5 ms·

I remember when we first found out that IE could be "uninstalled" from Windows 7 (it was a checkbox in an early build's programs list that let you have it remov

I remember when we first found out that IE could be "uninstalled" from Windows 7 (it was a checkbox in an early build's programs list that let you have it removed, basically). Interesting seeing the about-face over a decade later. --- for those not aware, Rafael's almost a two decade long authority on the topic of smashing Windows internals to bits to see how it all works.

hnlmorg 3y ago
I remember when we first found out that IE could be uninstalled from Windows 98 and thus what eventually lead the EU to mandate Microsoft give Windows users a choice of 3rd party browsers. Back then businesses were a lot more scared of the repercussions of anti-competitive behaviour than they are now.
- rjbwork 3y ago
  >Back then businesses were a lot more scared of the repercussions of anti-competitive behaviour than they are now. Reasonably, too. Governments seem reluctant to actually regulate anti-competitive behavior these days, especially from tech giants. I think it must be a kind of technological "too big to fail".
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Big businesses have more resource and more ability to manipulate the public than democratic governments
    - isanjay 3y ago
      Big businesses buy politicians too...
      - midasuni 3y ago
        The usual solution from libertarian techies is to remove what little power democratic governments have and let big business be unchecked other than some “invisible hand” from a collection of individual actors who can’t scale due to psychological warfare that big companies can easily scale to. We are now at a point that billionaires openly make unilateral decisions about foreign and defence policy with little discussion in public eyes, let alone checks and balances.
        sneak 3y ago
        I think this is curve-fitting. Billionaires in the USA are completely and totally beholden to the military-industrial complex, for the most part. Look how they all scrambled for JEDI, for example. The US military alone spends the entire net worth of the richest private person in 17 weeks, wealth it took him 30-ish years to accumulate; that's not counting the rest of government spending. There's an argument that any senator is "richer" than the richest private person in the country. It's not even the same ballpark. Did you have specific instances in mind?
        bluecheese452 3y ago
        A senator is not richer than the richest person in the country. Neither in money nor influence.
        nativeit 3y ago
        The banana republics aren’t all that old. President Isenhour’s administration were toppling sovereign governments and democratically elected leaders directly at the behest of Dole Foods (United Fruit) well after World War II ended.
        docmars 3y ago
        Unfortunately it's a Catch 22, because the most influential billionaires have direct ties to Establishment politicians, supporting and manipulating them freely to their liking, including brazen election interference, in which the same Establishment players all admitted to existing not long ago, while judges and district attorneys in their respective states have also been bought out by these same billionaires in an effort to squash these claims when raised by anti-Establishment players. We need anti-Establishment players who are already willing to confront these billionaires by cutting off their influence completely, rather than taxing them more — which is useless, and conveniently replaces their contributions with tax dollars that can be used for the same manipulation strategies. The bad news is, any criticism of these particular billionaires results in synthesized media campaigns crying wolf about anti-Semitism or anti-science, which causes the public to become distracted over manufactured culture wars, while the root issues go unchecked and the politicians willing to confront these billionaires are smeared, drawn, and quartered by the same media and voters who wouldn't dare to think outside their box.
      - hutzlibu 3y ago
        Also there is geopolitics involved. A war in the east and every EU regulation against US companies is seen a bit as an attack on the alliance while "we" must stand together against the east. Also IE was the dominant browser back then, which it is not today, but windows itself is on the desktop. So I think it is abusing monopoly, but instead of trying to regulate it, EU should make a push for open source. Maybe fund it with a big fine for Microsoft. That would be EU politics I could engage with.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >I think it must be a kind of technological "too big to fail". Microsoft was still big even back then, and yet they got regulated. Bell/AT&T was also a giant monopoly and it also got broken up. It seems that size wasn't the problem.
    - bilqis 3y ago
      Not enough. They tried to make them separated their Office software business from the OS business, but failed sadly. Not to mentioned all the problems with them making unsupportable office files formats.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      > It seems that size wasn't the problem. The lack of will to regulate seems to scale with industry lobbing. I used to hope we consumers would stop reelecting corruption. We never did and now we're too busy trying to keep even worse people getting into office.
  - offices 3y ago
    There's a deliberate emphasis on the etymology of monopoly, ignoring that the word was created to describe the problems it caused and the n-opolies are causing all the same problems.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    > Governments seem reluctant to actually regulate anti-competitive behavior. The EU seems happy to stick to it’s guns, though the rest of us seem to have to suffer the deluge of sewage.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > Governments seem reluctant to actually regulate anti-competitive behavior these days, especially from tech giants. True. US states are ramping up production of tech laws but those laws typically fall into two categories. Laws that only large tech houses can afford and/or unconstitutional reactionary laws. At best these laws do no good for the consumer. They absolutely do nothing do encourage competition. Most of them, however, bring tons of harm like gifting abusable power to govs and helping big tech further entrench their dominance.
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    A step further, these are understood to be very pro business before you even consider "too big to fail" (which itself is a very pro business platform anyway). As an aside, I don't think anyone realistically thinks MS is failing if you're able uninstall edge.

hnlmorg 3y ago

I remember when we first found out that IE could be uninstalled from Windows 98 and thus what eventually lead the EU to mandate Microsoft give Windows users a choice of 3rd party browsers. Back then businesses were a lot more scared of the repercussions of anti-competitive behaviour than they are now.

rjbwork 3y ago
>Back then businesses were a lot more scared of the repercussions of anti-competitive behaviour than they are now. Reasonably, too. Governments seem reluctant to actually regulate anti-competitive behavior these days, especially from tech giants. I think it must be a kind of technological "too big to fail".
- midasuni 3y ago
  Big businesses have more resource and more ability to manipulate the public than democratic governments
  - isanjay 3y ago
    Big businesses buy politicians too...
    - midasuni 3y ago
      The usual solution from libertarian techies is to remove what little power democratic governments have and let big business be unchecked other than some “invisible hand” from a collection of individual actors who can’t scale due to psychological warfare that big companies can easily scale to. We are now at a point that billionaires openly make unilateral decisions about foreign and defence policy with little discussion in public eyes, let alone checks and balances.
      - sneak 3y ago
        I think this is curve-fitting. Billionaires in the USA are completely and totally beholden to the military-industrial complex, for the most part. Look how they all scrambled for JEDI, for example. The US military alone spends the entire net worth of the richest private person in 17 weeks, wealth it took him 30-ish years to accumulate; that's not counting the rest of government spending. There's an argument that any senator is "richer" than the richest private person in the country. It's not even the same ballpark. Did you have specific instances in mind?
        bluecheese452 3y ago
        A senator is not richer than the richest person in the country. Neither in money nor influence.
        nativeit 3y ago
        The banana republics aren’t all that old. President Isenhour’s administration were toppling sovereign governments and democratically elected leaders directly at the behest of Dole Foods (United Fruit) well after World War II ended.
      - docmars 3y ago
        Unfortunately it's a Catch 22, because the most influential billionaires have direct ties to Establishment politicians, supporting and manipulating them freely to their liking, including brazen election interference, in which the same Establishment players all admitted to existing not long ago, while judges and district attorneys in their respective states have also been bought out by these same billionaires in an effort to squash these claims when raised by anti-Establishment players. We need anti-Establishment players who are already willing to confront these billionaires by cutting off their influence completely, rather than taxing them more — which is useless, and conveniently replaces their contributions with tax dollars that can be used for the same manipulation strategies. The bad news is, any criticism of these particular billionaires results in synthesized media campaigns crying wolf about anti-Semitism or anti-science, which causes the public to become distracted over manufactured culture wars, while the root issues go unchecked and the politicians willing to confront these billionaires are smeared, drawn, and quartered by the same media and voters who wouldn't dare to think outside their box.
    - hutzlibu 3y ago
      Also there is geopolitics involved. A war in the east and every EU regulation against US companies is seen a bit as an attack on the alliance while "we" must stand together against the east. Also IE was the dominant browser back then, which it is not today, but windows itself is on the desktop. So I think it is abusing monopoly, but instead of trying to regulate it, EU should make a push for open source. Maybe fund it with a big fine for Microsoft. That would be EU politics I could engage with.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >I think it must be a kind of technological "too big to fail". Microsoft was still big even back then, and yet they got regulated. Bell/AT&T was also a giant monopoly and it also got broken up. It seems that size wasn't the problem.
  - bilqis 3y ago
    Not enough. They tried to make them separated their Office software business from the OS business, but failed sadly. Not to mentioned all the problems with them making unsupportable office files formats.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > It seems that size wasn't the problem. The lack of will to regulate seems to scale with industry lobbing. I used to hope we consumers would stop reelecting corruption. We never did and now we're too busy trying to keep even worse people getting into office.
- offices 3y ago
  There's a deliberate emphasis on the etymology of monopoly, ignoring that the word was created to describe the problems it caused and the n-opolies are causing all the same problems.
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > Governments seem reluctant to actually regulate anti-competitive behavior. The EU seems happy to stick to it’s guns, though the rest of us seem to have to suffer the deluge of sewage.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > Governments seem reluctant to actually regulate anti-competitive behavior these days, especially from tech giants. True. US states are ramping up production of tech laws but those laws typically fall into two categories. Laws that only large tech houses can afford and/or unconstitutional reactionary laws. At best these laws do no good for the consumer. They absolutely do nothing do encourage competition. Most of them, however, bring tons of harm like gifting abusable power to govs and helping big tech further entrench their dominance.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  A step further, these are understood to be very pro business before you even consider "too big to fail" (which itself is a very pro business platform anyway). As an aside, I don't think anyone realistically thinks MS is failing if you're able uninstall edge.