[conspire] (forw) Re: [Golugtech] What could POSSIBLY go wrong?

[Rick Moen]

On a related note, mulish failure to comprehend change is often 
_mistakenly_ attributed to the "Luddites", a secret organisation 
of 19th Century textile workers in the English Midlands -- and this 
twisting of history was made possible simply because they were
ultimately on the losing side of the labour-management struggle, and 
the victors villified them after the fact.

The Luddites were actually extremely tech-savvy, and resourceful 
and effective in their tactics against manufacturers using machines
to abuse the workforce.  They were quite successful until the owners
called in the British Army Regulars and essentially made war on the
Luddites, with mass trials, excutions, and penal transportation to 
break up the movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Sun, 15 May 2022 05:53:16 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: golugtech at diypython.us
Subject: Re: [Golugtech] What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Steve Litt (slitt at troubleshooters.com):

> What could POSSIBLY go wrong?
> 
> https://fidoalliance.org/apple-google-and-microsoft-commit-to-expanded-support-for-fido-standard-to-accelerate-availability-of-passwordless-sign-ins/
> 
> Didn't I read in history class that the US antitrust laws outlawed
> collusion in the marketplace?

Explain, please.  For antitrust law to apply, one would need to show 
to a Federal judge according to a prepondance of evidence, and subject
to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure:

Sherman Act of 1890:
o  anticompetitive agreements, or 
o  unilateral conduct that monopolizes or attempts to monopolize the
   relevant market

Clayton Act of 1914:
o  price discrimination between different purchasers if such a
   discrimination substantially lessens competition or tends to create a
   monopoly in any line of commerce, or
o  sales on the condition that (A) the buyer or lessee not deal with the
   competitors of the seller or lessor ("exclusive dealings") or (B) the
   buyer also purchase another different product ("tying") but only when
   these acts substantially lessen competition, or
o  mergers and acquisitions where the effect may substantially lessen
   competition, or 
   voting securities and assets threshold is met, or
o  any person being a director of two or more competing corporations, if
   those corporations would violate the antitrust criteria by merging

Apple, Google, and Microsoft throwing their weight behind a replacement
authentication standard that is open-spec defined (and contributed to 
the World Wide Web Consortium, circa 2015) and has an extremely large
selection of open source implementations (both U2F and FIDO2; heck,
there are even PAM modules!) looks to this observer about as much a
restraint of trade as those companies all using HTML5.  But what big
thing am I missing, Steve?

OTOH, if what you're (effectively) saying is that you simply didn't
understand either the basics of American antitrust law _or_ the
technologies you're kind-of writing about, and are simply ranting in
opposition to new-ish[1] things you don't understand and can't bother to
look up, then:  You're welcome!

[1] For values of "new" approximating almost a decade old.


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