Thursday, June 11, 2009

Dial "E" for egregious!

European regulators are forcing Microsoft to not ship Internet Explorer with Windows 7. Are regulators over-reaching, or are they just stupid/useless/obsolete... (anyone remember SEC - Madoff?).

Not allowing the browser to be shipped with the operating system seems like a bit much, and definitely not in the interests of the user. I know, I know ... it's not like the manufacturers are going to ship machines without a browser - (imagine not having *any* browser loaded - how do you download a browser? FTP??) - manufacturers will have a choice about browser to include - but this is bogus IMO ... the choice should be to override the default browser, not ship without one! With IE's large browser market share, it's the logical default choice for manufacturers, and these regulators are just making more work for them, or worse, for the users.

Let companies innovate, and have meaningful checks and balances in place. Will Apple be forced to not ship Safari on iPhones? Will Google be forced to drop Chrome on the floor? Will Facebook...be banned by some country's "regulators" because its citizens can actually communicate openly (oops! that already happened...)

I just reinstalled my OS on my home machine, after a virus thingy, and the network driver is not working - do you know how frustrating that is? I can't connect to the network to download my drivers...

Let technology move on!

Please don't cut off your nose to spite your Face(book)!


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