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Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

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171–180 of 221 posts

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#171

This is a serious problem for us in my business as our business banking software we are forced to use by our bank in mainland China still only works with IE. I spent an hour last night ultimately inputting shady commands into my registry, to try to force IE to open instead of being hijacked by edge. When an entire industry in a country refuses to upgrade what the hell? Of course I’m pissed the bank hadn’t upgraded bu…

I sympathise with your frustration, but the blame is absolutely with your bank. I mean, finances are like THE thing to be security minded about - the fact they're still using IE is just unacceptable from any lens.

Sometimes the blame is regulations: too many hoops for banks to update their software easily and without adding stupid regulatory liabilities. Regulations added to protect the user, but perversely hinder the user.

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android always has a browser you can’t remove. It’s just not always chrome.

The OS needs a browser engine for its WebView, which many apps etc rely on. On non Google Android releases these can pretty easily be swapped. Possibly on Google Android as well.

The out of the box experience with Android is that you can not replace the OS browser.

The fact that you can recompile AOSP to have a different browser is not particularly noteworthy, you could do that for any mandatory component.

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#173
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully you have no idea what you're talking about. These half-million dollar devices (often more expensive than that) were the ONLY option at the time to perform certain kinds of experiments. Not exactly a choice.

So the vendor refuses to sell a support plan and requires you to purchase a brand new machine? That does sound monopolistic and abusive but I don’t see how Microsoft is to blame.

Basically, yes this is how it goes. And I agree that it's not Microsoft's fault.

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#174
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you expect a 20-year-old MacOS to run on a modern MacBook? Why not? Would you expect a 20-year-old Linux to install just fine on a modern PC? I remind you that this was the era of RHEL 3! I had trouble getting RHEL 6 running in a virtual machine just recently. Meanwhile XP will run on most modern PCs, it’s just not supported . That means no security patches. The mistake here is not Microsoft’s. The mistake is y…

I would expect a bash script I wrote 20 years ago to run on a new linux machine I buy today, yes. I'm not asking for windows XP to be installed, I am asking for these modern machines to let me run the code the machine I was sold 15 years ago let me run. This whole march to reduce compatibility is kind of stupid imo. Let me buy a mac that can run 32 bit software still!

Windows does run most stuff that you throw at it still unless the software made some boneheaded assumptions that violated basic API rules.

Software using a lib I wrote in 1998 doesn't work anymore but it's because I took a bad shortcut that made DOS-era assumptions, fixing/recompiling it would be the right course of action but I haven't had the time (also not sure where all the sources are).

On a contrary note, my first USB-Wacom pads STILL work after 20 years, it's not just software but a vendor that cared about it's software long enough to make 64bit drivers that still works.

As you said, the vendor isn't interested in upgrading the software and there is where the blame is, MS tries to keep backwards compatibility but some things has had to go for performance and/or security reasons over the years and those usually broke rules (or were tied to HW, Linux has dropped 386 and 486 after all).

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you expect a 20-year-old MacOS to run on a modern MacBook? Why not? Would you expect a 20-year-old Linux to install just fine on a modern PC? I remind you that this was the era of RHEL 3! I had trouble getting RHEL 6 running in a virtual machine just recently. Meanwhile XP will run on most modern PCs, it’s just not supported . That means no security patches. The mistake here is not Microsoft’s. The mistake is y…

As a device builder creating those machines (well, industrial CNCs, but similar idea) I don't have many options when trying to build something with a useful life of 20+ years. I just received an order for another machine in a lineup that started with some using Heidenhain controls from the early 90s, we ripped out those controllers and replaced them with models running a custom black box RTOS based on Motorola DSP 56…

Any reason communication with these kinds of machines hasn't been built on top of something like CAN or Ethernet?

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#178
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect a bash script I wrote 20 years ago to run on a new linux machine I buy today, yes. I'm not asking for windows XP to be installed, I am asking for these modern machines to let me run the code the machine I was sold 15 years ago let me run. This whole march to reduce compatibility is kind of stupid imo. Let me buy a mac that can run 32 bit software still!

Windows does run most stuff that you throw at it still unless the software made some boneheaded assumptions that violated basic API rules. Software using a lib I wrote in 1998 doesn't work anymore but it's because I took a bad shortcut that made DOS-era assumptions, fixing/recompiling it would be the right course of action but I haven't had the time (also not sure where all the sources are). On a contrary note, my fi…

I've recently seen code from 1998 running on a 64-bit Windows Server 2016 cloud-hosted virtual machine just fine.

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#179
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...but there's no guarantee my hardware is compatible with Ubuntu LTS 22.04 because the vendor doesn't support that config... So it's your vendor who doesn't care about backwards compatibility - Linux does. Whatever hardware you have, once it was supported, it will stay this way until it is really ancient, and even then you will have special builds that will support it. That's the beauty of open source (or even sou…

(a) Of course it needs binary blobs. This is the real world where medium- to high-performance machines need binary blobs. The GNU dream never materialized. (b) If Ubuntu (and I'm going to say "the Linux ecosystem in general") cared about backwards compatibility in the same sense Windows does, a minor-version bump to glibc wouldn't introduce API breakages that mean I can't build a codebase that's doing nothing new and…

glibc goes to great lengths to ensure binary backwards-compatibility. If a binary interface has to change it uses symbol versioning to keep around the old interface - for example if you have a program compiled against glibc2.2 on x86-64 that calls timer_create(), it will call through the function __timer_create_old() that provides the old interface when run on a system with a newer libc.

The reverse scenario that seems to be what you have - where you compile against a newer library version then run it on an older one - is forwards-compatibility which is a different kettle of fish. Even on Windows it's not like you can compile against the latest DirectX and run it on an older Windows?

Re: Microsoft is forcibly removing internet explorer from PCs

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OS needs a browser engine for its WebView, which many apps etc rely on. On non Google Android releases these can pretty easily be swapped. Possibly on Google Android as well.

People are talking about no browser. Not swapping them

Yes, I understand.

I'm explaining that you need a WebView for basic functionality of many apps.

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