cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/3376057
I held off on Windows 10 for as long as I could until my job required it. Now this nonsense. I hope this isn't the start of them joining on the web DRM bandwagon.
this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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@sugar_in_your_tea
Old anecdotal knowledge from the 1990s.
Became public in these court cases:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics
MS successfully countersued STAC because they were using proprietary DOS calls, ie reserved for MS products only giving them an advantage.
There is no reason to believe MS ever discontinued their use.
So you're saying that they're the criminals in question? Or are you saying that somehow they're selling access to those old MS-DOS APIs?
I'm really not sure how any of this supports the original claim that Microsoft makes APIs specifically for criminal companies. All it says is that they make APIs for themselves. They're a POS company, sure, so there's no reason to stretch the truth.
@sugar_in_your_tea
I never said or meant to imply that.
MS builds backdoors for their own use.
Criminals can use those backdoors.
I quoted your exact words.
@sugar_in_your_tea cute.
A backdoor is not an api.
A proprietary call is justified for competitive reasons but creates vulnerabilities.
Why do you think they exist?
Or do just troll?
A "backdoor" is just an undocumented API. It may have security issues, but it's still an API.
And yeah, companies love their backdoors because it makes a lot of things easier for the vendor. Apple loves the ability to send security patches without the user being aware so they can silently patch systems to limit the impact of a virus. That's still a backdoor, but its arguably a desirable one. Microsoft used its control of the OS to make other browsers run worse than IE, and that resulted in the antitrust case of 1998, after which Microsoft agreed to share its APIs. That's arguably an undesirable use of a backdoor.
So why do they exist? Mostly to make things more convenient for the vendor. Sometimes it's in the users interest, sometimes it's not, but it's never made to support external criminal enterprise and rarely made to support internal criminal enterprise. Usually it's just to cut costs.