Why would I type on a small phone when I sit in front of a big display and keyboard? [...] Since when do you need a laptop to read messages received over the Internet, such as emails and instant messages? A smartphone can do it just fine.
Because it's inconvenient to reply to "messages received over the Internet" "on a small phone".
Who pays to store encrypted chat logs? I imagine that the provider of a storage facility would be unwilling to store information that it cannot decrypt because information that it cannot decrypt isn't useful for choosing the most relevant advertisements to show to the provider's users. Or would you and everyone with whom you communicate be fine with a paywall around the storage of chat logs?
Google Voice is unavailable outside the United States and still requires a phone number. Receiving phone calls requires either a Google Voice number or a Project Fi number, which is also available outside the United States. (Source) Even if you are among the minority (~5%) of people who do live in the United States, signing up for Google Voice requires a phone number to which to forward calls. (Source)
That's why you typically scan the QR code between clients
That'd work for WhatsApp or Allo, both of which require the subscriber to have a phone, but not for users who use only a PC. How would a PC-only user of an app that allows PC-only users copy the private key from one copy of an application to another? Consider the case where one of those copies is a JavaScript application running in a web browser for two reasons: it could be a machine whose administrator allows the user to run JavaScript in a browser but forbids the user to permanently install native applications, or it could be a machine running a operating system to which the native application happens not to have yet been ported. Or does the ease of copying private keys through an application for a major smartphone operating system justify requiring each subscriber to own and use a major smartphone?
Why would I type on a small phone when I sit in front of a big display and keyboard?
In order to send messages between those times when you "sit in front of a big display and keyboard". Or do you have a laptop on your person everywhere you go?
Sending SMS and forcing people to reply from a phone is rude.
Is it also rude for someone to have an IM waiting for him but not read it nor reply to it because he subscribes to SMS but not cellular data and is away from home, work, or a public hotspot?
Then don't use a mobile keyboard. Buy a full-size USB keyboard and a USB OTG adapter, and physically plug it into your phone's USB port. You can even get a Model M from Unicomp if you want.
I think bradley13's point is that almost everybody with a valid reason to communicate with bradley13 already carries a device with a cellular radio on a plan with at least several hundred monthly sent and received messages, and those few who do not (such as damn_registrars and irrational-design) can easily acquire one.
But I wonder how many people in bradley13's circle of friends have North American pay-as-you-go plans. Carriers in the U.S. and Canada bill both the sending account and the receiving account for each message. T-Mobile, for example, charges 10 cents for each sent message and 10 cents for each received message.
And with the Windows installation process strongly encouraging use of a Microsoft account since Windows 8, does this mean people are required to buy a cell phone and maintain a subscription to cellular service in order to use the operating system that comes preinstalled on the vast majority of PCs in North America?
It's for people who already use this app on a phone and want to additionally use a desktop or laptop computer with its larger screen and physical keyboard. In other words, it's a counterpart to WhatsApp web access.
If the man in the middle cannot read messages that you send or receive, then how can it back up your chat history to keep it accessible across all your devices? That's one reason I find IRC inconvenient as an IM protocol: I can't review previous conversations that I had on a previous device.
I already have a suitable laptop, which I use for other things, too.
But do you carry your MacBook with you everywhere in case you need to suddenly use an app that isn't available for your iPhone?
Your experience differs from mine. I have a laptop. A lot of other people in another circle of friends I'm in do not. When asked why they can't do something or didn't notice something, they say "I'm on mobile". They would need to buy and start carrying a laptop in addition to the phone.
Or are you REALLY so stupid to suggest that a phone and a laptop are equivalent devices?
No. But if most everybody needs a laptop anyway, why does the iPad continue to exist?
Distinction without a difference. An app developer could make an app technically "free" in the App Store or Google Play Store, but put some essential part of the logic of the app on the server and charge for access to the portion of the app that is on the server. Dropbox's storage upgrade is this way, for example.
I have yet to hear of any mobile app that was not a service that was free on the web at some point.
"Free on the web", or free legally on the web? Because the "free" counterparts that preceded Netflix were apps made with the intent of infringing copyright.
Individual communists still have a sense of personal ownership of belongings, anarchists form power structures
Which is why anarchism, communism, and anarcho-communism don't touch the edge of a Nolan chart. They come close but aren't quite to the extreme.
white supremacists can believe in the welfare state
Hence the "socialist" in "National Socialist German Labor Party" (NSDAP). To capture where different ideologies fall relative to the National Socialists and their successors, you might need a different chart with economic regulation and ethnic discrimination as its axes.
Where is the chart that acknowledges this individuality and supports exploration of the issues and not the identities?
These charts improve on the left/right divide by adding an additional axis. But a chart really can't summarize more than two orthogonal aspects of a political position for one practical reason: An image on a piece of paper or computer monitor has two dimensions, as does the human retina.
Gamers usually have ample RAM to run apps in the background.
How, when a PC game itself takes so much RAM? Or are they playing older or emulated games, which require less RAM, or console games, which use the RAM of a different device? Besides, once you have some groups in Discord, other groups in Skype, and still others in a third app, the RAM cost keeping yourself contactable starts to add up.
I happen to enjoy it because it brings my VOIP and chat (which is just IRC with some extra front-end features) into one app.
But how much RAM does this "one app" use while running in the background, compared to an IRC client like HexChat? Some PCs are still being sold with only 2 GB, particularly compact laptops. As I understand it, Discord is like recent versions of Skype: an Electron app that uses over 300 MB because it's running inside a copy of Chromium.
Hard fascism and hard socialism are not the same, but both are authoritarian. This puts them in the lower part of a Nolan chart, the upper part of a Pace News chart, or the right side of a Pournelle chart.
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Why would I type on a small phone when I sit in front of a big display and keyboard?
[...]
Since when do you need a laptop to read messages received over the Internet, such as emails and instant messages? A smartphone can do it just fine.
Because it's inconvenient to reply to "messages received over the Internet" "on a small phone".
Who pays to store encrypted chat logs? I imagine that the provider of a storage facility would be unwilling to store information that it cannot decrypt because information that it cannot decrypt isn't useful for choosing the most relevant advertisements to show to the provider's users. Or would you and everyone with whom you communicate be fine with a paywall around the storage of chat logs?
Then which services still popular in 2017 use the method used "about a million times in the past already"?
which is also available outside the United States
This should be "which is also unavailable outside the United States" as stated in the source.
Google Voice is unavailable outside the United States and still requires a phone number. Receiving phone calls requires either a Google Voice number or a Project Fi number, which is also available outside the United States. (Source) Even if you are among the minority (~5%) of people who do live in the United States, signing up for Google Voice requires a phone number to which to forward calls. (Source)
This paper shows evidence that N != 1.
That's why you typically scan the QR code between clients
That'd work for WhatsApp or Allo, both of which require the subscriber to have a phone, but not for users who use only a PC. How would a PC-only user of an app that allows PC-only users copy the private key from one copy of an application to another? Consider the case where one of those copies is a JavaScript application running in a web browser for two reasons: it could be a machine whose administrator allows the user to run JavaScript in a browser but forbids the user to permanently install native applications, or it could be a machine running a operating system to which the native application happens not to have yet been ported. Or does the ease of copying private keys through an application for a major smartphone operating system justify requiring each subscriber to own and use a major smartphone?
Why would I type on a small phone when I sit in front of a big display and keyboard?
In order to send messages between those times when you "sit in front of a big display and keyboard". Or do you have a laptop on your person everywhere you go?
Sending SMS and forcing people to reply from a phone is rude.
Is it also rude for someone to have an IM waiting for him but not read it nor reply to it because he subscribes to SMS but not cellular data and is away from home, work, or a public hotspot?
Then don't use a mobile keyboard. Buy a full-size USB keyboard and a USB OTG adapter, and physically plug it into your phone's USB port. You can even get a Model M from Unicomp if you want.
I think bradley13's point is that almost everybody with a valid reason to communicate with bradley13 already carries a device with a cellular radio on a plan with at least several hundred monthly sent and received messages, and those few who do not (such as damn_registrars and irrational-design) can easily acquire one.
But I wonder how many people in bradley13's circle of friends have North American pay-as-you-go plans. Carriers in the U.S. and Canada bill both the sending account and the receiving account for each message. T-Mobile, for example, charges 10 cents for each sent message and 10 cents for each received message.
And with the Windows installation process strongly encouraging use of a Microsoft account since Windows 8, does this mean people are required to buy a cell phone and maintain a subscription to cellular service in order to use the operating system that comes preinstalled on the vast majority of PCs in North America?
It's for people who already use this app on a phone and want to additionally use a desktop or laptop computer with its larger screen and physical keyboard. In other words, it's a counterpart to WhatsApp web access.
If the man in the middle cannot read messages that you send or receive, then how can it back up your chat history to keep it accessible across all your devices? That's one reason I find IRC inconvenient as an IM protocol: I can't review previous conversations that I had on a previous device.
I already have a suitable laptop, which I use for other things, too.
But do you carry your MacBook with you everywhere in case you need to suddenly use an app that isn't available for your iPhone?
Your experience differs from mine. I have a laptop. A lot of other people in another circle of friends I'm in do not. When asked why they can't do something or didn't notice something, they say "I'm on mobile". They would need to buy and start carrying a laptop in addition to the phone.
Or are you REALLY so stupid to suggest that a phone and a laptop are equivalent devices?
No. But if most everybody needs a laptop anyway, why does the iPad continue to exist?
Then why not just make all apps "free" on grounds that an app's functionality is a "subscription service" as a software substitute, and require an IAP after installation to use it past 30 days? The only reason I can see is Apple's "stubborn refusal" to allow trial versions, which is killing the iPad Pro.
Distinction without a difference. An app developer could make an app technically "free" in the App Store or Google Play Store, but put some essential part of the logic of the app on the server and charge for access to the portion of the app that is on the server. Dropbox's storage upgrade is this way, for example.
I have yet to hear of any mobile app that was not a service that was free on the web at some point.
"Free on the web", or free legally on the web? Because the "free" counterparts that preceded Netflix were apps made with the intent of infringing copyright.
There is no app I would ever get sucked into "renting", ever.
Not even something similar to Netflix or Amazon Video? And what would you recommend for web animation now that Adobe Animate CC is rental-only?
Individual communists still have a sense of personal ownership of belongings, anarchists form power structures
Which is why anarchism, communism, and anarcho-communism don't touch the edge of a Nolan chart. They come close but aren't quite to the extreme.
white supremacists can believe in the welfare state
Hence the "socialist" in "National Socialist German Labor Party" (NSDAP). To capture where different ideologies fall relative to the National Socialists and their successors, you might need a different chart with economic regulation and ethnic discrimination as its axes.
Where is the chart that acknowledges this individuality and supports exploration of the issues and not the identities?
These charts improve on the left/right divide by adding an additional axis. But a chart really can't summarize more than two orthogonal aspects of a political position for one practical reason: An image on a piece of paper or computer monitor has two dimensions, as does the human retina.
How fast is it to earn $999 (source) to buy a MacBook Air?* And how convenient is it to carry a MacBook Air everywhere that you would carry an iPhone?
* Less expensive laptops made by other companies are available, but TheFakeTimCook has already expressed a preference for Apple products.
Gamers usually have ample RAM to run apps in the background.
How, when a PC game itself takes so much RAM? Or are they playing older or emulated games, which require less RAM, or console games, which use the RAM of a different device? Besides, once you have some groups in Discord, other groups in Skype, and still others in a third app, the RAM cost keeping yourself contactable starts to add up.
It takes a few brain cells and an apt-get install to get an IRC server up and running.
And an ISP that allows servers.
I happen to enjoy it because it brings my VOIP and chat (which is just IRC with some extra front-end features) into one app.
But how much RAM does this "one app" use while running in the background, compared to an IRC client like HexChat? Some PCs are still being sold with only 2 GB, particularly compact laptops. As I understand it, Discord is like recent versions of Skype: an Electron app that uses over 300 MB because it's running inside a copy of Chromium.
Hard fascism and hard socialism are not the same, but both are authoritarian. This puts them in the lower part of a Nolan chart, the upper part of a Pace News chart, or the right side of a Pournelle chart.
And no nasty SysOp telling you that you've exceeded your download quota either.
Download quotas are still around. File-sending services impose quotas on non-paying users, and ISPs impose them even on paying users.