Re: Crowdstrike fiasco

On 21/07/2024 22:46, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

And so you had the interesting situation where, in Europe, you could buy
your phone first, then decide which carrier to sign up to, whereas in the
USA, you first chose your carrier, and then you had to buy your phone from
them.

It didn't work that way in practice though.
My phone had to be bought from my supplier, because only then would it have WiFi Calling.
But think of all the other non legislated common standards that arose because people need common standards.
VHS
Cassette audio tape.
Metric threads.
in te end governments dont need to run these as industries,  merely work out which is the mostr common and ubi quitous, and say 'this is te legal onbe'
You may recall the Government and big businesses supported X networking propcols. X400. X 25. That were destined to doom TCP/IP . That worked well didnm't it?
The point is that conservative governments regulate as little as is reasonably sensible, the left wing ones as much as they can get away with.
Back in the day the British Post Office and the German Deutsch Bundespost were both government run dinosaurs in charge of telecoms. The Post Office was split and British Telecom was privatised, and a regulator set up to try and ensure it did not anuses its monopoly.
But not in Germany, not until much later, where whilst the UK was getting broadband speeds with dozens of ISPS up in the tens of MBPS,. In Germany you got a supplied ADSL router from the German monopoly ISP, that might to a few Mbps on a good day.
This is all down to the fact that its not who owns or runs it, its down to how well a monopoly is *regulated*, that counts.
Conservatism accepts that de facto monopolies like railways, roads,. bridges, wires to your house, water to you house and sewage out of it, *are* de facto monopolies. And therefore need to be regulated to prevent abuse, but history has shown that state ownership   is just as bad as poor  regulation.
--
     “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
     ― Leo Tolstoy