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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

#41

Post by troupo »

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…

> Europe's legal structure is unsupportive and hinders software development on the scale of an Apple or a Microsoft. Until they fix that

You're phrasing it in a way that makes this scale seem like a good thing. Is it?

I'm not convinced that the scale of supranational grow-at-all-costs uncontrollable corporations is good

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

#42

Post by troupo »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #36
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.

LibreOffice isn't going to win any beauty pageants, but it does everything you need in an office setting. Some specialists can't live without MS Excel and all of its extensions (banking), but that's not the common case. Common case is word processing, slide presentations, and task management (in spreadsheets).

MS Excel is the most common case. Some multi-billion-dollar businesses are run from Excel

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

#43

Post by impossiblefork »

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.

I like plaintext documents. I think it's the future, since it's compact and LLMs can consume it without having to consume strange tokens.

For typesetting and presentations that have be 'nice' I use TeX and beamer. For the kind of stuff MS users use Excel for I use R.

For presentations that don't have to be nice I use nano, plaintext and then just scale up the text.

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

#44

Post by wazoox »

personomas wrote: post #38
LtWorf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US isn't an ally… They do their best interest and nobody else's.

That's utter nonsense.

On the contrary, that's cold hard truth. The US repeatedly forces foreign companies into obedience for US companies' profit. For instance, the US forced Alstom to sell its power branch to GE by actually taking hostage one of Alstom directors into high security prison. They repeatedly menaced an punished foreign companies to force them to comply to US policy.

The US is a merciless imperial power.

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

#45

Post by mordae »

personomas wrote: post #38
LtWorf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US isn't an ally… They do their best interest and nobody else's.

That's utter nonsense.

It's actually spot on.

We are all looking pretty nervously at the possibility of Trump's return. He'd be definitely willing to throw us under the Putin bus for a couple million USD laundered through his golf club or hotel bookings.

And you wouldn't actually revolt and do anything about that. So, on a whole, not really allies. Just other people who individually may or may not be our friends.

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

#46

Post by forty »

eastbound wrote: post #12
alexey-salmin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things seem to change in France though. It's relatively easy to open a startup and get tax discounts for research and innovative work. Then you fly-in employees (I'm one of them) on passeport talent which is very easy to get and lasts 4 years. Average IT salaries in Europe are much lower than in US, which is unpleasant but allows to run an IT startup with less funding and healthier economics. However the gap to close…

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…

The issue is not that Apple is not possible here, but more that it is possible there and we allow them to operate normally in Europe (though things are starting to change on this front, as more laws are targeting them). Corporations that are so large have financial power that can threaten democracies, and have an overall negative impact on economy and innovation by destroying/preventing fair competition, and we should treat them as such threat/problem.

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

#47

Post by forty »

eastbound wrote: post #34
alexey-salmin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon valley was largely built by immigrants too. I believe in this concept, people who have enough determination to move are already above some potential energy threshold. And this threshold despite being relatively low still cuts off a huge part of local population who didn't have to pass it. I've seen it at work both for internal and international moves.

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 don't worry.

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

#48

Post by kwhitefoot »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #10
HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just sounds like "might makes right" with more words. Most wealth is not a metric for how ethical a place is. At a certain point it is negative inference.

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.

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

#49

Post by maigret »

yobbo wrote: post #25
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…

The problem is product/market/financing; not in personnel or organisation. Airbus and Dassault are doing fine because they have well defined stable markets and (probably) government funding.

This doesn't fit LVMH which had tech-like growth in the last decade.

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

#50

Post by nonrandomstring »

troupo wrote: post #42
MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LibreOffice isn't going to win any beauty pageants, but it does everything you need in an office setting. Some specialists can't live without MS Excel and all of its extensions (banking), but that's not the common case. Common case is word processing, slide presentations, and task management (in spreadsheets).

MS Excel is the most common case. Some multi-billion-dollar businesses are run from Excel

> Some multi-billion-dollar businesses are run from Excel

And that's a problem because it isn't even particularly great software [0,1,2]. Of course all complex calculation tools have bugs, but compare the code quality of Excel with something like Matlab or R and it looks amateurish.

[0] https://www.microassist.com/software-tips/real-world-risks-o...

[1] https://www.solving-finance.com/post/the-wall-of-shame-for-t...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...

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