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Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

brookings.edu

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Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#131

Post by sukilot »

boogies wrote: post #122

The fact that people are being evicted after not using Zoom https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2020/spring/trial-by-proprietar... is insane. The industrial revolution and all of its consequences may not have been exclusively a disaster for the human race, and I personally don’t share Bill Joy’s fears of mass extinction https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/ , but proprietary software can cause serious problems for members of…

Why? If Zoom hurts you in some weird way, you can sue. That's how US law works.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#132

Post by ghaff »

Proziam wrote: post #94
rorykoehler wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely no company that cares about security enough to lockdown machines like that would choose zoom?

The company cares about security, the mindless manager wants to use whatever they like the most.

Or they need to use whatever a partner or customer is using. I don't use Zoom much (and it isn't one of our standard tools). But one organization I have standing meetings with and others I interact with now and then do use Zoom. It's often not about what mindless managers (or engineers) "want" to use.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#133

Post by boogies »

sukilot wrote: post #131
boogies wrote: post #122

The fact that people are being evicted after not using Zoom https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2020/spring/trial-by-proprietar... is insane. The industrial revolution and all of its consequences may not have been exclusively a disaster for the human race, and I personally don’t share Bill Joy’s fears of mass extinction https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/ , but proprietary software can cause serious problems for members of…

Why? If Zoom hurts you in some weird way, you can sue. That's how US law works.

Because that’s a massive, expensive endeavor that may only solve one specific problem between one person and one company if it works at all. (Edit:) Much like anti-trust hearings: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/a-tech-antitrust-hearing...

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#134

Post by sukilot »

reaperducer wrote: post #113
choward wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's not ideal and not everyone has one, but couldn't your friend wear a headset so the microphone isn't right next to the fans?

The problem isn't the user, it's the software. I'm no Zoom fan, but in the Zoom meeting I had this morning with 38 people my 2015 MacBook Pro's processor peaked at 11%. Zoom knows how to do something better than the other companies. They really need to catch up.

Would you say the same if the user was compiling software or rendering video?if your computer fan is interfering with audio, that's an audio setup problem not a software problem.

Wasting CPU/heat is a different problem.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#135

Post by sukilot »

tomxor wrote: post #107

BS, people use what works, it's just video calls. What I find most bizarre is why zoom is on top, this is probably a lesson in how powerful marketing and timing can be for some types of products... But as a counter example: everyone at my company has ended up using google meets, just because through trial and error it fails the least and is the easiest for everyone to get into. The last time I tried zoom for an exter…

Marketing and Timing? Zoom was founded 9 years ago, from a team that built Webex for 13 years prior. They've been making videoconferencing software for 22 years.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#136

Post by Closi »

scottlamb wrote: post #91
impendia wrote: post #71

I don't buy it. The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

> And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other. I think it's for real. Think about elementary school instead. The kids are just learning to use computers. Their parents may be also, and if not they may be trying to do their own work fr…

We had a meeting today and Zoom went glitchy, so we swapped to teams within 10 minutes.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#137

Post by k8skil0 »

notahacker wrote: post #103
reaperducer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A six-year-old student is not an employee.

A six year old student also isn't someone who's at risk of losing a business deal because they can't get their IT team to let them install one of the client's suggested alternative webconferencing systems to do the demo at a particular point in time. Of the many potential problems six year olds accessing education primarily through webconferencing may face, I'm not sure inability to choose their own preferred videoco…

If a business lets IT policy get in the way of it’s important business, it a terribly managed business.

Look elsewhere for work of this is your actual existence.

If this is just some off the cuff anecdote, meh. Stick to real problems not made up ones thanks to hands off clueless management edge cases

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#138

Post by esaym »

gpvos wrote: post #66
esaym wrote: post #38

Not sure why there isn't more open source alternatives in this realm. Since I only run Linux, I was amazed the first time I used Zoom that it had an actual working linux client. I've always had hopes that webrtc would take over. There's been demo's of video conferencing done over webrtc 5+ years ago and I always hoped it would get more traction. The best I've found lately is "Unamed"[0] but it is the product of one a…

Jitsi is pretty well-known and you can run a server yourself; are there any problems with it?

Never heard of it, but I will try it :)

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#139

Post by asdff »

When we have trouble connecting with zoom, we just go back to the old school conference call which is pretty smooth. It turns out, you really don't need to see closeups of peoples neck hair to have a functional remote meeting. There are also a dozen other similar popular video chat services that can be step up just as easily as zoom. Zoom isn't a utility, it's just one of the many redundant ways out there that you can use to communicate with people.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#140

Post by fsflover »

boogies wrote: post #122

The fact that people are being evicted after not using Zoom https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2020/spring/trial-by-proprietar... is insane. The industrial revolution and all of its consequences may not have been exclusively a disaster for the human race, and I personally don’t share Bill Joy’s fears of mass extinction https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/ , but proprietary software can cause serious problems for members of…

> Any software that the public is forced to use, fund, or through network effects promote, the public should be able to audit and control.

Sounds like you should agree with this petition: https://publiccode.eu (all publicly funded software must be public).

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