[HN Gopher] The disappointingly ongoing success of WvDial (2009)
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The disappointingly ongoing success of WvDial (2009)
Author : tzhenghao
Score : 55 points
Date : 2023-07-04 10:01 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apenwarr.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (apenwarr.ca)
| makomk wrote:
| Huh. I'm pretty sure that was largely obsoleted a while back
| (like, over a decade probably, not too long after this was
| written) by NetworkManager and ModemManager adding better
| handling for all the weird quirks that did actually matter with
| mobile broadband. It might still be possible to use it with the
| right manual configuration and additional software, but it'd mean
| dealing with badly documented quirks that are just handled for
| you by ModemManager.
| anthk wrote:
| Nowadays, well, on BT, bluez solved all of these problems, and
| blueman works once at for all.
|
| But BT it's insecure as hell, OpenBSD and distros like Hyperbola
| GNU/Linux (which will be obsd based soon) ditched BT because of
| these reasons.
| anthk wrote:
| There was wvdialconf I can recall it right.
|
| On using old software because of inertia or better features:
|
| - MPlayer/MPV. Simple keys, click on the file and it just plays
| it. That's it.
|
| - Pidgin with plugins.
|
| - Mutt+lynx (for HTML email) with mbsync and msmtp. Batched email
| for important stuff when you must preserve _your_ data against
| inferior solutions such as Discord.
|
| - Lynx on gopher/http heavy sites calling external video and
| audio viewers. Good when bw is scarce, and
| gopher://gopherddit.com, gopher://hngopher.com and
| gopher://magical.fish have tons of services to use.
|
| - wpa_passphrase+wpa_supplicant daemon+wpa_gui if you are in love
| with mice.
|
| - find/xargs/rsync/moreutils/vidir/rclone: editing zillions of
| filenames in place with an editor and vidir, sync them, rename
| them... hell in Explorer, a piece of cake under Unix where you
| can use your favourite editor in a folder tree mounted with
| rclone and then batch-replace your whole remote directory subtree
| as if it was a text file. Old concept, science fiction for
| today's youngsters: rclone mount
| yourcloudremoteshare: ./here EDITOR=gedit vidir
| ./here/foo/bar/
|
| And that's the simplest method. With find you don't even need to
| spawn an editor, with a command after exec you can run for
| instance find ./here -type f -iname "*.pdf"
| -exec evince {} \;
|
| to open the evince PDF viewer on all the PDF filenames you find
| in your remote.
| zokier wrote:
| mpv isn't particularly old or crufty, and especially this thing
| doesn't really apply to it
|
| > And perhaps most oddly of all, none of the problems WvDial
| originally set out to solve are problems today.
|
| mpv still addresses the same problems and needs that sparked
| it's inception
| asgerhb wrote:
| There is also the question of inertia. People are used to certain
| software, and recommend this to others. In many cases I'd rather
| have a CLI that I know how to use, than a finnicky GUI that I
| don't.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep, also it works, and if it works, why change it?
|
| Also the documentation exists.. find a 10 year old manual how
| to connect? Still works? Great! A rarity with modern software
| (and programming languages).
|
| Also, since it's not really "exposed", lack of maintenance
| doesn't matter a long as it just works.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Especially when the GUI is just a hastily thrown together
| wrapper for some _other_ command line tool that's worse than
| the original.
| _ache_ wrote:
| In 30 years, the GUI could have been deprecated about 7
| times.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| There's an astonishing amount of things in the world which are
| not too hard to do, would be really useful and/or popular, yet no
| one really thought of making them. This also applies to software,
| BTW.
| munchler wrote:
| Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Care to elaborate?
|
| Because nowadays anything can be a startup idea.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| For example, a universal internet annotator/commenter tool.
| Dissenter has tried but it quickly got shut down.
|
| The point would be that you could comment on and discuss any
| site without the site operators' interference.
| xingped wrote:
| Google tried that too with SideWiki, but it only lasted
| 2yrs I think. There must be somethin to it that makes it
| not as easy as you think.
| ilyt wrote:
| Moderation. It's always moderation.
|
| "Anyone can write there" also means "anyone can write
| bollocks there". From ye-olde name-calling and flaming to
| SEO/ad spam.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| That was just Google being Google, and its history of
| abandoning products. I wouldn't give it too much meaning,
| tbh.
| anthk wrote:
| Usenet?
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Dissenter is still around. You can just install it
| manually, its great but you have to dodge the odd nazi.
| iSnow wrote:
| So, Reddit as a stand-alone app?
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Basically, and it would work on a URL basis.
| hyperpape wrote:
| Lots of attempts here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_annotation.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| stet was a bad implementation of a great idea but my god
| was it cool!
|
| I am really puzzled why this idea did not catch in
| academia.
|
| Only Rap Genious reimplemented it somewhat poorly.
|
| And JIRA... even worse.
| guerrilla wrote:
| This seems like something Brave could get away with...
| kdmccormick wrote:
| I think part of what would make these things so especially
| useful is that they'd be simple FLOSS packages. "VC-backed
| modern-WvDial-replacement-as-a-service" doesn't sound so
| useful, does it?
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| >VC-backed
|
| There's your problem.
| twic wrote:
| Not with the federal funds rate at 5% they can't!
| guerrilla wrote:
| > We originally created wvdial back in the late 1990's because
| setting up pppd 'chat' scripts was too annoying.
|
| Yes, wvdial saved my ass back then. I remember pppd being
| incredibly confusing (not sure if it was, but I was only a
| teenager at the time.) Weird flashback to hear about this; I
| would have forgotten about it completely otherwise and yes, that
| is a sad state of things...
| _ache_ wrote:
| I use it every week, sometimes every day.
|
| Like, just start the dam thing and it works.
| asveikau wrote:
| Loved wvdial in the late 90s and early 2000s.
|
| Circa 2009-2010 I was surprised to see instructions to use it for
| tethering on the Nokia N900. I guess the cellular data was still
| using the old AT command set.
| tonyg wrote:
| You'll never guess what cellular modems still use.
| bdavbdav wrote:
| There was a period where many were presenting a CDC Ethernet
| device instead, although this seems to have gone out of
| fashion again.
| tylerag wrote:
| > WvDial is a modem dialer and nobody uses modems anymore.
|
| I was using dial up until probably 2007 or 2008, and I was
| certainly using wvdial with it. The reason I was using wvdial is
| because it was the only option that actually worked. I think I
| tried to get Gnome's GUI to work, but was never able to. I think
| I still have the non-winmodem PCI card too, spent a lot of money
| (for a teenager) on it.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| I remember my first paycheck from my first real job, I went out
| and bought a new modem. Don't remember exactly what, but it was
| a big upgrade from the 2400 baud that came with my computer
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Yea I've still got my hardware modem too. External, connects
| via serial.
|
| I don't even have copper phone line service.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| I remember my excitement for a Ubuntu Shipit CD quickly
| dissipating once I realized I couldn't use a USB-A cellular
| modem dongle, which was the only way for me to get internet
| connectivity at the time. This was even after having compiled a
| custom driver, and so on and so forth.
|
| As a Linux newbie, this experience gave me an immense sense of
| revulsion towards the Linux desktop. However, one fine
| afternoon, I tried to boot up the Ubuntu partition, and try
| running the wvdial command instead of using Gnome PPP. Imagine
| my surprise when it just worked...
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