0 users browsing Discussion. | 7 bots  
    Main » Discussion » Mozilla, *sigh*
    Pages: First Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next Last
    Posted on 19-03-01, 01:56
    Custom title here

    Post: #281 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 7 days
    Last view: 9 hours
    Posted by sureanem
    No, not sandboxed in a separate process. It should still have full access to the memory of the Firefox process, but if it crashes it shouldn't bring FF down with it, but rather just stop interacting with the browser.
    If it has full access to the entire Firefox memory space, there's no way to prevent it from crashing Firefox.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-01, 02:08
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #53 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1526 days
    Last view: 1524 days
    Yes (assuming it has write access), but a poorly written extension wouldn't do it by accident. I mean, a deliberately malicious extension could crash Firefox now too. Heck, even an incompetently written website does the trick.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-01, 02:11
    Custom title here

    Post: #282 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 7 days
    Last view: 9 hours
    Full access implies write access. And never underestimate the power of bad code.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-01, 02:41
    Full mod

    Post: #140 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 864 days
    Last view: 61 days
    > a poorly written extension wouldn't do it by accident.

    Poorly written programs crash themselves by accident all the time. Heck, *well* written programs sometimes crash themselves, just because they're not 100% perfect 100% of the time, and that's when we're talking the same team or the same person writing the whole thing. If we're considering two separate teams working on two separate codebases that have to interact in the same memory space, you can bet there'll be fireworks more than occasionally.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-01, 14:14
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #55 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1526 days
    Last view: 1524 days
    >Poorly written programs crash themselves by accident all the time.
    If they're running in a separate process, they shouldn't bring the browser with them. Sure, they could overwrite its memory, but that's not something to happen by accident.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-01, 14:52 (revision 1)
    Custom title here

    Post: #285 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 7 days
    Last view: 9 hours
    Posted by sureanem
    Sure, they could overwrite its memory, but that's not something to happen by accident.
    Innumerable horrible glitches in equally innumerable pieces of software suggest otherwise.

    If it can be done, it WILL be done accidentally.

    Writing to RAM you're not supposed to touch is the kind of glitch that used to crash entire computers in the Old Days, when each process had unfettered access to the entire system's resources.
    ...
    So ultimately, you're arguing that Windows 95 never crashed.


    We don't take the performance hit that isolating processes entails because it is fun.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-01, 15:30

    Post: #82 of 449
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 9 days
    Last view: 1 day
    Windows 95 has virtual address spaces. You probably meant DOS or Windows<=3.11.

    My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
    Posted on 19-03-01, 15:40

    Post: #49 of 100
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 1544 days
    Last view: 1109 days
    Windows 95 had a broken driver model, however.
    Posted on 19-03-01, 23:57
    Custom title here

    Post: #286 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 7 days
    Last view: 9 hours
    Posted by creaothceann
    Windows 95 has virtual address spaces. You probably meant DOS or Windows<=3.11.
    Well, DOS is single-tasking.

    I was pretty sure 9x offered no protection from out of bounds access, and thus anything could trample the system.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-02, 02:07
    Dick Duck

    Post: #153 of 598
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 87 days
    Last view: 4 hours
    Win95 gave all programs their own flat memory space, swapping pages as needed -- it technically counted as a DPMI extender -- so each application could have its own notion of what a given memory address contained. There was also protection against working with pages that aren't yours, hence the General Protection Fault errors.

    On the other hand, you could trivially gain access to another process' memory space by simply asking Windows. That's how trainers could work even then. And they still can today, though they may need elevation now.
    Posted on 19-03-02, 14:55

    Post: #83 of 449
    Since: 10-29-18

    Last post: 9 days
    Last view: 1 day
    Posted by Kawa
    though they may need elevation now



    My current setup: Super Famicom ("2/1/3" SNS-CPU-1CHIP-02) → SCART → OSSC → StarTech USB3HDCAP → AmaRecTV 3.10
    Posted on 19-03-17, 00:09
    Full mod

    Post: #160 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 864 days
    Last view: 61 days
    Old news, but Stay classy, Pale Moon. (why Pale Moon does not have an OpenBSD port)

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-17, 01:51
    Dinosaur

    Post: #204 of 1282
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 5 days
    Last view: 13 hours
    Once again, "your browser, your way®™".

    Why bother making your software open source if you're going to be an ass protecting MUH PRECIOUS BRANDING!?
    It isn't like they want their product to be used by people outside their echo chamber. Oh hey, we've got another Mozilla, but with plain ol' assholes instead of "visionaries", art school dropouts and people that consider "dogfooding" to be a curse word instead of an industry standard term.

    I have nothing but really ugly and censor-able words towards the Pale Moon staff right now, but I'll save them for myself as I ran over my quota of really ugly and censor-able words for the month. Instead, I'll just continue ignoring then, telling others why they should stay the hell away from that thing, while I continue to be worried about the future of Seamonkey :/


    Licensed Pirate® since 2006, 100% Buttcoin™-free, enemy of All Things JavaScript™
    Posted on 19-03-17, 02:24
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #87 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1526 days
    Last view: 1524 days
    Posted by Screwtape
    Old news, but Stay classy, Pale Moon. (why Pale Moon does not have an OpenBSD port)

    mattatobin seems like a fairly reasonable guy, only his sidekick who seems a bit too pissed off for his own good. They both seem to have the same issue many of those kinds of developers do; due to spending too much time interacting with complete idiots they respond to anyone doing anything with complete hostility. You can see it clearly in the FAQ/rule lists of cough some websites as well, where the author sometimes appears to have been figuratively seething with rage when he or she wrote it.

    All this branding nonsense is insane, but then again they didn't start it, Mozilla did. Meanwhile, no other open source projects have any legitimate issues with people making substandard forks without changing the name. No self-respecting hack would do that. Either they're competent enough to actually make something of value, in which case there is no problem, or they are incapable of this, in which case they are the kind of person who wouldn't need a complicated license agreement to get persuaded into rebranding the project they're forking into something along the lines of "PaleMoon+ Optimized Edition by somedude123", in which case any sane person would avoid it, in which case there is no problem either.

    It feels like somewhere along the line, the free software movement got mired down in the legislation they were fighting against (GNewspeak: "use copyright to guarantee their freedom" - direct quote), confusing the map with the territory and getting us all into this great big hash of licenses and regulations. For all practical purposes, The Pirate Bay accomplished far more in six years (operating at a net profit) than the FSF has done in thirty-six (spending about $1mil a year) and counting. Even if the heroes who ran TPB would have paid their fines, which they did not, it would still have been a vastly cheaper endeavor ($6.5mil) than whatever the FSF did (something to do with India?) with their money.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-17, 05:30 (revision 2)
    Post: #153 of 426
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 262 days
    Last view: 1 day
    Did you all read this from wolfbeast?

        The issue you don't seem to understand here is that our in-tree
    libraries are often patched specifically for the quirks of our code, and
    of very specific versions (system-installed versions may or may not
    work, since APIs and behavior changes). Also, due to the sheer size of
    our code, number of components involved and interconnectivity between
    such components, any component that does not play well due to a version
    difference or missing a patch will have immediate and far-reaching
    impact on the rest of the resulting application.

    ..., there are too many unknown factors in the resulting binaries on
    user's systems. What you are asking is exchanging known-good
    combinations of libraries with unknown and potentially disastrous
    combinations as-present on end-user's systems.

    The only problem I have its that apparently you have to read the whole License Agreement to understand that perspective, it's not clearly explained early on.

    AMD Ryzen 3700X | MSI Gamer Geforce 1070Ti 8GB | 16GB 3600MHz DDR4 RAM | ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard | Windows 10 x64
    Posted on 19-03-17, 08:41
    Custom title here

    Post: #325 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 7 days
    Last view: 9 hours
    That's not part of the license.

    Nonetheless, the Mozilla Public License is too complex for its own good, and very much a product of the era.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Posted on 19-03-17, 10:44
    Full mod

    Post: #163 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 864 days
    Last view: 61 days
    Posted by sureanem
    mattatobin seems like a fairly reasonable guy, only his sidekick who seems a bit too pissed off for his own good.

    Really? The guy who starts off the very first post with "You will..."? Not even "Hello, I'm a fan of the Pale Moon browser, and I noticed you're doing this particular thing that the project leaders hate" or "Thanks for helping to get Pale Moon working on your platform, but we've got some problems with the way you're going about it"?

    Regardless of the legal or technical merits of his position, that's not the way to get people to want to help you.

    They both seem to have the same issue many of those kinds of developers do; due to spending too much time interacting with complete idiots they respond to anyone doing anything with complete hostility. You can see it clearly in the FAQ/rule lists of cough some websites as well, where the author sometimes appears to have been figuratively seething with rage when he or she wrote it.

    That's definitely a problem - there's always more jerks in the world, and it can be very difficult to give the next person the benefit of the doubt when the last five people you interacted with were assholes, just ask anyone who's worked retail.

    That's really part of the job, though. Some people have the emotional maturity and support network to handle that kind of work, and other people don't, in the same way that some people have the upper-body strength and fitness levels required to haul loads of bricks around all day, and other people don't. If you have those things, you can do the job well, but if you don't have them you're going to do the job poorly, or do OK for a little while and then burn out. If you can't do the job, there's no shame in finding a more appropriate way to contribute.

    All that to say, if the Pale Moon developers and their proxies can't send legal requests in a polite manner, they should find somebody who can do that on their behalf, for their own good, and the good of the project. Heck, if they'd just called their lawyers instead of creating that GitHub issue, the resulting cease-and-desist letter would probably have been more pleasant to read.

    Either they're competent enough to actually make something of value, in which case there is no problem, or they are incapable of this, in which case they are the kind of person who wouldn't need a complicated license agreement to get persuaded into rebranding the project they're forking into something along the lines of "PaleMoon+ Optimized Edition by somedude123", in which case any sane person would avoid it, in which case there is no problem either.

    There's also the people who take browsers like Firefox and sell "subscriptions", where for an monthly fee they'll send you a copy of the Firefox installer and tell you they've scanned it for viruses. There's even people who will build Firefox with an insecure configuration, or with nefarious CA certificates bundled, or with spyware, and pass it off as the real deal.

    Sure, you and I probably wouldn't fall for such tricks, but with a product as widely used as a web-browser it's good to have some level of protection; protection that trademark law was invented to provide.

    It's not just browsers, either; I remember hearing about a bunch of punks who would take every VBA-M release, hex-edit the binary to replace the original attributions with their own names, then upload it to their own website with changelogs like "improved HDMA timing accuracy" and "higher-fidelity colour reproduction for mode-3 graphics", and ridicule the original VBA-M team for being unable to provide such improvements themselves.

    It's enough to make a man want to invent a device to punch people in the face over the internet.

    It feels like somewhere along the line, the free software movement got mired down in the legislation they were fighting against (GNewspeak: "use copyright to guarantee their freedom" - direct quote), confusing the map with the territory and getting us all into this great big hash of licenses and regulations. For all practical purposes, The Pirate Bay accomplished far more in six years (operating at a net profit) than the FSF has done in thirty-six (spending about $1mil a year) and counting. Even if the heroes who ran TPB would have paid their fines, which they did not, it would still have been a vastly cheaper endeavor ($6.5mil) than whatever the FSF did (something to do with India?) with their money.

    I'll grant that TPB probably provided more practical freedom than the FSF in the time they were around, but where are they now?

    TPB was an attack on the excesses of copyright law from the outside, the FSF is an attack from within. TPB had much success with little effort, but the System brought its resources to bear, the System squashed TPB, and the System will be immune to such attacks in the future (why download MP3s when you have Spotify? Why download movies when you have Netflix? Why download an office suite when you have Office365.com?). The System cannot attack the FSF, because the FSF is made of the same stuff, so it would just be attacking itself.

    Honestly, if anyone wants to make any kind of techno-social change, investing the money in India or Africa or somewhere like that is probably a far smarter move than doing something in the USA or Europe, calcified as they are in their existing systems. If you really have a better idea, you have a better shot at getting it adopted in a culture that's not already heavily invested in an alternative. For example, the ideas behind Kaizen were invented by Americans, who couldn't get them adopted in America because American industry was in love with Ford-style mass production. It wasn't until those ideas came to Japan post-WWII that they were successful, because Japan's industry was largely destroyed during the war and they were ready to try something new.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-17, 18:25
    Stirrer of Shit
    Post: #88 of 717
    Since: 01-26-19

    Last post: 1526 days
    Last view: 1524 days
    Posted by Screwtape

    Really? The guy who starts off the very first post with "You will..."? Not even "Hello, I'm a fan of the Pale Moon browser, and I noticed you're doing this particular thing that the project leaders hate" or "Thanks for helping to get Pale Moon working on your platform, but we've got some problems with the way you're going about it"?

    Regardless of the legal or technical merits of his position, that's not the way to get people to want to help you.

    Oops, I meant the other way around. wolfbeast seems like a fairly reasonable guy, only his sidekick who seems a bit too pissed off for his own good.
    Posted by Screwtape

    That's definitely a problem - there's always more jerks in the world, and it can be very difficult to give the next person the benefit of the doubt when the last five people you interacted with were assholes, just ask anyone who's worked retail.

    That's really part of the job, though. Some people have the emotional maturity and support network to handle that kind of work, and other people don't, in the same way that some people have the upper-body strength and fitness levels required to haul loads of bricks around all day, and other people don't. If you have those things, you can do the job well, but if you don't have them you're going to do the job poorly, or do OK for a little while and then burn out. If you can't do the job, there's no shame in finding a more appropriate way to contribute.

    They're not working retail, though. It's not a job. As harsh as it sounds, they have no obligation to be nice. Linus (until things started going off a cliff) never was a fan of the excessive politeness, and he did just fine.

    Posted by Screwtape

    All that to say, if the Pale Moon developers and their proxies can't send legal requests in a polite manner, they should find somebody who can do that on their behalf, for their own good, and the good of the project. Heck, if they'd just called their lawyers instead of creating that GitHub issue, the resulting cease-and-desist letter would probably have been more pleasant to read.

    Why would they have lawyers, when they can just tell people to knock it off? Their tone is rude for sure, but the law is the law and people following it is not contingent on you being polite. They could send the same request but riddled with expletives, and it would be just as legally effective. They lost the port, and maybe that's not good (or maybe it was, since they didn't seem to be huge fans of the way they were running it), and they appear to have made some spectators on the sidelines upset, but it doesn't really have any bearing on anything. The project climate becomes a little harsher, but that's neither here or there. Some people like it better that way.

    Personally, I'm no fan of either, but I would much prefer contributing to a project with a perpetually angry but honest maintainer, than the one with one who uses the disgusting corporate sickly-sweet tone, referring to problems as "challenges," expends large amounts of time on writing meaningless documents about "inclusive language" (and actually enforcing them, instead of treating them like repository ornaments like the gratuitous makefiles), and uses expressions such as "yikes" and "sweetie" instead of explaining their issues with a given suggestion clearly.

    Man, I hate those people. The screaming rage-type is generally just hazing anyway, and should not be something about which one worries excessively. Rather aggressive-aggressive than passive-aggressive, which is what all these "communication policies" generally tend to boil down to.

    Posted by Screwtape

    There's also the people who take browsers like Firefox and sell "subscriptions", where for an monthly fee they'll send you a copy of the Firefox installer and tell you they've scanned it for viruses. There's even people who will build Firefox with an insecure configuration, or with nefarious CA certificates bundled, or with spyware, and pass it off as the real deal.

    Sure, you and I probably wouldn't fall for such tricks, but with a product as widely used as a web-browser it's good to have some level of protection; protection that trademark law was invented to provide.

    Never heard of this. Wild guess is that these people aren't overly concerned with licenses. Also, trademarks are quite expensive and cumbersome to register. It's only a select few countries that have much protection for unregistered ones. Pale Moon don't seem to involve trademarks either, just copyright law.

    Posted by Screwtape

    It's not just browsers, either; I remember hearing about a bunch of punks who would take every VBA-M release, hex-edit the binary to replace the original attributions with their own names, then upload it to their own website with changelogs like "improved HDMA timing accuracy" and "higher-fidelity colour reproduction for mode-3 graphics", and ridicule the original VBA-M team for being unable to provide such improvements themselves.

    It's enough to make a man want to invent a device to punch people in the face over the internet.

    That's a violation of most licenses already. No need to bring trademarks into it. Can just send an ordinary C&D, assuming it isn't public domain or similar.

    Posted by Screwtape

    I'll grant that TPB probably provided more practical freedom than the FSF in the time they were around, but where are they now?

    It was a triumph. I'm making a note here, huge success.
    It is still online, and works just fine. It's true that there wasn't any more development after the initial release (short of DHT/magnet links decentralization), but the fact still remains that paying for media today is effectively optional, and this improvement persists regardless of whether any future ones are gained. What has the FSF accomplished? Helped large companies externalize software maintenance?

    Posted by Screwtape

    TPB was an attack on the excesses of copyright law from the outside, the FSF is an attack from within. TPB had much success with little effort, but the System brought its resources to bear, the System squashed TPB, and the System will be immune to such attacks in the future (why download MP3s when you have Spotify? Why download movies when you have Netflix? Why download an office suite when you have Office365.com?). The System cannot attack the FSF, because the FSF is made of the same stuff, so it would just be attacking itself.

    I don't see in what way it was squashed. The Pirate Bay came out of the dotcom crash, and filesharing arguably had its heyday in the wake of the 2008 crash. Of course people are using it less today, but this is due to economic conditions. That it still manages to remain relatively popular despite no innovation at all is a testament to its efficiency. Just think, how much effort was expended on The Pirate Bay and how much was expended on streaming services?

    Imagine if Popcorn Time didn't suck, and you would have been the same scenario over again. Right now, innovation in this field is stagnating because nobody really cares - for technical users, torrents are fine, and nobody is bothered enough by copyright law to go further - but if someone were to make a version of Popcorn Time with better UI, smarter torrent downloading, subtitle sync that doesn't suck, and smooth integration of I2P or the likes, it would probably have a noticeable impact.

    That it's no perpetual motion machine where you give it a push once and it just flies away as if it had negative friction doesn't mean it's no good. The system didn't emerge unscathed as you seem to think. Spotify is barely profitable (and more importantly, has little room for growth), and music industry revenue is down by more than 60% since its peak in 1999 (including streaming). I'm not saying that piracy did it, but it's nowhere as big an industry as it was back in the day.

    Posted by Screwtape

    Honestly, if anyone wants to make any kind of techno-social change, investing the money in India or Africa or somewhere like that is probably a far smarter move than doing something in the USA or Europe, calcified as they are in their existing systems. If you really have a better idea, you have a better shot at getting it adopted in a culture that's not already heavily invested in an alternative. For example, the ideas behind Kaizen were invented by Americans, who couldn't get them adopted in America because American industry was in love with Ford-style mass production. It wasn't until those ideas came to Japan post-WWII that they were successful, because Japan's industry was largely destroyed during the war and they were ready to try something new.

    No. The Global South at best perpetually skijors on the achievements of the West, and so does China but with actual, quasi-legitimate industry. There isn't any change to affect down there anyway, since nearly nobody uses computers and if they did they would all just use whatever shipped on the computers the West sent them.

    It is a common fantasy, that the oppressed third world will rise up against their capitalist masters and do something, but it's not a realistic one. Even the so-called independence movements were mostly just the Soviet Union funding proxy wars, or power struggles that had completely nothing to do with ideology (Sierra Leone). Possibly you might be able to do something in Asia, but they are just like us entrenched in their ways. It is however true that Japan innovates within file sharing, but if someone would solve the issues the anonymous high-latency file-sharing networks have, they would begin to be used here too for other applications than you-know-what. IPFS is doing some work but they are incompetent.

    I'd sooner put my faith into "the Blockchain" than Africa to save the day.

    If you think that we'd have a hard time changing our system, just think how hard it would be if it's not even your system you built up yourself but rather just a white-label import you adopted having no idea of how it works.

    The only reasonable expense Mozilla/FSF could have down there would be outsourcing, but I've never heard of any software development in Africa (excluding South Africa (Ubuntu) and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia (TrueCrypt), neither of which were developed by Africans), and Indian outsourcing is probably not something you want to do for mission-critical software. But that is a great mystery. If they're paying their developers something like $100k a year, why not just move to somewhere that isn't Mountain View, California? Even if they would be hiring slightly worse developers, they'd avoid the "code artisans" which would drastically improve the quality of the product.

    I'm not even saying that they should move to Russia or even West Europe, it would be enough to move to literally anywhere else in the United States that isn't Silicon Valley.

    All of these people have been dependent on massive amounts of funding for so long that they've gotten addicted to it without having anything to show for it. When three guys with little to no resources or formal education manage to accomplish more than you did in a fraction of the time, someone is doing something wrong, and it ain't them.

    There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.
    Posted on 19-03-20, 08:02
    Full mod

    Post: #168 of 443
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 864 days
    Last view: 61 days
    Posted by sureanem

    They're not working retail, though. It's not a job. As harsh as it sounds, they have no obligation to be nice.

    They have no obligation to be nice, but they also have no obligation to be nasty. I guess they have to say *something* because of trademark law, but I don't think there's an explicit time-limit, and even if there is, I'm sure it's longer than two days it took that bug to go from "hello" to "repository locked".

    I assume the developers' long-term goals for Pale Moon include gathering enough of a community around it that the project becomes self-sustaining, and (in this instance at least) their actions are undermining their own goals. It's not about obligation, it's about strategy.

    Personally, I'm no fan of either, but I would much prefer contributing to a project with a perpetually angry but honest maintainer, than the one with one who uses the disgusting corporate sickly-sweet tone, referring to problems as "challenges," expends large amounts of time on writing meaningless documents about "inclusive language" (and actually enforcing them, instead of treating them like repository ornaments like the gratuitous makefiles), and uses expressions such as "yikes" and "sweetie" instead of explaining their issues with a given suggestion clearly.

    Ultimately, as in so many other things, being a good project leader is about being a good communicator. If somebody tries to contribute to my project, and I respond with a nugget of information wrapped in aggression and profanity, that's just as bad as a response wrapped in passive-aggression and equivocation. Luckily, if I take a minute (or a day) to wait and think before I respond, I can usually just write a response without the emotive overhead that should be clearer and more pleasant for everyone involved.

    I have a theory that because software developers work so intimately with computers, we fall out of practice at identifying and processing emotions in ourselves and others (or maybe the kind of people who have problems with that are naturally attracted to software development). And so, like people who are hard-of-hearing yelling at each other indoors, we get super-emotional because we don't remember what volume-level regular people use, and we wish regular people would speak up and quit mumbling so we can observe their emotional state without having to guess wildly. And like people who are hard-of-hearing, even though we're behaving rationally and haven't done anything wrong, it's more pragmatic to learn to control our volume level and learn to lip-read than it is to try and make the rest of the world conform to our expectations.

    Posted by Screwtape

    I'll grant that TPB probably provided more practical freedom than the FSF in the time they were around, but where are they now?

    It was a triumph. I'm making a note here, huge success.
    It is still online, and works just fine. It's true that there wasn't any more development after the initial release (short of DHT/magnet links decentralization), but the fact still remains that paying for media today is effectively optional, and this improvement persists regardless of whether any future ones are gained.

    I believe it's also blocked by a lot of ISPs, or run by the CIA, or visiting it flags your account for increased scrutiny, or something. I'm pretty sure all the good content is now mostly (only?) available on smaller trackers, or even private trackers, and there's no tracker as central and complete as TPB was back in the day. Sure, a lot of fresh content is still available *somewhere*, but it was generally available before TPB arrived, too. TPB made it *widely accessible*, and now with the decline of TPB content is less widely accessible again.

    It used to be that members and representatives of the copyright industry from all over the world were fighting TPB tooth-and-nail, but now they are not. The copyright industry has not evaporated, it has not given up control of copyrighted works, and even if it's smaller than it was, it has not gone away. Therefore, I conclude that TPB is no longer a threat to the copyright industry.

    What has the FSF accomplished? Helped large companies externalize software maintenance?

    I'm typing this right now on a computer with a Free operating system, Free drivers and mostly Free firmware, and I didn't have to ask anyone's permission, or pay $99 a year for a developer kit. It's true that multi-billion dollar companies like Google and Amazon and Facebook are the biggest beneficiaries, but other people benefit too. In fact, it's a good thing that those companies exist and that they use Free Software so heavily, because it means lots of software developers want to develop software on Linux so they can deploy software to the cloud, which means hardware makers want to keep their machines Linux-compatible so that software-developers will want to buy them. Certainly not *all* hardware makers want *all* their machines Linux-compatible, but even the most locked-down laptop maker would baulk at a standard that mean they couldn't sell nice expensive enterprise servers that worked with Linux.

    It used to be that members and representatives of the proprietary software industry from all over the world were fighting against GNU and Linux tooth-and-nail, but now they are not. Many of those companies have gone bankrupt, or gotten acquired, or reorganised their business models into different shapes. Heck, today I saw a product announced by Microsoft, that is not only open-source, but "requires Python 3 and only supports Linux and macOS systems at the moment". The very idea would have been *madness* a couple of decades ago. Therefore, I conclude that even if the FSF hasn't achieved their ultimate goals, they have certainly had a tremendous impact on the entire computer industry.

    The Global South at best perpetually skijors on the achievements of the West, and so does China but with actual, quasi-legitimate industry. There isn't any change to affect down there anyway, since nearly nobody uses computers and if they did they would all just use whatever shipped on the computers the West sent them.

    Generally, economically weaker nations tend to follow in the steps of the economically stronger nations they trade with, but they don't always *stay* economically weaker, and there's a tipping point where a large number of people with tech-level X can be economically stronger than a small number of people with tech-level X+1.

    Indian film-makers might be using western-made cameras and editing equipment, but Indian cinema is very much its own thing, distinct from the genres and tropes of Western cinema. A huge chunk of the Indian software industry is devoted to handling outsourced tasks from the West, but do you really think no Indian software developers would think to use their skills for problems they themselves face, or problems they see in society around them?

    If you're going to argue that economically weaker nations always wind up as pale imitations of the stronger nations they trade with, I'd like to remind you that America was once a poor little nation that imported all its technology from Britain, and they've had quite a sizable influence on world culture and technology since that time.

    It is a common fantasy, that the oppressed third world will rise up against their capitalist masters and do something, but it's not a realistic one. Even the so-called independence movements were mostly just the Soviet Union funding proxy wars, or power struggles that had completely nothing to do with ideology (Sierra Leone).

    It's not about "rising up against their capitalist masters". If anything, it's about *preventing* such a thing.

    Technology and population are both economic multipliers. There's a bunch of countries that are weak despite having large populations, because of their low tech level. Their tech levels are growing very, very quickly, and soon they'll be strong enough to do whatever they want. From a progressive point of view, it'd be really nice if those countries could learn from our mistakes rather than repeating them. From an economic point of view, it'd be really nice if those countries shared fundamental values with us, like egalitarianism and democracy rather than, say, authoritarianism. At the very least, we'd like them to think of us as the people that helped them grow up, rather than the people that held them down, and dismissed them as cheap and dirty.

    It might be a bit late for China, what with communist dictatorship and all, but democracy has had a pretty good track record versus dictatorships (albeit a bit bruised since 2016) but there's hope yet.

    The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
    Posted on 19-03-20, 08:42
    Custom title here

    Post: #340 of 1150
    Since: 10-30-18

    Last post: 7 days
    Last view: 9 hours
    Posted by Screwtape
    ... but democracy has had a pretty good track record versus dictatorships (albeit a bit bruised since 2016) but there's hope yet.
    I'd say we've been going downhill rather dramatically since 2001. Some assholes wrecked a plane, and it rapidly changed how people thought of liberty, state surveillance, innocent until proven guilty, and a whole host of other things. And they've just been inching the line a little further every time anyone looks away.

    --- In UTF-16, where available. ---
    Pages: First Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next Last
      Main » Discussion » Mozilla, *sigh*
      Get an ad blocker.