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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.'
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.
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.
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 don't know, I guess this strikes me as petty somehow.
It would have been petty if they had put this into their main release, so that everybody using Opera had to put up with it. You know, sort of like how MS put it into the main release of their web page, so that every Opera user has to put up with it.
The Opera folks very clearly set aside the "joke" browser, and they've stated very clearly why they are doing it. People who don't want to mess with it won't accidentally stumble acrsos it. They're pointing out, in a manner that makes it very obvious, just what it is that MS is doing. And if the article is right, and MS is still screwing up older versions of Opera, then contacting the MS team clearly hasn't done much good.
-Rob
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
The problem was both Opera v6 and v7 rendered the page that was sent to Internet Explorer browsers perfectly. Opera v7 renders the page that was sent to v6 just fine. 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.
Opera wasn't broken yet MS decided it needed to be fixed (as is fixing a cat).
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
I talked to Mr. Håkon Wium Lie myself, and he said that they repeatedly hav complained to MS about this and other problems over a long time, but nothing happened. The Opera problem was very, very obvious and could be seen very easily. Yet, they did not fix it. The error MSN on Opera error was the most reported Opera error of them all and I imagine that MSN got their fair share of complaints from the MSN on Opera users as well.. Mr. Lie said to me that "there's a fair shar of incompetence at Microsoft, but this problem is not caused by that." Seems like he has borked his own site as well... :)
Opera isn't OSS.
"So what was wrong is MSN's version checking code,"
Web-sites have no business sending different content to different browsers in the first place. There is never any need to change anything you send; just settle for whatever subset of valid content still looks good in the majority of browsers.
Particularly in the case of CSS, it's up to the browser to choose whether to render it or not, and if so, there's lots of scope for how it's done.
If website authors learned this small fact, assigning the bug to the correct party would not be a problem.
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
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"
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
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.
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
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.
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.