6 ms·

> People didn't stop using oil after the Standard Oil break-up. Nor Windows after its antitrust brush or cigarettes after the tobacco master settlement. The pow

> People didn't stop using oil after the Standard Oil break-up. Nor Windows after its antitrust brush or cigarettes after the tobacco master settlement. The power of those companies was simply sharply reduced. I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO became Esso and Mobil, who became ExxonMobil, and ostensibly went right back to doing what it did best (owning most of the domestic oil market). Breaking up the company doesn't actually change the practices or culture of what got the company there in the first place. The new companies which are spun off oftentimes don't even know how to operate as companies and so they're easy pickings for the nucleus of the original company. How many competitors to Windows popped up after the microsoft antitrust suit? Is there a "windows specific browser" to compete with Edge or IE which is from a former microsoft company? The same thing for smoking. If we look at smoking as "I light something on fire and jam it into my food hole" then yes, the numbers look promising according to the CDC website. If you look at a Vice article (https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xxx83/the-shady-link-between-big-tobacco-and-nicotine-gum https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xxx83/the-shady-link-betwee...), however, all the tobacco companies did was shift their business into providing alternatives to cigarettes. But they're still made from nicotine. It's just smoking without the smoke. That's the other reason why they're pushing so hard to regulate vaping - the idea that there's an "open source" "anyone can make this" alternative simply cuts out their business.

triceratops 5y ago
Standard Oil => SO => Esso. Mind blown! I had no idea.
- splistud 5y ago
  Yep, and Esso + Humble became Exxon. Other parts turned into Mobil, Amoco, Marathon, Unocal and Texaco...
- DemocracyFTW 5y ago
  (off to buy domain names efbe.com, effbee.com, ...)
- Tarsul 5y ago
  theres a great reportage on ARTE (for German/French only?!) about oil history: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/092970-001-A/oel-macht-geschichte-1-2/ https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/092970-001-A/oel-macht-geschic... (only til 20th of Oct)
snowwrestler 5y ago
Microsoft went flat for a decade after their antitrust trial. They lost many markets where they had significant footholds, struggled to attract and retain top talent, and struggled to enter new markets. They kept making money from Windows, Office, etc. But the tech industry exploded in growth around them, leaving them behind in many ways (technologically, financially, culturally).
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  One notable exception was video games. In retrospect the success of the Xbox is extremely strange.
  - rctec 5y ago
    The success of Xbox resulted from what was essentially an internal con job. It survived to launch and succeeded because the team responsible managed to keep a straight face about several important lies about what Xbox would be to the rest of the company's leadership and BG himself.
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      > several important lies Can you please elaborate? I'm pretty familiar with Xbox's history but I'm not aware of any lies.
      - maxwell 5y ago
        Maybe referring to dropping Windows from the original Xbox: https://www.shacknews.com/article/95635/how-the-original-xbox-team-convinced-insulted-bill-gates-to-green-light-a-console https://www.shacknews.com/article/95635/how-the-original-xbo...
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    You'd probably enjoy the book "Renegades of the Empire" by Drummond. https://www.amazon.com/Renegades-Empire-Software-Revolution-Microsoft/dp/0609604163 https://www.amazon.com/Renegades-Empire-Software-Revolution-...
p_j_w 5y ago
>How many competitors to Windows popped up after the microsoft antitrust suit? Is there a "windows specific browser" to compete with Edge or IE which is from a former microsoft company? I don't think this one really illustrates your point very well. There are no former Microsoft companies because Microsoft was never broken up. That was actually on the agenda until we elected a Republican president who decided MS just needed a slap on the wrist. Add this to the "ways in which the Bush administration hosed America" pile.
emptyparadise 5y ago
I want to see court-mandated open source and federation. Doubt it'd ever happen though...
- splistud 5y ago
  What other private property are you in favor of taking from others?
  - akimball 5y ago
    Anything built by appropriating other people’s property and/or by depredation of the commons.
  - emptyparadise 5y ago
    I'll settle on just enough to have a viable healthy, open and free tech ecosystem. My evil regime will even let you keep the rest - as long as you play along nicely and interoperate and federate!
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Something like court-mandated federation is not completely out of the question in the EU, given that the GDPR requires "data portability" between digital services, including "the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible."[0] I suspect a big American corporation like Facebook would have a hard time persuading an EU court that it wasn't technically feasible for it to automatically duplicate your Facebook posts onto a competing Fediverse instance where you have an account, and the court could even decide that the "natural" technological implementation would be to broadcast your Facebook posts directly to your friends across the Fediverse. Sadly the language of the GDPR seems to only mandate the export of personal data from the site where it is stored, and not grant the complementary right to have data imported. This means Facebook wouldn't have to show you the posts of any of your Fediverse friends, and it also wouldn't export your Facebook friends' posts to be viewable on your Fediverse account (unless they also had a Fediverse account and chose to export those posts themselves). [0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/
b3morales 5y ago
> all the tobacco companies did was shift their business into providing alternatives to cigarettes. But they're still made from nicotine. Isn't this okay? Asking genuinely -- I haven't followed this one way or the other. But my understanding was that the health problems were mostly caused by the smoke. Does nicotine itself cause problems when delivered via gum or vape or whatever? Certainly the current ingestion methods make it easier on those of us standing around not consuming them, compared to clouds of smoke. Which is a plus for me.
- svachalek 5y ago
  Vaping is less bad for you than inhaling the big cloud of carcinogens that is cigarette smoke. But even if you discount the direct effects of addiction, which is horrible, there are plenty of other indications nicotine itself is bad for you.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Nicotine is a stimulant, similar to other stimulants such as caffeine. The addictiveness in smoking apparently comes from (1) high dose absorbed rapidly, and (2) combination with other chemicals in tobacco and tobacco products. Nicotine addiction per se (or caffeine addiction) can be harmful to people, but the scale of harm is orders of magnitude away from the harms of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. In small doses and in moderation, nicotine alone (e.g. taken as patch or gum) can be an effective medication, is not especially addictive, and has relatively mild side effects. https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine Side effects of vaping should be studied more carefully (and the contents of vape fluid should be regulated): it is dramatically less harmful than smoking but plausibly still harmful. A massive quick dose of some stimulant (e.g. downing several espresso shots in a row) is not the most effective, and breathing stuff other than air is generally a bad idea.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  If vaping was pure nicotine its health effects would be limited (i.e. much less dangerous than tobacco smoke). Unfortunately most vape devices deliver a witches brew of nasty chemicals (besides nicotine) added for flavor and increased addiction potential just like cigarettes did. Many of said chemicals have less well-studied health effects than those in tobacco.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
The same thing happened with AT&T. After the government broke them up into the regional "baby bells" in the 80s they started eating each other until only one (Southwestern Bell) was left standing. At which point it bought the shell of the original AT&T corporation and promptly renamed itself "AT&T." The AT&T you buy cell phone service from today is actually Southwestern Bell.
- andrewla 5y ago
  Not entirely true -- Bell Atlantic became Verizon after it ate most of the baby bells in the Northeast.
mcguire 5y ago
"I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO became Esso and Mobil, who became ExxonMobil, and ostensibly went right back to doing what it did best (owning most of the domestic oil market). Breaking up the company doesn't actually change the practices or culture of what got the company there in the first place. The new companies which are spun off oftentimes don't even know how to operate as companies and so they're easy pickings for the nucleus of the original company." You realize there is about 88 years between step one and step two there? "The same thing for smoking. If we look at smoking as "I light something on fire and jam it into my food hole" then yes, the numbers look promising according to the CDC website. If you look at a Vice article (https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xxx83/the-shady-link-betwee https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xxx83/the-shady-link-betwee...), however, all the tobacco companies did was shift their business into providing alternatives to cigarettes. But they're still made from nicotine. It's just smoking without the smoke. That's the other reason why they're pushing so hard to regulate vaping - the idea that there's an "open source" "anyone can make this" alternative simply cuts out their business." Do the new products cause as much harm as cigarettes?
p1necone 5y ago
> they're still made from nicotine. It's just smoking without the smoke. The nicotine is not the harmful thing in cigarettes[1][2] - the "without the smoke" bit is pretty important. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Adverse_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Adverse_effects [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#Health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#Health_effects Sure the tobacco companies are making money off of selling addictive chemicals to people, which is not a particularly ethical business practice. But "selling addictive chemicals with adverse effects roughly in line with caffeine" is still a big improvement over "selling addictive chemicals that kill people".

triceratops 5y ago

Standard Oil => SO => Esso. Mind blown! I had no idea.

splistud 5y ago
Yep, and Esso + Humble became Exxon. Other parts turned into Mobil, Amoco, Marathon, Unocal and Texaco...
DemocracyFTW 5y ago
(off to buy domain names efbe.com, effbee.com, ...)
Tarsul 5y ago
theres a great reportage on ARTE (for German/French only?!) about oil history: https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/092970-001-A/oel-macht-geschichte-1-2/ https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/092970-001-A/oel-macht-geschic... (only til 20th of Oct)

snowwrestler 5y ago

Microsoft went flat for a decade after their antitrust trial. They lost many markets where they had significant footholds, struggled to attract and retain top talent, and struggled to enter new markets. They kept making money from Windows, Office, etc. But the tech industry exploded in growth around them, leaving them behind in many ways (technologically, financially, culturally).

jonny_eh 5y ago
One notable exception was video games. In retrospect the success of the Xbox is extremely strange.
- rctec 5y ago
  The success of Xbox resulted from what was essentially an internal con job. It survived to launch and succeeded because the team responsible managed to keep a straight face about several important lies about what Xbox would be to the rest of the company's leadership and BG himself.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    > several important lies Can you please elaborate? I'm pretty familiar with Xbox's history but I'm not aware of any lies.
    - maxwell 5y ago
      Maybe referring to dropping Windows from the original Xbox: https://www.shacknews.com/article/95635/how-the-original-xbox-team-convinced-insulted-bill-gates-to-green-light-a-console https://www.shacknews.com/article/95635/how-the-original-xbo...
- WalterBright 5y ago
  You'd probably enjoy the book "Renegades of the Empire" by Drummond. https://www.amazon.com/Renegades-Empire-Software-Revolution-Microsoft/dp/0609604163 https://www.amazon.com/Renegades-Empire-Software-Revolution-...

p_j_w 5y ago

>How many competitors to Windows popped up after the microsoft antitrust suit? Is there a "windows specific browser" to compete with Edge or IE which is from a former microsoft company? I don't think this one really illustrates your point very well. There are no former Microsoft companies because Microsoft was never broken up. That was actually on the agenda until we elected a Republican president who decided MS just needed a slap on the wrist. Add this to the "ways in which the Bush administration hosed America" pile.

emptyparadise 5y ago

I want to see court-mandated open source and federation. Doubt it'd ever happen though...

splistud 5y ago
What other private property are you in favor of taking from others?
- akimball 5y ago
  Anything built by appropriating other people’s property and/or by depredation of the commons.
- emptyparadise 5y ago
  I'll settle on just enough to have a viable healthy, open and free tech ecosystem. My evil regime will even let you keep the rest - as long as you play along nicely and interoperate and federate!
dane-pgp 5y ago
Something like court-mandated federation is not completely out of the question in the EU, given that the GDPR requires "data portability" between digital services, including "the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from one controller to another, where technically feasible."[0] I suspect a big American corporation like Facebook would have a hard time persuading an EU court that it wasn't technically feasible for it to automatically duplicate your Facebook posts onto a competing Fediverse instance where you have an account, and the court could even decide that the "natural" technological implementation would be to broadcast your Facebook posts directly to your friends across the Fediverse. Sadly the language of the GDPR seems to only mandate the export of personal data from the site where it is stored, and not grant the complementary right to have data imported. This means Facebook wouldn't have to show you the posts of any of your Fediverse friends, and it also wouldn't export your Facebook friends' posts to be viewable on your Fediverse account (unless they also had a Fediverse account and chose to export those posts themselves). [0] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/

b3morales 5y ago

> all the tobacco companies did was shift their business into providing alternatives to cigarettes. But they're still made from nicotine. Isn't this okay? Asking genuinely -- I haven't followed this one way or the other. But my understanding was that the health problems were mostly caused by the smoke. Does nicotine itself cause problems when delivered via gum or vape or whatever? Certainly the current ingestion methods make it easier on those of us standing around not consuming them, compared to clouds of smoke. Which is a plus for me.

svachalek 5y ago
Vaping is less bad for you than inhaling the big cloud of carcinogens that is cigarette smoke. But even if you discount the direct effects of addiction, which is horrible, there are plenty of other indications nicotine itself is bad for you.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  Nicotine is a stimulant, similar to other stimulants such as caffeine. The addictiveness in smoking apparently comes from (1) high dose absorbed rapidly, and (2) combination with other chemicals in tobacco and tobacco products. Nicotine addiction per se (or caffeine addiction) can be harmful to people, but the scale of harm is orders of magnitude away from the harms of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. In small doses and in moderation, nicotine alone (e.g. taken as patch or gum) can be an effective medication, is not especially addictive, and has relatively mild side effects. https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine https://www.gwern.net/Nicotine Side effects of vaping should be studied more carefully (and the contents of vape fluid should be regulated): it is dramatically less harmful than smoking but plausibly still harmful. A massive quick dose of some stimulant (e.g. downing several espresso shots in a row) is not the most effective, and breathing stuff other than air is generally a bad idea.
dreamcompiler 5y ago
If vaping was pure nicotine its health effects would be limited (i.e. much less dangerous than tobacco smoke). Unfortunately most vape devices deliver a witches brew of nasty chemicals (besides nicotine) added for flavor and increased addiction potential just like cigarettes did. Many of said chemicals have less well-studied health effects than those in tobacco.

dreamcompiler 5y ago

The same thing happened with AT&T. After the government broke them up into the regional "baby bells" in the 80s they started eating each other until only one (Southwestern Bell) was left standing. At which point it bought the shell of the original AT&T corporation and promptly renamed itself "AT&T." The AT&T you buy cell phone service from today is actually Southwestern Bell.

andrewla 5y ago
Not entirely true -- Bell Atlantic became Verizon after it ate most of the baby bells in the Northeast.

mcguire 5y ago

"I actually disagree with this. When the company is forcibly broken up there's a chance that it's "power" (what?) is reduced but if we look at Standard Oil, that quicky is shown to be not-what-happened. SO became Esso and Mobil, who became ExxonMobil, and ostensibly went right back to doing what it did best (owning most of the domestic oil market). Breaking up the company doesn't actually change the practices or culture of what got the company there in the first place. The new companies which are spun off oftentimes don't even know how to operate as companies and so they're easy pickings for the nucleus of the original company." You realize there is about 88 years between step one and step two there? "The same thing for smoking. If we look at smoking as "I light something on fire and jam it into my food hole" then yes, the numbers look promising according to the CDC website. If you look at a Vice article (https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xxx83/the-shady-link-betwee https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xxx83/the-shady-link-betwee...), however, all the tobacco companies did was shift their business into providing alternatives to cigarettes. But they're still made from nicotine. It's just smoking without the smoke. That's the other reason why they're pushing so hard to regulate vaping - the idea that there's an "open source" "anyone can make this" alternative simply cuts out their business." Do the new products cause as much harm as cigarettes?

p1necone 5y ago

> they're still made from nicotine. It's just smoking without the smoke. The nicotine is not the harmful thing in cigarettes[1][2] - the "without the smoke" bit is pretty important. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Adverse_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Adverse_effects [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#Health_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette#Health_effects Sure the tobacco companies are making money off of selling addictive chemicals to people, which is not a particularly ethical business practice. But "selling addictive chemicals with adverse effects roughly in line with caffeine" is still a big improvement over "selling addictive chemicals that kill people".