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The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

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Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#111

Post by npteljes »

heyycppl wrote: post #66

Linux on the desktop is utopian. Even in 2024, it is plagued with millions of bugs. I can't use Linux for an hour on a desktop PC without encountering some issue. On the other hand, MacBooks and Windows PCs just work seamlessly, without any problems whatsoever. This is solely the fault of Linux developers, who, instead of developing one system well, create dozens of half-baked package managers, desktop environments,…

Most of these statements are false.

Linux on the desktop is a reality. I'm on one, it's my main OS, I even play my games on it.

It having bugs is nothing special. Other systems have them as well.

Windows is not seamless at all. And if you'd like to debug, you're SOL, because often it's not helpful at all.

The state of things is not up to developers. Developers are part of a project, and the projects are part of a culture. Companies have projects and culture too, producing the same effects, for example take a look at how many UI styles Windows has, or how Microsoft's one project supports and contributes to open source, while another part of them actively destroys it.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#112

Post by npteljes »

oneshtein wrote: post #6
kfk wrote: post #5

The challenge with Microsoft in Europe is that it is so convenient, it doesn’t make business sense to consider alternatives. See how easily MS won market share over Slack (MS Teams) and PowerBI (Tableau / Qlik). They have such a big bundle of services that any single player has to be either amazingly good, or specialized, to win maybe 1-2% of market share. The only way I see Europe doing something about it is antitru…

The problem is that when data is stored in the cloud, I don't have full control over it. My data hold as hostage against me. We need to break up data storage from data processing. Imagine if all your data was stored in a secure, independent location, like a large vault. You could then choose which services could access your data, allowing you to use multiple services simultaneously. Better, if this will be on browser…

ONLYOFFICE supports this. The webservice they host supports different "storage backends", which can be something they offer, or Dropbox, or your own Nextcloud instance, etc.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#113

Post by alexey-salmin »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #48
alexey-salmin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic (for better or for worse) was not ethics. The question was why some countries manage to maintain colonies, some don't, and some do but then lose it over time. Having superior infrastructure and economy is definitely a huge part of the answer, I believe the majority of it. This holds true all the way back to Roman and Byzantine empires.

> some countries manage to maintain colonies, some don't, and some do but then lose it over time. They all lose them over time, or are themselves dissolved and absorbed.

Of course, and everything turns to dust and entropy in the end. This doesn't make it any less interesting to study the current affairs.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#114

Post by sharpneli »

rurban wrote: post #53
sharpneli wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another issue are non competes. Everyone wants to get a tech sector like California but insist on having non competition agreements being either valid or conditionally valid meaning there is a gray area that stifles innovation.

> gray area that stifles innovation Innovation by theft? Well, California is a very special outlier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause

And that is why we use products made by companies in California.

Non competes are good for the big incubent companies, but bad for the economy and the workers.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#115

Post by personomas »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #107
personomas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't support Trump, I don't like Trump; however, although Trump says a lot of shit, he's no where near the level of Putin or Xi in terms of what he actually does. Even under Trump, America would still definitely definitely be an ally.

Trump has thankfully not been able to do much, however the Bush family has. They were worse than Xi or even Putin (if you take a non-European point of view). (Arguably, Trump, Xi and even Putin still have "potential" left.)

> Trump has thankfully not been able to do much, however the Bush family has.

Not true, ridiculous statement.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#116

Post by CRCPowershroom »

bj-rn wrote: post #61
Kwpolska wrote: post #29

What viable European alternatives to Microsoft Office are there? Google Docs is also a US-based cloud service. LibreOffice is ugly, its UX is sometimes worse than Office 2003 (especially Calc, where pivot tables have to be blindly configured in a modal dialog, and there is no equivalent to the Table feature from Excel), and they still haven't implemented automatically downloading updates.

There is SoftMaker Office from Germany. Never used it though. https://www.softmaker.com/en https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftMaker_Office

I tend to prefer OnlyOffice, if only because it's open-source (unlike SoftMaker), and has better compatibility with MS Office documents.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#117

Post by TMWNN »

thrance wrote: post #86
roenxi wrote: post #2

One of the interesting things about real colonialism is that the Europeans had wildly better legal infrastructure, that supported wildly better economic infrastructure, which supported wildly better military technology, which supported colonies. The proof in the pudding is that Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft. Until they fix that, they…

Honestly, I really don't see the point of having such megacoroporations here. What has Apple and Microsoft done for Americans ? They pay little to no taxes, they spy on everyone, they provide increasingly terrible products...

If you don't think any other country (not just in Europe) wouldn't kill for the next big American big tech company to have been founded within its borders instead, I don't know what to tell you.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#118

Post by oneshtein »

npteljes wrote: post #112
oneshtein wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that when data is stored in the cloud, I don't have full control over it. My data hold as hostage against me. We need to break up data storage from data processing. Imagine if all your data was stored in a secure, independent location, like a large vault. You could then choose which services could access your data, allowing you to use multiple services simultaneously. Better, if this will be on browser…

ONLYOFFICE supports this. The webservice they host supports different "storage backends", which can be something they offer, or Dropbox, or your own Nextcloud instance, etc.

"Storage backend" is not a "storage frontend" I'm talking about.

Example scenario:

As an office user Alice, I want to open documented XXX stored on NAS Foo at Foo.net in application Bar at bar.com.

To do that, in application Bar user clicks on "Open File" button, then in dialog she selects "NAS" tab, then selects Foo, then selects file XXX.

When the file is selected, NAS Foo forms a one-time URL for the file, like davs://foo.net/u/alice/d/xxx.docx?otp=1234567890abcdef. This URL is invisible to user, unless she explicitly asks for it.

Application Bar receives this URL from the user browser and tries to open it.

NAS Foo shows popup to user about "Application Bar at Bar.com [LOGO] tries to open document xxx.docx. Allow? [O]nce, [A]llways, [C]ancel".

When Alice presses Once, a temporary password is generated and securely shared between Foo.net and Bar.com for the next 12h.

Now, application Bar.com can read and write document xxx.docx freely. At each read, NAS stores a record in a log about access to the document. At each write, NAS creates a new revision of the document and backups it.

Application Bar.com has no access to other files except for those selected by Alice. NAS Foo automatically revokes access of Bar.com to all files after a period of inactivity (month?).

In this case, service Bar.com cannot force Alice to pay for service just because their app contains some important documents in storage. Bar.com cannot pass those document to third party actor, like government, police, etc.

Re: The Microsoft-Dilemma – Europe as a Software Colony – Full Documentary

#119

Post by pjerem »

homarp wrote: post #98
pjerem wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, and French people have nothing against riches as long as they don’t try to evade taxation. We have plenty of rich people who just contribute to the social system and live their life. What French people don’t like is when elites try to steal our social system. However your example isn’t really fair to be honest : Arnault and Bettencourt are really not self-made families, they are both from historical…

But Niel is a good example on how you can get rich in France.

Yes, but that’s also the only one self made billionaire I can think of so that make him more an exception than an example.

Granted I limit myself to people who created successful businesses with real added value and mostly satisfied customers : businesses that are positive for the society.

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