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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   22586 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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(In fairness, the first two were mandated by governments, and the third was walked back.)

Well this is an important point because there isn't really as big of an issue as people make it seem and what problems do exist are often because of government.

If something is widely unpopular enough in a competitive industry then a company will generally walk it back. As the comment pointed out before me about league of legends, Riot could nerf any of my favorite champions into the ground and there's nothing I could do about it. But they wouldn't, there's no financial sense in it. Popular characters like Yasuo or Lux will never be unplayable for an extended period of time. Even the less popular ones like Reksai or old asol/morde/aatrox before reworks weren't compete gutter trash, in fact Asol at least was crazy overpowered if anything for most of his pre rework existence. And the only reason they got changed is because they just weren't liked by the community. It sucks for the niche fans like me, who used to main old Mordekaiser, but I was probably like one of ten people who did or something.

Markets have internal feedback systems to prevent them from upsetting you too much, you can just walk away and go somewhere else. Heck even the worst offenders like someone brought up overwatch 2 self correct pretty hard if it's hurting them, because Overwatch 2 has pretty much just reverted back already! They even have a 6v6 mode again.

When games shut down, it's typically because there's just not enough demand left anymore to justify the ongoing costs. Passionate fanbases who are willing to eat the cost themselves will often make their own privately hosted servers to play on and many companies don't really care that much about it. It's very rare for companies to step in unless you're directly threatening their current profits (like why Yuzu got shut down after they fucked about with Tears of the Kingdom piracy) or trying to make money off it like the original YouTube Vanced project only got shut down once they tried profiting. If no one is willing to eat the cost then clearly not enough people really want it so what's the problem?

What issues do exist is generally in the legal aspect of hosting. Or rephrased, because of the government making rules on what you can and can't do. The government creates problems that only more and more government can solve!

Markets have internal feedback systems to prevent them from upsetting you too much, you can just walk away and go somewhere else.

Exactly where are you going to go instead of Office 2019?

What issues do exist is generally in the legal aspect of hosting. Or rephrased, because of the government making rules on what you can and can't do.

Are you suggesting that people opposing this should demand that the government repeal DMCA and copyright laws, and that you won't accept a solution where the government does something other than repealing laws?

You should know very well that getting the government to repeal copyright and DMCA is infeasible. If you can't accept less optimal solutions, you are telling people that because the solution doesn't involve maximal restrictions on government, they shouldn't have a solution at all.

Furthermore, even libertarians are supposed to permit the government to enforce laws against fraud. Microsoft claiming it's perpetual and then walking that back should be considered fraud, and even with your anti-government stance, you have no grounds to oppose forcing Microsoft to actually provide what they said they would.

Exactly where are you going to go instead of Office 2019?

People have listed alternatives even in this very thread! So they aren't hard to find. Seems like there's open office, WSOffice, onlyoffice, libre office, and of course Google docs that will fulfills most things you'd need.

Are you suggesting that people opposing this should demand that the government repeal DMCA and copyright laws, and that you won't accept a solution where the government does something other than repealing laws?

Copyright laws can have some value but "I can't legally host this server" is inherently an issue from government because the problem is about what is legal.

You should know very well that getting the government to repeal copyright and DMCA is infeasible.

Because there's not enough political demand for reform. Lots of unpopular ideas that will never happen are objectively the right ones while unpopular ideas of rent seeking regulations consistently win. See basically everything in the housing market space for proof of that.

Furthermore, even libertarians are supposed to permit the government to enforce laws against fraud. Microsoft claiming it's perpetual and then walking that back should be considered fraud, and even with your anti-government stance, you have no grounds to oppose forcing Microsoft to actually provide what they said they would.

If they claimed it would be available forever and they're actively making it not available and it's not one of those lifetime guarantee type things where the specific details clarified it to something more reasonable then yeah that does seem like an issue that should be solved.

But can it not be solved through already existing fraud statutes?

People have listed alternatives even in this very thread!

If they were useful alternatives, people would be using them instead already.

Because there's not enough political demand for reform.

I repeat: If the only solution you will accept is the government getting rid of (or even reducing) copyright and DMCA, you are saying "I will accept no solution that's practical, and if you do come up with a practical solution, tough."

But can it not be solved through already existing fraud statutes?

Microsoft has a binding arbitration clause. I'm not going to win in Microsoft-approved arbitration.

I suppose you are going to say "well, you shouldn't have agreed to the arbitration clause when you bought and used the product".

If they were useful alternatives, people would be using them instead already.

Cool, so people are using the best option available to them already. Be mad at the worst options if you have a complaint.

I repeat: If the only solution you will accept is the government getting rid of (or even reducing) copyright and DMCA, you are saying "I will accept no solution that's practical, and if you do come up with a practical solution, tough."

I understand it's more practical to layer on more and more government, that doesn't make it right. That is the bullshit that causes our insane bureaucracy to turn even more insane.

Microsoft has a binding arbitration clause. I'm not going to win in Microsoft-approved arbitration. I suppose you are going to say "well, you shouldn't have agreed to the arbitration clause when you bought and used the product".

Well yeah duh, you picked the best available product to you and agreed to the terms. Even then binding arbitration laws don't necessarily hold up and you can in fact win them.

Cool, so people are using the best option available to them already.

I'm talking about the best option that we could practically have.

The government requiring companies to not disable products isn't available, but it is one that we could practically have. The government getting rid of copyright to the extent necessary to solve this problem isn't available, and also is not one that we could practically have.

Well yeah duh, you picked the best available product to you and agreed to the terms.

All large companies use binding arbitration in their products. There is no product that is equally useful and doesn't have such clauses.

People have listed alternatives even in this very thread! So they aren't hard to find. Seems like there's open office, WSOffice, onlyoffice, libre office, and of course Google docs that will fulfills most things you'd need.

And which of those Just Work, aren't horribly slow and don't have garbage UI (the reason I absolutely refuse to use Google Docs)?

If you're really all-in on UI (and don't hate post-2007-Microsoft), OnlyOffice. It's pretty explicitly trying to emulate Microsoft Office and to minimize on-boarding issues. Performance is comparable to MSOffice, one of the better PowerPoint equivalents.

LibreOffice is the most powerful and performant, but the UI looks like it came straight from 2003. That can be a plus, and is for me, but most won't like it. It does have the strongest Excel competitor if you're doing a lot of spreadsheet work.

I will generally discourage OpenOffice (effectively dead since Sun abandoned it, minimal updates) and Google Docs (usable for basic collaboration, but Google will bite you and it struggles badly as use cases get complicated). WPS Office had some trouble (Chinese ownership, censorship scandal), but I haven't used it so I can't comment deeper.

Another option, albeit commercial, is SoftMaker Office, and they do make a free beer version of an older version of their office suite. I myself use the free beer version of the 2006 release of the office suite for document writing; it’s lighting fast in a modern computer and works really nicely.

If I need a newer feature, e.g. ODF (or DOCX) support, Color fonts, etc. I reach to Libre Office. But SoftMaker’s 2006 free suite works really well for my needs 99% of the time I need to edit a document.

Suppose I have legacy VBA macros in Excel. Are there any that let me just directly use them? Last I had looked at LibreOffice, I think, and I was going to have to do some significant rewriting.

LibreOffice has the best direct VBA support, but it is still limited and partial and unlikely to get drastically better. OnlyOffice has an LLM-assisted translation, but I wouldn't recommend it for production services.

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