java not working

[Xen]

Ralf Mardorf schreef op 17-03-2017 21:27:
> On Fri, 17 Mar 2017 14:50:05 +0100, Xen wrote:
>> Ralf Mardorf schreef op 17-03-2017 13:43:
>> 
>>> That is how my Arch Linux does look like right now [1].
>> 
>> I cannot interpret that.
> 
> It shows all packages I installed from official repositories, that
> suffer from known vulnerabilities.

Sure, but I cannot see if these vulnerabilities have already been fixed, 
whether these were old vulnerablities or not, how old they are, and 
whether it is significant as to the entire scheme of things, I mean the 
total volume of packages and all.

>>> For example, you still could compile Claws-Mail with the fancy plugin
> 
>> You cannot seriously argue that, if this is some important email
>> client, that the security issues surrounding the viewing of HTML
>> emails dwarfs the usability concerns with regards to _being able to
>> read them_ in the first place.
> 
> I'm a claws user and never displayed HTML. There are other ways to
> display HTML, the fancy plugin not necessarily is needed to do this.

Sure, I will take your word for that, but unless you show me what those 
other ways would be, and if that would be in any way user friendly or 
user convenient, I obviously cannot judge the subject, now can you :p.

> HTML is required for a browser, but not to view even HTML formatted
> emails.

Apparently we were speaking about a plugin to a mail client, but anyway.

> Webkit isn't = webkit, as GTK is not = GTK and Qt isn't = Qt. Therer
> are releases, e.g. Qt3, Qt4, GTK2 and GTK3 and for webkit it's the
> same, AFAIK not all webkits are continued by upstream.

I don't really see the point of that, but the topic was vulnerabilities 
and whether or not enough manpower would be available for that. I cannot 
argue, or discern, whether what you say, about lacking manpower, would 
be true or not.

> 
> A lot of distros will drop even the more used i686, IOW 32 bit PC
> architecture. Not many people are still using PPC.

And even that seems to be not a decision based on actual manpower 
required in relation to the benefits that it brings to have these 
architectures (ie. for older hardware, or also other use cases or 
platforms (ie. low memory footprint)) but that is not something we can 
discuss here right. It was already discussed, I don't agree with it 
either, but I was just meaning to show you that in THIS CASE the 
decision was made WITHOUT fully or considerately considering the 
manpower ACTUALLY AVAILABLE.

Your argument is predicated on the amount of manpower not being 
available, well, tough luck, evidence shows that you are wrong.

People _are_ willing to do the work, well I cannot argue completely 
about Java,

but since we have been harassed for years by people making coding paths 
that turn Java off in thet most variety of circumstances, rendering it 
almost impossible to use it, not because it isn't there, but because 
/PEOPLE HAVE SAID IT COULDN'T BE USED/ through *code*.

And that if you had been able to patch this code, to hack this code, to 
change even a single "jump" in this code, ie. in the compiled code and 
the paths it used, hey, presto, the code is available again! Java is 
available again!

So now of course they are dropping it completely, as you say, in 
Firefox, at least the ability to run any plugins for real (and not just 
extensions, I might assume), but this follows a long chain of harassment 
of users that absolutely were not mandated by any security concerns that 
were real, but by any security concerns that they thought had to be 
real, so they turned it off for the user, the assholes, that don't care 
about what you want, but only about what they want, and what you 
shouldn't use according to them, and that's my point, they don't care 
about YOU, they only care about your "security" that you don't care 
about, but _they know better_ and they will decide *for* you because 
they know better as to what you want and don't want and that's the 
disease in this world, according to me at least and I think I should 
speak for a lot of people that usually don't have a say, and pardon 
these words here, but I cannot make it more clear or more nice even than 
this.

Disabling java in the browser unless 20 security checks were passed and 
exceptions added to some file and so on and so on were active measures 
that were not mandated by what the user wants, but just to make it 
harder to use the damn thing.

I will post a response to Scott Blair in another message.



> I didn't mention it. What's dropped in this case is something that does
> cause serious issues, while at the same time other stuff is improved,
> e.g. HTML5.

It never caused serious issues for me. I have been using Java for years, 
it was never more insecure than it is now, but now suddenly it has to be 
dropped?

Java in the browser has existed since the 90s and it has always been 
equally insecure and now suddenly it needs to be dropped? And only 
because HTML5 exists, that cannot be used to code any real thing?

This is a moral issue and it is in terms of opinions, not hard truths.

Some people feel security must be forced on the user, others don't. I 
don't.

I give preference to flash, not Java really, but flash is in my mind 
definitely a better solution overall than HTML5. I don't *like* HTML5. I 
did like Flash.

Flash has been working brilliant for everyone.

There have never been any real issues with flash, apart from the 
occasional security leak, that didn't really impact anyone.

If it had, I would have been effected too. See, it is not so easy to 
target a corrupted flash thing at someone, you first have to get someone 
to open a specific website. Never happened for me, just didn't.

So maybe my situation is different, but my choice is to use flash, and 
they are taking that choice away from me, on purpose. Security issues 
are not in the browser. They are in the flash plugin itself. You don't 
have to code or do anything on the Flash plugin, that is the job of its 
author.

There are no huge issues on browser developers for that. But just to be 
sure I checked some links. Browsers have had issues with crashing, yes.

But in any case, this is what Mozilla writes:

"Browser plugins, especially Flash, have enabled some of our favorite 
experiences on the Web, including videos and interactive content. But 
plugins often introduce stability, performance, and security issues for 
browsers. This is not a trade-off users should have to accept." [1]

That's opinion, not fact, and I never experienced a trade-off myself. 
They are making a choice FOR ME.

They are only looking at it from THEIR perspective, NOT from the user's 
perspective, while pretending to care about the user. The user doesn't 
care. The user was happy with Flash.

This is what a game developer writes:

"When technologies fall out of favor it's usually because other better 
technologies were created, and the market reacted (...). That's not what 
is going on with Flash. We don't have a better technology for games." 
[2]

So we are not experiencing market reaction, we are experiencing forced 
choice. We are experiencing dictatorship, where the browser developers 
dictate what people should and can't be allowed to use.

It is pretty evident that you cannot develop games in HTML5 and that if 
you did, you would have to wring yourself in turns and corners to get 
the same functionality.

The same page writes this:

"Google is likewise taking a gradual approach. It announced in May that 
its Chrome browser would start blocking Flash files by default for most 
sites starting in the fourth quarter of this year. But it would allow 
Flash to run unimpeded on the top 10 sites."

So we are now being discriminated against. Because some piece of 
software on your computer thinks it knows better than you.

How you can not see this as control being taken away from the user, is 
beyond me.

This is terror and this is tyranny. You absolutely have no control over 
this software and they do what they want.

But the software controls your computer, and you don't. It's as simple 
as that.

There is no user configuration available for this. These are hard-coded 
choices so it is not about the user at all.

These choices are dictated to us.

If this was about FREE SOFTWARE this wouldn't happen.

I am just incredulous that you (you people) who are ADVOCATES of FREE 
SOFTWARE cannot see what is happening.

I mean, pardon my language in this message.

But I am not being served here as a user.

This is not directly to do with Ubuntu or Firefox. But browser games are 
going away, completely.

Various simulations and scientific experiments (or programs enabling or 
simulating them) on the web, are going away completely.

Or almost completely in any case, there won't be much left.

We will be left with a poorer web that can only play *video* (files) and 
nothing else.

With "programs" that need to be encoded in HTML and CSS and Javascript.

Java was never a great thing (in the browser) because of its footprint 
for things such as menus, of course, but no one used that after a while, 
they used flash for that, if they did that.

Still, choice is being taken away from us and this is pretty clear, and 
the users are not doing that, the developers are. The users are not 
asking for that, but the developers are doing that anyway. They are 
giving us THEIR choice, but not OUR choice. They are dictating how 
people should live and what they can use. It's not you making that 
decision. They are.

Users have no choice in this, we don't have a say, our opinion was never 
asked.

They are dictating how we should live and what choices we can make.

This is a prime reason for the open source movement to exist, and you 
fall for it completely.

[1] 
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/07/20/reducing-adobe-flash-usage-in-firefox/
[2] https://phys.org/news/2016-08-dont-delete-player.html

http://tech.blorge.com/2016/02/07/the-future-of-adobe-flash-player/155419

https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/08/google-chrome-will-block-auto-playing-flash-ads-from-september-1/

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/07/firefox-will-start-blocking-flash-content-in-august-fully-click-to-play-in-2017/



>> The whole premise of Linux (or Ubuntu) is that you are in control of
>> your own system and you should keep that high, I feel, and that is all
>> I can say about it.
> 
> We don't lose this freedom, if the Internet goes through an evolution,
> to improve security.

Of course we lose freedom. Just because you think it's for security, 
doesn't mean we don't loose freedom to do what we want. We won't be able 
to play games or do various other things, and we never chose that.

And this is not evolution, this is directed development by certain 
actors. These are people that DECIDE what people should use, it is not 
an evolution at all, it is an evolution in how much control these people 
want over our lives, at best.

I could also say that this is the same kind of 'evolution' as a certain 
premier first changing the constitution of a certain country to allow 
the president of that country to be elected, then elects himself as 
president, and then basically abolishes the premier-ship causing the 
president to wield supreme power.


> Human kind has got another issue with digitization. All our
> newer documents, many new books, most new music etc. is archived on
> digital media only. 1. A lot of those media aren't long-lasting. 2.
> Even if those media should last long enough, often the gear to read
> those media gets lost.

I really don't think this is more of a concern to most people than the 
current issue is, or should be., In that sense of people recognising 
that it could effect them, and will effect them, and they will see many 
games suddenly cease to exist, for instance.

This also has nothing to do with freedom. It has more to do with analog 
media of old than newer media to begin with, so it has nothing to do 
with digitization. It is VHS tapes and cassettes and grammaphone records 
that become unusable most quickly, and not at all the digital media we 
have today. So I don't know how often the "gear to read those media" 
gets lost, but it is nonsense. The only digital media we've had to date 
were CDs and ZIP drives and floppy disks, ZIP drives and floppy disks 
were never used for archiving anything permanent, CDs are still 
readable, and everything else is USB and SD card so I don't know what 
you are on about. Yes, older harddisks, maybe. But there are still 
plenty of IDE readers so this is not an issue. The molex plug also 
hasn't changed on PSUs and there are billions of external IDE readers 
out there. This is not an issue at all. Yes, theoretically the decay of 
DVD/CD and harddisks can become an issue, but it is not now, certainly 
not for digital media (but rather for analog media of the past), not 
barring of course, the use of textiles to produce books ;-).

In any case this is not a concern for most people and also has nothing 
to do with "freedom".


> We are losing some freedom, by the short lifespan of our cultural
> achievement, not because old software concepts for daily use get
> replaced by more secure software.

No, only access to tapes and VHS tapes is getting limited. Nothing else 
yet.
Floppy disks, sure, that's the only thing.

A thing few care about.

But in any case, millions of Flash games are destined to become 
unplayable in a few years, maybe even next year already.

THAT should be the real concern. And this is not happening through 
natural evolution (as would have been the case with e.g. VHS or 
floppies, where new technology takes over) but rather through 
dictatorship.

There is no new technology that can replace Flash and Java. It is 
bollocks. This is a directed choice through the limiting of people and 
what software they can use.