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EC Considering Removing Internet Explorer From Windows
Itsabouttime writes "In a preliminary ruling, the European Commission told Microsoft that linking Internet Explorer to its dominant Windows operating system violates EC rules. The EC's ruling was triggered by a complaint from IE rival Opera. Microsoft could seek to offer a Windows version without IE, as it did in the EC's 2004 ruling on Windows Media Player."
Most likely it will just ship with a second or third browser installed. Then when you go to do anything involving a web browser for the first time, it will ask you which you would like to make your default.
As far as I know, that's how the modified version of XP works for Europe, though I have yet to hear of anyone actually using it.
I really, really hope Windows never, ever loads what it wants onto its operating system. If you thought users loading viruses and trojans was common but stupid (and easily blocked), can you imagine what would happen if the OS kernel decides that it damn well wants some malware and that you've no business telling it not ro?
Oh, you meant Microsoft! Actually, legally, no they can't. They may not use a monopoly in one environment to impose a de-facto monopoly in another market. That is a crime, and rightfully so. Monopolies that try to seize other markets are damn dangerous because you rapidly lack these supposed alternatives. Netscape discovered that one, when Microsoft "knifed the baby" (in Microsoft's own words). Alternative browsers ONLY exist today in meaningful numbers because IE6 was a mess and IE7 took too long to come to market, due to Microsoft having no browser team, having dismembered it. (If you see any suspicious-looking concrete structures with arms sticking out near the Redmond campus, that's probably them.) If Microsoft had kept with IE, then IE would be all that existed. Microsoft would long-since have fixed IIS to never serve a competing browser, and IE would have long-since been fixed to be so non-compliant with standards that IE-capable pages won't work anywhere else. (Actually, that last one is almost the case today.)
No, Microsoft has no business distorting the markets like that, creating monocultures of their choice, exterminating competitors (I suspect at least one MS exec is actually a dalek) and forcing people to only buy what it sells. You're seeing this with the anti-virus market today. MS got information under the false pretenses of working with anti-virus vendors on how the products worked and the data used, then used that information to create a version that it provided ready-installed. Nobody is going to buy software for a few hundred dollars that is not that different from the software that is provided already, which means those vendors are being squeezed out of existance. I expect that, by the time Windows 7 is fully released, very few if any of the current AV suppliers will still exist. Microsoft will have crushed the bones of their business and squeezed the life-blood out of the remains until nothing identifiable without a scanning electron microscope remained.
Now, I would agree with those who say Microsoft is not technically evil, just very very good at what it does. In the same way Nyarlothotep is. Indeed, they're probably related. Bill Gates probably has an actual copy of the Necronomican and his palace, err, home, is suspiciously close to where you might expect Cthulhu to hang out. Not evil, just very very powerful and very very insane.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's our responsibility as people educated in dealing with technology to help the less skilled make better tech decisions. It benefits all of us in the long run.
"Not making people care" is why there are still a lot of people out there running IE6 on Win98 sucking up a lot of available bandwidth because they are part of a spam botnet. This affects me.
So yes, I will attempt to make them care.
It's called doing the right thing. Not socialism. Caring about your fellow man (especially when it benefits you) does not make you a commie pinko. Grow the fuck up.