Yeah, Microsoft is encouraging you to do something that isn't even technically possible.

Windows will, however, warn you that the .lnk file can be potentially dangerous when you try to run it, just like with executables downloaded from the net.

Whether anyone bothers to click Cancel on the warning is a different matter though.

They're just different operating systems. Windows has always used ACL heavily, while Linux sticks to just basic file permissions.

Once you've learned the basics, ACL is not hard to use and is easily handled even from the command line. Any more advanced Windows user would be expected to learn this, just like a Linux user would be expected to learn how the various parts of a Linux distribution work.

The reason is that the Local Settings folder doesn't exist anymore. It was only present in XP and earlier and has been replaced by User\AppData\Local. Similarily, the old Application Data is now User\AppData\Roaming.

If you set Explorer to show all hidden operating system files on Vista/7 (which this guy clearly has), these old folders will appear to show up, but you cannot manipulate them as they aren't actually folders anymore. They're protected junctions (a type of hard link) that are used by the compatibility layer to redirect requests for these folders to the new locations.

Now granted, this is a bit more technical than your regular user can be expected to understand, so it's understandable that you'd get claims like this. For a large site like Slashdot to blindly repeat them is shameful though.

I'm not sure if I see the relevance. We are discussing current operating systems here (or what will be on the market when the EU makes its decision, in other words Windows 7 and beyond), not Windows XP and earlier. Those operating systems are dead and there isn't going to be a big patch to remove IE from them.

Which I agree is a totally reasonable request.
Everything that is needed to do this is already present in Windows. All that is needed is for OEMs to be able to pre-install something else without facing any pressure from Microsoft.

(Provided that the OEM wanted to take responsibility for supporting and updating the replacement browser, of course.)

What are you really getting rid of? All the underlying engines (which, presumably, are shared components available to everyone on OS X as well), or just the GUI frontend? If it's the latter, then you haven't really removed it, you've just done the equivalent of deleting iexplore.exe.

You can't, because, oops, that feature is actually supplied by IE (yes, this is true for Vista and Windows 7 as well).

It doesn't matter. Most of the APIs and structures are pretty much documented already (you can read the documentation from an implementor's perspective), but we aren't talking about some small utility here, we are talking about something so large and complex that there is no realistic chance of anyone else bothering to implement it.

The underlying IE framework that so many third party applications use (and it's not just for displaying HTML) is going to have to remain in Windows (or be offered as an optional download through Windows Update), there is no way around it.

It's easy to say that today. It wasn't that easy in the late 90s when this was all happening. Microsoft most certainly did have a monopoly, and did abuse it. Things have gotten better since then (and Microsoft is even partly responsible for Apple getting back on its feet), but we're still paying for it today. It's not a problem that is easily solvable.

The API is open. You're free to go to MSDN and implement them from the documentation yourself (lots of programs do this for various other APIs). The problem is that it's still a fucking huge job and not something that is realistically ever going to happen.

It would not be painful. It was already done years ago. Slashdot readers need to get some experience with more recent versions of Windows.

These days it's mostly third party stuff that will break without the IE framework installed, which is kind of funny in a twisted "Mission Accomplished" way.

That is because IE is not just the browser frontend, it is an entire framework that a lot of third party applications depend on.

This was done intentionally by Microsoft, even going so far as making important components like Explorer depend on it. This isn't really the case any more for most of Windows, but the third party programs still need it, so removing it would break a lot of programs people use.

Firefox is not a replacement either, because it does not implement any of the interfaces that the IE framework does (even though they could go to MSDN and implement them, but we're talking about a lot of work here.)

Now... you could remove the actual IE program itself, as few other programs depend on it, but what would be the point? To save a few megabytes?

I mean, there is already the option to remove access to it and use another browser as default. That's really all OEMs would need to ship a third-party browser (it would be problematic for Microsoft to do so.)

You are correct in saying that the Explorer can open FTP sites, however this functionality is supplied by Internet Explorer through a shell extension. Remove IE and you also remove the FTP support, leaving you with only the command line FTP command (or whatever you hack together in PowerShell).

This guy -- an employee of ZDNet -- is running a pirate copy of Windows 7 (only 32-bit, the 64-bit version is not on the pirate sites). Why would a "EULA" matter.

It's disgusting that ZDNet condones this.