IMHO we have several really big problems with the web as it is today, which are intertwined:
The web (standards) is by far too complicated. If even Microsoft doesn’t have (or isn’t willing) to provide the resources to implement a browser, there are not many players left with the resources and the motivation
Google Chrome and Safari are the only game in town. (My main browser is Firefox, but seriously, we have such a small market share that nobody gives a damn)
Most people/governments/companies don’t care or don’t understand the problem of the mono culture for browsers
The value of the web is everything which is already on the web and that one can access anything with the browser - for this reason, we can only grow in the direction of more complicated while keeping backwards compatibility
Besides lip-service to the contrary, our politicians want to control communication and supervise their citizens, so for politicians it is better to have a browser controlled by a company like Google, than a really free web
Given how fundamental important the web is for modern human basic infrastructure, we (as a society) should find a better way to protect our infrastructure, freedom of speech and basic freedoms.
The first part was a brilliant persiflage of all the boring James Bond movies (Pierce Brosnan at that time) with awesome action scenes, a lot of fun and mostly a killer OST. To this day I don’t understand that most people didn’t get the persiflage part, although the James Bond agent gets killed within the first minutes of the movie…
Seriously, this is so ridiculous: So Slack filed a complain because their chat application looses against Teams?
I mean, Slack could have like innovated and make their application really, really good so that customers choose Slack over Teams because of the value it brings.
Instead they go the legal/lobbyist way and cry because a chat application obviously isn’t a forever gold mine.
The EU being technically illiterate and dump enough to play along is even more ridiculous than Slacks entitlement.
(For the record: I don’t like Teams, Office, Microsoft, Slack etc… but this is just such an obvious/bullshit lobbyist move.)
I am referring to the motivation for Slack to file a complaint, look at the numbers (50 vs 300 millions) which clearly show that Slack is loosing. Do you seriously imply that Slack is filing their complaint to reduce bloatware? (In that case, I am happy to see Slack starting to debloat their client. :-P)
As I already said, I am no fan of Teams, Microsoft, etc. but IMHO by now everyone grown up can decide what messenger app to install, there is enough competition (Apple, Linux) on the desktop for people who want less/different bloatware.
I am just seriously tired of the EU investing time and energy in this bullshit instead of investing energy in important/useful topic for its citizens.
I totally grasp the situation. The same could be said about notepad.exe, the File Explorer and everything else that comes preinstalled with Windows. According to the preinstalled logic, Windows should just be delivered with a kernel to even the competition.
AFAIK Slack is a Startup, backed by VC. If we would speak about Sublime Text vs. Notepad.exe, we might have ethical/moral grounds for a discussion.
Edit: … and just to be more clear: We have SublimeText, Directory Opus etc. - great software from great teams, which can survive although they compete with preinstalled software on Microsoft Windows. If Slack would provide something really valuable, Teams wouldn’t have had such an easy play. Same is true for Zoom.
I complain about the EU and my own technical incompetent government for a simple reason:
For years now, we have Open Source Software that is good enough ™ for the public sector, and for example the French police showed already that you can move to Linux (zdnet.com/…/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ub…).
The EU should get independent of Microsoft for something so important like the IT infrastructure, instead of painting lipstick on a pig.
Edit: And if the EU is independent from Microsoft, I would prefer to use a messaging system like Matrix instead of blowing money into something like Slack.
I agree with your points, but by that logic, Google (Android), Apple and all other smartphone/smart appliances provider should be sued, too. Think about FaceTime(?), Apple Safari (where they even force their shitty browser engine on iOS on you) etc.
If we all agree that this bundles are a problem, the solution is simply: Don’t allow any bundling at all, for no one.
I fully agree about the damage done at universities. I also fully agree about the teaching professors being out of the game too long or never having been at a level which would be worth teaching to other people. A term which I heard from William Kenned first is ‘mechanical sympathy’. IMHO this is the big missing thing in modern CS education. (Ok, add to that the missing parts about proper OOP, proper functional programming and literally anything taught to CS grads but relational/automata theory and mathematics (summary: mathematics) :-P). In the end I wouldn’t trust anyone who cannot write Assembler, C and knows about Compiler Construction to write useful low level code or even tackle C++/Rust.
To quote a designer friend of mine ‘Apple is the king of average’. :-P Most people I see using apple don’t even understand how shitty the UI is if your workflow is keyboard driven (snap windows w/o 3rd party programs for example.)
I am literally forced to use Apple at work. I can life with an iPhone, because I use it just for its intended, dumped down usage and I overcame the annoyance about Apples fascism (alternative web engine). If you are not able to automate 100% of your setup on a proper UNIX machine, please do the programming community a favor and switch your line of work. Apple is such a shit show: no keyboard driven workflow w/o extensive customization, how the fuck can I automate 100% of the the setup/customization, why the fuck do I have to upgrade every fucking single program interactively with a click, why are the package managers homebrew and macports as shitshow like Linux 25 years ago, why is macOS so bloated and fucking slow on a machine, why is the development experience for mac worse than Visual Studio 6 (!), Finder is such a sad joke compared to file managers on every other OS or DE, why can I not easily enable transparent file compression when I am a grown up user etc etc etc. Seriously, macOS is nice for consumers with too much money. The literally only thing macOS does which I envy is the tag system which works. Don’t get me wrong, Linux is also a shit show, but compared to macOS it is like the best thing ever.
You mean like their recent Wine patches, which they trough over the fence instand of working with the community? WebKit was forked AFAIK for open source projects etc. Perhaps Apple conforms to the letter of the law, but they for sure don’t play nice to the spirit of OpenSource. Finally: Given what they borrowed from the *BSDs, I don’t see Apple being a contributor to the *BSDs in any way.
Back then I played Warcraft 3 ladder games and I hit my skill ceiling quite fast because my micro was simply too bad/slow. I still very much enjoy real time strategy games. Is there any real time strategy game that is played competitively with an active community where micro is not that essential? (Ruling out Star Craft 2.)...
I have an Lichess account, so your suggestion is spot on. What I miss in Chess is the ‘fog of war’, you have at all time 100% of the information clearly on the board. I especially like the scouting/deception/gambling part in RTS games like WC3/SC2.
Thanks for your suggestion, as I said: I am mostly looking for competitive games. Turn based games are great, though, especially games like Dominions 4 with simultaneous turns.
Is there a competitive scene for this games? For me only games with an electronic version (like Terraforming…) make sense, because it is hard to meet with friends physically regularly.
Google pushing web DRM into chromium (github.com)
Found on hacker news.
Mozilla opposes Web Integrity API proposal (github.com)
Opinions: What is a movie you genuinely like, that is rated below 60% on rotten tomatoes? (xkcd.com)
Inspired by the linked XKCD. Using 60% instead of 50% because that’s an easy filter to apply on rottentomatoes....
Microsoft faces antitrust scrutiny from the European Union over Teams, Office 365 (www.windowscentral.com)
optimal java experience (lemmy.ml)
And then comes the wonderful realm of the BSDs and the OpenSolaris derivatives (thelemmy.club)
Competitive games for gamers with slow reflexes
Back then I played Warcraft 3 ladder games and I hit my skill ceiling quite fast because my micro was simply too bad/slow. I still very much enjoy real time strategy games. Is there any real time strategy game that is played competitively with an active community where micro is not that essential? (Ruling out Star Craft 2.)...