idea that government run is bad.

Nothing is inherently bad, but putting yourself into a hierarchy (at the bottom of it too) that you don't need seems a dubious decision.

Having postal service support e-mail services is fine, maybe.

People have invented cryptographic identities. Maybe unbinding email identity from service is long overdue.

I'm biased, but seems much better than what you are suggesting.

Typical.

Especially when that ad was released, nobody considered piracy a crime seriously then.

Those making the ad could probably be thinking like: something business-made, with workhours put into it, shouldn't be pirated, that's theft, but something made by enthusiasts can, it's taking what doesn't have an owner, just toys in the Internet, and also GPL is dishonest for having rules, it's cheating and poison, it's ownerless too, only companies doing business should be able to sue for IP violations.