[l_theanine]

Imagine being someone who made a simple mistake, and people on some weird internet forum with no identity verification said "Oh, that guy must be malicious!" and you lose your job. How would you feel? It's justified, if I understand the point you're trying to make, right?

Which is worse?

Edit: Not that I expect much from here, but since there are a number of child(ish) replies, I might as well clarify this for the replies that I'm not going to individually address:

I'm not saying it's not cool to say "Microsoft sucks" or anything like that. If that's how you feel, then feel free to just say that. It's the internet. What's NOT cool is making up an imaginary situation where someone's simple error is part of this conspiracy that Microsoft is this terrible evil corporation, when there's thousands of decent, community-loving people that work there, one of whom made this error, more than likely by simple carelessness. It's not that big of a deal, it's not a showstopper by any means, and will be a simple fix in due time, almost undoubtedly.

There are people behind software, but a lot of commenters seem to think it's professionally appropriate to just shit on things because they're from Microsoft or because they're from Apple, or wherever. Just say you don't like Microsoft, or that you don't like Apple. It's so antisocial to take the stance I keep seeing.

I think the young people call this "parasocial" these days. Back in my day, we called it "fanatics", where there's this unhealthy obsession and seemingly anthromorphized view of corporations and institutions where hundreds or thousands of different, varied, diverse groups of people are all cohesively accomplishing or building things. It dismisses nuance, it rejects common sense understanding of how teams of people work, and is reductive and hostile to actually intelligent conversations about products and ideas.

[Ensorceled]

You do realize the "someone" in question is a mega corporation worth almost 2 TRILLION dollars with around 200K employees? One with a long history of anti-competitive behaviour and "mistakes"?

[l_theanine]

I've worked on contracts alongside MS employees and researchers in the past, and I've been pleasantly surprised.

Three decades of experience in the field, and unfortunately, I don't have quite the brooding disdain for Microsoft. Their stock has lined my pockets, their employees have treated my respectfully when we've worked together, their products do what they're advertised to do.

Something tells me you're under 40.

[Ensorceled]

> Three decades of experience in the field, and unfortunately, I don't have quite the brooding disdain for Microsoft. Their stock has lined my pockets, their employees have treated my respectfully when we've worked together, their products do what they're advertised to do.

"They've lined my pockets and treated me nice so anything they do is all right by me."

> Something tells me you're under 40.

No. But during my three decades of experience, I actually grew up.

[mistrial9]

self-defined winners claim the system works, news at 11

[l_theanine]

Bummer, I guess. I got rich and paid for three kids to go to Ivy League schools, bought a house a mile and a half from the White House, and before too long will leave them a seven figure nest egg after my wife and I are dead.

But hey, revel in your internet wit, mighty commenter! Your immense mental stature frightens me! ;-)

[Forbo]

Of course someone who is gaining financially from MS is going to take this position.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

[l_theanine]

My salary doesn’t depend on it, it’s just in my portfolio. I’m just not an idiot…

I do consulting and bill upwards of 300/hr worked in the DC area, with several decades of experience and a network built up along the way.

I took this position thirty years ago too, my mind hasn’t changed except that young people feel like they’re clever or somehow intellectually valid for copy pasting a quote into a web forum.

[tanseydavid]

Your continued series of replies seem to do nothing to bolster your argument about Microsoft.

But at the same you elaborate in great (and unnecessary) detail about the level of success you have attained.

BTW: I am hardly young. I am nearly ancient.

[l_theanine]

I'm not making an argument about Microsoft, but rather about the low regard I have for people who make inflammatory comments about companies online when there's human beings there doing all the work, affected by the negativity. It's just childish, and reeks of chronically online personalities.

Making a personal remark about me is plenty of reason for me to mention my success, since they implied that my perspective is somehow fueled entirely by some stock that I own. I have actual experience working alongside some MS people, and I have held that stock since 2013. So what? My opinion just goes out the window? That doesn't make much sense to me, I don't know about you...

The reason I associate that with youth is that young people often don't have a healthy portfolio or indeed any financial hygiene to speak of and seem to think that business is a zero sum game. We all benefit from the business world pushing things forward if we're holding stock in the most powerful companies. I'm hardly a supporter of the capitalist system, but I'll be damned if it's not going to work in my favor, since I understand how things are. My responsibility is to my family first. Had there been a revolution when I was younger, I'd have been among the first in line to change things, but it didn't happen.

I think I'm wasting my time in this thread, though.

[capableweb]

I don't think anyone is assigning blame to a specific individual here, but to the corporation as a whole. A corporation that has time and time again been proven and acknowledged themselves to engage in anti-competitive behavior.

[l_theanine]

I think it's deliberately obtuse to claim to represent such an opinion. The people on "git blame" for this will end up being reprimanded in some way, in serious cases.

If we're chalking it up to "Microsoft sucks" then that's fine, but it'd be better imo to just say THAT, rather than sneak up to the point via this auxiliary issue of this user agent string. Someone has to answer for these individual fuck-ups, it's intentionally shitty behavior to be insinuating that someone did this maliciously under the guise of end users assuming innocence, thereby obscuring the responsibility for it.

[capableweb]

> The people on "git blame" for this will end up being reprimanded in some way, in serious cases.

Ok, sucks to work at Microsoft then, it is not the fault at people outside Microsoft that they have terrible management, if that's how things go there.

> Someone has to answer for these individual fuck-ups, it's intentionally shitty behavior to be insinuating that someone did this maliciously under the guise of end users assuming innocence, thereby obscuring the responsibility for it.

Yes, management who are the decision makers should obviously answer for this, and if the culture is to blame some random engineer who happened to program it, the engineer is probably better off getting fired from such a toxic environment where they have to be some scapegoat for managements fuckups.

[mynameisvlad]

Most organizations, Microsoft included, employ a blameless policy.

It’s almost never an individual person’s fault, but rather that the process failed in stopping a regression from going through. If anything should be blamed, it’s that the process didn’t catch this; at the PR, testing, or release phases.

If individuals were reprimanded nearly as much as it’s implied, there wouldn’t be a lot of people employed at Microsoft or any other big company.

[pessimizer]

> and you lose your job.

You're making up stuff to make your case stronger. Also, it's totally legitimate to fire people for making mistakes, it's not an injustice.

edit: Instead, imagine being fired for making a mistake when you were actually told to ignore something by a supervisor.

[antifa]

Imagine Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown for the 99th time then some randos show up to defend Lucy saying some really obtuse and ignorant shit like it was "a simple mistake".

[Karunamon]

You don't have to invent imaginary scenarios when the one before us does quite well on its own. We are not talking about an individual, we are talking about a faceless megacorp with a storied history of bad faith.

Just being a faceless megacorp is reasonable grounds for losing the benefit of the doubt, but one with their history? Ascribing anything other than malice first is plain and simple naïveté.

[13of40]

I'm struggling to see the world from your point of view. Do you honestly believe there's a room full of cigar smoking robber barons somewhere in Redmond who got together and told the devops guy who runs that site to break compatibility with some niche browser's interim builds, because that's the best way to maximize profits? (And somehow these same guys were the ones pulling the strings in 1995?)

[MereInterest]

Align all the incentives, and you don’t need to have an explicit command. If your product demo is only tested on the company’s browser, no order is necessary to break compatibility, as it will drift away by default. If a team is chastised for having misrendered prototypes, but not for browser compatibility, then it makes sense for an individual to throw in a User Agent check.

It isn’t likely that any one individual is pushing for incompatibility, but that nobody cares about incompatibility. That lack of care about any standards, with “it works” and “it works on our browser/OS/hardware/etc” treated as synonymous, can be part of a company culture.