SloanTheServal

joined 1 year ago
[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

Is this being baked into Chromium itself or just Chrome? If it's Chromium itself I guarantee you a lot of the various third-party Chromium browsers are going to jump ship, or remove that from their builds.

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I mean, it will, because unfortunately there's still a ton of people who have that whole "So? Everyone does it, and they already have my info anyway. And there's nothing we can do about that so why bother." mindset.

Still, this is going to cause a massive privacy lawsuit.

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The only reason I can think of for people to be downvoting you is if they think you're talking about the car company, not Nikola Tesla. Probably should have used his full name.

Though the system he came up with was, well, flawed for lack of a better word.

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago

Ok, then... tell me. What browser do you use? Do you have a cell phone? Is it an Android phone? Because I guarantee you that unless you're still using Internet Explorer and have an iPhone, you are using open source software. The Chromium engine used by both Edge and Chrome is open source, with Google as the primary contributor. Some interface elements are proprietary but many of them carry over to full FOSS Chromium browsers like Opera and Vivaldi. Well, what about Firefox? Also fully FOSS. The basic framework of Android is an ARM-compatable fork of Linux.

I've found LibreOffice to actually be EASIER to use than Microsoft Office, and on top of that at this point Microsoft Office formats are almost perfectly supported. The only thing that doesn't carry over is scripting because LibreOffice uses a different scripting language from Microsoft Office, but in this day and age I guarantee you that 99% of people don't even use that anymore.

Are you in software development? Do you work with Java? Chances are, unless you work for a big megacorp, your company switched from the Oracle JDK to OpenJDK. Which, by the way, has Oracle as a major contributor and a mirror host.

Sure, there are definitely examples of open source software that are a bunch of crap. I've yet to find a good FOSS CAD program that has compatibility with .sldprt and .sldasm files, acceptable compatibility with .step files AND a decent interface. But most of the stuff I've used has been more than adequate.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that open source developers typically "eat their own dogfood" (meaning that they use the software they develop). Chances are if they made the UI bad enough that it affects their workflow, they're going to change it so that it's easier and quicker to use. So they might not necessarily be getting feedback from users (although that's very rare, most open source projects maintain community networks that rival or even surpass corporations.) but they're actively field-testing their software. And on the flip side, big corporations don't actually give a shit about the user. If they can get away with saving a quick buck and hiring "Bubba McGeoCities" to do their UI and still get their product to sell, they will. And they won't change it if a handful of people complain that it's completely unusable as long as it still sells. Want to know what the worst software I've ever had to use was? QuickBooks Online. And it very much felt like the combination of a late 90s GeoCities site AND Baby's First Tax Software. It makes a TON of costly mistakes (the IRS will not take "But QuickBooks said I owed X" as an excuse for an incorrect payment) and if you try to fix those mistakes the software actively tries to "correct" them back to its original, incorrect output.

As for the "freedom" aspect that gets mentioned a lot, that actually refers to the software license. Most open source software licenses give the user the freedom to copy, modify and distribute the software, with the only requirements being that the license cannot be changed with your distribution and the original developer must be accredited. The GNU GPL also requires that any other licenses used for various libraries and plugins must also be GNU GPL or similar. On the flip side, there are licenses that eliminate even the "share alike" clause, and one that outright says you can, and I quote, "do whatever the fuck you want".

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It actually does make sense. Besides the whole "getting WordPad users to buy Office" thing, there's also the fact that they won't have to continue updating WordPad. It's one less thing to worry about for security and compatibility on their end. The user might not benefit from its removal, but Microsoft does.

Just pointing out that it's not just for the sake of changing things.

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Open software tends to be written by programmers and not users of that type of software

As opposed to proprietary software, which is written by programmers and not users of that type of software?

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've had zero issues loading .doc and .docx files in Writer, and the same goes for .xls and .xlsx files in Calc. The only thing that might have issues is anything with VBS built-in, but that's not commonly used and I haven't run into that yet.

I will say that I agree with you on Excel's UX, but with the caveat that spreadsheet programs in general are just a pain (still better than trying to do anything manually in QuickBooks Online, though).

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 5 points 1 year ago

shrug I think I might have used wordpad maybe once in my entire life. Once Microsoft Office moved to a subscription model I just switched to OpenOffice, then Apache OpenOffice, and then LibreOffice.

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

LibreOffice can read and export to Microsoft Office formats. So there's really no reason to pirate Microsoft Office even if you technically need it for a job (and if the IT guy complains about "non-standard software", threaten to get him written up by HR for wasting company hours complaining instead of actually doing his job).

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is why everyone should take active responsibility for their own internet security instead of relying on companies to do it for them.

Locks stop opportunists. Anyone who's even remotely determined to get in is going to bring a lockpick. And anyone who's dead-set on getting in will just use bolt cutters. And digital locks are no different.

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 3 points 1 year ago

A fursona is also free (technically. Getting art of them can be expensive, but there are a few various "paper doll" style tools you can use to draft out a basic concept for free), is priceless in value, and doesn't fluctuate in its value based on arbitrary economics.

[–] SloanTheServal@pawb.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Border Collie

It's a regular collie

view more: ‹ prev next ›