Slashdot Mirror
Opera Releases "Bork" Edition
David Arnesen writes "Two weeks ago it was revealed that Microsoft's MSN portal targeted Opera users, by purposely providing them with a broken page. As a reply to MSN's treatment of its users, Opera Software today released a very special Bork edition of its Opera 7 for Windows browser. The Bork edition behaves differently on one Web site: MSN. Users accessing the MSN site will see the page transformed into the language of the famous Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show: Bork, Bork, Bork!
Here you can find the press release and download link!"
Can we have an anti-goatse version? Maybe one that brings up a page saying 'Hello Slashdot newbie, you have been linked to some sick shit by someone, trust us when we say you do NOT want to look.'
However -100 for usefulness. As a user I don't want to get dragged into a petty corporate war. I just want my browser to work. They could have spent the same time and effort in detecting if the user is going to MSN and then lying to MSN what browser it was, or better yet they could have worked with MS to correct the problem with website.
I don't know, I guess this strikes me as petty somehow. Does anyone know if the Opera team tried to contact Microsoft to fix the problem? You know, the old "Never ascribe to stupidity that which is adequately explained by incompetence." And of course we all know that Microsoft is *never* incompetent... no sirree, not a bit! (/sarcasm)
*waits for the universe to collapse on itself*
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
Amen.
There needs to be more humour in situations like this. When things get as daft as this you've got two options - a) laugh, or b) cry.
Besides, if these two companies started suing each other, wanna hazard a guess who's the bitter death would be?
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
I agree, there should be more corperate taunting going on out there. It would be a lot more entertaining for us that a bunch of suits posturing.
Nobody would notice a lawsuit. But a silly muppets reference gets the news posted on the frontpage of Slashdot!
Who here thinks their incentive to do that has been increased by this move?
Cheers,
Ian
How can you trust a browser that intentionally doesn't show you what you asked for? You have no idea if you're getting what you're supposed to be getting when you go to *any* page. This is exceeding unprofessional, and violate everything that a browser is supposed to do. I guess that's the point they were trying to get across.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
What are you talking about? There are many browsers which does this. Have you newer used lynx, or some of the browsers made for blind people which talk insted of displaying anything?. Infact there don't exists ANY browser which display the site that the server send, because the server does NOT send any site. It send a html document which is a description of the CONTENT of the page not a description of HOW to render it. Just try to visit msn.com internet explore, and then with a wap phone. This you will get an entire different view of the same information.
They specifically did it for one page for a limited time on a specially named release of the software to show that 1) this is juvenile, and 2) both content providers and browser writers can be juvenile and it could get an arms escalation. With the point being: nobody should do this to begin with.
Yes, it's mildly unprofessional. In my book, that's okay, because professionals today would either 1) sue them or 2) do it back without saying anything and CYA in a long EULA. It's rare that a company tries to make their point with a little bit of wit, probably because it'll be lost on some people.
And then, once they fix it, Microsoft would find some new way to determine it's Opera. This way they call attention to it and MAYBE they'll be able to get a long term fix. Personally, I think it's a good strategy. Not to mention that it's kind of funny.
It is certainly a much funnier response, and it must have been a load of fun for the people on the team who did this. Unfortunately, I doubt that it is very effective. The relatively small number of current opera users will probably think it is great, but it will have absolutely no impact on Microsoft.
It might make a great advertisement for opera. At the same time they are letting people know that if they use opera then they will have problems on at least one (big) web site.
I think that suing people for trivial matters is also juvenile.
This isn't being advertised as Opera's main browser. It's being advertised as an offshoot, special-purpose, no-other-really-good-use browser. If they had put this into their main browser, then yes, I would agree with you, but this was done as a joke. It's no worse than any parody done on Saturday Night Live. In a month or so, we'll all have had our laugh and have forgotten the entire event.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Oh, but it is! As the msn.com site does not pass validation, it can be treated any way the browser chooses.
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
1) MS has monopoly (practically) on web browsers.
...
2) Opera is a competitor.
3) MS is using it's webiste (a different product) to maintain it's monopoly.
Isn't this almost the definition of illegal monopolistic practices? I think the definition is slightly different, like "Using a monopoly to further your business in another area." They're "Using another area to further a monopoly."
Hmm... Perhaps if IE was distorting the Opera web page, it would be the exact definition.
But then again
1) MSN is not a monopoly on ISP's (or portals?)
2) IE is a monopoly on browsers.
3) Making opera apear broken will make more people use IE.
4) IE's default homepage is MSN.
5) MSN is benefiting from IE's monopoly and unfair business practices against opera.
So perhaps that fits the definition more closely?
(can't help my self...)
6) ???
7) Make money
Opera isn't OSS.
For all those who called this "childish" or "unprofessional" or "juvenile" or any such names--firstly, RTFA, and secondly, lighten up, they didn't put this in their main version. It's a special purpose, no-other-good-use offshoot of the main version. You can still download the regular Opera without this "feature." If they did put this in their main version, then I would agree with all of you, but they didn't. This is merely a parody, no worse than any portrayed on Saturday Night Live. In a month or so, we'll all have had our laugh, and forgotten the entire event.
So, if I may so repeat myself, lighten up!
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Moderation is retarded. Welcome to /.
GF
Lots of petrified grits
Not to mention, you'd think a web developer would test the MAIN FRICKING PAGE against his code for a specific browser, ummm I don't know USING THAT BROWSER!?!?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Opera is so good, people are happy to pay money for it, or are prepared to have a constant banner ad on the screen. That makes Opera a serious commercial rival. Couple that with the fact Opera is their major rival in the mobile phone market, a market MS desperately wants control of, and you start to understand why it is suspicious that the Opera stylesheet for MSN mysteriously changed a few days after Opera 7 rolled out.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
It was validated by Opensource WGET.
Yes, MSN sends crap CSS to Opera.
Yes, MS takes Opera serious, they are being losing ground on mobile market, TO OPERA, not Moz/Netscape.
No you didn't read the press release, did you?
That's great!
But I think what we really need is a show of solidarity. Mozilla and Safari, among others, should release a Bork edition asap.
Good point. However, the bug was apparently reported to MSN a couple of weeks ago. To their credit, they did fix it. HOWEVER, their fix targets Opera 7; Opera 6 still gets the bad stuff. This may be stupidity rather than malice. We have no idea how the MSN web monkeys create stylesheets for various browsers. It may be that it was easy for them to create a new "Opera" stylesheet, but "oops" their process created a new v7 stylesheet, leaving the v6 stylesheet lying around. It may be trickier for them to go in a modify an existing stylesheet.
- Jasen.
P.S. Unless there was some REALLY good reason for making an Opera specific stylesheet in the first place, I still think websites in general should deliver generic, standards compliant stylesheets and expect the browsers to render such in a consistent manner.
I think what this does in my mind is give Opera some personality. You know there are real people there. With this light on things people may be more inclined to actually buy Opera. They will know their money is going to a group of real people, not some dirty money grubbing corporation. It's just a thought on things, I like Opera maybe I'm partial, or that I'm just a little hungover.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
I think this was a good idea. The press coverage this will get will make Microsoft look like incompetent assholes. It's a company making light of a monopoly trying to crush them. I usually don't take sides, since I don't really care who wins (ie, if Pepsi died tomorrow I would start drinking Coke), but it sorta makes me want to cheer for the underdog.
I think it will also get a lot of geeks who were reluctant to use it based on experience with older editions to download it again just to try it (and thus have the opportunity to remove that bad taste in the user's mouth).
This is definitely intentional on Google's part, as the offending referer spammers have no relation to the SPAM-oriented pages (and certainly are not mentioned or linked there). It's like a digital middle finger to the referer spammers.
No, most likely what happens is that a lot of people link to the sites saying things like "this site supports spam etc. etc." and then when google starts indexing it, it relates spam to that site.
I know there are a lot of Microsoft bashers here, but why did this get modded up? Every sentence is incorrect.
eg:
"The problem was both Opera v6 and v7 rendered the page that was sent to Internet Explorer browsers perfectly."
Wrong. Opera v6 rendered to page adequately, but not exactly the same as IE on the same CSS. Because Opera v6 had a bug whereby it magically added 30 to a margin value, ending up creating an unwanted gap on the bullet points.
Not exactly a big deal, and I would have just left it assuming it would be fixed next version. But this just shows that Microsoft did the right thing and tested using various browsers. As for correcting the issue, thats probably due to a rigid designer who required the page to look the same on all browsers.
"Opera v7 renders the page that was sent to v6 just fine"
If you mean IEv6 then yes it does, BECAUSE THE BUG WAS FIXED. If you meant Opera v6 then no it doesn't, it moves some items 30 to the left making them move partly out of the visable area.
"The only thing that can't be rendered properly is a special page that is only sent to Opera v7 browsers that aligns elements by -34pts"
Just plain untrue, the work around CSS is sent to all user agents containing "Opera". God knows why they didn't tie it down to Opera v6, but I strongly suspect laziness, it's much easier to match on Opera, then on grabbing the version string. Maybe someone just plain didn't think, who knows.
"Opera wasn't broken yet MS decided it needed to be fixed (as is fixing a cat). "
Opera v6 _was_ broken. But MS did a badly implemented work around.
I mean come on people, Microsoft has done a lot of bad things, but this isn't one of them. If they get nothing but shit shoved at them when they go to the effort of playing nice, but make a tiny oversight. Where is the incentive for them to try again?
Do you want msn to be just another "optimised for Internet Explorer" web site? If Microsoft goes to the trouble of being compatible then you can ask other web sites why the hell they aren't.
I am extremely disappointed with Opera's response to this issue, they have sugar coated the existence of the bug in Opera v6, and make out it is all MSN's fault. Essentially turning a "feature" into a desperate media attention grab.
What about the users? What if they don't want the MSN website in Swedish Chef? And I was so close to making Opera my default browser over Mozilla. Guess I'll stick with OSS Mozilla, which doesn't screw around with the contents of other people's web sites.
PS: Watch this get left to rot because it doesn't bash MS.
Fraud is all about intent and the honesty with which things are presented.
If Bill wrote code that kept Oracle from running on Windows and publicized this, he'd be able to sell it (except for that monopoly thing, but run with this) because his product is still working as advertised. But when he writes secret code that makes Oracle appear broken, it's fraud. When other programs work properly, and one breaks, the natural assumption is that the broken program is at fault. If you intentionally break a program, and let people come to that conclusion, it's pretty much as dishonest as claiming outright that the program is broken.
DR-DOS sued and won (well, whoever owned the husk of the company at that point, won) because of MS's quiet sabotage of their product. Likely Opera could, if this keeps happening, because it's essentially the same actions. And provably, Microsoft did detect Opera 7 specifically, and send it broken code. It's not just that they sent NS4.7 compatible code and Opera didn't like it. Opera faithfully rendered a badly layed out page, that microsoft designed to make it look like a sloppy browser error. It's pretty hard to claim that they intentionally detected Opera 7, created code just for it (not the same as sent to any other browser), and did it by accident. Especially as Opera 7 renders essentially identically to IE, there wasn't a reason for them to even have an Opera specific page, it's not like they can claim it was needed and they just screwed it up.
Well, MS's just made another enemy, one who'll have an opportunity to present evidence against them at the trial in the EU. It's actually likely to cost MS a lot. The MS corporate line is that they have done stuff they aren't proud of, but that they're past that now. A nice current example of their dishonesty will really hurt in the judgement phase by showing that small judgements at teaching them.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
except that the whole point is that people don't necessarily know to blame the gas station and think that there's something wrong with their mercedes then they trade it in and tell other people not to get one. it's anti-competitive and bad for the little guys and thats why there should be laws to protect us from corporate monsters before they get too big.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won