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As if normal popups aren't bad enough, now you can experience an all new level of frustration as you receive twenty "OK" dialogs on each page.
</rant>

Thank God for Opera.

At the risk of slashdotting my own site.....

If you are having trouble accessing Google and other major search engines, there is a NASTY browser hijacker going around using a bad HOSTS file to redirect the IP. We finally have the bugger figured out and here are instructions on dealing with the problem:

http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?showtopic= 12127

Look for your HOSTS file and open it in a text editor. There is no extension on this file. It is only HOSTS.

Win 9x/ME: C:\windows\HOSTS
Win NT/2000: C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS
Win XP: C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS

Note that on some systems the hijacker has hacked the registry to point to a bad HOSTS file at C:\Windows\help\HOSTS. Look in this location as well as those above.

If any line is found that mentions google or other search engines, delete the entire file. That should fix the hijack. To prevent it from happening again, apply all relevent security patches.

For 100% protection from this sort of attack, lock Internet Explorer behind a firewall and use a real browser. Mozilla Opera

It's a Trojan, that can be inserted by a "maliciously constructed website". Seems that you Windows geeks had better stop using IE for a while. Opera and Mozilla are nice alternatives...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/56/33187.html

Wrong. Everybody should be using not Internet Explorer. Use Opera, use Firebird, use Mozilla or any other fringe browser. Just do not use Internet Explorer or any derivatives.

Everyone's favorite browser has a new preview version out for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and BSD.

Everyone's favorite browser has a new preview version out for Windows, Linux, Solaris, and BSD.

Opera rocks!

It's irritating the way the world is enslaved to such an awful spyware-magnet standards-flouting browser as MS Internet Explorer.

Microsoft declared IE6 SP1 as the last standalone browser for lame-ass reasons. The truth is, they're only truly integrating IE into the next Windows Operating System for the first time, to prove their 'point' in the anti-trust case that they couldn't remove the browser from the OS.

If IE really was such an integral part of the current slew of windows versions, how come it takes ridiculously long to load when you enter a URL into the address bar of an explorer window, and that the people at LitePC was able to remove IE from the Windows operating system?

Bunch of liars. Guys, help educate everyone and have people switch to either Mozilla or Opera -> Makes Windows boxes more secure and gets rid of the need to buy those stupid superflous pop-up killers. (you can pick up viruses or spyware just by surfing a maliciously coded website and hitting the wrong button)

None of my family and friends use IE anymore after I educated them about the dangers of IE.

Grab it for Windows!
Grab the latest beta for Linux!
Read the Changelog!

Grab it for Windows!
Grab the latest beta for Linux!
Read the Changelog!

Grab it for Windows!
Grab the latest beta for Linux!
Read the Changelog!

Hey people, where or how could we know how many queries/searches do VeriSign and Microsoft get with sitefinder and with IE???? Because with it, i think they can intercept all 404, malformed URL, non-registered domains and DNS errors!!

From what you describe it sounds like you're using IE. There is absolutely no reason to do so, and I strongly encourage you to use Opera instead. Mozilla is pretty good too.

One of the added benefits is that you download .pdf just like any other file type - it goes in the transfer manager and you open it at your leisure without Acrobat taking over your browser window.

IE isn't the only web browser.

There are numerous known methods for disabling that feature, such as 1, 2, 3

according to opera...

"The origin of the word "bug" has wrongly been associated with an incident where a moth was pulled out of a Mark II computer. Apparently, the term was used prior to modern computers to mean an industrial or electrical defect."

Similarly, no problem with replacing microsoft's opinions with "Bork Bork"...

Alas, we computer users must endure pop-up advertising along with her ugly brother, unsolicited bulk e-mail, "spam," as a burden of using the Internet.

Um, can I take a rain check on that? Here's hoping for (speculating that) another ruling, in a follow-up case to be initiated in the not-too-distant future, will send this back the other way. Ads are a nuisance, and all most of us do to them any way is close them out. Anything that causes users to accidentally click on something and send them into a nightmarish loop of ads and "Internet grafitti" (as I call it) undermines the free will of the user.

Ads should be clear about what they are advertising and where they are taking the user. Ads should not falsely represent themselves or their intentions. Ads should not "pop-up" or "pop-under" in an attempt to trick users into supporting something they would never click in the first place if given an actual choice about it.

On this note, I think the Opera web browser (if you haven't paid to register) handles ads very well -- setting them aside in the upper right-hand corner of the browser, off the web page itself. Now, if only they could work on removing the pop-up and pop-under ads that plague the Internet and somehow maneuver those into a special advertising block or window of the browser, then we'd be making progress.

Again, the problem is choice. A user should never accidentally click on any ad he didn't wish to see in the first place. That would essentially be the same as a television ad running on top of your television program instead of during the commercial breaks -- that has been outlawed, and so too should Internet advertisements that get in the way of your browsing.

(So let's use the Opera/AIM method: if you've gotta have ads, put them in one place and out of the way of the application's useful area. Allow users to pay a registration fee to disable or hide the ads. Quit trying to trick users into clicking the ads; the trickery is not good salesmanship, but the commercial equivalent of entrapment, the kind of thing monopolies are accused of.)

I've used Opera's email client for a while, and am pretty happy with it. It provides what they call 'access points', which seem to be about the same conept as the above mentioned virtual folders. New access points can be created along with filtering criteria for each, and incoming email is assigned to one or more access points, if the filtering criteria match. I've found this to be a pretty powerful way of managing my email, since I can change the... well, the 'perspective' or angle, from which I look at my inbox. I can view email by contacts (sender addresses), unread, or any arbitrary access point I have created. That makes managing email, especially when having to assign email to several 'view points' in lack of a better term, based on several criteria, as described above.

It also sounds similar to how Opera handles mail with the M2 e-mail client. It defines "access points" that can (but don't have to) look like folders for jumping into messages that meet a certain criteria. For example, all messages with an attached image are grouped together, as are all messages from a specific person, and all messages meeting some sort of user-defined criteria might also be lumped together under an "access point." In the end though, there really is only one mail box, these tools just allow you to "slice and dice" through your mail.

Actually, Opera (7.20 B7 Linux) is blocked opening with Shift-click, Shift-Ctrl-click, and just regular click.

Incidentally, the link should be to Opera Software.

michael

Which page, the blog or the Chunder page? The Chunder page, in keeping with it's theme, was always supposed to be somewhat hideous and difficult to look at even for people of "normal vision" (it hasn't been updated for many years, it was just a joke amoung friends that got surprisingly popular for a bit).

The best suggestion I have is to use something like Opera which has "accessibility layout", "high contrast (b/w)" and "High contrast (w/b)" user stylesheets which will turn an ugly page like that into something much more reasonable.

it's more or less functionally equivalent to Netscape Communicator 4.7 to me

Netscape 4.x is badly engineered. It has major problems with CSS. As more and more sites start using CSS, you are just going to be left with plain, unstyled pages at best, and pages that crash your browser at worst.

Try Opera.

Have you tried the latest version of Opera? 7.2b7 just came out and it's fantastic! The amount of fixes and improvements is incredible. Take it for a spin today!

I should mention: currently, some heavy JavaScript runs pretty slowly on Opera as compared to Moz (note: last I checked, you need to have Opera identify as Moz in order for the site to entreat you to that heavy JavaScript - browser detection means Opera gets lumped with Internet Explorer). Anyway, that slowness is purportedly getting fixed in the upcoming 7.20 release

Uh, opera has a built in search bar that defaults to google and has about a dozen other types of searches built in too. It also has the wand, which is comparable to the google toolbars form filler, which seems to be the only other really useful feature of the toolbar. Thats according to this though, there are probably other features, i use Opera, so i've never tried the google toolbar.

Opera

Are there any qt apps that dont require kde to be installed?

Are you kidding? The Qt toolkit isn't just a base layer for KDE, you know. It's a cross-platform toolkit that works on Windows and the Mac as well. You are free to write apps using just Qt if you like. For instance the Opera browser is an application that uses Qt but not KDE.

While other operating systems hope to introduce comparable technology in late 2004, Jaguar has it now. Quartz Extreme uses a supported* graphics card built into your Mac to relieve the main PowerPC chip of on screen calculations. This dramatically improves system performance, making Jaguar much more responsive.

It sounds like you are referring to adware Opera as spyware - or at least it might sound like it to others. Just in case anyone thinks it is: Opera is NOT spyware! It doesn't come with Gator or Digital Brilliance at all. It's got built-in ad support which doesn't spy on anyone.

Or you use Opera for Smartphones on your Symbian-based phone (Sony Ericsson P800, Nokia 7650 etc) and view each and every page there is without problems.

Yes, I use it. It works just fine.

This is probably why the Microsoft smartphones won't and haven't so far taken off. Other devices are using browsers like Opera and they have done some good work on making pages useable on small screens.

Link to info

They think webmail is going to be more popular than imap, or pop3 mail boxes.

If Microsoft lets its market share for desktop-based e-mail clients slip, it could be short-sighted.

I use web-based mail at work (iPlanet/SIMS) and web-based mail (Yahoo) at home as my primary mail-reader. I have broadband in both locations and the responsiveness of web-based e-mail conpared to desktop e-mail clients is negligible.

My work-at-home CEO has satellite at home. He can't use the web-based product because the interactive sluggishness from delay and packet loss would kill his productivity. SSH-tunneled POP works great for him because his local e-mail client (Outlook) downloads new e-mail in the background and sends messages out in the background while he is composing/reading mail quickly in the foreground.

When I administered e-mail for a dialup ISP, the primary method our users preferred to access their e-mail was POP to Outlook Express or Netscape Messenger. It is painfully slow to browse through e-mail over a dialup connection. There are still millions of dialup users out there. They are the majority of users on the Internet.

If people use wireless devices in the future, their experience will be more similar to dialup/satellite than broadband, and they'll demand a product that isn't web-based-only. Some of the ideas brought to light by Central or similar technologies could satisfy both broadband/fixed and narrowband/mobile users.

Microsoft makes an excellent user interface for e-mail. They're good at that. Their enterprise/corporate customers may continue to pay for it. Other products like M2, Evolution, and Mozilla will help fill the consumer niche if they open it up. If it weren't for Microsoft's early monopoly bundling tactics vs Netscape Navigator (founded on a "beta/intro is free, production version costs money" business model), we might not have nor expect free browser and e-mail software. We're spoiled. If it weren't for security or playform supportissues, more of us Slashdotters might use Outlook Express.

-ez

PS: I lied. My primary mail reader is MH.

All the listed sites WORK GREAT IN OPERA. Don't sing the Open-Source-Blues anymore and INSTALL OPERA TODAY!

We've got Links, Dillo, and we could probably get Gecko working within reasonable constraints. We have commercial products on our side such as Netfront, Opera. If you're talking QNX, you've also got Voyager. So yeah, Windows, 0, the other guys, 1.

Wow! Nobody's ever done that that before!

You can do that natively with Opera on the P800. Their small-screen rendering is _that_ good.

Opera's M2 Email Client http://www.opera.com/products/user/m2/ Also has a filtering agent that does not contact outside servers so your privacy remains intact. It should also be mentioned that M2 is not an ordinary email client, it uses access-points instead of folders. Takes some getting used to but it is really useful and cool once you know how to use it.

The built-in spamfilter rocks, too, and it's really fast and responsive - so give it a try. :)

And it should be supported, because it isn't listed as an exception here:

http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/#html

"People can actually contribute and test mozilla beta releases, as opposed to opera releases."

Opera is an alternative, standards compliant browser with a geeky/nerdy user base. Why should it not be interesting for a site which has "news for nerd. Stuff that matters"? It's a nerd's browser, so it's definitely relevant for nerds.

>>Mozilla is available on more platforms than opera, and is 7.2b2 even available on linux?

Why yes it is (I am an Opera Fanatic)

Opera 7.20 Beta 1 for Linux Intel is now available for download.

Download at:

http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/inte...030703-7.20- B1/

The file below describes what package to select.

http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/inte...hatpackage.h tml

>>Mozilla is available on more platforms than opera, and is 7.2b2 even available on linux?

Why yes it is (I am an Opera Fanatic)

Opera 7.20 Beta 1 for Linux Intel is now available for download.

Download at:

http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/inte...030703-7.20- B1/

The file below describes what package to select.

http://snapshot.opera.com/unix/inte...hatpackage.h tml

... exist in Opera:

• linux
• windows

also:

• native mouse gestures
• pop-up blocking (allow all, block all, allow requested)
• M2 mail client
• incredible and always improving standards support

if you tried it and bailed, try again. it really is worth another look.

++ of course, I have no affiliation with Opera Software aside from owning a registered copy ($39) of their phenomenal browser.

... exist in Opera:

• linux
• windows

also:

• native mouse gestures
• pop-up blocking (allow all, block all, allow requested)
• M2 mail client
• incredible and always improving standards support

if you tried it and bailed, try again. it really is worth another look.

++ of course, I have no affiliation with Opera Software aside from owning a registered copy ($39) of their phenomenal browser.

... exist in Opera:

• linux
• windows

also:

• native mouse gestures
• pop-up blocking (allow all, block all, allow requested)
• M2 mail client
• incredible and always improving standards support

if you tried it and bailed, try again. it really is worth another look.

++ of course, I have no affiliation with Opera Software aside from owning a registered copy ($39) of their phenomenal browser.

... exist in Opera:

• linux
• windows

also:

• native mouse gestures
• pop-up blocking (allow all, block all, allow requested)
• M2 mail client
• incredible and always improving standards support

if you tried it and bailed, try again. it really is worth another look.

++ of course, I have no affiliation with Opera Software aside from owning a registered copy ($39) of their phenomenal browser.

... exist in Opera:

• linux
• windows

also:

• native mouse gestures
• pop-up blocking (allow all, block all, allow requested)
• M2 mail client
• incredible and always improving standards support

if you tried it and bailed, try again. it really is worth another look.

++ of course, I have no affiliation with Opera Software aside from owning a registered copy ($39) of their phenomenal browser.

I see Mozilla news almost daily on Slashdot but where's the Opera news? Every small release of Mozilla however unimportant gets mentioned but not even the biggest Opera news gets mentioned. Opera doesn't even have it's own news Icon here on Slashdot. We should demand more Opera news because Opera 7.2 beta 2 came out today and I must say it's the best Opera ever (much better than that memory hogging vile beast of a pig Mozilla). Although no Linux version of beta 2 is out yet, only Windows, it is still news worthy of being on Slashdot. Here's the news announcement and heres some forums to talk about the new beta.

I see Mozilla news almost daily on Slashdot but where's the Opera news? Every small release of Mozilla however unimportant gets mentioned but not even the biggest Opera news gets mentioned. Opera doesn't even have it's own news Icon here on Slashdot. We should demand more Opera news because Opera 7.2 beta 2 came out today and I must say it's the best Opera ever (much better than that memory hogging vile beast of a pig Mozilla). Although no Linux version of beta 2 is out yet, only Windows, it is still news worthy of being on Slashdot. Here's the news announcement and heres some forums to talk about the new beta.