Support Open-Source Browsers and Quit Steering People to Google

[ecsd]

I boycott Google as being an obnoxious megalomaniac for-profit corporation. The fact that 20-year-olds who've ignored History, Economics, Politics and the hubris of Microsoft, don't know any better and think Google is "our friend", is no good reason for them to write what should have been generic web code and then ask people to use "Google Chrome" to view it. Go check out w3c.org and quit asking people to use corporate-specific browsers, thank you in advance.

in re: http://snap.berkeley.edu/hoc/#1

[brianharvey]

Yes, you're right. That Hour of Code tutorial was coded in a huge rush against a tight deadline, and the students who did it needed a feature other browsers didn't offer. I don't remember the details, but it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this github repo, since Snap! uses plain HTML5 Canvas and runs in all browsers, and that's not going to change; don't worry. (The Hour of Code tutorial is actually a Beauty and Joy of Computing project, not a Snap! project, even though it's hosted in the snap.berkeley.edu site.) I'll forward your message to the right people but am closing this issue in the Snap! repo.

[ecsd]

I use an older version of Firefox that is complained of by many sites. It tells me whether sites are correctly coded if things won't work, but I get no message telling me the browser version is the issue. (and your demo won't work despite being AdBlock - permitted.) My point about Google translates as follows: you say Privacy Notice: For research purposes, this site uses Google Analytics to collect aggregate information about, e.g., how often the site is used and what links are followed from it. I'm in discussion with someone from the Oakland Unified School District concerning developing a CS curriculum for school kids. Since when do you need to use Google to track usage on your site? So if you counted your own hits and got rid of the use of Google code, you wouldn't have to warn people about risks to their privacy. This is a case where refusing to use code that was "Not Invented Here" is an excellent way of insuring that you and only you are responsible for what happens to people who use Your code, because it will be Your code. Tracking use of links on one's site is some of the most basic stuff mentioned in the O'Reilly books on the subject of writing web code; see what you get for "trying to save time" by using third-party possibly-trojaned stuff: the need to take time aside to WARN people. Please take this to heart. I'm sorry if I'm only one of 5 people in the USA who is worried about the corporate takeover of the Internet - but it is a serious concern, nonetheless. Although Microsoft is still a monopoly, their bid to rewrite Internet protocols so that only their software could play was refuted. It's time for the same to happen to Google, to quit inviting them to become part of everyone else's infrastructure. They just aren't that good and their "do no evil" slogan is a really sick joke on the people who use them: there are people in jail in China thanks to them and they work hand in glove with the NSA while pretending to be concerned about "intrusions" into privacy, which after all iswhat they were capitalized to do in the first place. That makes them transparent Liars worthy of a global Boycott, but they have managed to convince an entire generation of users that they are "good guys" and we have to worry now whether they will succeed where Microsoft did not. 1984, indeed. Nobody needs to use Google code; there is plenty of open-source code to do any and all of the same stuff. Tracking the use of a link is a one-line PHP call to one's own database needing no-one's branded software and external API calls to perform; and learning to do things for oneself is after all what School should be about, not training kids to use Corporate APIs. Thanks for reading my angry little polemic, if you did.

-ecsd (Eric Dynamic)

brianharvey wrote:

Yes, you're right. That Hour of Code tutorial was coded in a huge rush against a tight deadline, and the students who did it needed a feature other browsers didn't offer. I don't remember the details, but it doesn't really matter for the purposes of this github repo, since Snap! uses plain HTML5 Canvas and runs in all browsers, and that's not going to change; don't worry. (The Hour of Code tutorial is actually a Beauty and Joy of Computing project, not a Snap! project, even though it's hosted in the snap.berkeley.edu site.) I'll forward your message to the right people but am closing this issue in the Snap! repo. — Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[ecsd]

brianharvey wrote:

Yes, you're right. That Hour of Code tutorial was coded in a huge rush against a tight deadline, and

the students who did it

needed a feature

other browsers didn't offer.

Browser-specific coding == NO-NO I would tell the kids, sorry, not permissible in an open world. () That is what Microsoft tried to pull - "please code for MSIE because only our browser can do cool things." The lesson should be how to contact the developers of the browsers that don't support the desired feature, to perhaps give them the code that would enable that feature. () How can kids see where politics intersects public use unless they run into walls about it?

[brianharvey]

I politely explained to you that this is not the forum for the political argument you want to have, and I explained why. Let me try again so you'll understand it: THIS IS NOT THE FORUM FOR THE POLITICAL ARGUMENT YOU WANT TO HAVE. THIS TOPIC IS CLOSED.

[ecsd]

brianharvey wrote:

I politely explained to you that this is not the forum for the political argument you want to have, and I explained why. Let me try again so you'll understand it: THIS IS NOT THE FORUM FOR THE POLITICAL ARGUMENT YOU WANT TO HAVE. THIS TOPIC IS CLOSED.

I was responding to you personally - but you're sending from a "reply-to-list" link with nowhere else to respond to. You figure that out.

[brianharvey]

Since you know my email address and I don't know yours, don't respond via github, just send me a plain old email. bh@cs.berkeley.edu