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NYTimes Reports on Firefox
Soldrinero writes "Just three days after running a community-sponsored two-page ad, the New York Times is now running a news story on Mozilla Firefox. Our favorite browser is presented in a very favorable light, and there's a good discussion on both Firefox's useability-enhancing features and its security merits. Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'"
Why an ad if they make a good article for free ?
Good news ^^
[T]hey also present Microsoft's solution to security problems
What? Blame the user when SP2 fails them? User error! Woo!
And yes, I am trolling. But you know it's true.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Why would buying a new PC solve security problems?
I got a cheaper solution. Download and install Linux.
First, it gets rid of that POS called Windows! Secondly.. its free!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
www.spreadfirefox.com
s /SpreadFirefox.jpg ;)
Or some community submission for that matter:
http://vcl.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Wooly-Mitten
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Word of mouth advertising is the best. With the NYT article, and "geeks" like us spreading the word about Firefox, more and more people are starting to use it.
Just the other day, I had a friend who couldn't go to any site on the net without IE crashing and the Send Report box coming up (does anyone actually send the reports??). Anyway, she was getting frustrated, so I pointed her to Firefox's download site. She downloaded it and now uses it exclusively. She loves the look and feel and says it seems much faster in rendering sites. I told her there may be a couple sites she will have to use IE for, but for the most part, Firefox will work.
She said she is going to tell her friends about it. As I said earlier, word of mouth advertising is the best way to get the word out....especially for people that aren't very knowledgeable technology wise.
By RANDALL STROSS
Published: December 19, 2004
IREFOX is a classic overnight success, many years in the making.
Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.
Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9. Just over a month later, the foundation celebrated a remarkable milestone: 10 million downloads. Donations from Firefox's appreciative fans paid for a two-page advertisement in The New York Times on Thursday.
Until now, the Linux operating system was the best-known success among the hundreds of open-source projects that challenge Microsoft with technically strong, free software that improves as the population of bug-reporting and bug-fixing users grows. But unless you oversee purchases for a corporate data center, it's unlikely that you've felt the need to try Linux yourself.
With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.
Microsoft has always viewed Internet Explorer's tight integration with Windows to be an attractive feature. That, however, was before security became the unmet need of the day. Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a "natural defense."
For the first time, Internet Explorer has been losing market share. According to a worldwide survey conducted in late November by OneStat.com, a company in Amsterdam that analyzes the Web, Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. Firefox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.
Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago. He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account "all the factors that led them to choose I.E. in the first place." Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't I.E. come bundled with Windows?
Mr. Schare has said that Mozilla's Firefox must prove it can smoothly move from version 1.0 to 2.0, and has thus far enjoyed "a bit of a free ride." If I were the spokesman for the software company that included the company's browser free on every Windows PC, I'd be more careful about using the phrase "free ride."
Trying to strike a conciliatory note, Mr. Schare has also declared that he and his company were happy to have Firefox as "part of the large ecosystem" of software that runs on Windows. In fact, Firefox is ecumenically neutral, being available also for both the Mac and for Linux.
Mr. Schare may be the official spokesman, but he does not use Internet Explorer himself. Instead he uses Maxthon, published by a little company of the same name. It uses the Internet Explorer engine but provides loads of features that Internet Explorer does not. "Tabs are what hooked me," he told me, referring to the ability to open within a single window many different Web sites and move easily among them, rather than open separate windows for each one and tax the computer's memory. Firefox has tabs. Other browsers do, too. But fundamental design decisions for Internet Explorer prevent the addition of this and other desiderata without a thorough update of Windows, which will not be complete until 2006 at the earliest.
How fitting that Microsoft finds itself in this predicament. In late 1995, at a time when Netscape Na
...microsoft wasn't fair with themselves.
Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'"
They're shooting themselves in the foot here. Open source does not require you to 'buy a new personal computer'. Oh, the market does tho, and Microsoft is there for the market, not for the consumer. That's sad.
So, it only took two pages in their own newspaper to make them realize that something is out there called "Firefox" - from there, it was a snap googling out how it seems to be a web-thingie of some kind that is locked in a clinch of sorts with Microsoft's web thingie. By God, write it up! It's a story come to us!
I exaggarate, I know.
That said, the article itself is a brilliant advert for FireFox and gives an excellent overview of the circumstances in which Internet Explorer overtook Netscape and how that compares to what is happening in the browser market right now.
And assuming NYTimes is not a technical journal (which I don't think it is) it doesn't have the problem of "preaching to the choir" as so many articles have had in the past.
Long live Firefox.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
does anyone actually send the reports??
Yes. I have to maintain a lot of Windows PCs the send feature is supposed to get you any suggested fixes. I have rarely seen it work for IE or for the OS but in Office XP and above you click send, wait a minute and a website comes up that sometimes even details your problem and how to fix it. Better yet, 1 out of maybe 8 times it just fixes it. While I would never use it on the servers (due to MS "fixing" things) I think it is great for PCs.
found here: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=blog/1742
IAAL
Yeah, Firefox, great and all. But we're missing the big picture here. This is an article on NYT and the "horrid blood sucking registration required" phrase was absent from the description.
My world has just turned upside down. Is the NYT now on the slashdot buddy list?
Bleh, it contains nudity
The above should be modded down, not up
Firefox is getting alot of well deserved hype these days. Everything revolves around Firefox being new which gives it a great marketing advantage (the small non-profit organization against the goliath, microsoft). But for how long will the hype last? Although I personally belive a large milestone was reached with the release of Firefox 1.0 we must be careful not to enter the "comfort zone" and expect that this is how things will continue to be.
This was the first step, now it's time to plan for the next.
Thanks for browsing at -1
Please vistit my blog: www.framtiden.nu
The analogy comes straight from Mr. Schare. "It's like buying a car," he said. "If you want to get the latest safety features, you have to buy the latest model."
Bullshit......
Only an absolute retard would buy that line of crap.
My dad had nothing but total hell with a M$ box, BSOD's constantly, spyware, virus, trojans, etc..
I told him "Dad, time to end the stupidity. I'm going to install Linux for you".. End of problem. Same exact hardware, 100% rock solid, totally stable, totally trouble free.
OTOH, being that I work on all sorts of systems for people, I have an XP box, (behind a Linux based firewall), I keep it so I can help M$ people and just the other day it informed me new updates were available and asked if I wanted to download them. I told it NO, do not download them. Later, when I went to power down that box, it came up with a warning, telling me that it was downloading patches and installing them and DO NOT POWER DOWN or risk damage to the system. So I had to sit and wait 20 minutes while this thing did something that I did NOT authorize it to do.
I have no idea on earth WTF it even downloaded.
That's bullshit. I only fire that box up when I have to provide support for someone and walk them through something. And it does have Firefox on it, I'll NEVER use IE on it, ever.
If you want security you don't replace the computer, you dump M$.. The idiot that made the stupid comment should be run out of town on a rail...
This is like getting a letter from Ford saying they forgot to put in the airbag and if you want one, buy a new Mustang.
The other shoe will drop when MS releases Longhorn in whatever shape. MS is already painting this in the NYT article as "when the new OS is released, things will be much better, security is improved, all will be well..."
This is the version that will remove control of your PC and give it to MS and other media barons. That, my friend, will be MS's Waterloo. At the point that technically savvy users, at the point when corporate customers realize "Hey, what's in this for *me*", then the dam will break, and people will do a stunning display of inertia when it comes to upgrades.
And when MS tries to compel people to switch, then people will go to PC makers that give people a choice.
Its ironic that MS has the task of fighting an entrenched monopoly. One called Windows.
As if OSS is perceived as being as advanced without the loss of control....my goodness, the times they will be a-changin'.
The irony is so delicious, that I want to get A1 sauce and serve it up.
I dont really understand what FireFox is so much better than Mozilla, and why its such a big deal. How is it an improvement over Mozilla? Ive heard from others it has fewer features and options, and a more dumbed down UI. Dumbed down UI != ease of use. I think the less customisability software has the harder it becomes to use, for newbies and experienced users alike. It becomes more difficult for the user to customise the software for their preferences and usage pattern, and more difficult to accomplish certian tasks. The trick with useability is not to remove customisbility, but rather make software as customisable as possible but simply design a good configuration user interface that places more commonly used options more prominantly than advanced one, such as through placing the more advanced options on advanced options screens or other such techniques, thus keeping the more advanced options from confusing newbies but allowing people to gradually begin using them and discover them (and making it easy to discover them by making them all avialable through a good UI) as they become familiar with software. People often start out using software by using a subset of its features and then gradually add to their knowledge of the software and use a more complete set of its features, and different users have different needs and will use different features sets. This is why software should be as customisable as possible and not try to restrict features and functionality, but rather allow the user to customise the software to their tastes. One feature that seems useless to one person is likely essential to someone else.
Come on... Where's my reg free link, you bastards? :)
They didn't mention the great and useful plugins.
... if music be fruit of love, play on
disgusting
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
Scrappleface is running a story as well.
But don't ask me to do it I still have not figured
out how to program a hello world using it.
Seriously lets see some cool it only works in firefox xul applications.
Got Code?
Great, now when will they install it by default.
Got Code?
That's pretty good I guess but if you code to web standards like HTML 4/XHTML 1.0/1.1 and CSS 2 you don't have to support specific browsers. You may test with them and work around their bugs but your site will work on any user agent that supports the standards it was written with.
I find it interesting that the replies to a recent story about people volunteering their time to promote products were absolutely venemous, and yet most Slashdot users are unabashed Firefox evangelists. /insert tired line about cake
Howdy.
I actually started off with firefox since I used it in linux but then I needed to dual boot for a while to use some school software at home.
:(
:(
after less then a week I started using IE and scrapped firefox. It's brutally slow on my system (winXP w/ dual 533's) it's unbearable. and I'm not the only one, all my roommates agree that it's much slower then ie.
it even ruined my credibility as the "computer geek"! I told everyone about this super fast super amazing browser that'll smoke ie anyday and it ends up being junkware.
now no one listens to me
in the bonds, ppka
Well I thank the author for addressing that quote which we've seen in other articles regarding Microsoft's comments towards Firefox. The reply was exactly what I (and many more) thought of the original quote.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
My love for Firefox is accentuated daily by comparison to my continued use of IE at work. Due to security issues (which one could argue are based on MS software in the firstplace) I, as an end user, cannot install Firefox. Now the obvious solution would be to have IT migrate the institution as a whole to a new browser, but that is unlikely to happen in this particular institution for a variety of reason (monolithic administration, that ironically enough is run by committee, overworked IT, etc, etc)....
So, there are two issues here: 1. Has anyone solved this problem at their workplace? 2. IE 'market share' will always be artificially inflated by the captive user at work, which will also decrease an 'average' users chance to be exposed to Firefox.
-F
...Mr. Schare then went on to claim that the susceptibility to attack is a feature Microsoft's customers demand. "Every day we get millions of emails from Internet Explorer users thanking us for our design and also offering us great deals on herbal viagra and free porn."
I'm not entirely how buying new hardware will ultimately prevent the same _software_ bugs from reoccuring.
... well ... it's kind of a red herring.
And, I'm not sure that this will create a compelling argument for most non-technical computer users (who usually buy a PC at a _much_ less frequent rate than more savvy users). And, I suspect that the more savvy userse won't buy into this reasoning because
Choose? Doesn't I.E. come bundled with Windows?
I'll never understand this reasoning. No one forced you to use Internet Explorer. Certainly no one forced me. I used Netscape Navigator up through version 4.0, then got fed up with it and decided I'd give Internet Explorer a whirl. Liked it better, have used it since. I could have just as easily stayed with Netscape, or gone to Opera or Mozilla.
Just because something is bundled/integrated does not mean that your ability to choose an alternative is suddenly removed. That logic simply does not work.
The coolest voice ever.
hahahaha.
Who knows, the Katmandu Post might be next!
nope, never heard of Kirefox.
Sorry I just had to make that joke.
It is nice to see FireFox getting some well deserved press. It needs as much as it can get because it has a huge hurdle to overcome. It isn't pre-installed on computers. This means that it requires people to do something. /. readers enjoy improving their computers with great software, where as your average computer user wants to point and click with as little extra effort as possible. Some how the average pperson needs to be convinced that there is a greater benefit in installing FireFox than in taking no action at all.
Along with this hurdle, sit down with an IE user and install FireFox.....then watch them use it. They have no idea how to use tabbed browsing and will open browser window after browser window, because they don't know any better. And the extensions are great, but well beyond 90% of users ability to understand.
So....Remember....Don't just tell your family and friends about FireFox. Istall it for them(along with Flash, Shockwave and Java} and show them how to open multiple tabs. Install a couple extensions for them. This will take maybe 30 minutes, but it will create a FireFox user. Don't just spread the word...Show people first hand!
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Lots of folks must be avoiding the bloodsuckiness by using BugMeNot:
http://www.bugmenot.com
Kopera? :-)
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
`` Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'" ''
.. err .. Micro$oft if you prefer, in bad light. It'll run.
That was being unfair. Being fair, according to TFA, Microsoft's solution to the security problems is to upgrade to the latest windows OS, i.e. XP. Not buy a new comp. Still not a solution per se. But, it's different from buying a new machine.
Now if you say that Microsoft's solution is to upgrade to a newer OS which is better suited to the problems of current time - it doesn't sound that bad - does it? hence it must be said that "microsoft wants you to buy a new comp". It doesn't even make sense. Buying a new comp will not solve the problems - it's a software problem not a hardware problem. Doesn't matter. it'll still run, because it shows microsoft
All these are the reason I don't read newspaper anymore. You don't know what is the fact after reading them - why take time off from fragging a few more fat tailed animals in UT.
My favorite starts with a K..
Korea Browser? I heard it was only for old people. Very big fonts, that sort of thing.
Best line from the article:
Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't I.E. come bundled with Windows?
Ah, so refreshing to see a mainstream journalist hit the nail on the head in a single line.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
If you're going to troll, at least be semi-coherent
Preambulatory ramble (shield) against the zealots: While I absolutely adore FF's extensions and couldn't live without them now...
"Bold" rant: I had a look at the oft ignored Maxthon. I was very surprised to see how much faster the latter was compared to FireFox, I fail to see how FF is really as fast as it is claimed. Also, its plugins and extensions do work very well inspite of being less customisable than FF's...
Conciliatory note: Anyway, hurrah for the 11e6 downloads, as long as it doesn't encourage further slow down/bloating of FF!
"Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a "natural defense."
http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net ;)
The World is Yours.
More FFX tidbits from HP: http://h10014.www1.hp.com/news/dec04.html#four
Download and test your pages in Firefox
Our latest browser technology statistics indicate that the use of Mozilla is increasing dramatically in our Web audience. The advent of Firefox has been a major catalyst for Web users to switch to Mozilla. This browser has received widespread publicity recently, including an article in the Wall Street Journal (scroll down to browsing safely subhead).
As a result, after IE6, Mozilla is the most popular browser used to access HP.com. Fortunately, our HTML pages render very similarly on Firefox to the way they render in IE. However, we are getting a rapidly increasing stream of complaints from our Firefox customers about portions of our site -- especially Web applications -- that do not work in Firefox. Often our Firefox customers are faced with unfriendly error messages, and missing functionality.
Take Action Now!
Download Firefox browser from Mozilla's web site http://www.mozilla.org/.
Test your pages in Firefox
Make sure your Web Section is as smooth and polished in Firefox as it is in IE. Don't let your customers find your bugs first!
Mr. Schare? Is that you?
They're saying it's not the case that 90% of users choose to use IE, as Mr. Schare implies. Many, if not most, people use IE because it's preinstalled on their computer, and they don't know about the alternatives.
Then the way the article is phrased is misleading. So people don't know about alternatives - whose fault is that? The users' for not bothering to find out even after some of them get fed up with the IE browsing experience? The Mozilla Organization's for not marketing aggressively enough?
It's easy to place the blame for user ignorance on Microsoft, but to do so does not reflect the huge roles that others have played. The act of making something built-in does not guarantee that the user won't discover and use something else, as millions of Slashdot readers have demonstrated. Yes, most average users aren't aware, but again, whose fault is that? Who is to be blamed for their general laziness and cluelessness? Microsoft? Shall we eradicate any sense of user responsibility? Most people, amazingly, still don't want to give two shits about properly caring for their computer or learning about the hazards of the Internet, despite the fact that the Internet has become a fact of modern life - it's fast, it's cheap, and it's everywhere. The root problem is a culture of user complacency that goes far deeper than any one company or browser.
The coolest voice ever.
I can't even use IE anymore. I get so angry when I have to type out "www" and ".com" instead of ctrl-entering.
Good point but what HP is explecitly telling their people not to use any of MS only HTML "enahancements" that other browsers don't support and shouldn't have to.
For the non-nerds 11e6 is 11million in standard form.
For example take this, they support Netscape7, but lock out Mozilla and Firefox.
The webmaster did not want to believe me when I told him those browsers are essentially the same (I had a rather lenghty email conversation with him), but he will when he gets enough complaints from enough different people.
One makes a choice based on the information one has available.
It may be a little information, or a lot of information. Who is to blame for a user not having sufficient information, or not assigning enough importance to the matter?
The coolest voice ever.
What I fear with this positive writing on Firefox is that the New York Times and the article will be called biased by critics because of the ad. After all, a two page ad in NYT costs alot of money.
it looks like if i don't have a registration key, i can't see the article. please can i get an alternative source...
If we apply the same technique of the open source browser to all of the Microsoft Operating system we can say that none of it is clean code since 2001 (possibly earlier).
The major opensource projects get looked at on a regular basis.
Why UNIX?
As much as I hate IE and the security nightmare it creates, the sad fact is that for banks, other financial institutions and coporate intranets, ActiveX and other IE gorp can't be avoided.
It sucks to introduce people to Firefox, have them all impressed and then get a call that they can't get through to their Wells Fargo account (if any IT people from Well Fargo are reading this, get a clue. Your bank is one of the biggest in Silicon Valley and the fact that you persist in being IE centric is pissing a lot of your customers off).
Company intranets are a hopeless case. Considering the bureaucratic, pin headed phb mentality behind most corporate IT departments, it will years (if ever) before company intranets are adapted for non-IE browsers. The only even partial solution to gain Firefox type features in this case is to use Maxthon, and that still leaves the door wide open security wise.
In all honesty, my favorite is Internet Explorer. While there are obvious advantages to using Firefox, I find that MSIE has a nicer feel to it (personal preference I guess). I downloaded and used firefox for a while but I went back, mainly because of little things (firefox crashed on occasion, some pages seemed to load slower, etc). If MSIE is used with a little intelligence (Firewall installed, run adaware once in a while, Google toolbar to block popups) it really isn't that bad, and the hassle involved in watching out for the security holes is worth the better interface. ... IMHO
Why do people always point out that there are some IE only sites left? I can't remember seeing one lately.
Plus, Firefox does have the problems of fairly new software. IE is a piece of shit, sure, but I can leave as many IE browser windows as I want open overnight without coming back to find it taking up all my spare memory. Because most video plugins had many more years of development for IE than for Firefox, sometimes it crashes with Quicktime/Winmedia, etc. But despite memory handling problems, poor compatibility with inline video(or vice versa) and slower response time, it's definitely my favorite- Adblock eliminates the need for an ad-filtering proxy, the Web Developer toolbar is awesome, etc.
We could set our watches by the date when, six months from now, Firefox is arrested with a variety of prescription drugs and marijuana while trying to pick up a hooker that turned out to be an undercover cop.
Who did what now?
i have just been wondering that does slashdot implies firefox and vice versa? i shifted to firefox after reading on slashdot and i now see many more of firefox users. Also there is a bug reported in firefox that caters to only slashdot rendering. So does this mean, Geek==Slashdot==Firefox? has anyone done a poll on the browsers used among slashdot users?
This bears repeating:
Joe User can't fix a Windows problem any more than he can fix a Linux problem.
To drive home the point, how about this very reference from this morning? It took a sysadmin with VERY MUCH clue 5 hours to nuke all the stuff off a Wintel machine, and all it takes for it to come undone is one little click on the IE icon.
I cleaned up a friend's machine last month. The father was sure the kids were surfing pr0n sites and nasty bits that he didn't want them to go into. To prove it wasn't their fault I logged on and I opened IE. We waited about 5 minutes with my hands off of the keyboard while we chatted about this 'n that. I logged off and re-ran the spyware and malware scanners. 50 hits in 5 minutes. He was stunned.
I couldn't get him to go to Linux, but at least he's running Firefox now.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Rather than introduce ActiveX to default Firefox builds, you could just leave IE installed on max security (block all ActiveX, among other things) and only certain trusted sites enforced by IEAK, while deploying Mozilla 1.7 for mainline use. That's what we do.
And it's not just ActX now, we had to check all of our PCs for JRE when the recent vulnerability was announced, and installing JRE5 does not uninstall the defective JREs, annoyingly.
Corporate installs of FF 1.1 and/or Moz 2 would be nice with MSIs and options to retain trusted plugins like Flash, Acrobat and dictionaries. It's very annoying having to reinstall dictionaries when upgrading Mozilla.
When "whistle blowing", I post "anonimously" :-)
You should do the same since Big Brother may be watching you....
I was mentioning this ad in the New York Times the other day to someone at work, and their comment was, "Oh, too bad we can't get the NYT unless we drive across the city to the big bookstore."
Maybe instead of shooting for such an expensive ad that people would only see once, perhaps donations could be made by people and groups to advertise Firefox in their local newspapers, where it is sure to be seen by more people, and cheap enough it could run more then once.
Hey, I'd donate $50 to have it appear in my local newspaper (that would be a small ad in the corner of a page), and if I asked some of my friends I am sure enough could be raised to see it appear more prominently towards the front and in a much more larger size.
I wonder if the foundation who put together the big ad would be interested in such an idea, or even fellow slashdotters?
Firefox is better than Mozilla because it does one thing and does it well. Mozilla tries to be apprentice of many professions, master in none. This makes Firefox faster and more secure (the biggest your pile of code, the easier it is to introduce bugs).
Obviously you have no idea about User Interface Design. When you are dealing with a set of users (web surfers) that are not familiar with a given field of expertise (IT, Computers) the last thing you want to do is to burden them with too many choices and seetings. A reminder of this is the mythical clock on VCRs (always blinking in 00:00). You want to offer only the important settings and keep as much as possible under the hood with sensible defaults. Firefox improves on Mozilla on this regard but I think it could do even better.
It is a well documented fact in User Interface Design that the more complex and rich an interface is the more confussed a newbie will be.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You suggest that anybody who wants to play Windows video games on Linux use Cedega, the successor to WineX. The problem is that unlike Windows, Cedega is not bundled with the computer at no additional overt cost.
>"Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer".
:D
Ok, will do!
Apple, here I come!
Yep - I've done the same thing for a few people. But I will say this. If you have serious problems with IE on your machine (such as pop-up ads coming up like mad when you launch it, or crashes with error report logs coming up whenever you visit certain sites), you really should still get to the bottom of the core problem.
.DLL registration problems in Windows itself. If these problems aren't hunted down and resolved, you risk having crashes in some of your other apps too.
You can use FireFox as a good "work around", but when the user clicks on "Windows Update" to check for/get OS upgrades, it's going to still launch IE for that job, even if FireFox is set as the default browser - and the upgrades will probably fail.
Also, some of the IE crashes I've seen when people visit certain secure sites, or sites using lots of Javascript are actually due to
I've been using Mozilla for quite some time. While I have Firefox installed on many of my systems, I just prefer the Mozilla browser over it.
To me, Firefox looks like it tries to be like IE to ease the average Joe into using it. I don't really like IE but FF still has to win me over.
Kynx?
does anyone actually send the reports??
Better question: Does anybody at Microsoft read them?
I don't think the first launch is the only difference.
One thing I've noticed about Firefox and Thunderbird is that, when I have them running in the background for some time (15 minutes, or so), doing some CPU and memory intensive tasks in the foreground with other apps, it takes AGES to restore them after being minimized. I've only noticed that with these two apps. They have some kind of memory management that I think it's just not good.
Hope they fix stuff fast. Last I had to use HP/Compaq internal web stuff (for verifying desktop computer warranties and look up for parts), it was horribly broken IE-only piece of junk. You basically couldn't do jack with Mozilla. Granted, that *was* something like 6 months ago, but considering how tightly it was IE-only, some webdrones probably had to/have to recode lots of it.
So, someone has an opinion that DOESN'T go with the flow, and he's a troll/flamebait?
And he prefers an open-source browser over another?
Geeze, I'm glad to be locked into the Apple castle than be in the fight ring with you guys.
>Korea Browser? I heard it was only for old people. Very big fonts, that sort of thing.
And it does have an email client built-in, too! Perfect for old people!
But I think Mr. Stross is going to have a short career; M$ once got 16 pages of ads pulled form a magazine in which I had published a story critical of them and got me fired. Of course, I hadn't commissionned the story, the editor in chief had - but by firing me he demonstrated that he would toe the line in future.
This is not a signature.
Better headline:
Slashdot reports on NYTimes reporting on Firefox.
World goes back to bed.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
In fact, you need a browser to download FireFox. Windows also comes in handy for downloading Linux et al and burning them to CD to be installed over Windows.
So bundling IE with Windows makes it unnecessary to choose something else, and facilitates your choice if you choose to change. Likewise, prebundling Windows also facilitates your ability to choose something else.
People choose IE by not using it to replace itself with something else like FireFox. You can choose to build your own system and buy a Linux distro and skip Windows all together.
Not changing browsers due to lack of caring is a choice. You also choose which system you want to buy. If you choose to buy a prebuilt system or choose to buy Windows then you choose to start out your internet experience with IE.
Work Safe Porn
This is the link:
n ey/19digi.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&positio n=
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/business/yourmo
Cheers, now3djp
I think you have outdated information. My own bank works just fine in Safari or Mozilla. A lot of banks have changed interfaces in the last year or two - are there any banks left that are verified not to work under IE?
Now intranet stuff at work, that's another matter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which distro bundles OO.o pre-2.x? No wait, none, because OO.o pre-2.x came out just two days ago.
Download the 2.0 PR.
"Linux 95M | Win 78M" doesn't help if you're on NetZero dial-up. Lots of ISPs kick the user off after about 2 hours of being connected (long enough to download 30 MB if you're lucky), and lots of people don't know Wget exists, let alone how to use it.
Besides, it's frequently been suggested that people who haven't used computers before are much happier dealing with a commandline than a GUI.
The problem is that the majority of computer users have used computers before, and they're intimately familiar with the Windows GUI. Heck, people complained about the Windows XP Start Menu being green and/or shaped differently.
Its a lot like if you dont like linux.. you get modded into obvilion..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The rest of it is "his story|hisstory"?
;)
How 'bout "hi(s )?story"?
Okay, okay, pendant go home.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I agree,
I'm a Brit living in the Netherlands, and both my UK Lloyds and Dutch ABN Amro online banking systems work fine in Firefox. The way I see it, if a site requires ActiveX to work then I will find an alternative site rather than using ActiveX.
Dude... did that guy just say "re-architecting?"
The Penguin Producer
IBM are planning on doing this too.
http://extensions.roachfiend.com/howto.php
Thats for extensions. Otherwise check out.
http://www.xulplanet.com/
It is very easy to do.
Better yet, why not USA Today. That is more accessable and populist, without the trouble of having to arrange the ad placement 2000 times.
Plugins for Firefox may change its face totally and they aren't meant as "some extra fancy" but as an essential component.
But then plug-ins stop working as soon as people upgrade their browser because Mozilla Foundation releases a security update. Exactly how frozen is the API used by plug-ins? And where is, say, a version of Firesomething that works with Firefox 1.0?
The answers to the last three are usually "Probably.", "Probably not." "Probably not." Your average Joe Blow:
1)isn't likely to have the skill or inclination to run windows update, let alone upgrade his operating system. Hell, most people who /are/ knowledgeble and even a lot of professionals find it easier to just buy a new machine, or do a wipe and install the new OS clean rather than put an upgrade disk into a machine that works.
2)Is likely to have some Fishing Hole(tm) GPS software that only runs on Windows ME with the bug of the day patch for nov 17, 2000 installed, and be running a p233 with 64MB of RAM. Regardless of the printing on the box, XP will NOT run of such an animal. Not to joe Blow's liking, anyway.
Microsoft deserves very much to have Windows be considered simply a part of the "magic box", because they embraced the idea, not handling their own support, and seeing to it that everyone's grandma had a "dell windows dimension peecee." Joe Blow doesn't think of Windows as something other than an integral part of the "computer", because MS convinced him otherwise. They did this dude.
I would like to say a few words about nudity in the world today. And I, for one, and just appalled by it.
Are you aware that underneath their clothing, every single human is walking around completely NAKED?
Yes, and it's not just the people, although goodness knows that's bad enough. Animals too, even cute little doggies and pussycats can't be trusted. Underneath their fur...absolutely NAKED!!
And it's not just the quadrupeds either! Birds, yes, even birds, underneath all their fine feathers, completely...
Well I used to love Firefox and it's still a better browser than IE (by miles)
But since version 1.0 I'm getting sick to death of it telling me I need plug ins for websites I visit (via the small yellow div it superimposes at the top of each affected page)
No, I dont want these plugins thanks. Nor do I wish to be asked about them EVER AGAIN. I don't want flash, I don't want streaming medai crap. I'm a luddite who wants text and images full stop. Every other whizz bang plugin seems to be used for one thing - crappy advertising. And I don't want 'em on my PC.
This continual nagging is pissing me off as much as the inability to stop IE prompting me to download Active-X ("For the umpteenth time, No I do not want to download their crappy plugins")
Please people, if you write software respect your users. Ask me once and give me the options to say "No thanks" and "NO thanks and don;t bother me again about it".
Jesus !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
It sucks to introduce people to Firefox, have them all impressed and then get a call that they can't get through to their Wells Fargo account
Others have reported no problems. Specifically, Firefox 1.0 shows up in the browser test as Mozilla 1.7.5, which is supported.
I'd still have to go to that bookstore across town to get it. Not everyone lives in the states where NYT and USA Today are easily attainable.
`` Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'" ''
That was being unfair. Being fair, according to TFA, Microsoft's solution to the security problems is to upgrade to the latest windows OS, i.e. XP. Not buy a new comp.
DOH! The point of upgrading to a new comp was to BE ABLE to run the latest version of XP.
Anyway, this is the problem of XP. It comes bundled with lots of useless software: Outlook express, IE6, Netmeeting (WTF? I tried to erase the netmeeting directory the other day, i had to reinstall windows or insert the CD in order to restore the system config - and if that doesn't come bundled with windows, maybe it was the MSN thingy, but why is it now part of the OS???), DirectX 8.0 or whatever, which clutters your C: drive. You can't even tell it where to put "Program Files" or the virtual memory files on installation. It always does on C: drive.
in other words, winxp is a complete load of "FAT"ware. I guess *THIS* is the reason why the user needs to upgrade his PC in order to run the latest version of XP with SP2 etc etc.
As sacreligious as it is, I think Firefox should have a plugin that allows Active X to run, but set-up so that only certain URLs as provided by the user allow this.
o ad :)
It has.
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm#downl
In fact, I'm using it in my firefox right now, listening to embedded midi's
And yes, it ONLY enables windows media player. All other activex plugins have to be inserted by hand.
Sorry, part of the last URL fell out (from now on, I'll check the links in the preview...) Here's the right one: Complex Spiral demo. Check out the distorted version too...
Also, Penn state university urges 80000 students to dump IE.
i have managed (in the past) to talk folks though downloading Mozilla (suite) via command line FTP. It is quite easy once you know the path. Once you know the path you might be able to directly download it via an FTP app or a download manager.
.torrent and a link to Bram Coehn's official BitTorrent client.
Then again, i've had switchers successfully download firefox with a
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
you're getting all the extra publicity that ripples out from the news agencies that report on the ad.
This isn't to say that Firefox is bad, just that the looney Deaniacs aren't far from the truth when they say the much of the mainstream press is driven by profit above all else. Dan Rather didn't depart CBS Evening News a year earlier than he may have liked because he used forged memos in a bumbled attempt to slander Bush. He went because his ratings are the lowest in network news. It wasn't that he was a liar. It was that he was an unsuccessful and widely disliked liar. That made all the difference.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
is omniweb 5. It's got the best interface of any browser I've ever used, on any platform. I really enjoy it's easy to use site-preferences and it's tabbed browsing is quite useful.
I guess I had in mind something that would be in newspaper machines in cities -- and it is delivered to many hotel rooms gratis.
But you made me think, out town's chamber of commerce was always looking for advertising in their monthly newsletter, I wonder if they could come up with an 8.5 x 11 version that people could pay to insert in things like chamber newsletters. That would probably the the same price or less than a full page newspaper ad, and would get in front of a lot of small and medium business leaders.
Nobody is stopping the OSS crowd from creating and running ads for Linux anywhere. It's a choice on the OSS crowd's side not to run advertisements. You can't then turn around and whine because nobody knows about your product.
If you try to run Windows XP with anything less than 256 megs of ram, you'll be in a world of hurt.
Thanks to wonderful features like alpha blending on the desktop and general "feature" bloat, the 700 MHz compy you bought *before* XP came out will run like a 486 running Win98. (I've seen it done. It's not a pretty sight.) I shouldn't have to buy a new computer just to use the the internet.
Interesting...
Firefox is suddenly unable to view all websites... just when I thought it was great, it goes and changes by itself. I didn't do any changes, and right now there are three webshops I can't through to, although I could just yesterday. They work in IE and the Mozilla suite, but not Firefox.
They worked with the hardware makers so the machines
in the store boot to a desktop just by turning them on. I use a remaster of Knoppix Linux, and I still have to "myconfig=scan", admittedly not much to ask, but this OS only runs on one of my machines, not all of them. I have Damn Small Linux, remastered, based on version 0.6.2, and it runs on all of my machines.
The latest versions of DSL share the same kernel as
Knoppix, or thereabouts, and are limited in booting on all fairly current machines. Microsoft made sure that the OS, be it Windows 3.1, Windows 95, 98 or XP would boot to a desktop, and be able to connect to the internet through a simple dial up connection. True, they pressured the modem makers to come up with the "winmodem", that would not run on linux. So, lots of linux boxes cannot connect, even it they would come up with a desktop, such as icewm. 128 MB of ram is not a lot to ask for, and that is all that is required for fluxbox or icewm. I run DSL on 200 MMX processors all the time, and Knoppix on dual 200 MMX processors. Ready for the Desktop means "A desktop in the store". Not too long ago, Office Depot had tons of Windows 3.1 machines up and running in their showroom, before any of them could connect to the Internet. AOL was the easiest way for that OS to connect to the internet, so we have another success story, etc.
I have a lot of neat stuff in my remaster of Knoppix Linux, and I do enjoy it, and the freedom from virus worries, security updates, vs Windows XP. Those of us who work with Knoppix remastering have something here, and wish we could share it with more computer users.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
Here is a convo with a friend: ..
:@
MSN Conversation, containing:
Mike - If you run Windows, there is no doubt your PC will get fucked before you do. - Atleast www.getfirefox.com
and
Cat is not an animal, it's a flavour
[12:34:17 PM] Cat is not a: yo
[12:34:24 PM] Mike - If yo: hey
[12:34:36 PM] Cat is not a: we've got money spiders!
[12:36:04 PM] Mike - If yo: Lol cool
[12:36:08 PM] Mike - If yo: do u still use firefox?
[12:36:12 PM] Cat is not a: nope
[12:36:19 PM] Mike - If yo: how come?
[12:36:36 PM] Cat is not a: cause it didnt let me acess shit, stupid built in firewall
[12:36:37 PM] Cat is not a: toodles dude
Idiot.
[10:01:03 PM] w00t special: great
[10:01:15 PM] w00t special: theres a fucking search bar installed
[10:01:55 PM] Mike - If yo: its a standard firefox feature
[10:02:07 PM] Mike - If yo: or in IE?
[10:04:21 PM] w00t special: in ie
[10:04:26 PM] w00t special: i fdont use firefox
[10:04:59 PM] Mike - If yo: How come
[10:09:53 PM] w00t special: dont like it
[10:10:04 PM] Mike - If yo: How come
[10:13:06 PM] w00t special: cos i like IE
Idiot(s).
My dad, who supports proprietary software like it's his job, received an e-mail from UPROMISE after his IE didn't work correctly. They advised various stuff, and then," We also suggest an alternative browser, such as Mozilla Firefox." My dad was ranting for the next 10 minutes.
I was wondering what brought me this early Christmass present. A client of mine included the following in an email he sent me this morning.
3) I'd like to get your thoughts on whether we should migrate over to
Foxfire from Microsoft IE internally.
As with everything, I need to let them know the benifits and drawbacks of any software change. Can anyone think of drawbacks?
You get the cost gains from not having to buy Windows.
By the time you've paid for CrossOver Office or Cedega, you may already have paid more than what Microsoft charges the largest OEMs for Windows.
Right-O, Bill.
(1) Buy a MacIntosh computer w/ OSX
(2) Set up administrator AND user accounts
(3) Remove ALL MS S/W from the computer
(4) Install F/OSS FireFox & Thunderbird
(5) Profit (from not wasting time every week
cleaning viruses & spyware from your Mac
OR
(1) Talk geeky friends into scrubbing your
current computer's hard disk of all
semblance of Microsoft (for gaming,
buy that PS2 or Xbox with savings)
(2) Install a current F/OSS GNU/linux OS
(3) Lock it down pretty tightly
(4) Profit (even more than above solution)
OR
(1) Scrub hard disk free of all Microsoft OS
(2) Reinstall current MS OS
(3) Download all new security patches (before
MS starts charging for them)
(4) Install 3rd party firewall & anti-virus &
anti-spyware packages
(5) Install F/OSS FireFox & Thunderbird S/W
(6) Profit (a bit from not buying a new
computer, but spend hours a week D/Ling
new anti-virus & anti-spyware updates)
Thanks, Bill. Option #1 or option #2 sounds
like they are way more productive. So much
for all your fake TCO studies that neglect
weekly security maintenence drugery.
But then we are considering "MS Office" which is not "specialized software" and instead has nice Open Source equivalents such as OpenOffice.org
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
last i heard the 'stang was a fast, powerful and only moderately overpriced hunk of detroit iron.
the last 'stang i drove ('97 GT package) was agile and light on its feet. pretty forgiving of a novice, and a DREAM in the hands of a good driver.
what you're talking about is a HummerH2
suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
"...one wonder why they even bother keeping out Moz in the first place."
Well, that's the question of the hour isn't it?
This sites author and I got into a heated discussion about Firefox vs IE, and "market share" vs time spent designing properly rendered web pages.
He won, because he's the sys admn., but standards lost, as well as all of us who use other browsers.
No decernable logic to his "arguements" at all.
Wow, that page is one of the ugliest piles of steaming CRAP I've ever seen!
Hate to be contrary, this being slashdot n' all, but one of my buddies WIN XP box did exactly the same thing yesterday.
I haven't had a chance to check it out, but I'd bet it's some sort of exploit.
I forgot to mention that I had Auto Updates disabled...
I'll bet it's from Outlook, since I haven't set him up with Firebird yet.
Firefox, yes.
And it does not have tabs. I would like the next update to Thunderbird to include tabbed-mailing, something like tabbed-browsing, but the tabs will contain emails, new email (ie, while composing), person address, new person address, etc, like Lotus Notes R5 client.
"Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer"
I have a couple of suggestions for Microsoft.
Look at the "Database User Tools" or the "OpenOffice.org 1.0, ODBC, and MySQL 'How-to'" for an overview of how it works. This is much improved in OOo 2.x, which will be out early next year. Snapshots of OOo 2.0 are available for download and testing.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yes, that page is incredibly ugly, even in IE. The layout of that page is ismple enough that if it was made with a non-Microsoft program (according to the page source it was made with Microsoft Visual Studio.NET) it would work fine in any browser. Some pages that do rather complicated things and I can at least understand why it would be time and labor intensive to recode the page to be standards compliant, but I don't see any reason why dreamweaver couldn't crank out the same page with standards compliant code.
However, this example does raise an interesting point. I wonder how many web sites aren't standards compliant, or don't look good in Firefox or Opera simply because they were made with Microsoft products?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Not to discredit your otherwise valid points, consider that:
All software evolves. Call it bloat or whatever, but that's what it is - evolution. Microsoft has wanted to maintain the illusion that they innovate at a rate similar to the demand of OEMS who need shiny new toys to put in the ever powerful new computers.
I don't recall MS ever having avoided the upgrade frustration from almost any MS OS to any other MS OS. But that's not their problem. Because the OEMS don't have that problem.
Does MS make much more off OEM sales than off the shelf, full or upgrade versions? Probably.
Many people did not upgrade from 95 to 98, rather new pc buyers got 98 (at OEM prices) while the Web was becoming more popular. From personal observation, most people who upgraded from 95 to 98 did so with a friend's copy of OEM 98.
Was WinME ever sold on nonOEM systems? It's smoke and mirrors. And now that XP has set in, for better or worse, notice the slowdown on OS releases. MS might not be as interested in driving *other's* hardware sales as they once were.
Windows XP does not require the kind of backup/restore issues suffered by the 9x line. I doubt that MS has any intention of returning to that mess.
The discussion was _not_ about hardware compatability, it was about the GUI.
Without a driver for the video card, the machine will run in 16-color VGA mode, and people will think Linux's GUI is ugly.