EU Parliament Wants To Break Up Google... Because It's Big & American Or Something
from the gotta-any-better-reason? dept
On Friday, the Financial Times broke the story that the European Parliament is going to call for breaking up Google. Of course, the European Parliament can't actually do that, but it appears designed to put pressure on the EU Commission, which has been talking about antitrust actions against Google for quite some time. While it had looked like there was a settlement earlier this year, those plans more or less appeared to fall apart. Just recently, we wrote about efforts to force Google to change some of its search results in Europe -- and noted how problematic it gets when governments start telling search engines how to program their algorithms.But, actually breaking up Google would go a hell of a lot further. The idea had been floated earlier this year by a top German official, but who would have thought anyone would take it seriously.
And here's the thing: as far as I can tell, there isn't any real reason for trying to break up Google, other than the fact that it's very big and very not European.
There's no discussion about any actual harm... just the fact that some people don't like the fact that the company is so big (and not European):
Since his nomination to be the EU’s digital commissioner, Germany’s Günther Oettinger has suggested hitting Google with a levy for displaying copyright-protected material; has raised the idea of forcing its search results to be neutral; and voiced concerns about its provision of software for cars.If they were alleging real consumer harm, that would be one thing, but no one seems to be discussing that.
Google has become a lightning rod for European concerns over Silicon Valley, with consumers, regulators and politicians assailing the company over issues ranging from its commercial dominance to its privacy policy. It has reluctantly accepted the European Court of Justice’s ruling on the right to be forgotten, which requires it to consider requests not to index certain links about people’s past.
The NY Times has more details on the expected resolution, which talks about "unbundling" Google's various other services from the search engine:
The language in the draft resolution calling for the break up of powerful search engines does not attack Google directly. Instead, according to a version seen by The New York Times, the resolution calls on the European Commission “to consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services” to introduce more competition into online search in Europe.If true, then it seems that Microsoft -- one of the leading drivers behind antitrust actions in Europe -- may have shot itself in the foot here, since it, too, is a "search engine" that has plenty of other "commercial services."
The resolution was written by Andreas Schwab, a member of the center-right European People’s Party from Germany, where powerful publishing groups have strongly campaigned for measures to rein in Google’s market power.
While I do think antitrust is an important tool in stopping abusive monopolistic powers that block out any and all competition, it seems only reasonable that you should at least have to show some sort of actual consumer harm. Furthermore, it's difficult to see how this plan would actually do what its backers seem to want to accomplish. Breaking up Google, if it can even be done realistically, doesn't magically lead to more search engines in the market. There are lots of upstart search engines out there trying -- we hear about new ones all the time. And they're not, in any way, "blocked" by Google. So what would this move do other than punish Google for being successful?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: antitrust, breakups, competition, consumer harm, eu, eu commission, eu parliament, search engines
Companies: google, microsoft
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Demand vs Desire
has raised the idea of forcing its search results to be neutralIf governments and others really wanted Google's search results to be neutral, they wouldn't keep trying to force them to show certain results over others, or not show other results at all.
Their definition of neutral is 'What we want them to display and nothing else'.
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Demand vs Desire
If governments and others really wanted Google's search results to be neutral, they wouldn't keep trying to force them to show certain results over others, or not show other results at all.
Their definition of neutral is 'What we want them to display and nothing else'.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
They'd basically be killing Google's other services or at least making Google charge for what are currently free services. How would any of that be consumer-friendly for their European constituents?
Oh right, those people don't matter.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Because Google is so spread though the net, it's hard to avoid it if you don't want it's services and don't want it's spying on the consumer for commercial uses.
So I do what I can to prevent it from intruding mainly because I like my privacy and that is the one thing Google is not serious about offering.
Now I don't run around all the time throwing rocks at Google to anyone that will listen but then I don't support them either.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dont understand the complaint....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Would not shed a tear
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Would not shed a tear
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Would not shed a tear
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Big & American Or Something
Anyone who thinks the US tech industry is the greatest positive influence on human culture since Isaac Newton or Lao-Tsu is rooting for the wrong team.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Demand vs Desire
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I want one that doesnt use our property, i.e. information.....as a commodity, at least, withpout explicit consent, and i mean choices in every scarp of info they want, seperated and not bundled.......AND an easy way, on/off swith, on the CLIENT side whenever we want to stop given, were the system is built to automatically delete on the SERVER side that which is turned off.........AND no more of the illussion of choice, where if you dont say "i accept", to give you what you've asked, regardless if i want to give it, then you cant use this piece of software, that has no real alternative
I dont want to see google dismantled, barring news of major violations, i want to see alternatives rise up through their merits to match and hopefully exceed what google offers, that puts the human above the corporate
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Big & American Or Something
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Unfortunatly, ive been caught in the trap of "using google ecosystem too long, its hard to break out, without acceptable alternatives"
But one thing i have done........i might be caught, right now, with the current services, but ive noticed, im alot scrutinizing with any new ones, im glad to say that i havent signed on to anything new, since i started thinking this way, something that would get me deeper, and hence harder to leave
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: dont understand the complaint....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
Being shocked at the overshoot of security-state data mining gets great points amongst the pious, but pales compared to the amount of information/power that privately-run not-democratically-elected Google holds...and uses. This doesn't scare the bejeesus out of you? You must work for a tech startup.
Add the secret gardens that Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, ad nauseum are all trying to create for their own benefit, not yours, increases the nausea. This is not the internet I was involved with, all starry-eyed, back in the early 90's.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
unbundling various other services from the search engine
Yes, nobody likes having to have a G+ account in order to comment on YouTube. I understand that hate.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: unbundling various other services from the search engine
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Google Services
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Big & American Or Something
Really? Why?
Look at how nauseating the internet has become in the last few years. And who do we blame for that? The Russians?
You think it makes sense to break up companies because they nauseate you for unexplained reasons?
Anyone who thinks the US tech industry is the greatest positive influence on human culture since Isaac Newton or Lao-Tsu is rooting for the wrong team.
Ok. So build your own damn services in response and do a better job of it. But why break up offerings that people appear pretty happy to have chosen?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
Or... I'm fine with the limited amount of data I'm *voluntarily* providing to these services in exchange for their services. And no, that does in NO WAY hold a candle to the indiscriminate spying on everyone done by governments (with far more power over me as a citizen) I cannot opt out of.
Add the secret gardens that Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, ad nauseum are all trying to create for their own benefit, not yours, increases the nausea.
It would help your argument to get your terminology straight. It's *walled* gardens, there's nothing secret about it, most people know what they're getting into and you know what? They do it freely.
This is not the internet I was involved with, all starry-eyed, back in the early 90's.
Noone's stopping you from plugging in you 56k dial-up modem and putting in the AOL CD. Enjoy.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
>
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Big & American Or Something
If you are feeling nauseated, then consider it is not the delivery system (which could easily include search engines, as there is no content provided by those) but the content providers. There I think you have an argument for 'Big & American Or Something', it's just that you want to break up the wrong entity (I was gonna use person there, but it felt so dirty, horrific, Spanish Inquisition, and wrong (Who woulda thunk the Supreme Court could screw up creative processes with their 'out of their asses' rulings?)).
The MAFFIA are rooted in Hollywood, not Silicon Valley, and have spread their tentacles voraciously. Between copyright maximalism and the lousy content being produced one has good argument for nausea, but it is not with Google, or search engines at all.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
They're just doing their job
The job of the EU is to punish companies for being successful.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Greece meltdown
France with the Hollande rich tax
UK over FTT
Ireland over international taxes
Germany over wages
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Is it time to break up Germany?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Google Services
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Big & American Or Something
Could you elaborate on what is nauseating to you? I am European, currently living in the US, so I do have a European perspective. I also know there's a huge European tech industry (I've been in it my whole career) and that mass surveillance is as persistent in the EU as it is in the US.
"Anyone who thinks the US tech industry is the greatest positive influence on human culture since Isaac Newton or Lao-Tsu is rooting for the wrong team."
Who is saying that it is? Why exclude European tech industry from your argument? You think it's only US? It isn't.
Using the internet is still voluntary and you can choose to enhance your own security if you wish (VPNs and so on). But you are not anonymous if you walk down the street, do you complain about street cameras appearing in every city? The only way to evade them is to stay away from public areas like stations, shopping centres, cinemas etc etc. On the other hand you can live a fulfilled life without a smartphone, without a FB account, without Twitter, without LinkedIn and without search engines (*). Or you can choose to edit your settings to block google analytics, FB data collection from non-FB pages and so on. In other words you have a choice. Don't like it then don't use it or build a better one. Google's success wasn't pre-ordained, there is no rule of business, morality or ethics that says that Google is eternal. Build a better one.
* Despite being in tech, I have none of those, ie no smartphone, no FB, no LinkedIn, and google analytics and FB never get into my house, to mention a few.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Would not shed a tear
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Would not shed a tear
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
Newbie. You should have seen it in the early 80s if you wanted to see your nirvana. Seriously dude, the 'net back then was a bunch of academics, mainly computer guys. We'd use USENET to pass around source code, debate on SunOS vs. BSD, etc. There was even this thing called email that nobody understood. But it wasn't horribly useful for the average corporation, much less the average Joe.
And some of us remember when AltaVista ruled the search engine world and Google was in a dorm room. Trust me, the web sucked back then.
Complain all you want, but Google raised the utility of the Web, and the price it demanded was your information to sell you ads. At the time, that was a small price. And even today you can (mostly) avoid them if you care enough.
And if you ask me if I want a private company who wants my data but is willing to give me good services in return for somewhat limited access to my data, or a government who requires all information on me by force of law and is more interested in finding a reason to deprive me of my liberty than providing me a service, I'd have to say that I'll take Google over the government any day. At worst, Google is going to show me idiotic unwanted ads, while the government will confuse me with a terrorist and jail me.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
U.S. Should Conquer Europe
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Breaking up Google
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
He is the worst kind of lebensbrot politician you can possibly imagine. He is where he is because Merkel didn't want him in german politics. Now he is part of mr. illegal surveillance and tax shelter apologists horror-cabinet.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Not obvious
So no, delisting all EU sites probably wouldn't exactly do what you think it would do. Besides, what is an "EU site"? A site from a company based in the EU? A site hosted on a server in the EU?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Is it time to break up Germany?
No, the Soviets are too busy in Ukraine to reconstitute the Deutsche Demokratische Republik this week.
Better put it off til after New Year's day.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Its not about Google being American, what kind of dumb shit would say that? Google is probably filled with European workers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
Personally, I rather have google having my information than the governments and I rather use goolge services than the half assed concoctions european IT companies come up with in "competition" with the big evil G.
And that has nothing to do with google being american either. I wouldn't care if google were russian or chinese either. They are the least bad large IT company with the best and most compelling offerings around from where I stand.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
It would be just like Airbus but for network stuff. You could even make it really like Airbus and have the government run it. The East German company "Robotron" comes to mind. Cool name, tech that was 20 years behind the rest of the civilized world.
Come on, it's not that hard. You'd think after having the net around for so long you could figure it out. Funny though, I don't see Euro tech companies at the top of the tech world.
And once you've established your booming "Silicon Euro", let us know how that goes with elimination of "security-state data mining". You are aware that the Euro security services do the same things, right?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
All those services were junk designed by committee, not to appeal to users, but to satisfy academic and political vanity. Most didn't even make it to beta tests and those who did failed hard. If some are still around they have no importance whatsoever.
There is not much of an IT industry over here, the only actual big one is SAP and it is surprising that they got that big to begin with. Everything else that emerged here in the 80s and 90s has already been sold to primarily US companies and if so much as a shell is left it is noteworthy.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
EU & Bringing Down Google
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Why is it so hard for IP cocksuckers to take their own advice?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
Sorry, things are overall much better now than they were in the early days of the Internet. You must not have actually been around back then.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Marxism is a worldview and method of societal analysis that focuses on class relations and societal conflict, that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, and a dialectical view of social transformation. Marxist methodology uses economic and sociopolitical inquiry and applies that to the critique and analysis of the development of capitalism and the role of class struggle in systemic economic change
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Megalomania is a psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of power, relevance, omnipotence, and by inflated self-esteem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalomania
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Wait, what?
That's just what I was thinking too:
Just for the record, I strongly disagree. Microsoft can't stop me from using free software. Google can't stop me from using ixQuick instead. Banksters can't stop me from preferring credit unions over too big to fail banks. If any of them could, it would be due to some dipshit (aka "bribed") politician passing laws that skew the marketplace in their favor.
I do want to keep government from favoring any particular operation over another (creating unnatural monopolies by interfering with the market), but there is nothing wrong with natural monopolies, as their bottom line proves. Being better at serving the customer is their job. Doing a better job than their competition on the level playing field of the marketplace is what's expected of them. Any power brokers sticking their noses in there in favor of their particular preference is not welcome, is cheating, and is what gives monopoly a bad name.
Butt out, Gunther. This is not what we want elected (nor especially appointed) representatives to do with our delegated power.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
You're missing an important part of this. If Google receives a National Security Letter demanding it produce data which it may be holding, it has no choice but to comply. In addition, they don't even have the right to say they've received said NSL. Whole companies have shut themselves down trying to protect their customers from this stuff and still found themselves open to threats for refusing to comply.
Google had no choice in the matter. This is the classic "damned if you, and damned if you don't." They're an innocent bystander in somebody else's !@#$storm.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Gee, a blast from the past! I used to hear this all the time but the target then was Microsoft, and before them IBM. A few Graybeards created Unix just to get away from Multics at AT&T. Nowadays, it's Apple (iTunes) and Google (gmail, gmaps, gwallet, ...). It's proprietary lock-in, attempting to get you so hooked on some operation's ways that it's prohibitively expensive to even consider the competition. It's also why "the Cloud" provided services is lunacy. The only way to win that game is to not play! Thank you Stephen Falken.
This is why we have things like ISO and IEEE standards, so all our data doesn't lock us into buying yet another copy of Word or IE or Excel (or Access or db2 or rdb or Oracle) just so we can still access our data.
Thanks for the reminder. I'd pretty much forgotten that war. That was fun! I've been eschewing proprietary software lock-in since '93. :-)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
I like "Procrastinators" as a name for it ("Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow or (even better) next week") as the name for it but that's probably not going to pull in many supporters, so I'm not too wedded to it.
I do insist I will not be the Candidate, but I'll happily serve as the power behind the throne.
So, shall we do this? You can make out your cheques payable to me here: ...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
Okay, but I think you're a goof. Ever heard of Linus Torvalds? Alan Cox? How about CERN and Tim Berners-Lee? Alan Turing? Minitel?
Methinks you're limited by that mono-culture you've surrounded yourself with.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Very cool! Thanks. I didn't know that. It's little things like this that make me think there's still hope for this "humanity" thing. A few more minor wrinkles to be worked out, and it'll all be golden.
I think I can almost smell that flying car I was promised so many years ago.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: dont understand the complaint....
[I've got a great big "What?" staring at me for that first sentence. However, ...]
So, what's the count now of governments damning, attacking, and firewalling "their subjects'" view of the net? India, EU, Pakistan, USA, New Zealand, China, "Best Korea" (snicker), other (South) Korea, Australia, Canada, Russia, Burma/Myanmar, Ceylon, Indonesia, VietNam, ... Are there any left?
Well, Africa yeah, but nobody thinks they count right? Okay, maybe Egypt and Tunisia (but that's all).
"Immanent death of the Internet predicted. Film at eleven."
[Please consider sarcasm while reading. No offense is intended. This !@#$ comes to me naturally. I've no defense against it, sorry. It's like Turettes Syndrome or something.]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Would not shed a tear
S/He was going for funny, silly. At least I think s/he was. It's not always easy to tell, I know.
I just assume "insane" == "comedic intent". It makes it a lot easier to put up with all of you people's wierdness.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Would not shed a tear
Yup. In fact, they (G.) might prefer the result. They'd be divesting themselves of the thing that people ("EU politicians") most complain about, allowing them to focus on the really cool stuff (Gbit Internet, gmail, gmaps, gcars, gglass, ...) instead. "Hey thanks!"
That "search engine" !@#$ was getting really boring, ya know? Who in their right mind wants to fiddle with SEO and related !@#$ in the 21st Century? Holy !@#$. Zzzzz ...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
Screw it, I'm voting a straight "Paradox Party" ticket in the next election... although that's probably counterproductive in more ways than I can imagine.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Would not shed a tear
Ya know, there's this thing out there called "The Internet", which you can use to "search" for information? I like ixQuick (all https!). It'll even search Google's results for you.
Really!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Would not shed a tear
“Wierdness”, you say?
weird (wîrd) adj.“ ‘I’ before ‘E’ except after ‘C’ or when sounding like ‘A’ as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh’... ”
Then there's weird.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Perhaps my Fox News/MSNBC usage meter is telling me I'm getting low or something, but I'm feeling a bit woozy ...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
Everyone willy nilly abandoning email (and Usenet, and ...) for Facebook, Twitter, and "The Cloud" is just hunky dory in your opinion?!? Ya know, if it wasn't for all that video (and $0.99 iTunes) you were streaming to your iBauble every month, that 56k dialup connecting to AOL would do you just fine?
GTFO my planet, dipshit.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
I was using BBSs five years before I even learned that "The Internet" ("WTF is that?!?") existed, and "Holy crap yeah let's connect the BBSs to the Internet, what are we waiting for?!? Are ya mental?!?"
It is not at all astounding to me that random politicians/bureaucrats don't understand what they're dealing with here. They're busy cashing campaign donation cheques. Why any of you even listen to their whines is mysterious.
Google should just write EU off, refuse to answer the phone, and wait for them to crawl begging on their knees to be re-spidered, at its leisure!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Would not shed a tear
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Great
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Great
You think that's amazing? Wait, there is more ... some of these ingenious folks claim rights over things they did not in fact create and then bitch about supposed theft from 'real creators' as if they themselves were included in that group. It's quite funny actually.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Not obvious
Because if it had one might have some idea of what might transpire as a result.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141002/06202728699/google-removes-news-snippets-complaini ng-publications-germany-publications-claim-its-blackmail.shtml
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Demand vs Desire
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Would not shed a tear
Then there's seismic.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Is it time to break up Germany?
No, that's the White Russian Tsarists (who're currently led by an ex-Soviet KGB agent, curiously enough). The Soviets are currently warning that we're sliding back into a Cold War. Ask Gorbachev.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Because PageRank (as in "Larry Page"). They believe that Google's ranking algorithm is cooking the books on the inside where nobody can watch.
Cf. http://www.jagster.org/ .
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
Alan Cox: Created Smalltalk, whose market share makes Linux look like a killer app. It was highly influential in the development of Objective-C, which, likewise, no one ever used, until an American company (Apple) made it the new standard. Outside of the Apple ecosystem, which crams Objective-C down all of the iDiots' throats, there is still nobody using Objective-C for anything.
Tim Berners-Lee: Created HTML, which nobody used until an American company (Netscape) created a useful interface to it. Then it became a massive worldwide phenomenon, so the guy gets some credit; at least he designed a halfway decent product that became popular with a bit of outside marketing and exposure.
Alan Turing: Did a bunch of research that duplicated the work of an American researcher (Alonzo Church). Church's work is generally considered to be of higher quality, but somehow Turing is the one everyone remembers.
Minitel: Never heard of it. A bit of Googling turns up that it was a really big BBS system that was popular for a while before the World Wide Web came around and made it obsolete. (See Netscape, above.)
Sorry, but the guy's got a point.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
We do have and had quite a lot of brilliant minds in the IT space here, but when it comes to commercial application, european IT companies have no redeeming qualities. Everything worthwhile is produced by companies outside of europe, mostly in Japan, USA, South Korea and China.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Google is no good
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
Wow.
Torvalds created a version of Unix which would run on "toy computers." Unix(tm) was created by a couple of guys (AT&T Bell Labs "Graybeards") who wanted to run a game on a new computer that had been recently acquired. It's a server operating system and software developer's platform. Unix(tm) used to include many flavors of Unix which ran on "big iron" servers sold by many hardware suppliers. The Unix market was huge. You didn't see it on the boss's desk running on his toy computer. You saw it running on the monsters upstairs in the server room doing real work at *blistering* speed while blanketing the planet with transparent connectivity.
Do you think those toy OSs even knew the Internet existed when they were released? No. TCP/IP functionality was a freeware "bolt-on" after the fact. The things couldn't even protect themselves from email delivered malware!
Torvalds created a non-Unix(tm) version that ran on "toy computers" as those things finally began to be shipped with enough oomph to be able to run a real server OS.
Guess what's inside all those iDiots' toy computers? BSD Unix! Guess where Microsoft is planning to go in future versions of its toy computer OS? Unix!
Guess where Ultrix, SunOS, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, OSF-1/True64, ... are now? Dead, because Linux obsoleted them.
I thank my lucky stars every day for being alive while all this was happening. It's been a truly mind blowing experience.
Lots of concepts are too advanced for mere pedestrians to grasp. They don't have the necessary specialized knowledge to leverage it, nor does it even interest them. That's why they need people like us, and that is what creates a market for our skills. I don't want you to have to use Linux. I do *love* the fact that I can. Before Linus, that wasn't even an option, and I assure you I was looking for one when he showed up. I almost fell for Minix. I almost bought an already obsolete NeXT from my then sysadmin.
Linux let me do it on a garden variety "Beige Box" tower 80386 with a 40 Mb hard drive, 4 Mb RAM, 1.44 Mb floppy, a 1 Mb video card, and a 9600 BPS (real Baud!) modem.
Glorious! Snoopy dance!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
Ah! So you did. I'll concede the point.
It's a pretty sad situation when you consider it. We used to hear stories about Russian (Soviet) programmers who were brilliant coders, but had never even seen a computer. Yet their code compiled and ran first time with no errors. This is with Assembly to boot. That's. Just. Amazing!
I've always idolized the German apprenticeship system. They say budding machinists are handed a block of metal and told to work with it, for the next six months!
That's deep knowledge of the tools and materials involved and the overall craft.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
The problem isn't that it's "too advanced for mere pedestrians to grasp;" it's that a lot of it is too advanced for *NIX wizards to grasp! When Eric freaking Raymond himself posted a blog post about running into some serious printing problems, he later reported:
As one blogger mentioned in response to this:
(Emphasis added)
UNIX is a horrible system, and simply because it's less horrible than all of the other things it obsoleted doesn't change that fact. Not to mention that if it wasn't for UNIX, we would never have been saddled with the C language (created specifically to build UNIX) and the myriad buffer overflow vulnerabilities that have plagued the Internet ever since the Morris Worm. Tony Hoare called NULL "the billion-dollar mistake," but by his scale, how many billions worth of mistake is C (and C++ and every other abomination that sprang from its roots)?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Big & American Or Something
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: U.S. Should Conquer Europe
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Google is no good
Yeah, some guy blogging about how all the free stuff he's getting to use is actually costing him something he didn't expect to having to pay for in some way or another.
Yawn. Golf clap. Nobody's forcing you to use it. I don't use it. What's your excuse? Build your own if you don't like it, freetard.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Breaking up Google
Think what happened when Pirate Bay got blocked. It took a few minutes to a few hours to be right back up. They just moved. So will the EU based sites.
That's the way the internet operates. It's designed to get around interference. If Google stops indexing EU sites, some other outfit will jump in and do it instead.
This whole fiasco is just about money, anyway. The EU companies see Google making it hand over fist and WANT some of it. Never mind that they could never equal Google's performance (which is why they are rich). It's just pure jealousy. If they actually got cut off, the lawsuits would be flying along with the screams.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in thread ]
EU Financial Problems
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
"Immanent death of the Internet predicted. Film at eleven."
The thing was designed to route around damage, assuming it to be censorship (or worse). Petty thieves and tyrants merely tickle it.
Give it your best shot. "We find your lack of faith disturbing."
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
"Poor programmers can write spaghetti code in any language" (or something like that).
I love perl. It's fantastically powerful. Positively Eclectic Rubbish Lister. You can also write absolutely impenetrable, unmaintainable crap with it ("Job for life" stuff). Blame the language, or blame the programmer?
Java! Cobol! Lisp! WTF?
Me, I see tools. A good practitioner will use them to create good stuff which makes problems go away never to be seen again. Charlatans see opportunity for lifelong employment as long as nobody can figure out what's wrong with their code. *nix was brilliant for collapsing everything into "it's just a file." You can write a "filter" for that file's output, pipe that through another filter to do whatever else needs to be done to it, ... and eventually you find data transformed into information; something which people can actually use.
This's why we need to care, so they don't need to care. :-) It's why I care.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
"Unix is basicially a very friendly system. It's just particular about who its friends are."
It assumes its users want to learn "the correct way" to use it. C is the same philosophy. Yeah, you could use it to write crap, but you don't have to. perl is the same. Just because some people use it to write crap is no reason to damn the language.
"... the problem is that even Linux geeks have trouble figuring it out."
Welcome to the bleeding edge. Nobody guaranteed it would be easy. With power comes responsibility.
I tell people "don't even go there. That's my job." Their job is to expect me (and you) to watch their backs, because they haven't the time to deal with geeky minutia like this.
This is why sysadmins live - to protect users from what they don't know might hurt them!
Have fun! :-)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
Perhaps Basic, Pascal, or Ada would be more to your taste? No offence intended.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re:
Geez, you make me feel young (60). Thanks!
Sure, easily. Do I believe they do? No. Dogs don't !@#$ where they sleep. EU politicos are just screaming they're not getting enough bribes is all. Or that's my take.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: EU Financial Problems
You are aware, I hope, that we too are in financial trouble, since ca. 2008? We don't make anything here anymore, and the Chinese have us all by the gonads.
I don't think lording it over the EUros is called for at the moment.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
And yes, "everything is a file" was definitely a good idea. But as a developer, surely you're well aware of the distinction between a bad idea and a good idea implemented badly, even when the result is crap in both cases? ;)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
Sure, and I don't for that reason. My reason is because people who have taken the time to learn it right keep making the same mistakes anyway.
34 years ago, Tony Hoare gave a very interesting, and somewhat prophetic, Turing Award lecture. He talks about his work on ALGOL compilers, and one of the things he said has been on my mind recently:
He said this in 1980, about work he had done in 1960, so this was known and understood to be a good idea as far back as 50 years ago. But, of course, the programming community in general didn’t listen. Several years later, the consequences came back to bite us, in the form of the Morris Worm.
It rampaged throughout the fledgling Internet of the day, crashing an estimated 10% of all systems connected to the Internet by exploiting buffer overruns in a handful of specific UNIX programs. The author, a sleazebag by the name of Robert Morris, later claimed that he just wanted to find a way to “count the number of computers on the Internet,” but his actions put the lie to that statement. He encrypted the Worm and used rootkit techniques to hide it from the file system, and he released it from a different university than the one he attended, in an attempt to cover his tracks. A person who believes they aren’t doing anything wrong doesn’t try to hide what they’re doing, and comments in his original source code make it clear that his intention was anything but benign; he was trying to build what we call a botnet today.
And all because of buffer exploits in a handful of C programs. That really should have put us all on notice. Hoare was right, and in any sane world, the C language would have been dead by 1990. But it didn’t happen, and those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, so once the Internet started becoming a big thing among the general public, in the early 2000s, we ended up with a bunch of new worms that snuck into Windows systems through buffer exploits. Remember Slammer? Blaster? Code Red?
Hoare was right. We should have listened.
But we didn't, and now we get stuff like Heartbleed. Every few weeks, we get new security patches coming out for major software, fixing buffer overrun vulnerabilities. We get the same problems popping up over and over and over again, not because someone didn't learn how to do it the right way, but because someone who did know... was human, and made a mistake.
The guy responsible for the Heartbleed vulnerability isn’t a bad programmer. Have a look at the commit where the bug was introduced. See if you can find the problem without being told where it is.
It’s clear that this is not the work of an incompetent n00b; this is someone who really knows his way around the language. But he made a mistake, and it’s a subtle enough one that most people, even knowing beforehand that that changeset contains a severe bug and knowing what class of bug it is (a buffer exploit vulnerability) won’t be able to find it.
To err is human, to forgive divine, but to continue to make the same error and willfully refuse to learn from it... that's unforgivable. At least not by a non-divine mere mortal such as myself. And when a mistake can have consequences of this magnitude, that’s also unforgivable. That puts the language, which forgives such mistakes all to easily, fundamentally at odds with reality vis a vis human nature. That means something’s gotta give, and it’s not going to be reality… and this is what happens when it does.
Remember when Steve Jobs died, the minor kerfuffle over Richard Stallman’s quoting Chicago Mayor Harold Washington WRT the corrupt former Mayor Daley: “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone”? It was just a few days later that Dennis Ritchie, the creator of C, died, and that’s exactly how I felt about him. As one of my former coworkers put it, Ritchie’s true legacy to the world is the buffer overflow.
There’s really no excuse left for C, other than inertia. (Which, if you recall, is ultimately what ran the Titanic into that iceberg.) Can we let it and its entire misbegotten family die already? It’s 25 years overdue for its own funeral.
And WRT your snark in the next post, it’s worth noting that at the time the Morris Worm first brought the Internet to its knees by exploiting buffer overruns in C, Apple was already five years into its Macintosh project that ended up defining the entire future of operating system design… in Pascal.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
See the quote by Tony Hoare, above. Saying "it's only doing what it's designed to do" is no excuse when it was already well known, decades earlier, that this was a bad design.
...and so was every other high level language in existence at the time. What makes C so special, except that it did such a bad job of it?
Yeah, think about that for a second. Granted, I've never actually used dynamite, but it seems to me, just based on common sense, that holding a lit stick in your hand, for any reason, is Doing It Wrong. And if you're supposed to feel like you're doing something very wrong every time you use it... well, yeah, that's actually a pretty apt description. It's wrong to use C. Period. ;)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
You see, Wikipedia states: Also in 1936, before learning of Church's work, Alan Turing created a theoretical model for machines, now called Turing machines, that could carry out calculations from inputs by manipulating symbols on a tape. Next time, either do your research or just STFU.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Wait, what?
Okay, you're gonna have to link back to where I said that, because I know it sure as hell wasn't in a comment on this article.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
You didn't have to, your implication was defamatory enough.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Wait, what?
DMR == Anti-Christ?!? Choose your weapons A-hole. I'll meet you at dawn, with relish.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
What about duckduckgo.com? That's pretty good:)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Last Word
“Why is it so hard for IP cocksuckers to take their own advice?