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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

#121

Post by usr1106 »

personomas wrote: post #90
usr1106 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is nowhere near the level of Putin or Xi in following evil goals or keeping his office organized and loyal. But in the role of US president he would be able to do equal harm, just by acting like a 5 year old.

That's not true. America is still a democracy. The US as a whole is an ally to the West and Europe.

Trump does not understand or accept democracy. Yes, on that Jan 6th democracy won, but there is no guarantee it will end the same way next time. Roughly 50% of the voters don't seem to have a problem with abandoning democratic traditions.

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

#122

Post by willi59549879 »

fulafel wrote: post #16

Anyone have a gut feeling about Teams and Office penetration % in Asia/India/Africa?

Asia India and Africa don't care so much about licensing. Many companies have people working on their own pc. They'll work with pirated software and send files around by email. Usually there is a lot less infrastructure

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

#123

Post by sdenton4 »

forty wrote: post #47
eastbound wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By focussing on immigration, you missed the main point. I’ll simplify as: French people eat the rich.

It's very possible to be very rich in France. It's not the result of random luck that both the richest man and the richest woman in the world were french not that long ago (Bernard Arnaud and Liliane Bettencourt). You should not buy the right wing discourse that in France rich people are too taxed and they flee blabla. This is just a way to push their right wing agenda. I'm myself quite rich and I'm doing well, so do…

I met the head of one of the largest French corporations once, and was pretty shocked at the degree of elitism, hierarchy, and concern about prestigious schools... SV is bottom up - you hire smart people and let them collaborate freely. The typical French approach is too silo the people from prestigious schools from the rest of the organization, so the 'smart' ones can work on ideas that the rest will implement.

It's a great way to limit the understanding of the designers (no hands in the mud) and limit the total utility of design. You end up solving the problems of the elites, only, since no one else is in the room.

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

#124

Post by Kwpolska »

npteljes wrote: post #110
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.

ONLYOFFICE comes to mind, although the "Europeanness" of it can be up for debate. Promises pretty good compatibility with MS formats! AGPL licensed too, which I think is a plus. Free personal tier, which they host themselves, similar to Google Docs / Sheet: https://personal.onlyoffice.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnlyOffice

> Based in Latvia, OnlyOffice owner Ascensio System SIA was a subsidiary of Russian-based New Communication Technologies.[2] Due to EU economic sanctions targeting Russia, European organizations that used the commercial version of OnlyOffice were prohibited from doing so.[3]

Thanks, but no thanks.

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

#125

Post by forty »

sdenton4 wrote: post #123
forty wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very possible to be very rich in France. It's not the result of random luck that both the richest man and the richest woman in the world were french not that long ago (Bernard Arnaud and Liliane Bettencourt). You should not buy the right wing discourse that in France rich people are too taxed and they flee blabla. This is just a way to push their right wing agenda. I'm myself quite rich and I'm doing well, so do…

I met the head of one of the largest French corporations once, and was pretty shocked at the degree of elitism, hierarchy, and concern about prestigious schools... SV is bottom up - you hire smart people and let them collaborate freely. The typical French approach is too silo the people from prestigious schools from the rest of the organization, so the 'smart' ones can work on ideas that the rest will implement. It's…

It is true in some fields and in large corporations and especially in former public and semi public corporations. However in computer engineering startups for example, solving technical tests and/or a nice GitHub can open you the same doors as an engineering degree.

There are very elite engineering schools (mostly l'école polytechnique and the ENS which in kind of another beast) which are so selective that people from there are IMO in a different league from other engineers (not necessarily in a good way btw)

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

#127

Post by decide1000 »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #105
usr1106 wrote: post #82

This is a 43 minute video. Has anyone watched it in full length? I haven't, but I (European) agree with the title.

It's nice, but there's probably nothing new there for your typical HN reader (unless if they're young I guess ?) It's also dangerously focused on Microsoft and complacent with "cloud" software. Google has already been winning their wrestling match over desktop computing for some time now, they shouldn't be helped. And with shittier software as a result. Also while using "Microsoft sounds" in the music is cute, I can'…

It is focused on Microsoft because it is about the relationship between states and the European Commission with Microsoft. They show that Microsoft does not follow the same procedures like 'normal' tenders. Also MS employees have .gov email addresses and the states are not allowed to show how much money they pay M$.

It is not biased against Microsoft. It is about Microsoft based on journalism and decent research.

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

#128

Post by LtWorf »

personomas wrote: post #115
BlueTemplar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess you don't have many friends from iraq

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

#129

Post by kenutusabhik »

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...

so terrible product, that the whole world use them and apple is the largest tax payer in the world. These are some of the most innovative companies out there.

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

#130

Post by eastbound »

andrepd wrote: post #51
eastbound wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you say the best thing about France is that we can hire someone else than French people. And you are kind of right: We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference (something like a rest of revenge against the rich), and make them simply not possible, hindering the ability to build megacorporations. Apple wouldn’t have been possible here. We simply halt growth at median size and earn a good…

>We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference Yeah why would anyone dislike the idea of a run of the mill techbro making 50x more money than the janitor. I also don't see what this observation has to do with hiring immigrants or not.

Immigrants do not care about the presence of rich people. French people do (a lot), and they’re systematic in getting rid of them. So French people are kind of undesirable when you build a company in France and the best thing about France is, indeed, that you can hire people from somewhere else.
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