Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox

didde writes "It seems like our friends in Redmond are quite happy about IE. According to this article, they won't be updating it until Longhorn. My favorite quote would be [We have a very, very innovative set of capabilities that we're putting in the next version. And in the meantime it's an extensible platform, and there will be a set of extensions that Microsoft does as well as others.] Oh boy, are they actually working side by side with the virusmakers and phishers?" That just gives the MozBoys a year head start.

Comments

We're heard this line before

[cybermint]

Microsoft said the same thing about Linux a while back. It took a while, but they finally admitted that it was infact, a big theat.

Re:We're heard this line before

[DominoTree]

We've also heard them say that FireFox has no features to compete with IE, then admit to never trying FireFox.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Alien Being]

They said it about the Internet/WWW too.

Re:We're heard this line before

[airjrdn]

Theat to whom? MS in the server market? It already was to some extent. Threat to the desktop market? Not for a LONG time if ever.

Re:We're heard this line before

[thammoud]

It is not a fair comparison. It's a lot easier to change a web browser than Switch to a new OS. People like word and excel and the great selection of windows apps and will not easily dump these applications for their Linux equivalent.

As far as Linux is concerned, it is doing very well on the server but is pretty insignificant on the desktop and will probably remain so for the furseeable future.

Re:We're heard this line before

[wdd1040]

Why?

Look at how far linux has came in the last 3-5 years.

Re:We're heard this line before

[MoonBuggy]

I'm inclined not to take this at face value. While they are morally lacking and put out some pretty poor (in comparison with the alternatives) software, Microsoft have historically been excellent business people.

They've already lost the hyped up WinFS, while Spotlight is still on track to arrive in the next few months. People (and governments) are realising that Linux can often do what they need cheaper and faster (OSX can also often do it better, but it costs more and the design types that need it are already using it). Now MS is risking their place in the browser market, which is bigger than it might appear on the surface - once the average grandmother is using a different browser (because the big media told her that a virus would make her computer explode if she didn't) it's putting the thought into everyone's head that maybe there's an alternative to MS, that they don't define computing.

All of that does not look like good marketing to me, but MS lives on good marketing and little more, so it would appear that there are two possible outcomes here: either MS has something up its sleeve to counteract all of the things going wrong for their image lately, or that they honestly believe in their own untouchability, in which case they might just have a hard fall coming before Longhorn is out the door.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at how far linux has came in the last 3-5 years.

On the desktop? Not very far.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

That at least explains this.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Haydn Fenton]

I think the grandparent is referring to the story about an MS article reviewing MSN Search which features a screenshot of MSN Search in the Firefox browser. Microsoft, being Microsoft, denied it completely, even though we all had the evidence on many websites.
Of course I may be wrong.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

linux has already lost them my desktop, permanently.

"But your desktop is not The Desktop, you don't count, because you're tech-savvy enough to run linux".

Bullshit. Linux is already on thousands upon thousands of desktops, mine included. Linux is ready for anyone with a normal IQ. I realise that excludes large swathes of the USA, but hey, Microsoft can have the idiots - I only care about Microsoft when they start to try to stop ME doing what I want to by paying for new ultra-fascistic patent laws.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, looks like I am wrong. Should have read the full comment not jus' skimmed. Ah well, that's a /.er for ya.

Re:We're heard this line before

[dougmc]

It's a lot easier to change a web browser than Switch to a new OS.

I agree. However ...

People like word and excel and the great selection of windows apps and will not easily dump these applications for their Linux equivalent.

... the example you give isn't about the OS at all. It's about *applications* that are only available on a few OS's. (i.e. Windows and MacOS.) (There is Crossover Office, which makes Office run under Linux via Wine, but it still has some pretty serious issues, at least it did when I tried it.)

And again, I agree. [Lack of] Microsoft Office is probably the number one thing keeping Linux off the desktop at many businesses today. (It's not the only thing, but it's the biggest thing.)

It's unfortunately, really, that projects like OpenOffice and AbiWord are graded, not upon their own features and merits, but on how well they interoperate with the de-facto standard, Microsoft Office. (Of course, Microsoft is fully aware of this, and it's probably the #2 reason that they keep mucking with the Office formats every chance they get -- to 1) force people to upgrade to read the documents sent by their peers who have already upgraded, and 2) to `break' things like OpenOffice.)

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Theat to whom? MS in the server market? It already was to some extent. Threat to the desktop market? Not for a LONG time if ever.

MS inherited the old Netware/Vines market for intranet servers, but the Internet server market has never really belonged to them - what inroads they have made in that market are not strong enough to survive a better product as anything other than a legacy system. Linux will not be able to take the intranet market from MS for quite some time, but their market share in that space must be suffering a steady erosion. I agree that Linux on the desktop is still a long ways off (if ever), the economics of the PC business would need to change - the current system is kind of deadlocked into place, but one of the keystones could somehow slip and everything shift into a new placement.

Re:We're heard this line before

[hawk]

In fact, this situation hasn't changed much since Microsoft first deigned to publicly not notice Linux.
At the time, Linux had virtually no desktop presence, and Microsoft a negligible share of the server market.
While both have grown over the past few years, MS's share in servers has grown far more than the Linux desktop share.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Juanvaldes]

once the average grandmother is using a different browser (because the big media told her that a virus would make her computer explode if she didn't) it's putting the thought into everyone's head that maybe there's an alternative to MS, that they don't define computing.

As I read this it occurred to me, has MS EVER lost a market once they came to dominate it? Obviously not OS or Office markets. They never owned the server market. Sure they have had some amazing failures and other offerings that any other company would have had to give up on long ago. But has MS ever lost a market like this before?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Monkelectric]

Now MS is risking their place in the browser market... Microsoft have historically been excellent business people.

What browser market is that again? Remember MS wanted the "browser market" to put NS out of business -- and they did -- and after that, they let IE lay fallow for 5 years.

They can't *put* mozilla out of business. The only thing they are saying is "run longhorn, our browser is cooler".

Re:We're heard this line before

[iamacat]

If someone has a normal/high intelligence, it doesn't mean he/she enjoys puzzling out sendmail.cf or remembering if a given program uses Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V, Ctrl-Ins/Shift-Ins or select/middle mouse button for copy and paste. Personally, I would rather write a new program or play a good puzzle game.

Re:We're heard this line before

[man_of_mr_e]

What it really boils down to is this. Microsoft knows quite well what Edward Yourdon wrote about "good enough" software. So long as they keep IE "good enough" for the majority of users, they won't get that many defections.

You might argue that IE isn't "good enough" but for the vast majority of people, it is. At least as far as they're concerned.

Microsoft staved off a lot of problems with SP2, which really goes a long way toward making IE "almost good enough". So long as they can address major security holes within a decent amount of time, people will be content to wait for all these big changes that will happen in IE7.

Until web sites start breaking, some major IE related worm comes along that claims 99% of the users systems, or something equally as serious. They won't budge more than a few percentage points.

Of course it doesn't hurt MS that they have to keep IE around anyway to run Windows Update, or use the help system, run Quicken or a number of other apps.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Rew190]

Do you know how many users believe their web browser is basically their operating system? There are a lot of folks who have computer for the sole purpose of email, internet, and instant messaging. For all intents and purposes for this group, the browser IS as important as the OS, if not more so.

Re:We're heard this line before

[eno2001]

"Came on the desktop"? Eww!!! ;P

(I kid because I love. I use Linux pretty much exclusively at home)

Re:We're heard this line before

[Eric Giguere]

Here are some articles I wrote related to this topic:

• How to detect Internet Explorer
• Masquerading your browser
• HTTP header viewer

Eric

Re:We're heard this line before

[darthdavid]

Have you seen an old version of KDE or GNOME compared to a current one?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you used linux? I haven't had to edit a sendmail.cf EVER (but I've never installed a desktop distro dumb enough to use the hideous sendmail out-of-box).

And all modern linux apps use Ctrl-X/C/V for cut/copy/paste to the "CLIPBOARD" selection, and have a completely independent highlight/middlemouse system for the "PRIMARY" selection. This means you can be ignore the middlemouse system if you don't like it. This behaviour was standardised YEARS AGO by freedesktop.org, based on a Zawinski rant of yore.

Re:We're heard this line before

[schon]

If someone has a normal/high intelligence, it doesn't mean he/she enjoys puzzling out sendmail.cf

Yeah, because that's what *desktop* users do everyday, right?

Re:We're heard this line before

[marcello_dl]

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

(Ghandi)

Re:We're heard this line before

[tdemark]

So long as they keep IE "good enough" for the majority of users, they won't get that many defections.

Someone better tell that to these guys. While it is only one data point, the few large sites that I have seen actual logs to show similar results (>1% / month defection rate).

- Tony

Re:We're heard this line before

[secretsquirel]

Either way its still a good point. Seriously, who really gives a duck what some random dude who happens to work in the mailroom at microsoft say's. Basicaly there was just no real news to report on. Please move along, nothing to see here.

Re:We're heard this line before

[vsprintf]

I'm inclined not to take this at face value. While they are morally lacking and put out some pretty poor (in comparison with the alternatives) software, Microsoft have historically been excellent business people.

I might quibble with the term "excellent", but MS is doing what it has always done when challenged. They are claiming that their next version (of whatever) has all the features of the competition and more, so wait for it! They've pulled this same ploy for decades, and it works because people are gullible, and MS isn't above selling vaporware.

Re:We're heard this line before

[killjoe]

They only dominate in OS and Office software. Obviously monopolies of that magnitude are not going to go away overnight.

That's not the really important thing though. The really important thing is that they have been unable to leverage those monopolies to gain monopolies in other fields despite trying desparately to do so.

They have suffered one severe setback another whether it's MSN, MS-TV (whatever the hell that was), set top boxes, MS at work, SQL server, IIS, NT server, Active directory, .NET, sidewalk, xbox, etc.

Some of those products are successful but none of them have achieved a monopoly which is the only goal for MS that counts.

As long as MS fails to leverage their monopolies to achieve other the world is a better place.

In time their current monopolies will erode and wither, all empires fall eventually but the big ones take a while.

Re:We're heard this line before

[k.ellsworth]

well said.

I'm gonna make the biggest virus of all for windows... a virus that deletes the sol.exe of every single windows machine... muahahahahah

Re:We're heard this line before

[dosius]

Yeah, and they used vaporware to kill Digital Research too. >. Sick, sick, sick. Especially considering that ripping off DR was how they got onto PCs in the first place... and ripping off DR was how they stayed there (killing off GEM with vaporware promises of Windows; killing off DR DOS with Windows 95).

I think Gates had it in for Kildall, personally.

Moll.

Re:We're heard this line before

[upsidedown_duck]

has MS EVER lost a market once they came to dominate it?

They will. Every single market that Microsoft currently dominates has solid gaining competitors, because the technology is becoming commoditized more and more. Office suites are something people should not have to pay a lot of money for, any longer, as are operating systems. That could be a big one-two punch for Microsoft.

When in history has there been such a broad line of software products with a common base? Sun JDS, Xandros, Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, etc. all have the same overall source base plus their value added goodies for their target markets. This should be making Microsoft very very nervous about the future of Windows. No one can really take Windows, customize it, call it their own, and sell it, like people can with open source systems.

Re:We're heard this line before

[mrbrown1602]

(OSX can also often do it better, but it costs more and the design types that need it are already using it)

This may no longer be true if Apple releases the rumored $499 headless iMac at Macworld in January....

Re:We're heard this line before

[NatteringNabob]

They are not excellent business people, they are excellent criminals. They not only committed a crime netting them billions, but, despite a conviction, they escaped punishment except for a few token payments.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you consider making an as-undetectable-as-possible virus that spread rapidly, and then after an incubation period, just added a small number to an excel cell every so often instead?

Vast quantities of the transactions comprimising the world's economy are handled as cells in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. A virus that quietly mucked with them (instead of shouting "Look at Me, my author is elite!!!" (can't be arsed writing in leetspeak)), would cause untold havoc once its existence came to light (hopefully well after the fact) - the c(r)apitalist system would become much less trustworthy, markets would crash, people would demand all their money from banks, etc.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys are dreaming. Firefox is super popular on the Redmond campus (I know this). The management (who can just barely use computers anyway) don't really care about Firefox because they don't make money off IE.
They might get worried if Firefox was an App platform of some weight, but that is a long way off.
And how much money is Linux costing MS anyway? Can't remember the last time MS lost ground anywhere they were making money (Multiplan?).

Re:We're heard this line before

[jelle]

You might argue that IE isn't "good enough" but for the vast majority of people, it is. At least as far as they're concerned.

Translation: You might argue B is false, but I say B is true.

I say for the vast majority of people, IE actually is not good enough.

Actually, you say that too, one paragraph below... "goes [] toward making [it] almost good enough". almost is only almost, toward almost is not even almost, and sp2 is not installed by a lot of people.

The reasons why ie is not good enough include, but are not limited to popups, spyware, and tabbed browsing. I've seen it many times already even with nontechnical people. Making the switch is easy for almost everybody.

They won't budge more than a few percentage points.

Prepare to be surprised ;-)

Re:We're heard this line before

[johnnyb]

I've been wondering where Microsoft has been. Usually they're cooking _something_ up, whether its good or bad. But it seems like this year they have all but dropped off the map.

Internet Explorer isn't being updated. .NET is gaining some traction, but its not being hyped anymore, and its definitely not the solution MS was saying it was.

Windows Server 2003 is a yawn.

SQL Server hasn't done anything exciting, except come out with a desktop version.

Anything new in Office?

On top of that, they are being slaughtered by Apple who keeps coming out with great things that people need to buy. Apple keeps redefining what the computer experience is. Linux keeps redefining what the server experience is.

Where did Microsoft go? Honestly, I at least expected some vaporware.

What gives? Not that I'm complaining, though.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Epistax]

I think the grandparent is referring to the story about an MS article reviewing MSN Search which features a screenshot of MSN Search in the Firefox browser.

Context overflow. Core dumped.

Re:We're heard this line before

[koreaman]

But 2005 is the year of Linux on the desktop!
Didn't you know?

Re:We're heard this line before

[symbolic]

It's unfortunately, really, that projects like OpenOffice and AbiWord are graded, not upon their own features and merits, but on how well they interoperate with the de-facto standard, Microsoft Office.

Considering that any switch involves real resources (time and money), the idea is to try and convince them that they can switch AND avoid any residual pain. In other words, OpenOffice has to be as much of a drop-in replacement as possible. It means that whatever OO offers will need to be a lot like their Windows equivalents. It's not something that a lot of Open Source fans probably like, but it's reality.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Herschel Cohen]

Being the world's second worst speller: what the hell does theat mean?

Not one comment from the grammar police! Where are you when we really need you?!

Why should MS care, when at worse they are going to wacked with a mushy theat.

Re:We're heard this line before

[drinkypoo]

IE is good enough for Microsoft's purposes as long as people keep using it. If people really do convert to firefox in sufficient numbers to make things inconvenient for M$, they will put more work into IE.

Re:We're heard this line before

[tommertron]

My question is, what does Microsoft care which browser the end user uses?

If people pay for Windows, and IE comes with Windows, then why do they care whether people install Firefox on their Windows box? Do they make any more money from people using IE over Firefox if they already have windows?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Kizzle]

Actually in Windows, IE is basically the operating system because of all the integration.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Rew190]

Absolutely. The idea is that to a large group of users, the browser and the operating system are basically synonymous.

Re:We're heard this line before

[woodhouse]

The linux desktop is not about applications; it's about drivers, it's about compatibility, it's about hardware and software just *working* when you go to use it. These things are hard to achieve, and realistically, Linux is nowhere near that stage yet, especially on the hardware side.

Re:We're heard this line before

[AvantLegion]

As I read this it occurred to me, has MS EVER lost a market once they came to dominate it? Obviously not OS or Office markets. They never owned the server market.

You're thinking on too short of a timeframe. MS's market domination really has not been very long. Change is gradual, and 10, 15, 20 years isn't long enough to think in terms of "has this EVER happened?".

Re:We're heard this line before

[generic-man]

OpenOffice lacks a database component for making simple DBs and graphical interfaces to them. Look at all the companies that rely on Access databases, regardless of what you think about Access.

Likewise, VBA is so entrenched that it would take thousands of man-hours to convert a business's scripts to StarBasic.

A comparison based solely on features is great for a new company, but existing companies have a lot to ask of OpenOffice.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

> OSX can also often do it better, but it costs more

but less than Windows...

1. $179.99 XP Home
2. $206.43 XP Pro
3. $109.99 OS X Panther

Re:We're heard this line before

[Zeinfeld]

As I read this it occurred to me, has MS EVER lost a market once they came to dominate it?

Microsoft no longer dominates the world of talking Barney dolls.

Of course the Barney partnership was the real PR blunder, all that anti-trust stuff was just people trying to get at Barney through Microsoft.

I don't think Microsoft is under any threat in the desktop area from Linux any more than they are under threat from Apple. Its actually quite hard to loose a dominant market position in the software industry because of the network effect.

The companies that have lost a dominant position have mostly done so through total negligence. Lotus and Wordperfect both refused to support either the Microsoft or the IBM GUI. They also charged a bucketload of cash for their product and did not drop prices when computing became a mass market. When I bought my first copy of office it was cheaper than buying either Lotus OR Wordperfect.

The markets that have gone Linux are mostly markets that ten years ago were dominated by 'engineering workstations', mostly running SunOs or Solaris.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

They're too busy getting the /. posting type police after you. Preview is your friend.

Re:We're heard this line before

[timmarhy]

i can tell you all right now, that every organisation out there has atleast one linux server out there off the books serving an internal website, or doing something of that nature. after all if you think theres a way to count linux servers out there your talking out your arse. imo which is based on talking with many fellow sysadmins and my own experience, linux HAS won the server market from ms. the only people holding on are MS zealots. MS office and accounting packages like myob are all thats saving ms on the desktop, it's certainly not them having a better product thats doing it.

Re:We're heard this line before

[GregWebb]

To me, their place in the browser market gives them two wins:

* If they can hold a significant majority with a somewhat incompatible application, they encourage an awful lot of applications to work to their standards. As they can release for whatever platforms they choose, they can help ensure other platforms maintain a reputation in the public eye for not being quite compatible with the Internet. Result, extra sales for Windows.

* If another brand starts achieving name recognition, it can potentially be put on bundled software lists by vendors building Linspire / standard Linux machines, thus building further user confidence that these things will be fine. Result, less sales for Windows.

Either way, I don't think they're this daft and complacent. Moz / Firefox (I still actually prefer the full suite) is a nice product and with almost no advertising and no bundled distrubution on top of a previous low level, it's accelerating pretty fast all things considered. It could bite them if they don't get a reaction upgrade out there to compete - and if market share for this can reach and hold at least 20% or so, application designers will have to start considering alternatives. At which point we're back with the W3C standards to provide cross-browser sites and that genie will be hard to put back in the bottle.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft said the same thing about Linux a while back. It took a while, but they finally admitted that it was infact, a big theat.

Is it?

In the server market, perhaps, but that's not analogous to Internet Explorer and is therefore irrelevant to the discussion at hand. If your comparison is fair, you need to be talking about the desktop, which is where Internet Explorer exists.

And is Linux a threat on the desktop? In a word, no. Look at me: at least a beta geek if not quite alpha. I can program fluently in six languages, and can read dozens more. I can use emacs, for God's sake. And my OS? Windows. Windows with Cygwin, of course, but Windows nonetheless, because I like it better than Linux.

If the "big threat" is unable to woo geeks, what hope does it have with Joe User?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

The linux desktop is not about applications; it's about drivers, it's about compatibility, it's about hardware and software just *working* when you go to use it. These things are hard to achieve, and realistically, Linux is nowhere near that stage yet, especially on the hardware side

Only if you are comparing Linux on a self-install to a box that came preloaded with Windows. I recently reformatted this box and dual-booted both WinXP and SuSE 9.1. I have actually had more trouble and spent more time hunting down drivers in windows than in SuSE. It didn't even have a driver for the Nvidia nic integrated into the motherboard for godsakes....but SuSE did! I had a LOT more headaches in windows.

Any company selling Linux pre-loaded on a pc will make sure that all drivers are there. This is a non-issue...or at the very least, no more of an issue in Linux than it is in Windows.

Re:We're heard this line before

[amber_of_luxor]

OpenOffice lacks a database component for making simple DBs and graphical interfaces to them.

I see you have the usual /.malady of not knowing what you are talking about.

Look at all the companies that rely on Access databases, regardless of what you think about Access.

With the appropriate drivers, you can read/write Access files using OOo.

Likewise, VBA is so entrenched that it would take thousands of man-hours to convert a business's scripts to StarBasic.

a)If the company is smart, they won't convert the scripts, but hire somebody to rewrite them from scratch.
b) Companies have to spend almost as much time to convert their VBA scripts, every time they "upgrade" to a new version of Office, as they would spend upgrading to OOo.

Amber

Re:We're heard this line before

[woodhouse]

Only if you are comparing Linux on a self-install to a box that came preloaded with Windows. I recently reformatted this box and dual-booted both WinXP and SuSE 9.1. I have actually had more trouble and spent more time hunting down drivers in windows than in SuSE. It didn't even have a driver for the Nvidia nic integrated into the motherboard for godsakes....but SuSE did! I had a LOT more headaches in windows. Your experience is not typical. Let's face it, if you throw linux a remotely non-standard piece of hardware, it's going to take some work to get the drivers working if they exist at all.

You don't want to know the number of times I recompiled my kernel just to get my MythTV box up and running, and I still don't have a working remote (it's looking like I'll have to write the IR driver myself). Any company selling Linux pre-loaded on a pc will make sure that all drivers are there. This is a non-issue...or at the very least, no more of an issue in Linux than it is in Windows. That's nice, but what about when Jo(e) Bloggs wants to plug in the USB scanner/modem/soundcard (s)he just bought from PC world? Will it work?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is a theat. It's just not a threat.

Re:We're heard this line before

[complete loony]

That link to the picture is broken, This one works

Re:We're heard this line before

[mallardtheduck]

USB soundcards are standardised (USB Audio), and there has been a linux driver for ages...
As for the scanner and modem... common chipsets will work, obscurities wont.

Re:We're heard this line before

[negativeview]

You might argue that IE isn't "good enough" but for the vast majority of people, it is. At least as far as they're concerned. IE is good enough in Microsoft's eyes because there is not some extreme evidence that says otherwise. Microsoft has been basically ignoring IE for years. It will take large numbers to make them pay attention again, and by then it may be too late. Also, I will argue about IE being "good enough." I think that IE is currently seen as being "Good Enough" just because it is still, by many people, considered the Internet instead of IE. Give the average user Firefox/Mozilla and see how quickly they notice the lack of popups*. They won't say "this is better than that old Internet Explorer" but "I didn't know this was possible!" It's not that it's not good enough, it is all that they know. * They won't notice the lack of viruses until later. Otherwise the lack of viruses would probably be more important.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Juanvaldes]

MS as a company is a little over 25 years old. So in that time frame have they ever lost a dominant position in any area? It seems (so far) the answer is no.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we start modding this as a troll? Please? Ghandi was talking about freeing a country from colonization, not web browsers.

Thanks!

Re:We're heard this line before

[wed128]

As a college student working at a help desk, i can inform you that many of our student's PCs were mucked up by Service pack 2, released this year

i believe Microsoft released a new set-top thingy this year as well.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Dan Ost]

As far as Linux is concerned, it is doing very well on the server but is pretty insignificant on the desktop and will probably remain so for the furseeable future.

Interesting you should say that. All the people I know who want new computers
are migrating from Windows machines to Macs based on the advice of their more
technically minded friends (who, by the way, run linux or plan 9 on their own
desktops).

The business desktop seems to be the last refuge of Windows. I expect this
to change in the near future.

Re:We're heard this line before

[thephotoman]

Have you tried the beta for OO.o 2.0? I'd say it's pretty damn close. And the help file is far easier to use than MS's. That said, I'm still waiting for a "OpenOffice.org for Dummies" book. That'll tell you that it's finally relevant to the market.

Re:We're heard this line before

[phazethru]

To correct you a bit...

I just got a Visioneer Strobe XP100 USB scanner. It uses 'chip=LM9832/3' which is controlled, I am told, by some variation of the plustek backend. It is a very common chipset. The problem is that this scanner is not supported. While the interface for this specific chipset exists, the driver for this scanner (how much to move the motor, light intensity numbers, etc) still needs to be be written. So.. that is what I'm going to try and do this week.

The difference is.. I have that option. How many other people do? Linux will not gain any noticable desktop volume until it *all* just works. Not just most, not just many, *all*. Maybe not out of the box, maybe you have to go download and install drivers, fine. But the drivers have to exist.

Now, far from me to say that it's not getting there. It is! I'm even trying to help in the little ways that I can. The point is, I don't see this happening in the next year. Personally, I'd love to see companies supporting their own @#$@# hardware drivers for linux. But I figure that would happen slightly after the second coming. Or once linux has 20% desktop market share. Whichever comes first.

So yeah, there is still a lot of work to be done. Any if anyone here has experience with coding for Sane, please let me know. It seems their mailing list web admin is broken at the moment. But if anyone is on the list, I'd like to hear from you.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

For the most part, the "intranet" server market is significantly more complex (and profitable) than the "internet" market, with the exception of ecommerce (where MS has a good marketshare). Look where BEA, Oracle, IBM and everyone else sells nowdays ... it ain't Internet anymore.

Most of the Internet is simple LAMP stuff, no money there so no microsoft there.

Re:We're heard this line before

[denison]

So this means that Open Office is now relevant to the market?

Re:We're heard this line before

[man_of_mr_e]

Uhh.. you are aware that IE also has a popup blocker, right?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Wiseleo]

Tabbed browsing in IE from Microsoft, no less...

If you have Visual Studio .NET, mine is 2003 edition, hit Win-R and type in DEXPLORE.

Doubleclick any meaningless help document from Vstudio and you got tabbed IE.

Enjoy,

Re:We're heard this line before

[NutscrapeSucks]

Well, that's what Microsoft thought before they spent billions of dollars getting nearly 100% marketshare in browsers and then settling all the resulting lawsuits.

The fact is that most people do not use browsers in an "integrated" manner, and can switch to browsers with little consequence. So perhaps now Microsoft realizes that "ActiveX" and a few other hooks wasn't really worth the massive investment it took.

Re:We're heard this line before

[thephotoman]

Obviously, I didn't know that existed.

Perhaps I should ammend my statement to read "when OpenOffice.org for Dummies is readily available on the shelves at my local Barnes and Noble".

It's ready for the public. Sadly, they're facing competition with far deeper pockets.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Wiseleo]

So try this approach, I use it.

Setup an X server with a pretty desktop.

Tell the users "We'd like to enable you to work faster. From this point forward, just doubleclick this. We installed a new version of Office and Internet explorer, they are called OpenOffice and Firefox. If you don't like this, feel free to use your Windows98 system."

I had zero Win98 users within a month, and zero Windows XP users within 3 months. That's a 400+ user environment.

They still think it's new Windows. The management thinks that not paying for 400 terminal services licenses is priceless.

Re:We're heard this line before

[connorbd]

Also, it's just a restatement of Schopenhauer's maxim about truth, which isn't strictly true (not all truth is "violently opposed").

Re:We're heard this line before

[Artega VH]

The grandparents post was indicating that they haven't had time to lose a dominant position. True they've been very good at getting to the top... strategies for remaining at the top are entirely different.

Ask any company CEO, MD and you'll find that staying at the top is another challenge in itself. Microsoft is discovering this (almost certainly the management of all areas already know this).

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

One word. XBox

Re:We're heard this line before

[alw53]

Historically the reason MS cared about which browser people used is because MS was afraid that the OS would become an irrelevant extension of the browser, ie commoditized. For strictly browser-based users, I think this is probably pretty close to happening.

But I think that MS will eventually lose because their people are probably getting cynical. They have had a lot of defections; their product is inferior and they know it; the management message that MS is an underdog that used to work to motivate people is getting thin. Bill Gates has always been very visible at the front of Microsoft (I don't even know who runs Cisco these days) and his personality and his "one of the boys" shtick is beginning to grate. Their marketing message, "our passion is letting you fulfill your potential" is bizarre.

Longhorn is slipping at about one-to-one at present and will probably continue to slip as
it seems to suffer from aggravated second-system syndrome and grandiosity.

MS is going to lose the home users next as they are more budget concious and less demanding (web browsing and email).

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Well linux is a user based os. Users are writting the driver they need from scratch. And that's part of the problem. It's not that the linux drivers are bad it's that hardware compagnies are not writting them. As long as linux is not seen as a mainstream os compagnies will not invest time in writting drivers for it.

Re:We're heard this line before

[ReeprFlame]

That's why Microsoft has panicked and recently started this "Linux vs Microsoft" Server panic. They actually were willing to send me "information" on why it costs less to run Windows and a trial of Windows Server 2003 [which I already have]. Of course I was expecting a huge magazine type of document with support and research. All I get was 3 lousy pages of mostly opinions from others. Anyway, Windows Server has licenses whcih cost money. So right out of the box open-source software wins. That just goes to show you the Microsoft egg-heads being oblivious to anything. Especially with FireFox, which is gaining alot of publicity and conversion among users. I have converted several people myself...

Re:We're heard this line before

[westlake]

Bullshit. Linux is already on thousands upon thousands of desktops, mine included

which would sound more impressive if Windows didn't have an installed base of 250-300 million and the OEMs weren't still shipping 7-9 million Windows systems a month.

Re:We're heard this line before

[jeif1k]

People like word and excel

In my experience, most users of Word and Excel just use them because they are there and because they have memorized how to do a few things in them. Don't fool yourself into thinking that that means they "like" those applications.

and the great selection of windows apps

Most of them self-installing, as soon as you connect your Windows machine to the Internet, right?

Re:We're heard this line before

[cammoblammo]

Since when has MS had a monopoly with the XBox? Unless they've released a Monopoly game, never.

In one word, PlayStation.

Re:We're heard this line before

[westlake]

Pop-ups are blocked in SP2. In the MSN toolbar, in the Google toolbar. in Yahoo....

They won't notice the lack of viruses until later

I have never seen a virus in eight years of running Windows at home. It is not that difficult. If I decide not to renew Norton's Internet Security service, I can get the equivelant for free from my cable ISP.

Re:We're heard this line before

[kiddygrinder]

.NET isn't being hyped any more cause they're doing a whole new programming framework in longhorn (Avalon?), which would kind of screw over anyone who spent too much time converting to .NET. Mebee MONO annoyed them enough to pull the pin? who can tell.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Christianfreak]

As much as I hate IE (I mean really frickin' hate it), as a web developer I have to say that detecting browsers and then doing something based on what that browser supports is a bad idea. The web was meant to work for everyone and since 80%+ still use IE it has to work for them.

I personally code in standard WC3 and then use IE's conditional comments to load non-standard stylesheets or do Javascript that works around IE bugs. No need for server side code and no worrying about browser versions I haven't heard of.

Re:We're heard this line before

[iamacat]

Wow, that's even worse than I remembered. Ctrl-C doesn't do much good in a terminal window, so are you saying you can actually highlight a command in xterm, try to paste it with Ctrl-V into your kde-based irc window and instead share your juicy love letter with the whole Internet? Did you ever actually try to rationalize it to non-Linux users?

As for sendmail.cf, various cron jobs/crashed editors/other programs send you e-mail that you need to access with "mail" command or some other spool-based reader. Why shouldn't you see all your e-mail at the same time?

Well, you can explain away one case, but Linux is just littered with inconsistencies that can only be ironed out by commercial distributions with very undemocratic contribution policy. One scrollbar slides down one step if clicked at the bottom. Another one scrolls all the way to the bottom in the same situation. There are endless configuration files in /etc that control very essential facilities like getting online with PPP or syncing calendar on a Palm. There are various python thingies to edit some of them, but if user A edits in with a gnome control panel and then another one opens it in KDE, it gets mangled and must be fixed by hand. In RH8, if you just put a space in PPP password, you get a syntax error with a script line number the next time you open the config tool.

I don't know how far along are Lindows/Linspire and Java desktop at overcoming these problems for new users. But definitely windows and its typical applications are not as inconsistent for simple things and in this case the complexity is annoying rather than stimulating for people with decent IQ.

Re:We're heard this line before

[zcat_NZ]

Was this the same guy at MSFT who said "All software has bugs, just the other day I had to apply a security patch for Firefox.." ?

Re:We're heard this line before

[mushroom blue]

man. what the hell does any of this has to do with Firefox or Internet Explorer?

Mods: how about modding parent offtopic for once?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Bleh. You're off topic too.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Magic5Ball]

Our server environment previously consisted of about seven RS/6000s running AIX and a dozen NT/2K boxes scattered about.

We ran our first secret linux box in 2001, which was promptly replaced with an expensive BSD box less than 12 months later. We also had a secret Windows server, but that too was replaced this summer with another BSD box, skipping the linux step entirely.

In both cases, our vendor was more than happy to support well understood BSD versus the (at the time) more quickly evolving linux distributions. Since then, the number of Windows Server (2000 and 2003) installations in our building has increased five-fold (serving about 10,000 internal clients), we've done half a dozen OS X Server installs on core servers (~15,000 remote users per day), and I think someone has set up a rogue linux box in the south wing to serve internal forums or something fun like that.

As for browsers, we have IE, Moz, Opera, FireFox and Safari installed on Mac and Windows workstations. Given the choice, most people seem to use IE on both platforms, followed by Moz (although less and less as Thunderbird gets deployed).

Re:We're heard this line before

[16K Ram Pack]

That's quite true - MS Access is a big deal to a lot of companies. There is a database tool being put into OOo 2.0 to address that. Not tried it myself yet.

Re:We're heard this line before

[16K Ram Pack]

Linux may not yet be at the Joe Bloggs "buying a USB scanner/modem/soundcard" stage.

I'm planning on putting together a Linux box in the new year with the intention of jumping off Windows in the medium term.

I'm buying a Shuttle barebones system because I know that they've worked with Mandrake on getting it to work together. I imagine that it's all going to work with something like Suse as well.

Every person going out and buying something with that intention is going to convince companies selling scanners/modems/soundcards that they need to work to support Linux too.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Decaff]

Tell the users "We'd like to enable you to work faster. From this point forward, just doubleclick this. We installed a new version of Office and Internet explorer, they are called OpenOffice and Firefox. If you don't like this, feel free to use your Windows98 system."

I had zero Win98 users within a month, and zero Windows XP users within 3 months. That's a 400+ user environment.

Excellent!

I have managed the same thing, even with users who were very familiar with Windows. After many complaints that extensive training would be needed for a new platform, they just got on and used the Linux desktop, with no productivity loss.

Re:We're heard this line before

[16K Ram Pack]

I've been using OOo for my small business for about a year now, and to be honest I really don't care about MS Word and Excel any more.

I've not yet found anything that I miss. I can write nice documents, export them to PDF and send them to clients.

Re:We're heard this line before

[HiGHTeK]

Explorer sits in the kernel of Windows, and Explorer = IE. So you could say Explorer IS the operating system. :)

Re:We're heard this line before

[16K Ram Pack]

I'm looking back on the year and really, as far as I can see their most significant release has been SP2.

To be honest, if they had released a new version of Office, would anyone really have noticed? Most people could have O2K installed and work happily.

Re:We're heard this line before

[16K Ram Pack]

Do your bit - don't deal with companies who don't support Moz/Firefox/Opera.

I've told companies that I was thinking of using that I won't because of their lack of browser support, but that I'd gladly tell their designers how to set it up. Not one reply asking how to do it, so I've told them that I'll find a competitor who does.

The more people leave companies who don't play nice, the more companies will be forced to support it.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Moulinneuf]

Whats impressive is that a nobody OS like GNU/Linux already as a bigger market share then OS/2 , Apple , Beos all put togheter ( Gnu/linux is now officialy at 7% ).

Also its a known fact that oem are only 30% of the desktop computer market the withe box account for the remaining 70%.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Moulinneuf]

Windows gained 1% in server space

Gnu/Linus is now at 7% of the accounted desktop space.

Re:We're heard this line before

[JeremyGL]

I think you might want to research financial IT a *little* more. :-)

Such a virus might generate a few column inches of hysterical hyperbole in the popular press when some "mom and pop" outfit tries to charge their customers $1 mill for a toothbrush but it wouldn't bother the IT departments of the large financial institutions one bit.

Cheers,

Jeremy

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if you upgrade to SP2, but since the average pirated user can't benefit of WU and completely ignores update, in fact they haven't

Re:We're heard this line before

[daEnlitnd1]

I've tried to do this several times, in small offices (less than 20 users), and the problem has always been the lack of some custom application.

Also, a few of the OOo users had to revert back to MS Office 'coz of compatibility issues -- they regularly receive files from other organisations which refuse to open correctly in OOo.

Re:We're heard this line before

[GregWebb]

I agree. I write web applications for a living and actively push for Moz compatibility in them with colleagues. We're getting there but have some who don't really like playing ball. I'm still not quite sure why they dislike it so strongly as not to find bits like the form inspector and Chris Pederick's web developer toolbar useful.

I can think of three commercial sites I've used that wouldn't work. Dixons group fialed for a while - they don't any more. Argos reckoned it'd be bad enough to actively block - again, they don't any more. In neither case did I buy anything from the sites in that period. Walters Photographic wouldn't let Moz browse their new equipment listings - I told them as much on an order enquiry, was thanked for the feedback and they had a workaround in place within a few days. They now have a complete new site that works happily in either as far as I can see.

It's worth remembering tact with small businesses in particular. They may well not be aware of the issue and have a simple site bought through a local supplier, with no particular in-house expertise. In this case, I courteously explained what I couldn't do (alongside placing an order - I liked them anyway) and got a quick solution. They can now take more orders, I'm a satisfied customer who tells people of this. We all win.

Re:We're heard this line before

[winwar]

"Also, a few of the OOo users had to revert back to MS Office 'coz of compatibility issues -- they regularly receive files from other organisations which refuse to open correctly in OOo."

But if they have been told OOo=new MS Office, could they really tell the difference? In other words, if they didn't realize it wasn't MS Office, wouldn't they likely chalk it up to incompatability between MS versions....

Of course custom applications will always be a problem.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

5 years ago, the latest version of Windows was still running on top of DOS.

Microsoft have the resources to move faster. It's as simple as that. Linux on the Desktop was lagging 5 years ago, it's lagging now, and I see no reason why this trend will change in the future.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

I was using those old versions of KDE and GNOME. Current versions of KDE and GNOME are just as poor as those Beta versions from five years ago.

P.S: Dear KDE developers, for the love of God will you stop re-writing everything for each release? I've just fired up KView after upgrading KDE 3 a couple of point releases and my God, the functionality has changed again! Needless to say the new functionality leaves out the stuff I found useful in the old version, so KView is now totally useless to me. I have no doubt it will be replaced with a different application in KDE 4, so maybe that one will work.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Dasch]

You seem to be forgetting all of Microsoft's IE-based webapps, such as the Exchange Web Interface, which require IE. If everybody used Firefox those products would become worthless.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Elbows]

Actually, I write software for large financial institutions (order management software for mutual fund managers and the like). One of the biggest selling points of our product is -- you guessed it -- Excel integration.

The users can work out their orders in Excel and then easily import them in our software. And they love this feature. Not to mention that small shops (who can't afford software like ours) tend to do everything in Excel.

The stock market depends a lot more on Excel than you might think.

Re:We're heard this line before

[westlake]

Gnu/linux is now officialy at 7%)...Also its a known fact that oem are only 30% of the desktop computer market the withe box account for the remaining 70%.

"Known facts" on Slashdot can be difficult to nail down, and "official" even harder.

Linux's share in the W3 Schools stats is 3.1%.

White boxes may be in decline, with 40% of the market, not 70% as you suggest. Dell, HP Taking Market Share From White Box PCs (October 7, 2004) There are economies of scale.

Locally, white box builders are looking particularly sickly at the consumer level. Only one managed to get an in add in print (in a throwaway shopping paper) before Christmas.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Moulinneuf]

"Known facts" on Slashdot can be difficult to nail down"

I dont use ./ for known fact ;-)

"and "official" even harder."

Well when Microsoft , IDG and CRN and many others agree on that number ( wich is the lowest number used by them all ) I consider it official.

"Linux's share in the W3 Schools stats is 3.1%"

Thats generous considering its an American stats , but sadly Gnu/Linux asn't made great progress in America on the desktop.

"White boxes may be in decline"

Actually its the OEM who are in decline they used to hold 40% of the market but are now down to 30%, in part due to the fact that OEM are exiting the low margins desktop segment ( they make less offers ) , and they are eroding on the Laptop segment too , as there are more white box targetting Laptop for the higher margins this days. BTW Wal-mart are considered white boxes.
also Dell as of recently also sell white boxes wich some people account for OEM sale, tigerdirect and systemax are considered white box , Cicero is also a white box.

"There are economies of scale."

there are 150 OEM for 5 million + white box ...

"Locally"

would be fun to know what you call locally.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

"We'd like to enable you to work faster"

Er, but OpenOffice is about 20x slower than MS Office. Not sure how that helps people to 'work faster'.

Re:We're heard this line before

[negativeview]

I have never seen SP2 in the 'real world' and I am convinced that the majority of users will not get SP2 until their computer comes with it. The plug-in blockers require a level of intelligence not found in the average user.

You are also a slashdot user, and as such can be expected to at least have a small amount of sense about you. Here's a story from work, though.

I was charged with installing a computer. I had gotten the computer set up and running, but had not yet installed the safety software (ie virus blockers, spyware detectors, etc.). The boss gets on the computer to look up lyrics for a song, gets an ActiveX prompt, and before I could say anything clicks "Yes". Then does it again.

Needless to say when I finally did sit down, the spyware software found a few instances.

Discussing what is possible (add in toolbars, just-released not-wide-spread software that requires user action) does not affect what 90% of computers users are going to do -- nothing.

Re:We're heard this line before

[negativeview]

As I said to the above poster, the vast vast majority of users out there do not have SP2, as it requires action. Until SP2 is installed on the vast majority of machines (which won't happen until most of the machines were bought with SP2 pre-installed) this is not relevant.

Besides, isn't SP2 about as large as Firefox? Then you get tabbed browsing, and a generally better browser.

[Appologies for not knowing the size of SP2, Microsoft won't seem to tell me until I use Windows Update. That is of course not available to a Firefox + Linux user.]

Re:We're heard this line before

[generic-man]

I see you have the usual /.malady of not knowing what you are talking about.

Thank you. I see you have the usual Slashdot malady of not explaining your terse points.

With the appropriate drivers, you can read/write Access files using OOo.

But you can't replicate the graphical interfaces that were built on top of them.

a)If the company is smart, they won't convert the scripts, but hire somebody to rewrite them from scratch.

That costs a lot of money -- more money than it would cost to stay with Windows and Office, based on my calculations.

b) Companies have to spend almost as much time to convert their VBA scripts, every time they "upgrade" to a new version of Office, as they would spend upgrading to OOo.

That's a complete lie. I have Word files created seven years ago whose macros still work in Word 2003. Unlike the Open Source community, whose frequent releases require meticulous conversion of text-based configuration files (note: I'm fighting FUD with FUD here), Microsoft hasn't changed the core Office format in any meaningful way since Office 97.

Re:We're heard this line before

[syrinx]

My company uses Exchange, and I can access the web interface fine through Firefox... if you use IE, there are more "features", but it works fine without it.

Re:We're heard this line before

[daEnlitnd1]

if they have been told OOo=new MS Office, could they really tell the difference?

The trouble is, people just want to get their work done. Most of them don't care what they use as long as its familiar enough. Of course, users may be ignorant about computers, but they're not stupid -- they know OOo != MSOffice :-)

Its when people have complex tables that this becomes a really big problem. You won't believe the number of forms charities have to fill up!

Re:We're heard this line before

[handslikesnakes]

Yeah, because as we all know word processing requires intense computation and its speed is mainly limited by the computer (rather than the user).

Re:We're heard this line before

[fyngyrz]

Wait a second. XP Home and XP Pro (and almost any version of Linux) can be installed on my Dell desktop, a pretty standard, if loaded, PC configuration. So comparing those seems fair.

I was unaware that I could buy OS X and install it on my PC. If I can, then OS X belongs in that list. If I can't, then the cost of OS X is the software package plus a mac -- which is something else entirely. If I can, I'm going to go order it immediately. Like, immediately!

Re:We're heard this line before

[handslikesnakes]

The standalone installer for SP2 is about 270 MB. I believe the Windows Update package size depends on your system, but it's a hell of a lot bigger than Firefox.

Re:We're heard this line before

[marcello_dl]

Free to mod as you prefer, as I have karma to burn, pal.

I still think that is appropriate as it represent exactly the stages microsoft went through when confronted with linux.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Ambassador Kosh]

If you are waiting for it all to work then you are going to wait forever. It doesn't all just work on windows, macs or linux and likely never will. I have run into a fair bit of hardware that doesn't work in windows xp since the drivers don't exist for that either. I have even run into issues with macs not recognizing hardware that was plugged in that they had drivers for. All desktop systems are going to continue to have driver issues until it is all standardized. There should be 1 video driver, 1 sound card driver, 1 SATA driver, 1 USB chipset driver etc. It is the lack of standards causing the problems for all kinds of systems.

Re:We're heard this line before

[man_of_mr_e]

What typical back peddling bullshit. You first claimed it was "impossible" to have popups blocked with IE, now you claim this.

The vast majority of users out there have legitimate copies of Windows, since it came with the computer they bought. Of those that are pirates, they also know how to get around the SP2 problem (there are lots of valid SP2 VLK keys out there, not to mention SP2 VLK keygenerators).

Tabbed browsing is also something only power users use. It just confuses the average user, which is why Apple disabled tabbed browsing by default in Safari.

Most users only use one program at a time, and browse only one web site at a time. Yes, SP2 is a big download (about 90MB for most users) but then it's a lot more than just browser improvements. They should install it anyways, regardless of the browser they're using.

Re:We're heard this line before

[symbolic]

I use OpenOffice : )

I haven't had any Microsoft stuff on my machines (except for one box running Windows) since I decided not to upgrade Office 98 on the Mac.

The motivattion for my comment was simply to point out that in this case, where adoption is a primary issue, "different" is not necessarily "better," as it results in extra effort required by those considering a switch. Embrace, then extend.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know how many users believe their web browser is basically their operating system?

Well, at least Dean Hachamovitch, from the article :
"I think XP SP2 is still the best browser overall when you look at the full set of criteria for choosing a browser."

And when the general manager of Internet Explorer says that, how could other people think otherwise ?

Re:We're heard this line before

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, give Microsoft $600 for Studio.NET, and you can get a feature that comes with Firefox free of charge.

Come on /., let's line up and give Microsoft our hard-earned money for such "innovation".

Re:We're heard this line before

[negativeview]

I never used the word impossible. I said that the average user does not know that it is possible to have pop up blockers and tabbed browsing.

Where did piracy ever come into play? Keep to the issues, please. Or at least raise an issue.

Tabbed browsing is something that only power users know about, generally speaking. I introduced my girlfriend to Firefox, and she now uses tabs all the time. Not because she suddenly became a power user, but because she realized that using tabs make doing research and other things common to college students that much easier.

Most people only use one program at a time? So do you think that the average user has just AIM open? Or do you think that P2P apps were taking up the users' full attentions? The time of single app usage is long dead.

There is a difference between "browsing" and "using." People who use the web instead of wandering aimlessly (college students, comparison shoppers, etc) could greatly benefit from tabbed browsing. It's just a matter of them realizing the inherant power.

Re:We're heard this line before

[negativeview]

Thank you for actually being civil. I'm being reminded why I've read the articles and ignored the comments for years.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Dave2 Wickham]

5 years ago, the latest version of Windows was Windows 2000. That's hardly running on top of DOS.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Dave2 Wickham]

You can't ctrl+c/ctrl+v in cmd.exe or command.com either.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Scudsucker]

I disagree. Nobody is going to crack the Windows and Office monopolies unless Microsoft is forced to publish their API's as open standards, for several reasons. First, there's the self-perpetuating monopoly of Windows. Everybody develops for Windows because that's what everone uses, and everone uses Windows because the apps they need only run on Windows.

I've seen mentioned that Microsoft could lose these monopolies in the marketplace without government intervention, just as IBM lost their mainframe monopoly and Lotus and Wordperfect lost their dominance in the wordprocessing markets. However, its not a very good comparison, because file servers don't have to interoperate. By that I mean that it doesn't matter if Ford uses Novell and Chevy uses NT, because they don't have to operate together.

And the Wordperfect/Lotus comparison isn't a good one either, because at the time a great many businesses still used electronic typewriters, and it didn't matter if the file formats were incompatible because you'd be sending your document over a fax machine anyway. Today, a lot businesses would risk losing customers if they used Open Office instead of Word, because Microsoft keeps monkeying with the formats.

For the industry to break Microsoft's monoplies and switch to competing products, those other products would basically have to be free, be lightyears ahead of Microsofts offerings, AND be compatible with Windows apps/Office files. This would be impossible, unless Microsoft was forced to open their API's. Then any commercial or open source software group, could release an operating system that would run Windows applications natively, and make word processors that could compete on features since the file format would be the same.

Re:We're heard this line before

[Lord Raze]

Of course it doesn't hurt MS that they have to keep IE around anyway to run Windows Update [...]

I'm not so sure about that... seems to me well over 90% of the windows updates I download, are to address... Internet Explorer security flaws!

If one were to use Firefox for web, use Thunderbird for mail, and delete the IE icon off their desktop, how often would MSHTML.DLL even see the light of day? Would one really even need Windows Update at all?

If they have to say they aren't worried...

[geoffrobinson]

they are probably worried.

Having an IE monopoly is a lynchpin in their designs for server-side control. Unless I'm completely off-base.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[stupidfoo]

More importantly... what's with the [ and ] being used to designate a quote? That really sucks.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[ravenspear]

Their "designs for server-side control" won't mean squat unless they can dislodge Apache as the market leader, which I don't see happening anytime soon.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[nizo]

Thankfully apache kicked their butt here, or else you wouldn't even be able to use any other browser except IE to surf the web. I mean, imagine if microsoft controlled as high a percentage of the web servers as they do browsers.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[didde]

What do you mean by "serverside control"? If you're refering to ASP.NET and its postbacks then I think you might be wrong. It's basically just a "state-of-view" represented by hidden form fields (usually) which are submitted by links triggering JavaScripts instead of plain old href's pointing to another page

These scripts may cause problems with clients who have disabled JavaScript completely, but the calls themselves are (again, usually) simple...

document.forms['something'].submit();

...and so on.

Even if they were to rely on code suitable only for IE and FireFox were to take over the world I'm sure MS could publish some sort of fix for IIS on Windows Update - because we all know everybody uses it frequently, right? Ehh, yes. I'm sure. Almost positive...

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but why does Microsoft care about Internet Explorer in the first place? The only way I see it makes them money is through their MSN service.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[geoffrobinson]

I'm thinking of automatic updates and other hooks which many companies become dependant on which work with Active X/IE. But then again, as I said, I'm not exactly sure why Microsoft wanted to control the browser market.

But it had to be for some reason, right? If they don't care any more, the reason is now overcome by events. If they do care, it has to be for some reason.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[upsidedown_duck]

Instead of servers, then went after the minds of web developers, instead. IE-specific code is so sickening that it makes me sick, but people do it, for some reason they cherish their ability to make their work suck. If that isn't effective marketing by Microsoft, then I can't be sure about anything.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[msoftsucks]

I guess you haven't tried to develop applications in .Net that will work correctly on both IE and non-IE browsers. M$ has done everything possible to corrupt and distort the Internet so that only their crap-o-lla works properly. In a default ASP.Net installation, any browser that is not IE is brought down to Netscape V4.0 standards. Basically, if you decide to use any of the ASP controls, your web site will display properly only in IE. Anything else gets crappy HTML and you have spent enormous amount of time to make sure it works properly. To change this, you have to mess with the machine.config file, and redefine the how .NET and ASP.NET respond to non-IE browsers. And even then you have to be very carefull. This requires abit more intelligence than what your average MSCE has. Basically, if you want a site that works properly across all browsers, ASP.NET is not it.

Use something like Perl or PHP instead. This even gives you portability to other platforms later on.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[coupland]

Wow, that's such a simple idea but for some reason I've never thought of it that way. If not for Apache, we'd be in a living hell where Microsoft controlled every aspect of the web. They were just a hair's width from global domination, that's gotta burn their butts. :P

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[MemoryDragon]

If you want something like ASP.Net but with better control and less we try to force a monopoly give JSF a chance in the long run, the controls are not there yet but it looks promising, especially given that already projects like myfaces exist.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[nizo]

"The Internet? We are not interested in it"
-- Bill Gates, 1993

I am very thankful he had this attitude (apparently for at least a few years?) :-) If Microsoft had jumped on the web bandwagon and started offering a cheap web server with one of their server products, life on the web would probably be sucky indeed. Or if the web hadn't caught on for a few more years. They obviously clued in when they started including explorer with the OS though huh?

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh christ. Anyone using ASP should be shot in my opinion.
To rephrase Churchill's quote, PHP is the worst server side language, except for all the others I've tried.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound much worse than it actually is. IME, 99% of the HTML generation is identical for the browsers and the apps run and look fine on Firefox.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[msoftsucks]

Not true. I've spent a significant amount of time on this. Basically, with IE, you get 's and CSS, while with FF you don't. You basically get nested 's and in many cases these are not equivalent. If M$ really wanted to show that it was above all this, it could have released an updated machine.config when it released the .NET 1.1 Framework Service Pack.

In my case, my client initially insisted on .NET. I basically gave him a choice, either pay the additional costs for .NET or agree to allow me to use PHP. He chose PHP.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing the client went with PHP, because you're surely not qualified to be developing with .NET.

Extra costs for you to spend a few minutes changing the web.config for your app so it renders HTML4 markup in all browsers? Sad.

Re:If they have to say they aren't worried...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll agree with you... Classic ASP does suck compared to ASP.NET :) But you can hardly compare .NET to PHP either - it's apples to oranges really.

A year?!

[Xtifr]

Just a year's head start? You sure are optimistic about the Longhorn release schedule, aren't you? :)

Re:A year?!

[Anonymous Coward]

A Microsoft year. The calendar will freeze for ten months after 364 days.

Re:A year?!

[AthanK]

No kidding. Try two years. They've had to trim some features off of Longhorn just to get it out this decade.

Re:A year?!

[xyzzy]

No kidding. By some reckoning, it's taken them what, 3-5 years to get where they are? When was the Mozilla release party? Ah yes, June 2002. And it was open-sourced in *1999*.

Re:A year?!

[hawk]

You need to consider what they're copying, err, innovating. Why, the 1987 Macintosh interface alone took until 1995 . . . :)

hawk

Working with phishers?

[tyleroar]

Oh boy, are they actually working side by side with the virusmakers and phishers?
Now what would make him think that? Why would anyone assume that Microsoft was working with phishers or virusmakers?

Re:Working with phishers?

[rwven]

It's called sarcasm there buddy. ;)

Re:Working with phishers?

[mcleodnine]

Probably for the same reason people put those "Free iPod" links in their sigs - gullibility and no sense of humor.

Re:Working with phishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did Microsoft ever allow Browser Helper Objects, or allow third parties to install items on the user's machine by default. Ever since these changes went into Internet Explorer, we've been plagued with spyware, trojans, etc... all taking advantage of these loopholes in the browser.

Microsoft could close these loopholes back up, so why aren't they? Most likely they are getting quite a bit of money (bribes) from the spyware companies, and feel no need to take away this revenue stream. Sounds pretty suspicious to me.

Re:Working with phishers?

[NanoGator]

"Now what would make him think that? Why would anyone assume that Microsoft was working with phishers or virusmakers?"

Because it's a cheap way to get attention on Slashdot. With all the MS hatred around here it'll be assumed as fact that they are doing that. "Well, I wouldn't put it past them even though it wouldn't make good business sense to give everybody a strong reason to use another browser!"

Slashdot Editors really should enforce a little more professionalism. It's hard to take anything this site says about MS seriously.

Re:Working with phishers?

[October_30th]

Yep. That was rather pathetic.

I wonder if /. accepts Microsoft related submissions these days only if they contain a witty soundbite that's in line with the OSS groupthink.

Re:Working with phishers?

[Zonnald]

Or Maybe they are getting a lot of money form Third party Browser Helper Object companies?

Re:Working with phishers?

[Prophet of Nixon]

I don't particularly think MS is behind that stuff... look towards the antivirus vendors, and especially Yahoo (amongst the most evil of corporates).

Re:Working with phishers?

[heptapod]

It's hard to take anything this site says about MS seriously.

Deep breath.

You must be new here.

Re:Working with phishers?

[Darkangael]

I don't think you were supposed to take that line seriously ;) It was merely a joke; IE claims that Ie is extendable and that MS and others actually make "extensions", and the poster is implying that the only "extensions" (s)he has ever seen are virii and malware. I know I was lolling :P

Re:Working with phishers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably for the same reason people put those "Free iPod" links in their sigs - gullibility and no sense of humor?

Worse=better

[j_heisenberg]

As could be read on Joel on Software, Webapps are becoming major competition to MS. That's why a better browser is the last thing MS wants. Worse browser = better browser.

Re:Worse=better

[flynch]

I have no connection to MS, but I would suspect that in addition to what you suggested above, its quite possible that MS will integrate the browser much deeper into the o/s with longhorn.

They could then do crazy things like offer desktop/file search from your bowser... yeah google do this for you today, but MS could go deeper, they could intrgrate all this technology so that your standard windows file chooser applet is integrated.

Then when you want to open a file you can searh your disk, the web or your "search group" (where a search group could be a group of colleagues or friends PC's, imagine waste http://waste.sourceforge.net/ integrated into the OS, and included in your search results?

Naturally all this would be nicely integrated with DRM (incase your searching of sharing any mp3's divx or whatever).

MS could release longhorn with technology like this to great fanfare, sure most of this is doable today, but MS can kick up quite a stink and are mighty handy at the old Marketing game....

Re:Worse=better

[VitaminB52]

Webapps are becoming major competition to MS.

I think MS won't be happy with the upcoming XForms support in Mozilla / FireFox. A good XForms implementation by Mozilla before MS launches LongHorn + the next IE could make Mozilla a must-have application for those who want to use advanced Wbapps.

Re:Worse=better

[Anonymous Coward]

check out KDE ioslaves including locate plugin very nice
type locate://whatever it will look in a database of files for whatever, of coarse this is not metadata search but it shouldn't be that hard to do.

Advantage: Not integrated with OS in any way
Disadvantage: Works for KDE apps only

Re:Worse=better

[EddWo]

They were in fact working on something like that, called Castle. You exchange certificates or "information cards" with your friends and family and they become part of your Castle or serverless domain. With WinFS synch you were supposed to be able to search and access files shared accross all the Castle members. I don't know if that feature has been dropped along with WinFS, but it sounded interesting. They have already started introducing the concept of Information Cards in the new MSN Messenger 7 Beta.

Re:Worse=better

[barzok]

I wish that were true. It'll only happen in very limited situations, however.

You won't be able to do "public" web apps because the still-dominant browser won't support XForms. Unless you want to code multiple versions.

If you're an IE shop, you won't be able to do Intranet apps because management won't buy into using a different browser just because the programmers want to use this "way cool new tech" if the old way will work just as well for their end users. And you won't be allowed to write multiple versions.

I actually experienced #2 about 18 months ago. Told my project manager "well, we can do this easily if we don't have to use IE for this app. It could easily cut 200 hours out of your project plan." She actually considered it for a day or two...but ultimately it was determined that since the company doesn't support anything but IE, we had to go with IE.

To give you an idea of how bad management is with stuff like this, we now have those same users running Win95 inside VirtualPC to use another app because it doesn't run on WinXP...and running VPC alongside my web app.

Once upon a time

[rugwuk]

Isn't this also the company whose CTO said that email wasn't a big deal?

Extensible? How about extensions

[DoorFrame]

I'm not going to even consider going back to IE unless they're able to include extensions just as useful and as open as Mozilla has. Firefox with Adblock, and all the other handy add-ons has changed the way I browse. I don't want to go back.

browser security check

[exhilaration]

If you're still using an older (more than 6 months since you've patched) web browser, I suggest you check out this browser security check, which will test it for exploits.

At your own risk, of course. Firefox 1.0PR passed with flying colors.

Re:browser security check

[stratjakt]

No it didnt, I just tried.

Firefox 1.0 has 1 high risk vulnerability.


High Risk Vulnerabilities
Sun Java Plugin Arbitrary Package Access Vulnerability (idef20041123)
Description

Java Plugin allows web browsers to run Java applets. Java plugin may be used by Internet Explorer, Mozilla (and Mozilla-base browsers, such as Firefox), Opera and other browsers.

When a browser opens a web page that contains a Java applet the browser automatically downloads the applet and runs it locally. To protect the user from malicious applets all the applets run in so called "sandbox". The sandbox restricts what an applet can do. For example, the sandbox will not allow an applet to open local files or start programs.

This bug in Sun Java Plugin allows a web site to bypass the sandbox and execute Java code that the sandbox will normally not allow and possibly gain control over the client computer.
Technical Details

Sun Java Virtual Machine contains sun.* packages that are only supposed to be used internally, by the virtual machine itself. Some private classes allow direct access to memory or modifying private fields of Java objects. If an applet attempts to load one of those packages a security exception is thrown. If an applet could load those classes it could turn off Java Security Manager and break out of Java sandbox.

JavaScript can access properties and methods of Java applets embedded on the page. It is possible to load a private package from JavaScript as shown in the code below:

var c=document.applets[0].getClass().forName('sun.text .Utility');
alert('got Class object: '+c)

Java Reflection API allows objects to examine their own structure (for example, find out the class of the object or the available methods). Reflection API defines getClass() function that returns the object's class. forName method of Class object loads the named class. The same operation done from the Java applet instead of JavaScript would fail.
Recommendations

Upgrade Java Environment to version 1.4.2_06 or later. It can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html


Sure, it's a Java vulnerability, but a vulnerability nonetheless.

Why hasnt FireFox automatically updated Java for me?

At the end of the day, every time one of you sticks FireFox on some clueless' machine, and tell them they're "safe", you're lying (or just ignorant).

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox 1.0 on MacOS X passed without any reported risks. (Although Firefox on Windows needed a Java update.)

Too bad that Safari crashes immediately when attempting to run the tests. That can't be a good sign.

Re:browser security check

[MrChester]

i didn't recieve any errors either... its should be java responsibility to auto-update their software, not mozillas

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

i tried the test with firefox 1.0, no security valnerablilties
but i tried it with my SP1 IE, and only had 1 'low risk valnerablility', and no other ones, what up with that?

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it does:

Your browser reports to be:

Browser name: Firefox
Version: 1.0
Platform: Linux i686

High Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Medium Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Low Risk Vulnerabilities 0

Re:browser security check

[Moofie]

"At the end of the day, every time one of you sticks FireFox on some clueless' machine, and tell them they're "safe", you're lying (or just ignorant)."

Duh. Anytime anybody tells you you're "safe", they're lying or ignorant. There is no such condition as "safe". Breathing contains an element of risk. Opening your eyes is risky. Scratching your ass is risky.

So "safe" doesn't exist. Firefox is certainly safER than IE.

Re:browser security check

[N7DR]

Take it for what you think it's worth, but IE 6.0 also passed with no errors on my WinXP SP2 system.

Re:browser security check

[Zonnald]

Just ran it on my Windows box running I.E.

Browser Security Test Results
Dear Customer,

The Browser Security Test is finished. Please find the results below:

High Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Medium Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Low Risk Vulnerabilities 0

Imagine that, an I.E. with no vulnerabiliites!

and this statistics page.

Browser Security Test Statistics
Vulnerability Statistics
Total tests finished 382979
Tests that found high risk vulnerabilities 140633
Tests that found only medium or low risk vulnerabilities 69645
Tests that found only low risk vulnerabilities 8436
Tests that found no vulnerabilities 164265

Browser Statistics
Internet Explorer 290916
Mozilla and Mozilla-based browsers 63153
Opera 19841
Other browsers 9068

Unfortunately, no breakdown of the high risk vs browser.
But then I suppose if I ran the test again a few thousand times then I could sway the results if I wanted to prove a point.

Re:browser security check

[Tarcastil]

Funny how this article comes up when the media just released information about a new virus. Phel uses IE to remotely control any version of windows, even windows xp sp2.
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/holes/story/0,10801,98636,00.html

Re:browser security check

[baba]

Firefox 1.0PR passed with flying colors.

I had less success with FF 1.0 release for OS X. I tried the test a couple of times, and FF crashed both time midway through the tests.

Re:browser security check

[Ziviyr]

Why hasnt FireFox automatically updated Java for me?

Because I'd f***ing kick their arses if they rooted my system to perform unauthorized software changes on my system. Thats why.

If FireFox automatically stopped using vulnerable JVMs, that'd be fine though.

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Customer,

The Browser Security Test is finished. Please find the results below:
High Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Medium Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Low Risk Vulnerabilities 0

Re:browser security check

[bairy]

My FF 1.0PR passed without problem
My SP1, not-patched-in-a-long-time IE6 had 1 high risk. IE's run also looked really messy.

Re:browser security check

[Phroggy]

Safari on OSX passed with flying colors as well.

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's a Java vulnerability, but a vulnerability nonetheless.
Why hasnt FireFox automatically updated Java for me?

Why hasn't Windows updated FireFox and Java for me? Seriously though, why the hell hasn't Java updated itself, isn't that the issue here?

At the end of the day, every time one of you sticks FireFox on some clueless' machine, and tell them they're "safe", you're lying (or just ignorant).

Are you speaking from experience? I've never done this myself, my whole pitch is, "Firefox is more secure than IE and features liked tabbed browsing and render speed make it more enjoyable."

Re:browser security check

[MoonBuggy]

Strange, I got a pass with 0 vulnerabilities reported, and I'm using 1.0 on OSX 10.3.7 It did stall IE Mac and crash Safari though. I selected "Run all available tests" in all of the browsers.

Re:browser security check

[SnprBoB86]

No reported vulnerabilities at all with IE 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158 nor with Firefox 1.0PR, but I must say Firefox popped up two new windows and prompted me to open about a half dosen files. IE openned only one new window popup, didn't request to open any files, but did launch windows media player 10 (which simply reported an error) and openned a javascript file with Dreamweaver.

I would say that both are equally secure according to this test. Firefox only really has one up on IE in that Firefox prompts for confirmation when IE just openned the media file and javascript file.

I dunno what makes me special, but as far as I know, I am still spyware and other malware free even though I use IE. Until I experiance an issue, I will use IE. I don't see the usefulness of tabbed browsing (isn't the task bar like tabs?), nor have I noticed a speed difference between Firefox and IE. I have noticed that Firefox fails to render some pages (who's fault that is, I care not) and 1.0 even crashed on me twice in the short period of time I have used it. IE crashes on me once a month as a generous estimate.

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it did, I just tried.

Why did we different results? Because I never install Java. Since Java is not part of Firefox, then how can it be Firefox's fault?

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, not bashing Firefox here but I'd be curious to see what it reports when I change the User-Agent: header field to indicate Internet Explorer when I am using Firefox.

Have to try that when I get home tonight....

Re:browser security check

[MightyMartian]

> Why hasnt FireFox automatically updated Java for me?

Because it isn't the FireFox developers' job to update Sun software.

> At the end of the day, every time one of you sticks FireFox on some clueless' machine, and tell
> them they're "safe", you're lying (or just ignorant).

Who's telling folks they're safe? People with Firefox are *safer*.

But you pretty much discredited yourself by accusing Firefox developers over a Sun Java issue. If that isn't the most pathetic attempt at an attack I don't know what is. Congrats, you win the Most Mindless Statement of the Day Award.

Re:browser security check

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

IE6 passes with flying colors:

IE6 / XP SP2

The Browser Security Test is finished. Please find the results below:

High Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Medium Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Low Risk Vulnerabilities 0

Re:browser security check

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

What version of OS X are you using?

I had it run all tests, and on my system, the G5-optimized version of Firefox 1.0 made it through the test with zero vulnerabilities found. My system runs OS X 10.3.7 with all available updates(7S215).

Re:browser security check

[phoenix.bam!]

I think you may have jumped the gun and clicked on the first test that appeared, and not a vulnerability.

Re:browser security check

[gmack]

Check your plugins. The site checks several plugin related bugs and one of them may be crashing FireFox.

Re:browser security check

[drinkypoo]

Which Safari? Which OSX? I've seen three or four messages now that say safari passes or fails on OSX (Last I checked, that was the only OS upon which it would run) and only one of them has even given the MacOS version.

Re:browser security check

[MarkRose]

I wouldn't trust thist site. It doesn't even recognise Konqueror. It think it's an ancient version of Netscape. That being said, Konqueror 3.2.3 passes completely.

Re:browser security check

[stratjakt]

Doesn't matter to an end user, which is what you all can't get through your heads.

That's why people would rather pay $200 bucks to have it be Microsoft's responsibility than to have to constantly monitor and upgrade every component on the system.

How did Java get on my machine? Firefox automatically installed it for me. Firefox automatically downloaded and installed an unsafe JVM with a critical security hole.

When Java is exploited on an IE machine, you betcha it's Microsoft's fault, right?

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect sir, you are a total asshole. You argue the stupidest points just to feel like you are an authority, but in reality you are a powerless loser.

Regardless if there is ONE FREAKIN BUG out there, it is loads safer than the IE you seem way too quick to defend. Seriously, go have a beer, and fuck yourself.

OBVIOUSLY ITS NOT A MATTER OF TOTAL SAFETY, BUT SOME THINGS IN LIFE ARE RELETIVE. IF YOU GOT ALL THE ANSWERS BIG GUY NAME 1 WINDOWS BASED BROWSER THAT IS CONSIDERED LESS SAFE. Thats what I thought, buh bye now little man.

You are the ignoramus. Next time don't post because your reply offered nothing in terms of helpfullness, solutions, or though provoking content. you are white noise. /an opera user

Re:browser security check

[CritterNYC]

Doesn't matter to an end user, which is what you all can't get through your heads.

That's why people would rather pay $200 bucks to have it be Microsoft's responsibility than to have to constantly monitor and upgrade every component on the system.

How did Java get on my machine? Firefox automatically installed it for me. Firefox automatically downloaded and installed an unsafe JVM with a critical security hole.

When Java is exploited on an IE machine, you betcha it's Microsoft's fault, right?

You do have a bit of a point there. Of course, IE is completely vulnerable on your machine as well as it is probably also using the exploitable Sun JVM you have installed.

But, the vulnerability is within Sun's Java VM which does have an updater packaged with it that should run on Windows start. It just doesn't work right. Should Firefox be responsible for updating when there is an exploit in Java, Flash, Shockwave or some other plugin? IE isn't, except for their OWN outdated Java VM. But they won't go and update Shockwave or Flash or the Sun Java VM.

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

IE passed... WinXP SP2

Re:browser security check

[stratjakt]

I think Firefox should refuse to load a plugin with a vulnerability that allows remote execution of arbitrary code.

The moz team know about the exploit, they could easily toss in a "if java_version X" statement.

If they really want me to think of Firefox as the "safe" browser, they need to go that extra mile.

Software "security" seems to be about the blame game and fingerpointing.

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the 17 popups that Firefox generated. I thought Firefox had a popup blocker? Apparently, it doesn't work. You call that flying colors?

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree. I am spyware and virus free despite using IE6 all the time (always have and still do).

Maybe there isn't anything special about us. Maybe all this virus/spyware crap is just overhype.

Of course, since we are questioning this we will not be modded up.

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest version on OS X 10.3.7: 1.2.4

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

well...i passed with flying colours. of course, i do this for a living so i suppose my opinion is biased.

Re:browser security check

[Anonymous Coward]

You will not be modded up because there clearly WERE two vulnerabilities, and you two are acting as though there were none!
First: Your IE program opened an EXTERNAL program (Windows Media Player) and attempted to run a file! THATS HORRIBLE!
Secondly: Your IE program opened a THIRD PARTY PROGRAM(Dreamweaver) and OPENED A FILE AS WELL!
both of those are VULNERABILITES!
However, you two seem to act as though they were nothing. Luckily you were running a test that did not abuse local privileges. Had it been a lower-brow site, it might have abused being able to OPEN/RUN THINGS FROM WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER!!!!!!
I just can't seem to grasp how this is in the parent's mind NOT A VULNERABILITY???? while firefox PROMPTING THE USER! IS!?!?

Re:browser security check

[Phroggy]

Safari 1.2.4 (v125.12) on Mac OS X 10.3.7 (7S215), the latest publicly-available versions. Firefox 1.0 (Gecko/20041107) on the same system also passed.

Re:browser security check

[Phroggy]

Except for the 17 popups that Firefox generated. I thought Firefox had a popup blocker? Apparently, it doesn't work. You call that flying colors?

Worked fine for me in Firefox 1.0 on Mac OS X. Are you sure you didn't enable popups in the preferences?

Re:browser security check

[Lord Flipper]

On a Mac running Jaguar I get zero vulnerabilities (35 out of 35 tests) using 0.10.0 Firefox, Java loaded. I could be wrong, but it is my understanding that OSX includes Perl, Java, Apache, etc (yeah, and /etc -laughs-), so it's up to a Firefox user whether or not to actually implement Java. Not Mozilla's responsibility at all...my machine, my responsibility, that's the way we like it.

Re:browser security check

[stratjakt]

I browsed a site with a Java plugin.

Firefox said it needed to download the plug-in to view the page, I happily clicked OK, trusting FF to do it's thing. After all, it's super secure and standards compliant, the moz guys wouldn't have their app suggest I download a bad JVM, would they?

Now my machine is vulnerable.

It's worth noting this is only about a week-old installation. I think I'm going to bounce a system and check to see if it's still auto-downloading the borked version, I have a feeling it is.

You can argue semantics and say it's Sun's fault (and it is), but my machine would be safe if FF had a "If JVM.version X then DONT_FUCKIN_USE_IT" line somewhere.

New Exploit found

[Icarus1919]

This is an article that slashdot rejected from me, but still fairly pertinent.

Silicon.com reports that there's a new Trojan named Phel that takes advantage of the Help (get it?) controls in internet explorer. Though the expoit's been known about since October, Microsoft is still "testing" the patch, and isn't expected to release it anytime soon.

lack of foresight?

[LiquidMind]

"Now that IE is used on most of the world's computers, racing to match the features of competitors is less important than providing a stable, reliable product, Hachamovitch said."

a company doesn't survive on market share alone, it survives because it stays competitive.

A company won't go far with an attitude that reflects the quote above.

Re:lack of foresight?

[robfoo]

Hah! Microsoft is more focused on providing a "stable, reliable product" than adding more features?

Is that a flying pig I see?

Re:lack of foresight?

[Quino]

or it survives because it's a monopoly and normal free market forces don't apply? :)

I think MS can be toppled, it's just harder than if they competed just on merit.

Great!

[Eeknay]

I'm so glad the articles here at Slashdot are unbiased and fai- Oh. Oh wait.

"That just gives the MozBoys a year head start."

[temojen]

But what will they do with it? Look how long SVG's been in CVS, but not in the official release.

Sayt What

[joepress]

"racing to match the features of competitors is less important than providing a stable, reliable product"
So that makes racing to match features as job 22?

extensions

[uf22]

Is IE really an extendable platform? It doesn't exactly have a friendly firefox-like plugin architecture. I don't think anyone in their right mind would want yet another "toolbar" to come out. Clearly that market is saturated, despite what Netcraft may think. Some have taken to extending the browser with its built-in, fundamental functionality. You can achieve some interesting results. Other than this type of site, I don't see how IE will continue to grow without further work from MS themselves.

Re:extensions

[Alien Being]

"Is IE really an extendable platform?"

Sure, but instead of "extensions" we call them "exploits".

Re:extensions

[hsmith]

of course it is a extendable platform, don't you have the mysearchbar and lycos search bar on your machine! these ads for viagra also help me shop!

Re:extensions

[pluke]

talking about plug in architecture.... With regards to the guys at B3ta whose image i tidied up a bit

Re:extensions

[Anonymous Coward]

From MS's perspective, IE is very extensible. IE can be embedded in any application (as a COM object like the file browser) and any functionality can be embedded in the browser via activeX and BHO's.

It would be difficult to write a Mozilla plug that assumes as complete control of your machine as Windows Update, which is an IE activeX plug.

Sure IE's extensibility is proprietary; why wouldn't it be? MS's intent has always been to leverage IE's ubiquity into viral adoption of microsoft-specific web content. Unfortunately, while users don't seem to have enough reasons to resist viral adoption of windows, there are too many others that have something to gain by viral adoption in a monoculture.

You want you extensions to be open, MS wants them to be wide open.

Why

[tarquin_fim_bim]

can't I get excited about Longhorn?

Microsoft not worried...

[Anonymous Coward]

"After all, we here at Microsoft simply want computer users to have the best experience possible; if Firefox is delivering that, then we are all for it."

Er, wait, wrong universe.

Remember, they're not bugs...

[Anonymous Coward]

...they're a "very, very innovative set of features."

What I see...

[ZSpade]

We have a very, very innovative set of capabilities that we're putting in the next version.

Yay, yet more vulnerable features to be exploited by viruses, hijackers, and phishers. Seriously though,when is microsoft going to realize that pretending they have no competition in order to "belittle" their competition doesn't really do anything but make them look like, well Microsoft.

Re:What I see...

[im_thatoneguy]

It's a basic marketing technique that should be practiced by all marketing firms. Acknowledging your competitors gives them undue credibility. Watch any paper towel commercial, they will never give the name of their competitor, because that would imply their competitor is a worthy adversary. Instead all advertising compares it to "leading brand" or some other ambiguous label.

Re:What I see...

[ZSpade]

I know, it's just the way that microsoft does it rubs me wrong. They usually act a little too smug. That leaves a bad taste in most peoples mouths, or maybe it's just geeks like me *sigh.

Re:What I see...

[Vulture101]

well, intel did the same...

i think all big corporates do the same, until its too late

Re:What I see...

[SenshiNeko]

Watch any paper towel commercial, they will never give the name of their competitor, because that would imply their competitor is a worthy adversary. Instead all advertising compares it to "leading brand" or some other ambiguous label.

Actually, there was a sizable article in the 'Advertising' column of yesterday's New York Times about this very topic... in fact, companies often don't make direct comparisons because that opens them up to 'truth in advertising' legal challenges/lawsuits and countercharges - not only in in important things like beer and cola and potato chips, but even in basic boring products such as as dish soap and dental adhesive... or paper towels.

Trying to put a positive spin

[m_dob]

on a very bad situation for microsoft - Firefox is a far superior product in so many ways, and it challenges MS's plans of a browser monopoly.

This is fantastic news for FF... it means no aggressive Microsoft marketing for a good two years.

I wait eagerly for the "very innovative set of capabilities"...

Re:Trying to put a positive spin

[tcstoehr]

More like a very *imitative* set of capabilities.
Don't you think they're just going to copy what other browsers have succeeded with. Tabbed browsing comes to mind.

What would they Add?

[im_thatoneguy]

The IE platform is about as effective as it can be. Security fixes are not considered a new version, and the feature set is as complete as I would want at the core level. Linux may be fixed within a day, but updates are difficult and obtuse to aquire, be happy our friends at microsoft are securing a stable project instead of stabilizing a secure product.

Re:What would they Add?

[The Journalist]

"Internet Explorer" and "secure" in the same sentence without a negative modifier? Anyone else see a problem with this?

Re:What would they Add?

[electrichamster]

Difficult to aquire you say?

Choose your poison:
apt-get update
up2date
emerge sync && emerge -u world

(apologies to any I missed)

Re:What would they Add?

[Anonymous Coward]

yum upgrade

Why should they worry?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does MS really stand to lose if Firefox gains something like 50% of the browser share? MS isn't making any money off IE, are they? I realize that back in the mid 90's there was a big concern that the Netscape browser could somehow be used to usurp the Windows monopoly, but honestly, is anybody still thinking that an entire OS can be replaced by a web browser?

Re:Why should they worry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theres a big market of people who use their computer for web browsing, email, Word, and maybe a game or two.

Theres OpenOffice, Mozilla, Thunderbird, and some games starting to more or less show up.

I think they stand a lot to lose, if they don't play their cards right.

Re:Why should they worry?

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet Explorer make MS tons of money. It's like the first levels of Scientology. Hey, web apps work on Microsoft! Warm fuzzy...mmmmmm. Only later do people realize the dark sinister core of Microsoft, but they already paid for the courses and signed a contract for their soul! Bwahahaha!

Re:Why should they worry?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think XP SP2 is still the best browser overall when you look at the full set of criteria for choosing a browser."

They consider XP to be the browser, and that is FROM the article. Windows IS internet explorer according to microsoft.

Re:Why should they worry?

[EddWo]

The standards present/coming to Mozilla based browsers do present a big challenge to MS. People will be able to write web based apps that can use XUL, CSS, SVG, XForms, ECMAScript on the Client and know that it will work exactly the same on every OS because every OS supports a version of Mozilla.

Since Mozilla is free it makes a lot more sense would for developers to make a version of Mozilla a requirement for a particular product than it would to have Longhorn as a requirement.

If full SVG and Xforms can arrive on every platform before Longhorn gets here with Avalon, Indigo and XAML I can see people being tempted to use the open standard and cross platform supported technologies instead.

Re:Why should they worry?

[dirtyforker]

About two years ago I started to use Mozilla in order to get away from pop-ups. I now use Linux.

Re:Why should they worry?

[Duhavid]

They lose some of their lock in.

Web applications make the underlying operating system far less important. It makes it easier to switch away from ( and to, really ) Windows.

Re:Who cares anymore damnit?!?!?!?!

[bfizzle]

Atleast the NYTime ad we go a little bit of satisfaction. The personal ad would have gotten no where.

Firefox is not a threat...

[LegoEvan]

because "nobody" cares about how stable it is, how useful tabbed browsing is, what tech people say, how much sexier the icon is than that stupid e, the rave reviews it gets, the fact that it's OSS, feels faster than IE (at least on my Mac), and is safer for the average joe user.

I could totally see how an ostrich with its head buried in the sand* would consider it no threat.


*Yes, I am aware that there is no documented case of an ostrich burying its head in the sand.

Re:Firefox is not a threat...

[bfizzle]

With just a shovel that can be fixed. The hard part is getting the head to stay log enough to bury it.

Re:Firefox is not a threat...

[electrichamster]

Bahahah, that was absolutely the last thing I expected your comment to say after reading the parent. Nice :)

Re:Firefox is not a threat...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill the body and the head will die.

Re:Firefox is not a threat...

[Anonymous Coward]

With an axe, that can be fixed. The hard part is getting PETA off your back. Oh wait, we have an axe!

Re:Firefox is not a threat...

[robfoo]

I like the 'e' icon! (the *icon* not the security hole it represents)

I think firefox should have an (optional) 'f' icon, that's very similar to internet explorer's 'e' that way I could tell people like my sister (ie, non-tech types) that to get the internet now you click on the 'f' rather than the 'e' cos 'f' is the like new 'e'..

Re:Firefox is not a threat...

[ArticleI]

We often forget that we are among the "enlightened" computer users. The average computer user just want to surf the internet. If IE lets them do that then they're going to use it. Tabbed browsing? Most people don't even know such a thing exists. Stability? If they were concerned with stability they probably wouldn't be using a Windows PC in the first place. Security? That is usually not a concern. Look at all of the open Wi-Fi routers in your neighborhood. Most people just want something you can "plug in" and have it work. Internet Explorer provides that and to them, there is little reason they should switch to another browser. "Don't fix it if it's not broken".*

*This is not to suggest that there are not many problems with IE. I use FireFox and would never consider using anything else.

Re:Firefox is not a threat...

[fyngyrz]

Plus, you could say that you just "eff'ed" Explorer, which has to be worth something...

That's the way with Microsoft

[QuietLagoon]

the next version.

It's always better in the next version. Never mind that the next version won't be here for two years at least, but it will be better.

I don't care for extendable features.

[basvdlei]

When developing a website you have to look at 2 "standards". The one from the W3C and the hacks you need to do, to make the site display correct in the latest IE. And i'm not saying anything about PNG rendering.

Re:I don't care for extendable features.

[liangzai]

No, you just adher to the W3C standard. There's no need to take IE into consideration. Doing so would severly cripple web developing.

Re:I don't care for extendable features.

[Zonnald]

Little off topic (or is it)?

Microsoft is a Platinum Sponsor of the W3C tenth anniversary of the founding of the World Wide Web Consortium.

Re:I don't care for extendable features.

[generic-man]

Saying "My web page is perfect because the validator said so" is like saying "My application is perfect because I didn't get any compile-time warnings."

Valid XHTML+CSS doesn't necessarily look pretty, and pretty XHTML+CSS doesn't necessarily validate. Likewise, it's not hard to make pages that look great in Firefox but not in IE (or, for that matter, KHTML-based browsers like Safari).

Lastly, the W3C doesn't have any "standards." It has recommendations. To test all the W3C recommendation support, you would have to test your web pages with a screen reader, a printer terminal, graphical and non-graphical browsers, and so on. Validators don't do that. They also don't test style, like setting appropriate alternate text for images and so on.

why would they care?

[dotgod]

even if they did consider mozilla a threat, why should they care? even the mozilla users will still need to buy windows.

Re:why would they care?

[Newspimp]

With IE no longer a requirement to users, Windows is that much less valuable. How many sites are "IE Only" these days. Sometimes that's the only reason people keep Windows around; is to use those sites, like my mother does. If there were no "IE Only" sites, she'd be 100% Linux now. So, that's why it's a problem to them. Any feature they don't control and becomes available elsewhere takes away a reason to get Windows. I've never purchased Windows. I run Firefox.

Re:why would they care?

[payndz]

even if they did consider mozilla a threat, why should they care? even the mozilla users will still need to buy windows.

Unless they think, "Hey, Firefox is really good, much better than that browser from Microsoft, and it's from those Open Source people. Hmm, I hear that Linux thing is from these Open Source people too. If it's as good as Firefox, it's worth a look - and it's free!" Switch to Linux = loss to Microsoft of several hundred, maybe even thousand, dollars in software sales per switcher.

(Or they could be running OS X!)

Re:why would they care?

[klang]

..and after buying Windows and installing Firefox, you will not have any problems with IE thus making your Windows experience much better. (so I agree with you: "why would Microsoft care?")

Using mozilla on Linux will not change anything, you don't have the option of running IE anyway (without wine, but why would you do that?)

There is a LONG way from switching browser to switching OS..

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

guess it would have been to hard to write out this "story" without all the anti-ms crap. is that the best way to get your story up here on slashdot now? no wonder it's taking so long for people to take open source anything seriously. seems to me that posting without all the flames would have made the point hit home enough :)

Re:*sigh*

[Newspimp]

Consider it a counter effect to the IE/XP commercials within that article.

The second F!

[SuperJason]

The second F is supposed to be small!! Argh!

That is all.

Re:The second F!

[Anonymous Coward]

FireFox!
firefox!
fireFox!
Fire Fox!
fire fox!

Competition is a good thing

[robogymnast]

This is a good example that could be used against all the outrageous patents that are being granted. Because IE, Firefox and Opera are all competing, every of the browsers have to bring something new to the table (whether it is more secure, faster, easier to learn, ...) in order to be successful. Patents do not foster innovation, competition does, and it's about time the law started reflecting that.

And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Night Goat]

See, it's comments like this that ought to make the DOJ convict Microsoft. When a company's not afraid of a far superior browser, that's ridiculous. They aren't afraid because of the legions of users who have no idea what a web browser is, and don't need to know, because they just use the browser that's built in. They equate internet with IE. I do tech support for an ISP, and I see this happen all the time. Many people have no idea that they can use other programs to get web pages. And this is because IE is bundled with Windows. It's bullshit that they can get away with this.

-- Night Goat, a proud Firefox/Safari user

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people have no concept of 'software' 'program' 'desktop'

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[dark_requiem]

So you would break up Microsoft because of the willful ignorance of its user base? I dislike their crap software as much as the next guy, but I realize that if I have a problem with it, it is MY responsiblity to find an alternative, or create one if it does not exist. I thought that was the whole philosophy behind OSS: making a better alternative. Just because most users are too oblivious to look for alternatives is no reason to punish MS. If you run to the government to "solve" all your problems, you take no responsibility for your own condition, and thus take no measures to improve it yourself.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Squatchman]

You're going to have a lot more luck being angry at stupid people than being angry with a giant corporation.

Microsoft is doing what any smart business should strive to do. Expand their share of the market and make money by trying to make their product as attractive as possible to the largest audience.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[im_thatoneguy]

Can we also get the DOJ to sue QWERTY keyboard manufacturers? Because Dvorak is a much more efficient layout, but all those bastards at logitech and microsoft keep putting out an inferior product. Since when has producing an inferior product been a sign of a monopoly. I know this is unbelievably difficult for engineers to understand, but the market not the specs dictate sales. For all of you who are trying to pursuade Microsoft to not bundle software: Shut the Hell up. I wake up every day and thank God that Microsoft put Winzip virually out of business by bundeling a free .zip decompressor in XP. I am always grateful that I can go to any computer in the world and load up my MSN profile. Everytime I buy a new piece of hardware I am graced with 90% of the drivers being installed. There is nothing keeping users from downloading a competing product. 7/11 may not be the best restraunt but I'll be damned if they arn't convenient.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[dark_requiem]

One further comment I forgot in the previous post. If MS didn't include IE with Windows, how the hell would I conveniently download Firefox?

Remember folks, if you don't like it, don't use it.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is not a better browser, it just does a better job of rendering HTML.

IE does a lot more than just render HTML, look it up.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[NecroPuppy]

Dunno about your keyboard, but I can pry up the letters on mine and remap it.

Or, what I did at work, just remap and touchtype.

It drives my coworkers nuts, but it also keeps them from using my computer.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

If MS didn't include IE with Windows, how the hell would I conveniently download Firefox?

And yet, people somehow managed to get software before the web was in common use.

Personally, I always have a copy of Firefox on CD ready before first booting up a new machine (or formatting an old one). Pretty simple. If that wasn't an option, I could always point my FTP client to ftp.mozilla.org and log in anonymously.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Dahan]

See, it's comments like this that ought to make the DOJ convict Microsoft.

NEWSFLASH! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Microsoft has been found to be a monopoly and was convicted of abusing its monopoly power.

Oh wait... that was from June 2000... so what are you going on about again? Sounds like what you're asking for was done years ago.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[DataPath]

Oh, they are! And the DOJ has convicted them of it multiple times.

The problem is the little slap-on-the-wrist DOJ response.

After the 500 million euro fine the EU handed to microsoft, the DOJ responded with something to the effect of "but think of the effect on the world economy!"

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[gad_zuki!]

The idea that the US is against or will continue to do anything but slaps on the wrist against monopolizers is quaint and old fashioned. Toss in a lagging economy and the deficit and the Republican noise machine will churn out "Why do prosecutors want to hurt America" and every Joe Sixpack will tell me that "America hates success" like they did when MS was on trial before. I believe Bush ran in 2000 saying he would end the MS case in MS's favor.

So really, lets not be too naive here. The last entity that can help encourage a healthy IT market will be the government. Perhaps if OSX catches on like the iPod has there will be at least *some* competition on the desktop/bundled apps. This ain't the EU.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Night Goat]

I never said Microsoft should be broken up. What I'd like to see happen is for there to be either no browser included with Windows (we used to get our first browsers on a disk from our ISPs), or for there to be an option. Maybe Mozilla and IE, user decides. The "no browser" option's never going to happen because most users would be completely lost without a browser, but having a choice from the start would be nice.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Night Goat]

Firstly, nobody profits from the idea of a QWERTY keyboard. The guys in Taiwan who pump out cheap keyboards can do it so cheaply because they don't pay a license to QWERTY Corp. So there'd be nobody for the DOJ to take action against. I know you were exaggerating when you suggested this, but still, it's not a valid comparison.

Secondly, it's not the fact that IE's inferior that is a sign of a monopoly. It's the fact that 90% of the computers out there run Windows, and because of this, they run IE. I wouldn't care at all if Microsoft was a monopoly if they had to remain competitive to continue being one. But they don't, there are no viable competitors to Microsoft for the mass market. Apple and Linux are niche markets, let's face it. 7/11 and Winzip have to add new features and change to remain competitive. Microsoft doesn't HAVE to change Windows at all. The only reason they really need to change Windows or Office is to get repeat sales.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Night Goat]

Believe me, I'm angry at both! :)

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[HiThere]

Yeah, it was officially convicted and officially punished. Now I want to see an actual punishment. Even the sentence that was given, trivial though it was, was never enforced, and was openly violated without even embarassment or attempt at concealment.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Thnikkaman]

I'm a hardcore Apple user and hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but not because they include features in their software. A feature of Windows is to be able to browse the internet with IE. Should we not include music players to play CDs? Should we not have built in graphics adapters on motherboards? Where do we draw the line? What seperates a monopoly from a feature of the product? I also noticed your Sig says you're a proud Safari user... Safari is bundled with Mac OS X. Just a thought.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

it is MY responsiblity to find an alternative, or create one if it does not exist.

I agree that it should be MY responsibility to find alternative browsers (or my ISP's). I also think that it should be MY responsibility to find the original browser, I.E., rather than have it be bundled. Otherwise Microsoft would have an unfair advantage over the browser that I picked, because Microsoft would be using its Monopoly power to spread its monopoly to a different product.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari comes bundled with Mac OS X. Mozilla App Suite comes bundled with Mandrakelinux. NetPositive comes bundled with BeOS. How dare they!

Gotta love the Slashdot double standards. I'm sure someone will reply with "but Linux distros with a variety of browsers" or something similar, but it's still bundled. Bundling software is a good thing... except when it's Microsoft... er, I mean M$.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[colinrichardday]

I suspect that people might prefer to have more, not fewer, browsers bundled with Microsoft Windows.

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[dark_requiem]

So, you somehow still feel restricted by the inclusion of IE in Windows? As stated, if you don't like it, don't use it. Use your browser of choice, use your OS of choice, and if you believe your current choice restricts you too greatly, change it. Get a new browser. Get a new OS. Get a new computer (not a Dell, for christ sake). Just take responsibility for your own choices, your own actions. Quit blaming MS and seek an alternative, if you don't like IE. Don't tell me about all the "poor souls" out there who don't know about firefox. Even if they don't know about firefox, is that MS's problem? No, of course not. It's their own problem. If people believe their browser is too lacking in security to be used effectively, then they switch. Let's all try a fresh dose of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. It might really change the way you see the world, if you have to view your life as your own responsibility...

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Sezzler]

You're missing the key difference: in all other cases there's a distinct difference between the OS and the (bundled) browser - you *may choose* to use what's there, or not. Have you tried reading MS help files in a browser other than IE recently ?

Re:And they're NOT a monopoly?

[Anonymous Coward]

I formerly worked at a university support desk, and saw the same all the time. MANY users thought the internet WAS the big, blue 'e' (many also walked in and said "I heard I could download the internet on a floppy for free if I come here," when requesting the dial-up installer). They did not know any better. Time and again, while on a phone call, they had no clue what a 'browser' was and I had to resort to telling them 'the big, blue e' (a few had the big 'N', which I always suggested first).

Many users thought they had to have Word open to print anything (what they called 'the big, blue W'). Several had problems with there USB mice which were fitted over the prongs of the serial port. At least one, seriously, had problems with their mouse not moving, as they held it like a TV remote. And don't even get me trying to count the number of users who double-clicked everything and had no concept of left and right clicking.

Many had no clue as to what version of Windows they were running, and even stated that they didn't think they ran Windows because it only ran (the splash screen) when it started up, and then it promptly closes.

The problem is that what they see is what they think and become used to. They relate computer things to non-abstract items in the world. The 'e' IS the internet. The 'W' IS printing. The mouse IS the remote that plugs somewhere, anywhere, in the back. The computer IS the thing with the 'e' and the 'W'. Gator IS a wonderful thing ;) (Please DO NOT believe that (no doubt a few here might))

MS knows the average user is like this. So, why not make them believe there is nothing but a MS universe? It sure works, and gives them greater market-share, and, in turn, greater leverage to do whatever they please and desire.

Their dominance is basically four-fold: their own dominance, evangelistic marketing, strong-arm and dirty business tactics, and the average user who lives (body, mind, and nearly soul) in the MS universe. MS can easily survive with only 3 of these legs, and could balance cautiously on only 2, but completely removing even one of these legs is a severely difficult task.

On a side note, if OSS/GNU/Linux were ever to increase in the average user desktop market, it would be plagued by the wannabe geeks who "help" the lesser computer users, always log in as root, and 'have to change that annoying red background.' They are already out there, and they download pirated copies of the boxed distros 'because the free versions don't have all the software' (which they could download and compile themselves, but that is beyond them). They have no true respect for OSS/GNU/Linux, and use it to be 'geekier than thou.' But even they will say that 'Linux' is way better.

Taking down a firmly entrenched empire is a VERY difficult road, and will have new perils all along the way.

I have written less than half my thoughts and, sadly, I have not said half as much as I have wanted to, and of the half I have said, only half of that did I originally intend, while another half was completely lost.

The only serious, possible in roads I see are Apple. Through the IPod and the coming 'headless' Mac's, many are being introduced to things non-MS and may go that route. Firefox has short-turn possibility, but NEVER underestimate the giant while it seems to be sleeping (i.e. IE, lol).

In closing everyone should be more informed about MS. I suggest the following (the titles are to the best of my memory): "Microsoft, in Our Own Words," "How the Web Was Won (the story of Netscape's rise and decline)," "Renegades of the Empire (the story of DirectX and more)," and do research on Tim Patterson (the father of MS DOS).

-JDS

Not without a change in sysadmin policies

[Phoinix]

As long as sysadmins do not limit browsers to FF/Opera or at least to a non-IE browser, not many people will switch.

For ~ a year I have been providing friends and family members with advice on using FF and even customized versions with improved default features only to notice that no one is using it yet. Only after my sister had to use my desktop for couple of weaks did she start liking FF (since IE is disabled).

The Mozilla Foundation should offer more customizable versions similar to IE so that ISP's and sysadmins (companies) can offer FF more easily.

Re:Not without a change in sysadmin policies

[jonwil]

Another thing about IE from the perspective of a sysadmin (e.g. corporate network,computer lab etc) is that the Group Policy Editor has all these great settings they can use to change how IE looks, how IE works and etc.
Also they can set particular configuration options to a specific setting (and allow or disallow users from changing them).

Mozilla does not have any of that lockdown/configuration capability.

Re:Not without a change in sysadmin policies

[jfolin]

I am responsible for administrating the computers (and audio equipment) at the student radio station at my university (http://www.radioaf.com). I have nothing to do with the website though. Anyway, I reinstalled the systems on all the publicly accessable computers a month or two ago, installed firefox as the default browser and removed all shortcuts to IE. No-one has complained, and quite a few people have switched to firefox on their own computers as well.

In the meantime...

[spidereyes]

Microsoft announces the changes included in Longhorn with Internet Explorer 1. Rename Internet Explorer to Microsoft Internet Firefox. 2. Allow *new* toe gestures for specialized mouse.

Life as normal then.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new here, Move along please.

'Innovations'

[Nuskrad]

The features in the next version of IE

*Popup Blocking
Stop annoying popup ads in their tracks with Internet Explorers's built in popup blocker.
*Tabbed Browsing
View more than one web page in a single window with this time saving feature. Open links in the background so that they're ready for viewing when you're ready to read them.
*Privacy and Security
Built with your security in mind, Internet Explorer keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls. A comprehensive set of privacy tools keep your online activity your business.
*Smarter Search
Google Search is built right into the toolbar, and there is a plethora of other search tools including Smart Keywords (type "dict " in the Location bar), and the new Find bar (which finds text as you type without covering up anything).
*Live Bookmarks
RSS integration lets you read the latest news headlines and read updates to your favorite sites that are syndicated.
*Hassle-Free Downloading
Files you download are automatically saved to your Desktop so they're easy to find. Fewer prompts mean files download quicker.
*Fits Like a Glove
Simple and intuitive, yet fully featured, Internet Explorer has all the functions you're used to - Favourites, History, Full Screen, Text Zooming to make pages with small text easier to read, etc.
*S, M, L or XL--It's Your Choice
Internet Explorer is the most customizable browser on the planet. Customize your toolbars to add additional buttons, install new MSMods that add new features, add new Skins to browse with style, and use the adaptive search system to allow you to search an infinite number of engines. Internet Explorer is as big or small as you want.
*Setup's a Snap
At only 47.3MB (Windows), Firefox takes just a few hours to download over a slow connection and years over a fast connection. The installer gets you set up quickly, and the new Easy Transition system imports all of your settings - Favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer, the only other browser - so you can start surfing right away. (After compulsary registration)
*A Developer's Best Friend
Internet Explorer comes with a standard set of developer tools including a powerful JavaScript and CSS error/warning console, and an optional Document Inspector that gives detailed insight about your pages.
*Read Mail--Not Spam
Outlook Express is the perfect complement to Internet Explorer.

Hmm, that sounds familiar...

Re:'Innovations'

[NanoGator]

"Hmm, that sounds familiar..."

Oh brother. Damned if they do, damned if they don't, just because it's Microsoft.

"I switched from IE because FireFox has the features I want! Ready pitchforks!!"

"Microsoft stole the features I like in FireFox and put them into IE! Ready pitchforks!"

Re:'Innovations'

[rainman_bc]

Of course when you copy and paste you tard:

...At only 47.3MB (Windows), Firefox ...

Re:'Innovations'

[Nuskrad]

Of course when you copy and paste you tard:

Ah, give me a break, I've taken too many drugs :P

Re:'Innovations'

[rainman_bc]

You just didn't think anyone would make it to the end lol :)

Re:'Innovations'

[cbiltcliffe]

Oh brother. Damned if they do, damned if they don't, just because it's Microsoft.

I couldn't give a damn if they use features from other software. Even if they take features from open source to make Windows better. That's the whole point of software development, and why software patents are a bad idea.

What pisses me off is when they use somebody else's features, then try to advertise themselves into history as the "innovative" inventor of those features.

Re:'Innovations'

[tambo]

I couldn't give a damn if they use features from other software. Even if they take features from open source to make Windows better. That's the whole point of software development, and why software patents are a bad idea.

Yeah, I'm really glad we have all of this freedom to innovate. I mean, look at how far the word processor market has advanced, give ten years of freedom. Since Office 95, Word has improved by... um... well, at least the paperclip is 3D now.

Okay, Word is stagnant. But - but - but we have freedom to operate! Without this, we wouldn't've had the flood of new competitors in the word processor market who've striven to dethrone Word by heavily pushing the development edge and offering great, innovative alternatives! ... Er, wait, that hasn't happened either.

Face reality. In most software markets, "freedom to innovate" means that everyone sits around and waits for someone to develop an improvement, and then they copy that improvement. So what's the point of wasting money on R&D when your competitors will do it for you? Specifically, what's the point of creating a whole new product to take on Microsoft, the king of stolen innovation?

And so, the word processor market has stagnated for a decade. Ditto spreadsheets. Ditto small database software, too, and PowerPoint, and Media Player. We've seen the same apps banged out with 1995+(x) labels, the same price tags, and no new features. It's likely to continue.

This cycle of stagnation is exactly what software patents are designed to break. It gives companies to invest in researching new ways of doing things, on the promise that their competitors won't immdiately copy them. Yes, the bleeding edge is likely to be dulled by patent concerns. But it spurs development in commodity applications, which, in fact, comprise most of the software market.

Keep in mind that biotechnologists raised the same chicken-little cry when the USPTO started issuing biotech patents: an end to biotech innovation, interference with daily activities, and general calamity for the future of biotech. Thirty years later, biotech looks amazingly vibrant - one of the few bright spots in our post-industrial economy.

- David Stein

Re:'Innovations'

[IceFox]

You expect people to click on adds when they are in flash? Are you stupid?

Re:'Innovations'

[rainman_bc]

The ads aren't in flash, only the landing page is:

http://www.costasandsandra.com/index2.php

I would link to that page in my sig, but I'm out of room :(

Thanks for the sentiment though...

Re:'Innovations'

[drsmithy]

What pisses me off is when they use somebody else's features, then try to advertise themselves into history as the "innovative" inventor of those features.

Based on that standard, are there any software developers that _don't_ piss you off ?

Not to mention, when have Microsoft ever claimed to have invented technology they really haven't ? Bearing in mind that "innovation" in marketing speak hasn't aligned with its dictionary definition for a couple of decades now.

Some other famous quotes...

[H_Fisher]

...from like-minded individuals throughout history:

T. Rex, 30-some odd million years ago: "Mammals? Ha! I'm the biggest predator in town! Why the hell should I worry, I rule this place!"

Roman generals, c. 200 a.d.: "Barbarians, you say? We've got nothing to worry about. We're the biggest army on the planet. What could possibly go wrong?"

A Confederate general, 1861: "Those Yankees ain't nothin' to worry 'bout! We'll run 'em back across th' Potomac in a month, then we'll go back to plantin' cotton."

Adolf Hitler, 1942: "We can fight a war on two fronts! The Russians can't stop us! We're invincible!"

The Iraqi information minister, 2003: "The Americans will never set foot in Baghdad."

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[pyrotic]

George W Bush 2003: "Mission accomplished!"

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[dynamo_mikey]

This is very tangential to the subject, but I'll ask anyway. America fought a two-fronted war very successfully in WWII. How come the "two-fronted war" is so obviously dumb when Germany did it? I think it's as much 20/20 hindsight as anything else.

Nonetheless, that was an amusing post.

-dynamo

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[squidfood]

How come the "two-fronted war" is so obviously dumb when Germany did it?

NGIIALWIA! ("It's one of the classic blunders of all time").

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[spud603]

"The Iraqi information minister, 2003: 'The Americans will never set foot in Baghdad.'"

This one strays from your "huge-wealthy-megalomaniacal-power-underestimates- small-poor-megalomaniacal-underdog" analogy. More fitting:

Bush in 2003: "It's just Iraq.. we don't need troops, armor, congressional approval or funding! We're all-powerful! Let's just invade already!"

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

CuZ AmEriCa RoOlS!!!! All other countries are the sucks!!

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[dameron]

This is very tangential to the subject, but I'll ask anyway. America fought a two-fronted war very successfully in WWII. How come the "two-fronted war" is so obviously dumb when Germany did it? I think it's as much 20/20 hindsight as anything else.

Two reasons:

1) Atlantic
2) Pacific

-dameron

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Wiz]

It isn't the same deal though. Thus:

1. Neither Germany nor Japan could attack contiental USA.
2. Germany & Japan did have other countries attacking their land however.
3. Germany & Japan had already been in war for 2 years before the USA got involved, which would have been a further drain on their resources.
4. Germany did it OVER LAND! Remember 25 miles of water was enough to save the UK, but when you can march straight back into the country that attacked you then you better win!

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[dustinbarbour]

The mission he spoke of was that of defeating the Iraqi army.. not rebuilding Iraq into a democratic nation. Thus, the mission was actually accomplished. Get your head out of your ass.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Iraqi information minister, 2003: "The Americans will never set foot in Baghdad."

G. W. Bush, a bit later in 2003: "Teh war is over, Iraq has been p0wned".

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[NanoGator]

I'm sure history has quite a few more quotes like that only made by the victor.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[moosesocks]

and to add another entirely false statement, this time from a former US President:

JFK, 1963: "I am a jelly dougnut."

Look how that one turned out. Personally, I still want to see a jelly doughnut serve as president.

Of course, there's a bit more to the story

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

True ... just that there is a difference between defeating an army and diffusing an army so that it can regroup and come back to bite you in the ass in the form of insurgency or partisan war. That's all.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Planesdragon]

ok, so Saddam's out of power.

Why the @#$! are we still in Iraq?

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, what Iraq war are you looking at that we've won a military victory?

The fact that you're moderated funny speaks volumes.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[cain]

No. He said it was the "end of major combat operations". And since then, 1000 US soldiers have been killed. In fact the heaviest fighting of the war so far happened after that speech.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[painandgreed]

This is very tangential to the subject, but I'll ask anyway. America fought a two-fronted war very successfully in WWII. How come the "two-fronted war" is so obviously dumb when Germany did it? I think it's as much 20/20 hindsight as anything else.

Well, first off, one of Hitler's rules that he stated in Mein Kaumpf was to never fight on two fronts. So, in that light, it's him breakign his own rules.

Reality was that every day he did not attack the USSR, was a day closer to the USSR attacking him. His error was not attacking the USSR but in trusting Mussolini. It was Italy's attack on Greece which delayed Hitler's push into the USSR by several months because Germany had to go to their aid. It was that several months that made the winter an issue in invading the USSR. Another was declaring war on the US. Since Japan had attacked the US, Germany was under no obligation to declare war on the US, especially not so soon, but Hitler didn't hesitate and allowed the US to operate in the European theater immediatly. There as also the change of bombing tactics in England that gave England tim to rebuid and defend herself.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no, you've got it wrong. The most current Official Explanation that you were instructed long after the fact is that the "mission accomplished" actually means "this specific ship's mission has been accomplished."

Stick to the official explanations, pal. And keep current with the updates. You're not helping anyone by wandering off-message like this. Cognitive obedience is strength.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

I still want to see a jelly doughnut serve as president.

Me too. Anything would be better than the vegetable that's there now.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[dynamo_mikey]

That's pretty good, particularly number three. I guess I'd say it's a little more complicated than "don't fight a two sided war, stupid." On the eastern front, the unusually extreme winter ended up having as much to do with Germany's problems as Russia did. And on the western front, I don't think the Channel was as big a factor as you're giving it credit for. Hitler never did achieved air superiority. If he had, he would have launched operation sea lion and invaded GB. Add to that that the Brits had the opportunity to learn a lot from the failures of the French and Poles. And finally, I'd have to say the Brits are just a group staunch mother f*ckers. Made of a little more resilient stuff than the rest of us :)

Thanks for the reply.

-dynamo

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[dynamo_mikey]

Well, first off, one of Hitler's rules that he stated in Mein Kaumpf was to never fight on two fronts. So, in that light, it's him breakign his own rules.

That's interesting, I didn't know that. I agree with the rest of your post. Germany's problems in Russia were much more complicated than simply lacking the resources to fight on two fronts. What I wanted to know is why Hitler gets such a bad rap for it, and your point that he wrote about it being a bad idea pretty much answers that :)

Thanks,

-dynamo

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[coyote-san]

The dinosaurs weren't killed off by the mammals. It took millions (tens of millions?) of dinosaur-free years before mammals were more than rats.

The Roman empire split and the real power had moved to the east, based in Constantinople (Istanbul), long before Rome was sacked. The western empire had been basically abandoned. As I understand it even the "sacking" was nothing like what you think - for a long time it was basically one group coming in and displacing the top tier of society. Some people argue the Roman empire morphed into the Bryzantine Empire and didn't really fall until fairly recent times. (Recent when you're talking about 2500 years, that is.)

The Confederacy was a far stronger military power than you give it credit for. It fought off the Union for four years and came close to delivering crippling blows on several occasions.

And finally, Hitler didn't defeat the Soviets but he had Leningrad/St. Petersburg under siege for years and got close enough to Moscow that Stalin et al came close to doing an emergency evacuation.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[gad_zuki!]

And excatly who is the competition here? Cobbled together and hard to use linux distributions that lack games and common apps users need? OSX's slightly pricey offerings which include the learning curve and rebuying/stealing all that software people are using on windows?

Windows may be a natural monopoly on the desktop as people are reluctant to change, their office uses the same stuff, and the pricing is dirt cheap. Slashdotters complain about the 'MS tax' but Joe Sixpack sees 40 dollars extra for windows as a deal when it retails for over $150.

Even after the IE mess of spyware and viruses we're only seeing at best a 12% non-IE usage across the board, which includes a lot of people who didn't switch to FF but were using other browsers well before FF 1.0. Its not exactly a mandate, although FF is wildly popular.

Of course no company/product lasts forever, but MS isnt going away soon, nor is IE. SP2 probably saved a lot of people from changing browsers and at the end of the day people dont want change and they have product loyalty.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[upsidedown_duck]

Friend of goatse.cx guy: "You'll never do the basketball! It'll just never happen!"

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

T. Rex, 30-some odd million years ago: "Mammals? Ha! I'm the biggest predator in town! Why the hell should I worry, I rule this place!"

Is this insightfull for a geek!?

Roman generals, c. 200 a.d.: "Barbarians, you say? We've got nothing to worry about. We're the biggest army on the planet. What could possibly go wrong?"

If anything, the romans were afraid of becoming like that, that is the main reason they had gladiator fights. You don't build an empire with that kind of attitude.

Adolf Hitler, 1942: "We can fight a war on two fronts! The Russians can't stop us! We're invincible!"

He though the war in England would be over soon and he would not have to fight a war on two fronts long enough to count. One of the purposes of Blitzkrieg (fast war) was to allow the german army to finish its campaign in the west, then move on to the east (when Hitler decided to go to war in the East since he didn't decide that at the start of the war IIRC).

The Iraqi information minister, 2003: "The Americans will never set foot in Baghdad."


You're joking, right? :) If the previous examples, though idiotic, had a powerfull figure as an example, the Iraqi minister of information was certainly not a powerfull figure, even in Iraq during those days.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot:

3) Arctic
4) Second Amendment

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

On the eastern front, the unusually extreme winter ended up having as much to do with Germany's problems as Russia did.

The winter was bad, but the biggest factor was Hitler's bad strategy. He went to conquer Stalingrad, which had very little strategical importance, only some propaganda value carried by the city's name. They should have gone straight to Moscow, as it was weakly defended in the beginning of the war. The German army was designed for Blitzkrieg, not for long lasting trench warfare in extremely cold winter conditions. Hitler wasted an entire army in Stalingrad. Russians had more time and lives to waste. Eventually Stalingrad became the tombstone of the Germany's war effort.

Anonymous European

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Whyte]

Personally, I still want to see a jelly doughnut serve as president.

Do you have any idea how hard it would be to properly screen President Jelly Doughnut's security force? Particularly difficult since most of the applicants would be current or ex-law enforcement officers... IMPOSSIBLE I tell you!

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[dourk]

"What was that?" -- Mayor of Hiroshima

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[H_Fisher]

The dinosaurs weren't killed off by the mammals. It took millions (tens of millions?) of dinosaur-free years before mammals were more than rats. ..... Firefox probably won't be what "kills" IE. It'll take time, and a lot of other factors - if it ever "dies" at all.

The Roman empire split ... long before Rome was sacked ..... The browser market is starting to split, slowly. As more devices make their way onto the 'Net in one form or another, the concept of a "browser" - a standalone program for Internet / Web access - will probably fragment also.

The Confederacy was a far stronger military power than you give it credit for. ..... Redmond is a far stronger power than most people give it credit for, but the whole point was to illustrate the shortsightedness aspect. :-)

And finally, Hitler didn't defeat the Soviets but he had Leningrad/St. Petersburg under siege for years... ..... Microsoft has had the personal computer market in the US and elsewhere locked for a long time. But they can only grow so much and have so many irons in the fire - and eventually they'll reach a point of diminishing returns. You can see that already as they drop at least one large project that's not working (.NET Passport).

You make some very good points, though - but I was going for humor more than historical accuracy. As someone already noted, dinosaurs don't speak much English. :-)

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you're the kind of person who checks their anonymous postings. If you think the 2nd Amendment had anything to do with WW2 you are, well, either ignorant or just plain stupid.

I vote for both.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[klang]

..there are still money to be made?

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[danila]

Actually the biggest problem WAS the lack of resources. Because of that all minor problems, which could be easily overcome with twice the power, became important.

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Wiz]

Ah yes, the winter didn't work into the Germans favour that is for sure. Then again, those crazy Russians were just throwing men at the Germans and this man power was just always going to work in the long run. Also having some kick ass T-34 tanks which were the best available at the time helped, although I can't quite remember when they became available.

I think the channel mandidated the need for air superiority, otherwise we'd have been blitzkreig'd as well. Thankfully they never got it (yay for radar!) and we were just able to fend them off and eventually use ourselves as a base to invade France with help from the US, remaining French fighters, Canadians, etc.

Ultimately though, attacking Russia was really stupid. Given their size & man power, in the long run it was always going to be a losing fight.

I'm a Brit btw!

Re:Some other famous quotes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, here were the publically stated war aims:

Remove Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

Prevent Iraq from being a terrorist training ground.

And that's it. By those criteria, the mission is a major (and costly) failure. If you beliveve that there were some other mission objectives, and there is no clear evidence of this, you might be able to judge the mission a success. Care to speculate?

It's '1984' all over again.

[master_p]

When they say they are not worried about Firefox, it means that they are deeply scared by it, and preparing an all out attack against it. We've seen it with Linux.

Microsoft is doomed, they just don't know it yet. In 10 to 15 years time, no one is gonna remember Windows.

Re:It's '1984' all over again.

[NanoGator]

"When they say they are not worried about Firefox, it means that they are deeply scared by it, and preparing an all out attack against it."

I doubt they're scared by it. FireFox isn't doing anything that IE couldn't easily be made to do. Their next browser will likely imitate FireFox in many ways and the casual user just won't see the big need to move. Reality may tell a different story, but no, Microsoft has no reason to be scared.

"Microsoft is doomed, they just don't know it yet. In 10 to 15 years time, no one is gonna remember Windows."

The same could be said for Linux. I know, you're shaking your head etc, but the real flaw here is the 10-15 years time bit you put in your post. For all you know, the OS could be so transparent in 10-15 years that it won't matter anymore. Heck, we could all be leasing run-time off a central computer down the road. Linux wouldn't matter much to the individual user then, would it? Maybe? Maybe not. 10 to 15 years is quite a few life-times in computing terms.

Re:It's '1984' all over again.

[Squatchman]

Microsoft is afraid of a free browsing alternative when their own version of the software is basically given away with Windows at no extra charge anyway.

wait... huh?

I think your overestimating this "threat" a wee bit.

Re:It's '1984' all over again.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just patented that idea. Tough luck eh?

Re:It's '1984' all over again.

[NanoGator]

"I just patented that idea. Tough luck eh?"

My lawyers can beat up your lawyers!

Re:Who cares anymore damnit?!?!?!?!

[NerdBuster]

Geee imagine that, I've been labeled a troll because I spoke out against all this stupidity. Stupid nerds.

Window tabs

[sycamore_days]

but will the new IE have window tabs? ;)

Of course they will wait...

[albn]

...it is another marketing ploy that is more likely to backfire, but we all know Microsoft is king on coming out better than they came in.

They are in the process of making another operating system, and of course all of the "innovative" features will be included in the next release and will make users want to buy that operating system with the features they want to see in a browser.

That kind of marketing might have worked yesteryear, but with the likes of FireFox and other alternatives actually LISTENING to customers and doing something about it as soon as possible instead of waiting months and months for patches, it is bound to make others just dump what they are used to and move to something else.

It does not matter how mauch we rant about Microsoft, they still have 95%+ of the market as far as desktops are concerned, but with losing market share with large companies moving to open source or other (less free/open source) alternatives, it should make them worry and not use scare tactics to make people stay...

It's in the water.

[funny-jack]

Insane denial seems pretty common in this neck of the woods.

It must be something in the water.

Firefox is safe now.

[af_robot]

Until they have ANY kind of ActiveX enabled by default for all sites FireFox is safe.

What MS can do quickly is to release quick patch via windowsupdate which will disable all ActiveX by default and allow it only from trusted (whitelisted) sites with a BIG HUGE WARNING like this:

"I'm a stupid fucking idiot and allow this binary to run without any restriction on my computer.", type: "YES I AM",
next window: "I do understand what this ActiveX can delete all information, be a virus or spyware and I'm brave enough to Allow This"

Just like in Windows2003 default IE enhanced security configuration but more user friendly :)

Firefox is nice, but not Perfect

[Anonymous Coward]

An Internet browser is supposed to be my interface to the Internet. When I'm looking at a webpage, I don't always care about standards compliance. Sometimes I want to divulge as little information as possible, while collecting as much as possible. This means that the browser needs to be able to lie about its user-agent, ignore meta refresh commands, and other such things.

And so, I'm sorry to say that IE has the most correct model of settings there is. Konqueror has the next best, and Firefox still uses the old Netscape model. I want to browse by default with cookies and Javascript turned off and Java disabled. These settings often need to be turned on together by site. It's more correct to group the settings by site than it is to group them by feature. IE groups its settings by what ``zone'' a site falls in. If instead of only providing four zones, they allowed a user configurable number of zones (perhaps one for each site looked at frequently), then they'd have something nice. Not that I'll ever use IE again anyway.

I'd also like super logging capabilities. Offline browsing doesn't always work with Firefox, as some image or something wasn't cached for some reason. This is unacceptable. The webserver I accessed has a record of every file I downloaded from them. I want a record of this too, and the ability to store any file I download indefinitely.

Remember. A web browser is my interface to the Internet, not the Internet's interface to me.

These are all complaints against Firefox. Internet Explorer is beyond repair, no matter how confident Microsoft is about it. IE's mishandling of MIME types makes it unsafe to even let IE _touch_ Freenet. IE has a horrible track record. If I were in charge of IE, I'd glue Active-X stuff onto Firefox to get the next version of IE.

Re:Firefox is nice, but not Perfect

[ebrandsberg]

As a comment on the MIME types, a little know issue is that mime types are handled differently if the content is compressed. If you have a .csv file, and it's not compressed, it will be opened by Excel because excel is associated with the .csv extension (ignoring the mime-type). If the content is compressed, then it will honor the mime-type, even if it is text/plain (which a lot of webservers will send for .csv).

The usual Microsoft tactics...

[grefyne]

Microsoft has a long history of doing this to put off people potentially switching over - remember Win95 versus OS/2 - "Just wait for the next version, it will blow the competition away". Usually time lines slip and the product isn't as good as the promises.

Re:The usual Microsoft tactics...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, back then IBM was the big evil monopoly, and Microsoft was the underdog, and all the dumbasses loved them for sticking it to IBM.

Now we love IBM because they pretend to be behind the OSS movement. Believe me, it's an act, and you're all a bunch of naive dopes if you think anyone at IBM gives a rats ass about "Yer Rites Onlyne!"

What a bunch of dupes, it's as if noone here can think for themselves.

Opera 7 passed.

[eddy]

Opera 7.54u1 build 3918 passed.

The Browser Security Test is finished. Please find the results below:
High Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Medium Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Low Risk Vulnerabilities 0

"Conflict", Microsoft-style

[Daniel Dvorkin]

From the article:

Hachamovitch said he has to balance those concerns with the requests of customers who want new features such as the "tabbed" Web page displays offered by Opera and Firefox.

"You go through and talk to all these people and ask them what they want out of a browser and there are a lot of conflicting requests around: 'Hey, give me tabs right now' versus 'I want stability, I want a platform that won't break, I want to make sure I have extensability, I want to make sure have manageability,' " he said.

I'm not sure why he thinks those requirements conflict with each other. The Moz team doesn't ...

Re:"Conflict", Microsoft-style

[robfoo]

This is Microsoft we're talking about. You just *know* that if they added tabs 'right now' that they'd be scrambling for the next year patching all the remote-root holes they just opened.

I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[zymano]

And the Firefox developers aren't even trying to fix the bugs people want fixed. Like the bug about needing a "FAST BACK BUTTON" like in opera (has over 100 votes at bugzilla and they wont fix it) or even a rewind.

The Netcraft toolbar type addon which tells you which country a website is from is a good idea. Another idea would be to allow you to report malicious websites and report on history of commercial websites that steal your money.

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[ArticleI]

This is not to mention tabbed browsing, while not an extension, arguably one of the best tools for reading /. ever. You can keep the main page, the article and the page it links to open in one window.

Microsoft is install-driven

[ehack]

Microsoft is Install-driven - they know that however bad the product is, if they can get it installed they will always win, later. Look at how easily they got rid of Netscape !

A product like Linux is much more dangerous to them, because it fights back at install time, eg. Linspire or Linux server platforms.

Edmund

Head Start?

[__Maad__]

That just gives the MozBoys a year head start.

They'll need that head start.. Has anyone here actually tried developing for the Mozilla platform? It isn't a walk in the park. The documentation available on XULplanet, mozilla.org, etc, although improving, is rather sparse and frequently out of date. Even some books on mozilla development are out of date already - RAD in Mozilla (published this year I believe) has some wrong details about XUL tree selections, for example. One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces. This is a tremendous amount of work, but I for one would be more than willing to contribute bits and pieces as I come across them. This basic documentation step needs to be done to encourage people to develop sites and applications for the Mozilla platform -- and to a greater extent, more modern w3c standards (DOM2/3,CSS2/3,etc).

I think that what the Firefox devs have done is an absolutely amazing feat of marketing and UI-cleanup, however, there is a huge amount of legacy code in web applications and scripts and pages in general dedicated to MSIE's own proprietary DOM, ActiveX, and rendering quirks. We need to bring those people to the standards-compliant world and, to a lesser extent, to the Mozilla platform.

I just don't see that critical mass in the application side of things yet, and that will be part of winning the battle. If XAML and so-forth start to make inroads, we are in trouble.

Re:Head Start?

[N7DR]

They'll need that head start.. Has anyone here actually tried developing for the Mozilla platform? It isn't a walk in the park. The documentation available on XULplanet, mozilla.org, etc, although improving, is rather sparse and frequently out of date. Even some books on mozilla development are out of date already - RAD in Mozilla (published this year I believe) has some wrong details about XUL tree selections, for example. One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces. ... This basic documentation step needs to be done to encourage people to develop sites and applications for the Mozilla platform....

I couldn't agree with this more (and I wish that I hadn't already posted elsewhere in this article, so I could mod this up :-( ).

I have on three separate occasions started to attempt some some-scale Moz-based Web Service development stuff, armed with books and the lastest available info off the mozdev site. On all three occasions the result was the same: after about eight hours of massaging examples with increasing frustration, I finally admitted defeat and decided to wait until someone else has done something sufficiently similar so I could look at it and figure out how this stuff really works.

Now, I readily admit that I was doing this simply for fun to try to understand how things like SOAP are supposed to work in Moz -- so I wasn't in the usual panicy desperation mode that absolutely forces one to figure things out at any cost, but even so I found it disheartening that I couldn't simply read an article and example or two and make stuff work.

Re:Head Start?

[moosesocks]

Let me add to this.

In the open source world, DOCUMENTATION IS EVERYTHING.

Think of it this way... in order for an OSS project to be successful it either needs corporate funding OR good documentation in order for the non-academic types to use it and learn to hack it.

In this regard, I consider most of the official GNU projects, perl, and many others to be failures.

PHP has amazingly good documentation. I was able to easily learn PHP only having a basic knowledge of C++ beforehand using only the docs on php.net. They're easy to navigate, pleasant to look at, and readable by NORMAL HUMANS. Now, from what I understand, PHP didn't start out as being much of a superior language to perl, python, asp, and many others... The fact is that php got good because it got popular. Php gor popular because it was easy to use and the docs were top-notch.

Now move on to Gentoo (no. I'm not a gentoo fanboy and do not have any systems currently running it). By all means, the installation process for gentoo is ASTONISHINGLY complicated and difficult --- without proper documentation. The official installation documentation is excellent. It's no wordier than it needs to be, and should be understandable by anyone with a decent amount of experience with windows or mac os. Gentoo's large userbase can easily be credited to its excellent (centralized) documentation and community. In my experience, when I ran into a problem with gentoo, I could find a solution easier than I could with RedHat because the documentation was all in one place, easy to understand, and logically organized. By all means, if gentoo's docs sucked, the project wouldn't exist anymore. Everyone would be scared off. My only gripe was that when I installed it, they gave no warning that it would take about a week on my ancient celron-466. live and learn.

OS X got tons of little freeware/shareware/oss apps once apple got its act together and started offering decent documentation on cocoa. the number of small independent software companies developing for apple has exploded over the past few years thanks to this.

As annoying as it is, the M$ office assistant is actually a nice thing to have. It gives short, concise answers to everyday questions with word and excel. Great for people who don't have much computer knowledge. Although most people like them, I don't like microsoft's developer docs...

now all mozilla needs is decent XUL / devloper documentation. Last time i checked a few months ago, it was virtually non-existant which is a pity, because I think XUL could really take off as an entirely separate entity from mozilla. XUL + Javascript could finally fufill Sun's original dreams for Java to create applications which were small, lightweight, and portable. XUL is to HTML as Applications are to Web Pages (XUL:HTML :: Apps:WebSites) if you catch the drift.

To get an idea of the power of XUL, check out the Mozilla Amazon Browser which is in all ways a faster and easier method for browsing amazon.

Also think of the bandwidth savings! Web applications would no longer have to serve entire pages for each request processed.

Re:Head Start?

[drinkypoo]

PHP will have amazingly good documentation when you don't have to read user comments at the bottom of every damn page to find out how things actually work instead of what the manual they wrote says. IMO perl is still a superior language, though I admit that the documentation is difficult to navigate. But, at least it is correct.

Re:Head Start?

[anechoic]

>To get an idea of the power of XUL, check out the >Mozilla Amazon Browser which is in all ways a >faster and easier method for browsing amazon.

I agree and use this handy app all the time for research...find it here:
http://www.faser.net/mab/installation.cfm

Re:Head Start?

[Christianfreak]

I couldn't agree more about PHP, and how often are the user comments completely wrong, or suggest something that's going to get your site owned.

As for perl documentation its not that hard. On *nix 'man perl' gives a list of man pages and what to look for where. And if you're looking for a specific function you can do 'perldoc -f ' and get a good idea how to use it. Or do perldoc perlfunc (or man perlfunc) to get a complete function list if you aren't sure what to look for. And most pagers let you search the page your viewing.

If you don't have access to a shell there's also http://perldoc.com/ which should have everything that's availiable from a shell. And finally if you need info on specific modules it can be obtained from the shell after installed (at least through CPAN) or you can view the docs on the web by typing in the module name at http://search.cpan.org/

if you still need help there's also http://perlmonks.org/ with lots of people ready to answer your questions :)

I'm not worried either.

[robyannetta]

For once in my life, I RTFA all the way through. Gimme a prize.

Microsoft seems to have fogotten that competition benefits everyone, including their own bottom line.

I for one, choose to use Firefox. Not because it's open source, but because it works for me.

Re:I'm not worried either.

[Juanvaldes]

/me hands robyannetta a cookie.

Re:Who cares anymore damnit?!?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that your troll schtick? Calling out people for being nerds? On SLASHDOT? Did you read the little slogan under the logo? You are the weakest troll. Goodbye.

The next NY Times add will be...

[faramir_fr]

When Microsoft will release Longhorn. It will list the names of the last 10k IE users.

Meanwhile Pepsi says

[stratjakt]

Don't worry about the new formula from our competitor, we have something even better coming very soon.

Seriously, this isn't news, this is basic marketing. No company is ever going to admit that the competition is superior, which is what they'd be doing if they said they were worried.

No athlete is going to say he's worried on game day, either. "Gee we suck! I sure hope the Bears don't hurt us!". It doesn't happen.

But anything to bash MSFT, I suppose.

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[ryanjensen]

Would you consider Maxthon then? It has tabs, plugins, themes, ad blocking, etc. It's based on IE, so more sites should work with it (some sites don't even load for me in Firefox).

I've never used Maxthon, but I might give it a try.

Combined attack

[valkraider]

They are not worried about FireFox. But they *are* worried about FireFox+Mozilla+Thunderbird+OpenOffice+Linux+MacOS X+Java+Eclipse+Apache+Mono etc...

Every time someone says "I don't need [Microsoft product] because I can use [open source or competing product]" it scares them.

Lynx...

[Linker3000]

OMG Lynx can't be tested!!!

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no "second F" in "Fuck you".

Obligatory meme

[emurphy42]

A year?! I wanna beat people up right now!

Re:Obligatory meme

[bladesjester]

boot to the head *whack*

Re:Obligatory meme

[Anonymous Coward]

Ouch! You... booted me in the head!

Re:Obligatory meme

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha!

So remove Internet Explorer

[The Fifth Man]

So remove Internet Explorer

Technical process

Automated software

Instructions for trolls:
1. reply that this cannot actually be done.
2. reply that removing IE makes Windows:
--a. unstable.
--b. less secure.
--c. disables windows update.

Re:So remove Internet Explorer

[spac3manspiff]

Internet Explorer Outlook Express Internet Information Server, Internet Information Server Debugger Imageviewer MS FrontPage Fax Services Indexing Service Games Windows Scripting Host COM and DCOM Distributed Transaction Coordinator Web-Based Enterprise Management Internet Connection Wizard Task Scheduler (not Task Manager, don't worry) ActiveMovie for IE MS Fake Java for IE Windows Address Book NetMeeting Media Player 2.0 (the Codecs WILL STILL be installed, though) 16 bit Application Compatability Remote Storage Recall Notification Windows Automatic Updates (Use Daisy with the -m switch) Color Profile
I dont need any of that except windows updates however i can download those manually so it doesnt seem too threatening.

Re:So remove Internet Explorer

[Anonymous Coward]

I got tired of the constant patches / security updates for IE. So I uninstalled it along with other garbage with XPlite. God the diffrence is like night and day. Its fast more stable, and dont have to rely on the constant winupdates.

True removing IE breakes some packages, like McAfee, but just install another vedor AV like NOD32 which is just as good if not better. your golden.

Oh yah, its amazing how little spyware you get after doing it. I pratically stopped scanning for them altogether.

signed,
fully converted Firefox/Thunderbird user.

Translation

[spac3manspiff]

We have a very, very innovative set of capabilities that we're putting in the next version.

Basically what they're saying is, "We will make it impossible for you to use windows with out IE"
An example of things not compatable with firefox are, windows updates, WUS (Windows update services), or anything with microsoft.com in it.

And what is Firefox's Market Share?

[dynamo_mikey]

As the article said, Firefox's market share is rising, the latest numbers have them up to 4%, eroding Internet Explorers commanding 92%. And they rose an entire percentage point in one month. This article on zdnet is from the 15th:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5491439.html

I think they've done it the only way possible, better features and publicity. I hope they take the time Microsoft is giving them to get even further ahead of the competition.

-dynamo

Re:Article text in case of slashdotting

[Anonymous Coward]

"...said Marty Lindner, a team leader at the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team at Carnegie Mellon University."

I think the author of the article is referring to CERT. According to their FAQ (found here: http://www.cert.org/faq/cert_faq.html#A2), they don't appreciate "CERT" being expanded into an acronymn.

I Can Hear the Commercial Now

[Anonymous Coward]

We bring you yesterday's innovations tomorrow! (And give you the impression we just invented them).

My browser passed the test.

[Anonymous Coward]

Browser: Lynx 2.8.4rel.1 on Slackware Linux 9.0, kernel 2.4.28.

It passed with flying colors. :)

Re:Who cares anymore damnit?!?!?!?!

[NerdBuster]

You know I'm right.

Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[MikShapi]

A common line of thought seems to be that Mozilla/Firefox is more secure than IE, virus/exploit-wise.

This is probbably true, at this point in time.

A common misconception (which happens to be one of my pet peeves) is that this is because microsoft write bad code, microsoft devs are not security minded or are incompetent, open source code is better code just because it is open source, or Microsoft are in league with virusmakers, and various other manner of of BS.

Here's the news people: Microsoft can afford as good a development team as anyone else. They can afford to hire extra devs for their QA teams as well as their dev teams, QA devs that read code, something many software houses just hire techs that know mercury products for. They can afford to have two (probbably more) devs per line of code - one to stick back and fix bugs, another to run ahead with the next generation of code. Not many software houses can do that (thus affording a larger dev attention span to bugs) either.

And Open Source is as prone to bad methodology, bad coding, non-security-minded coding, bugs and what-have-you as any other code. OS devs make mistakes too.

The advantage MS has in many highly-paid devs is offset by open source being exposed to immense scrutiny levels by being open, but, having seen quite a bit of OS, this doesn't always guarantee someone will volunteer to fix it.

I don't think either has a check-mate advantage over the other in this respect.

Today, Firefox's security advantage lies in one single factor: The very little attention it is getting from the people who write exploits.

Once it makes more sense for them to assume mostly FF browsers will be running their malware, they *will* write malware for FF, open source or no open source. They *will* find ways to exploit FF, or any number of its (sometimes very-widely-installed) extensions, which do not undergo the same code scrutiny of the core FF team. They *will* find ways to exploit plugins, which are often not Open Source at all and are as exploitable as IE in this sense.

All it takes is a critical mass installbase for FF, and that cozy misleading feeling of security will fly right out the window.

My 2 cents.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[IpSo_]

I don't see how your argument holds any water.

Take Apache for example, just because it has a "critical mass installbase" doesn't make it any less secure then it was previous to that point.

Regardless, in my opinion anyone who thinks open source software is more secure than closed source is fooling themselves. In both cases human beings are writing the code. The big advantage open source has is that a fix can be released the instant it is completed. No formal QA teams to go through, no legal department to consult, no inefficient policies to follow, no press releases required to put a positive spin on a negative event need to be written, and no investors to consider, it is just done.

For me, thats where the "cozy feeling" comes from.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[roca]

> Today, Firefox's security advantage lies in one
> single factor: The very little attention it is
> getting from the people who write exploits.

People keep saying that, but you can't prove it until we get equal market share with IE. I'm looking forward to that.

In fact there are lots of other reasons why Firefox is more secure than IE. For example:
-- We use a string class library for almost all strings that flat-out prevents buffer overflows associated with those strings. My impression is that the IE code mostly does not.
-- IE is designed to be lax in its interpretation of the HTML, CSS, HTTP headers etc that it receives. Gecko is designed to be strict --- well, as strict as possible while making it possible to view 99% of the Web. IE's approach leads to confusion, which leads to security bugs. A great example is the raft of security bugs where different parts of IE guess the MIME type of incoming data and the guesses are inconsistent.
-- The IE-Windows integration means IE supports a lot of magic features such as special protocols that Gecko doesn't support or just blocks. So IE has more attack surface.

SP2 has improved things for IE a lot but they started from a bad position.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[finkployd]

I agree that is a part of it, but certainly not the only place their advantage lies. Their advantage is primarily that they are under active developement and can react much quicker than Microsoft's IE. Basically MS won their browser war and forgot to maintain the product, let alone enhance it. Now they are scrambling to restart developement and like any good 800lbs gorilla, they are quite slow to do anything.

The whole "the only reason project X seems more secure than project Y is because project Y is more popular" is quite an annoying (and false) meme. By that logic Apache should be much less secure than IIS. Sometimes project Y is just poorly designed. In the case of IE that is certainly what happened. It does not matter how many highly paid devs MS has that understand security if the final project decisions are made by clueless execs who insist on senseless integration with the OS for purposes of beating a DOJ trial and other decisions that are simply bad for security. Those highly paid devs can only do so much good.

Finkployd

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[livingboy]

You wrote: "Mozilla/Firefox is more secure than IE, virus/exploit-wise."

And it will be as long as it doesn't support active-x controls and is separete application not integrated with OS.

So I think that your writing: "Today, Firefox's security advantage lies in one single factor: The very little attention it is getting from the people who write exploits." is incredible bullshit also known as FUD.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

The safety record of a big Cadillac is better than that of a little sub compact. You are saying that once there are as many Caddys as sub-compacts on the road, the Caddy safety will become just as bad as that of a sub compact. Get real. The difference is in the design.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit.

Are you saying the *only* way to exploit IE is ActiveX?

Are you saying FF is unexploitable?

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

For goodness sake moderate roc up - he should know what he's talking about as well as anyone (check bonsai.mozilla.org for the extent of his expertise).

To add a little to what has been said, it's actually untrue that Firefox has not been subjected to any attention by malware writers. The whitelistinng of XPIs and "Information Bar" were a direct response to sites that tried to force users to install some piece of spyware onto their computer.

Now I don't claim that Firefox is in any sense immune to security issues; extensions have the possibility to be a walking nightmare (extensions on update.mozilla.org don't get formal code review and so could contain hidden keyloggers and so on, extension authors may unwittingly introduce security problems into the chrome code, and so on) but it's certianly not clear that the Mozilla Foundation will repeat the years of neglect by Microsoft that led to the current web environment. If Microsoft had released something like XP SP2 in 2002 when it was first needed, IE would never have got a reputation for sieve-like security (among the general populus, at least) and Firefox would have much less momentum.

I should probably make an insightful comment about capatalism here but...

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

"And Open Source is as prone to bad methodology, bad coding, non-security-minded coding, bugs and what-have-you as any other code. OS devs make mistakes too."

Are you brain dead or just very misinformed? OpenBSD is the most secure OS in the world and the one with the best coding and it is OSS. So yeah that much said up yours with all you retarded statements.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[ppanon]

Now they are scrambling to restart developement and like any good 800lbs gorilla, they are quite slow to do anything.

Nah, they just aren't angry enough. An angry 800lb gorilla is a very fearsome thing and plenty fast.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay...then why are the comments tables in Slashdot spilling over onto the navigation bar in Gecko?

That bug has been fixed on the trunk.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[The Master Control P]

This just goes back and forth and back and forth over whether OSS is less exploited becauase it is more secure or because no one cares/wants to exploit it.

Well, an OSS project happens to drive almost 2/3 of the WWW pages on the Internet and it's widely agreed to be far more secure than IIS despite being by far the largest target. The problem at Microsoft is that, no matter how good a team of coders they may have and no matter how good the code they *could* produce is, they are controlled by marketoids, with the result that the newest features override the 1000 new security headaches they will cause.

Then again, having earned the almost pathological hate of every hacker in the world doesn't help...

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[gallinula]

If the computer virus analogy is really similar to the biological one, then surely a more even distribution of browser species would make it harder for virii to spread. If there is only a (say) 50% chance of the next browser having the same vulnerability would not that just stop the spread in its tracks? Would not the need to account for a variety of browsers make the creation of a successful virus a monumental development task? They would need to be larger to start with (I would think) and potentially easier to recognise as such by virus scanners.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[labratuk]

Microsoft can afford as good a development team as anyone else.

It's not about money, it's about culture. Microsoft can spend all the money on developers as they want, but it doesn't make any difference if they don't care.

All the people I've ever known who've gone to work at Microsoft haven't really been into computers much. Sure, they probably got very high marks on their course, and that's why they're being headhunted and paid a fortune. But they're usually in my experience the sort of people who turn up to the first day of their compsci course never having touched a compiler before. The sort of person who only ever knew enough about computers to complete the course and doesn't fiddle with them in their spare time.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but you do end up with people who don't have as much pride in their code. It's just a job to them.

Microsoft hires the students with the highest marks, but in reality, the most talented hackers often don't get very good results.

As Robert Love said recently, "...This was a year before I nearly failed a test in Operating System Design (excuse: I had kernels to make preemptive). The following semester, the course adopted a textbook that I reviewed and technical edited."

It also doesn't help that the culture at Microsoft is to have a very inflated, blaze opinion of your own coding skills.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

You're comparing apples to oranges.

A web browser and a web server are applications governed by different physics, one regularly running in a server environment, on a bastion machine in a DMZ, the other running in the much softer environment of the desktop belonging to the superuser of the machine (I'm assuming windows here).

I'm furthermore not at all sure you can compare the overall resources (time, creativity) spent trying to crack web servers to those spent trying to get code to run on Joe Sixpack's desktop. My guess is that the latter has significantly more.

The picture you draw of webservers does not neccesarily (meaning may, and yet may very well not) apply to browsers.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[oliverthered]

'Oh, gee, your impression? Well, hey, that proves it.'
Why do you think he said my impression if he wanted to prove anything? He was making an informed guess about the possible cause of the problem.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1344 24&op=Repl y&threshold=-1&commentsort=3&tid=113&mode=thread&p id=11223895
'Has Mozilla done a code audit?', well probably not a formal one, bugs fixes do get validated/audited as part of the process though, and mark shutleworth put up some bounty for finding faults.

'Nobody has ever been able to legally or morally justify piracy.'

Well,
1: legally people were paid to raid Spanish bullion ships.

2:
CD's stolen from my car, I still 'own' the CD's so I download them.

CD's burnt in fire, I still own a license so I download them.
Dodgy or scratched game dist, so I download it.

I don't want company ZYX tracking me by my key, so I download a cracked version of the software I have purchased.

The song has just come out of copyright but the only available versions are DRM'd or pirated. The pirated versions are the only ones that give me fair use of a now public domain work.

I run linux, the app I own works under wine, but the copy-protection doesn't so I download a cracked version.

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

the mozilla string library (which changes every two years or so) does not handle OOM well. but it's not like the rest of mozilla does either :).

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[roca]

> Oh, gee, your impression? Well, hey, that proves
> it.

Without access to the IE source code, it's hard to be sure, but there have been a number of bugs related to string buffer overflows in different parts of IE.

> In SP2, they recompiled all system libraries,
> including IE, using the VS2005 compiler with
> overflow detection.

That approach is not perfect, and would have been less necessary if they were using a safe string library. Still, it probably would be a good idea for Mozilla.org to build Firefox with the same options if they don't already.

> Has Mozilla done a code audit?

Mozilla.org has not done a systematic code audit, as far as I know, other than the regular code reviews that happen before checkin. I do know that people have studied the code, some using automated tools, others by hand, but we only know if people choose to tell us. (Which they often do to claim money under the bugs bounty program.)

Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits

[roca]

> Perhaps the fact that Firefox has already had
> several security exploits out despite its
> extremely small userbase in comparison to IE

That doesn't prove anything other than that people are looking at it. You are relying on an assumption that the number of security bugs found is proportional to the user base.

> I'm still questioning why every single widget is
> reimplemented and loaded up into memory when we
> have desktops that provide widgets for their
> apps to use.

You're aware that IE also reimplements its widgets, right? Anyway, a full answer is here:
http://ocallahan.org/mozilla/why-no-native- widgets .html

> Thank goodness for Opera.

Opera is a fine piece of work. I won't bash it.

> Okay...then why are the comments tables in
> Slashdot spilling over onto the navigation bar
> in Gecko?

That was fixed a long time ago, unfortunately too late for the Firefox 1.0 branch.

It is even worse

[MemoryDragon]

According to the german Heise site, they currently have a patent application pending which basically patents most if not all of the techniques which others like spamassassin have used for years now.

MS has no reason to fear loss of market share.

[fermion]

MS has nothing to lose short term, and seems to be keeping a handle on the long term as well.

MS has conned web developers large and small, not to mention web users, that IE is the web. It practically gives away front page and other tools so that web sites can be developed cheaply, either by the site owner or by cheap labor.

I am running into an increasing number of site that require IE to function. Not because of rendering or ActiveX, but because some small detail in the code is unique to IE.

As we have said, most users do not see the web, they see IE. What is increasingly happening is the most developers do not see the HTML, the see the MS tools. When you talk to them about the HTML, they look blankly and saythey just say that they develop for IE and the user is responsible for downloading it. What I have said is that IE is a applicaiton front end, and the developers are creating applications, not web pages. As long as we think of everything as a web page, MS is going to dominate the market.

The issue is not the broswer. Firefox is good. Netscape was never bad. And don't give the me the bullshit, I watched all the drama. I was running. The only major browser i have not run in Lynx. I even had my copy of Cyberdog. But firefox is simply a gimick to win the now irrelevent broswer wars.

What the open source community has missed, and what has not been commoditized, is the web page editor. Many of us on /. can code HTML in our sleep. We can write engines to code HTML. We can visualize what the markups will do. However, the people who make websites don't have the resources to code. They want to plug objects into the page and have stuff like search boxes, boiler plates, and images automagically work. MS has given them this power. Open source, to the best of my knowledge, has not. And until that happens, the pages will be written for IE only.

Re:MS has no reason to fear loss of market share.

[The One KEA]

Have you heard of Nvu? Being part of the coding-HTML-in-sleep brigade, I haven't actually tried it yet ;-)

Re:MS has no reason to fear loss of market share.

[drinkypoo]

Microsoft's HTML editors all suck horribly (iirc they have three programs which output html now; publisher, word, and frontpage) and they weren't first anyway. I'm not sure whho was, but by far more commercial sites are made with homesite or dreamweaver. Granted, most sites target IE anyway, because there's more IE users out there than any other browser combined.

Question

[robyannetta]

To the Slashdot moderators:
Why is there an IE icon attached to this story? Shouldn't you have used a FireFox icon?

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

I can never understand what MS do -- I mean, wouldn't it make sense for them to release an update to IE prior to Longhorn, with tabs and a few other niceities? Then there'd be slightly less reason for the Unwashed-Mases(TM) to switch! [just to explain, I'm a happy Firefox user, but I just don't understand MS's business logic!].

How difficult would it be for them to build a .Net based wrapper on the existing IE to allow extensions to be created that way? Surely that would be a sensible thing for them to do? [again, just to explain, I don't particularly _want_ them to do this, I'm just supprised they don't!]

Konqueror passes.

[incom]

The first page said that my browser, konqueror 3.3.1, was "very old" , yet it passed the tests without fault.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Anonymous Coward]

then implement it yourself. Nobody will stop you from doing this.

Scripted responses

[cocoamix]

Hachamovitch said he gets asked often -- on airplanes, at dinner parties -- whether people can feel secure using IE. His advice is to use the browser with Windows XP and with XP's Windows Update service turned on and the latest update kit -- Service Pack 2, or SP2 -- installed. "Whatever software anyone writes at any time, there are malicious people out there. They will target and they will find things to do," he said. "There's a really long discussion we can have around how do you judge trust, how do you judge vulnerability, how do you judge exploitability, how do I judge my safety, what are safe browsing habits?" he said. "Candidly, what do I say to them? I think XP SP2 is still the best browser overall when you look at the full set of criteria for choosing a browser." I wish I could get a high-paying job parroting stuff that deep down I knew was a load of crap, but would never admit. These aren't the browser features you're looking for . Move along. Move along.

DINOSAURS CANNOT TALK!

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:DINOSAURS CANNOT TALK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but the Romans didn't speak English, and Hitler would have included a Seig Heil somewhere in there.

Re:DINOSAURS CANNOT TALK!

[MegaManXcalibur]

And there is good evidence that the Tyrannasaurus Rex was actually a scavenger, not a predator. But hey the joke was good so why worry about the technicalities?

Off-topic, I know...

[MonTemplar]

...but why is there a 'Compare prices on Mozilla' link in the Related Links slashbox for this story? The page it links to would be pretty tiny, I imagine... :)

-MT.

Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Andy_R]

I know this sounds outlandish, but given that Microsoft don't make any money from IE, and it's vulnerabilities are giving them a lot of bad publicity, is there any sound business reason for them not to scrap it (and the staff that write it), save themselves a fortune by recommending Firefox? This would also solve their legal problems with the EU over bundling.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[kwalker]

You mean besides the giving up of control, the Microsoft-specific lock-in that they have spent billions of dollars to establish and maintain?

Microsoft doesn't care that they're the biggest and baddest of the 800lb gorillas. They want all the toys and the deed to the sandbox. They want to rule it all.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Leverage. Embrace, extend, extinguish. It allows them to try to turn the WWW into a protocol that works only with Microsoft products. Is it working? Well, what percentage of major websites only work properly in IE?

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[PoopJuggler]

It's all about control. It has nothing to do with money really -- it's about power. And since MS doesnt control Firefox they want nothing to do with it.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[beejay54]

I agree with the parent of this post. It seems like poor business for MSFT to continue to run a project that does nothing but generate negative issues for the company. But this could explain why IE releases aren't being constantly delivered.

On the issue of dropping IE, I think to any geek, having a browser built into your OS is a nice feature. And one that shows to the end user that Microsoft is capable and willing to cover all bases. I think it remains more of a branding/marketing thing. Users feel comfortable when everything is from one place. Like when you buy a part for your car, you might feel better if that part was from the same company that maufactured your car, even if there was a cheaper competitor part that did the same job.

I've said it before and I'll say it again... I'm all for companies developing their own browsers or even different ways of doing the same thing but please please lets make sure they all follow some guidelines. As a web developer nothing is more time consuming or limiting then trying to make sure your web app performes consistiently across all browsers/platforms. Trust me, with the way things are today I think most web developers praise the idea of one browser squashing them all out, it would make life easier. (Let's just hope that browser is Firefox.)

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[CaptainBaz]

Ok, most PCs come with Windows preinstalled. So Microsoft makes some money on the OEM license. Now, Windows ships with IE as the default (and only) browser, so most users will just use IE without even realising what a 'browser' is.

Because of this, lazy web developers, as well as Microsoft and their partners, will only develop their sites for IE - therefore lots of websites will only work with IE on Windows.

So people who want to use "the internets" will have no choice but to use IE on Windows. Which means more license fees for Microsoft...

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[theantix]

They need a dominant browser to exist only on their own platforms to encourage platform lock-in. Why else do you think they developed it in the first place, why else do you think the various gov't agencies try to stop the bundling? Platform lock-in is anticompetitive but very profitable for Microsoft, and make no mistake they will defend IE marketshare to the death if it comes to that.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[rdean400]

Microsoft didn't develop it in the first place. NCSA/Spyglass did.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Rew190]

1. Because you need to have a browser installed with a new OS, otherwise it would be like getting a new car without a radio.

2. With that many users, you can't simply back out of IE support; it would be terrible business.

3. It would be giving open source a foothold and showing an incredible amount of users what open source can do... sort of like how iPods are converting folks over to Macs.

4. They lose control over things like internet integration in their applications.

5. They lose control over a lot of potential APIs/protocols since they wouldn't have their browers' users to use as a user base.

6. It admits a crushing defeat to open source. Shareholders probably wouldn't be too cool with that.

What you said makes total sense, but you have to look at it from a business perspective... Ditching IE would only confuse users, point them towards open source, and lock Microsoft out of potential future revenues related to internet browsers.

It's also important to keep in mind that from a non-techy's perspective, IE is not bug-ridden filth and that any viruses or nastiness that are caught at this point are just functions of the internets and not Microsoft's fault. Microsoft knows this.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[upsidedown_duck]

I hope your comment makes large on-line retailers nervous about optimizing their site for only IE. Microsoft could crush the whole on-line industry with one Windows Update. Funny, that.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[HannethCom]

Because as scary as it may be, Avalon is IE7. All programs, including pre-Longhorn applications will run in an IE Window. Media player 7+ already does this. Avalon is the code name for the new graphics and layout API in Longhorn. All DirectX, GDI+ and normal GDI routines will be processed through Avalon. IE for the first time will be inseperable from Windows because it is the graphics rendering system. You can't run a program with out it.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's this huge company I know, with it's nice Intranet that they must have payed someone huge amounts of money to design it for them and that someone made it with activeX or something that only IE can view it. Think that's an exception or the rule?

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[labratuk]

You need to hear the whole reason for IE being produced in the first place.

Back when the web was new and exciting, Netscape was making waves with its browser. They predicted that web based apps would be the future, and all apps would therefore be client system agnostic. The head dude of Netscape said something along the lines of 'In 10 years, windows will be reduced to nothing but a buggy set of device drivers'. This pissed Microsoft off.

So they pumped huge amounts of money into IE to try and make it a better browser. Of course the idea of something being system agnostic really scares Microsoft. So to stop customers being able to just switch away from using IE and more importantly windows (the thing you give them money for) on the clients, they added a bunch of crazy features that would make webapp code that used said features not work with other browsers. Bingo. Clients have to stay running win/IE. One of these features was ActiveX which was touted as improving application interactivity.

So you see, this is/was not really about the web at all, but webapps.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[obeythefist]

Simply put, it would be a bad business decision to drop it.

1) Everyone starts using Firefox.
2) Everyone realises you can get Firefox on Linux!
3) Bill Gates hangs around outside your house asking if you have any spare change for this new OS he's thinking of.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

The head dude of Netscape said something along the lines of 'In 10 years, windows will be reduced to nothing but a buggy set of device drivers'.

Holy crap! That head dude of Netscape is PSYCHIC!!!

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Grishnakh]

On the issue of dropping IE, I think to any geek, having a browser built into your OS is a nice feature. And one that shows to the end user that Microsoft is capable and willing to cover all bases. I think it remains more of a branding/marketing thing. Users feel comfortable when everything is from one place. Like when you buy a part for your car, you might feel better if that part was from the same company that maufactured your car, even if there was a cheaper competitor part that did the same job.

As a geek who is also a bit of a car enthusiast, I totally disagree. No one company does everything extremely well. Cars aren't even made by one company: they have parts made by many different companies, which are assembled into one product.

I've seen many instances where different companies make parts that are better than the parts which originally came with my car. Unless your car is a Ferarri or something, chances are there are many places where your automaker skimped in order to save on cost. There's lots of opportunities to replace parts with better ones. For instance, very few cars' brake systems have aluminum multi-caliper pistons and rotors with aluminum hats. But many inexpensive cars have kits available from Wilwood, Stoptech, and Brembo which add these capabilities. Most people don't need these type of braking capability however, and automakers would be stupid to add such expensive parts for cars which don't represent the pinnacle of performance, because this would make them less competitive. But if I need to replace my calipers (suppose they've seized), I'd feel a lot better with Wilwood brakes than with the plain ol' Honda (Nissin) brakes my car came with.

Similarly, Microsoft includes a lot of programs with their operating system that might do the job for many users, but just isn't that great, such as Notepad, Photo Editor, etc. They might be better than nothing, but they're nothing outstanding, and you'd be stupid to use these if you have anything better available, even though the alternatives are non-MS.

As an aside, the problem with this analogy is that software is not like auto parts. There is no incremental cost: once you've written and debugged and tested it, it doesn't cost any more to distribute it to your customers than an alternative software product which cost less to develop. This is different from cars where, for instance, high-end braking systems cost a lot more to manufacture, so there's an incremental cost in installing these systems on all car models. Because of this, I think it's appropriate to give Microsoft a very poor evaluation, since it would be relatively simple for them to provide better built-in products (anticompetitiveness of bundling arguments aside), given the size of their development teams, and their profit margins.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Christianfreak]

Because the general public doesn't understand that is IE or Microsoft that is the problem. Think about it, whenever a new virus or worm comes out, the media and everyone else rushes the blame the 'evil virus writers and hackers'. Microsoft points their own fingers too and everyone looks the other way.

And a billion dollar industry is being propped up by bad design ideas.

An earlier poster commented that Microsoft doesn't have incompetent developers and nor are they purposely directing virus writers. I personally feel this is not true. Its got to be one or the other, or a combination of the two. The combination is most likely. The incompetence comes not from developers, I'm sure there are very talented people at Microsoft, rather it comes from a strategy of putting marketing before good design.

But now they know this, but why should they fix the problem? While I doubt they are actively seeking virus writers, the bugs prop up a billion-dollar industry and I'm sure those people have closed door meetings with MS and I wouldn't be surprised if some money changes hands, you know, 'Stratigic partnerships' and things like that.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[colinrichardday]

But can you run a program with it?

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[pjc50]

The browser is really just a carrier for the MSHTML engine, which is used all over the place. A lot of people developing custom apps for Windows use IE in non-obvious ways to build bits of user interface cheaply.

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto to what parent said. Note that the US gov't antitrust lawsuit against MS was based on MS's anticompetitive actions taken against Netscape and Java, which are referred to in the legal documents as "platform independent middleware".

Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser?

[beejay54]

Seriously though, I think we need to get back to tech talk. Your just jealous cause my car goes faster then yours, nah nah. lol, cheers and happy new year.

Interesting turn of phrase

[jd]

there will be a set of extensions that Microsoft does as well as others

Microsoft will be doing them as well as others. Other whats? Taken literally, the "others" would be other companies, and the extensions will be extensions others have already done, and that Microsoft is simply cloning.

As Microsoft will only be doing as well as others (their words, not mine), it would follow that Microsoft aims to duplicate any bugs, too, otherwise they'd be doing better than others.

However, Microsoft nowhere talks of doing extensions others have not done. Nor do they talk of doing ALL the extensions that others support. Rather, there will only be a set of extensions (again, their words) that exist both in IE and in other browsers.

Of course, the empty set is still a set, so they don't actually need to do anything for this statement to be "true".

Other than tabbed panes, I can't honestly think of anything Microsoft would want to add to IE that would be visible to the user. (There are lots of things that aren't visible to the user that Microsoft could add, but they've never seemed in much of a hurry with those.)

Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla

[artifex2004]

Don't forget, every Windows system running Firefox and Thunderbird instead of IE and some version of Outlook is... still a Windows system. They won't worry so much about the negative impact of the bazillion vulnerabilities that remain, if more people start using other browser and email software. Meanwhile, they're still collecting the Windows tax on most consumer PCs.

It might even be in MS's interests to sneak Mozilla a million bucks sometime to continue developing alternative browsers, because it would pay them back umpteen times in reduced support and bad press. I wouldn't expect them to do it openly, however.

Re:Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla

[debest]

Small problem with that for Microsoft. They know that the OS just isn't that important to a user: it's the *applications* that keep people on your platform. If all Windows users start getting used to (and liking) Firefox & Thunderbird, then it's that much smaller a jump for them to migrate to Linux instead of staying on Windows.

That would be BAD for Microsoft. Therefore, they will be discouraging all movement off of their applcations to alternatives. The bad publicity doesn't matter if they can still dominate as a platform for computing, and require everyone to run Windows.

Re:Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla

[artifex2004]

If all Windows users start getting used to (and liking) Firefox & Thunderbird, then it's that much smaller a jump for them to migrate to Linux instead of staying on Windows.

I don't know about that. In my experience, most average users separate mentally "going to the internet" (doing mail&browsing) from "doing my Excel" and "doing my Word." They don't use generic terms like document or spreadsheet; they associate these tasks with specific icons and names. I can see where Thunderbird is different enough that someone who makes it past the learning curve should be ready to consider trying alternative suites like OpenOffice, but with Firefox, the experience is similar enough that a skin and icon change is just about all you need to sneak it in on most users. Well, unless they go to certain Flash sites. Or certain sites with popups, even enabled. Or... :) You see where I'm going, though.

Re:Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla

[debest]

You've just made my point: it's the *applications* that matter. Microsoft is dependant on maintaining application lock-in, which will maintain their platform lock-in (since they, of course, make it as difficult as possible for their applications to run anywhere other than Windows). That IE and Outlook are less entrenched than Word or Excel (in your opinion, but looks like it might be a reasonable statement) is beside the point: they NEED to establish as much of a stranglehold on the application side, and will never willingly give an inch of that space away on categories that matter (browser and mail client certainly qualify).

Re:Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla

[artifex2004]

If you say so; I think the lock is too tight for the loss of IE and O (or OE) to tip the scale for someone.

Speaking as a MozBoy

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a MozBoy, there is no reason for Microsoft to worry. They can just add the following lines of code to kernel.dll.

IF PROGNAME$ == "firefox.exe"

THEN PRINT "The application has unexpectedly quit. It may have been infected with a virus."
GOTO TERMINATE

ELSE GOTO CONTINUE

TERMINATE
END

CONTINUE
.....

Re:Speaking as a MozBoy

[MoOsEb0y]

that's okay. Firefox/Firebird/Mozilla/Netscape/Gecko has gone through so many name changes, that one more per MS OS release wouldn't make a noticeable difference.

kills firefox on os x

[Trepidity]

Tried it three times now, and it's segfaulted each time.

What would stop MS from just using Firefox?

[Not_Wiggins]

Out of curiosity... what would stop Microsoft from developing the "next" IE as an extension of Firefox made with proprietary MS extensions (ie, add ActiveX and such into it)?

I would imagine the design challenge would be less to do it that way than to implement new features in the current IE codebase.

Or, is it because IE is so heavily integrated into the Microsoft OS that it would make doing this unrealistic? Or is it a matter of pride that doesn't allow them to see Firefox/Mozilla as a real threat?

In any case, I don't believe they think that Mozilla isn't a threat; they didn't get to the position they're in by being stupid with competitors.

Re:What would stop MS from just using Firefox?

[rdean400]

NIHACBIO (Not Invented Here And Can't Buy It Out) syndrome.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always switch back. M$ will always listen to your concerns and race to adopt your suggestions.

browser ... and extensions

[tinkerton]

On my mozilla i got an alert about a high vulnerability concerning java applets. Maybe that would occur on other browsers too?

anyway, good link. I'll patch the JRE

In other news...

[ThousandStars]

Edward John Smith not worried about icebergs.

Well when you've been duped

[Elfich47]

If you've been duped into thinking that the only browser available is IE then why go look for anything else since it doesn't exist. That's where alot of people stop, because: 1) they don't know that opera, mozilla, firefox, etc exist. 2) they don't have any programing knowledge or inclination. 3) They don't know the proper question to ask let alone the right person to ask.

Re:Well when you've been duped

[Squatchman]

I stand by my assertion that the problem does not lie with Microsoft, but with the tards. It would be a different story if Windows was hard coded to completely disallow installation of 3rd party code.

Re:Well when you've been duped

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you, basically, but there is one small (large) problem - the tards have given Microsoft so much money that Microsoft can now buy favorable laws (software patents, draconian copyrights) to eliminate the competition.

What can you do when your worst enemy steers an unjust legal system corrupted by corporatism? - that's the problem the Free (as in Freedom) computer users of the world now face :-(.

Seriously, it might be possible for Microsoft to effectively outlaw Free Software (as defined by FSF and GNU). How can one enforce one's contracts if you reject a new part of the established legal system? You can't, properly. You need to, quite literally, abandon the civilisation with the corrupted legal system in question and make your own - relatively easy for the Founding Fathers of the USA... Much harder for Computer Geeks, now that the enemy has nukes :-(.

Re:Well when you've been duped

[dark_requiem]

Again, you're saying that MS should be punished for the ignorance of their consumer base. Can a consumer who has bought only GM certified parts for the life of their vehicle sue GM because they were suddenly told that generic parts would work too? Can I sue a drug manufacturer for duping me because I didn't know I could buy generics? Of course not. I am responsible for my own lot in life. If I am unhappy with my situation, I work to recify it. It is not the responsibility of anyone other than me. Just as every man's fate is the responsibility of no one but himself. Just because they lack the technical knowledge to build their own browser, or the logical skills to assume that someone else has created a product superior to on they know to be defective, does not make someone else (MS, in this case) responsible for their failings. To each his own fate...

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[kai.chan]

But that is like saying if a shoddy farm estate seller is selling a farm that also grows corn, you would purchase that farm. What you didn't take into consideration, is that even though that farm can indeed grow corn, it is still full of gopher holes and other infestations.

Hey at least it'll be solid this time

[Anonymous Coward]

(hysterical laughter)

Alright, I tried, I can't say that with a straight face. If the little Dutch Boy took one look at all the holes in a new Windows release he'd say "Aw screw it" and go look for a boat.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[at_18]

That's not a bug, it's a feature request. It's one thing to require bug fixes, a developer usually feels obliged to deliver. New features are an entirely different game.

Firefox or Firefly?

[sch7572]

Well, MS is not afraid because they only need to wait long enough and copy all of Firefox's new innovative features in their next version of IE. Then Firefox will look like a Firefly! Isn;t this what MS is known to have done all its life?

Re:Firefox or Firefly?

[dynamo_mikey]

DING!

I think that about hits the nail on the head. Hopefully Firefox will use this year to continue to implement new and better features.

-dynamo

What do you expect?

[mjudtmann]

You can't expect MS to say "Firefox is a very good browser, we are afrad to loose some IE-costumers."

Worse=better- Future fast approaching.

[Anonymous Coward]

"As could be read on Joel on Software, Webapps are becoming major competition to MS. That's why a better browser is the last thing MS wants. "

Unless it's their browser naturally. Also Microsoft can utilize their Monopoly to do things that others "bound by standards" couldn't do as easily.* If you know your API has 90 % of the market? Then many things become possible(1) Also with the influx of .NET and XAML, they have a much better foundation than the old API's gave them.

The only thing OSS is enjoying at this point is "window of opportunity", while the technological gap is fast closing (2)

*Something similiar that benefits the Apple. Known hardware makes it easy to make a stable experience.

(1) Just ask the game console makers about that.

(2) Remember OSS isn't playing just against Microsoft. But everyone who contributes to, and uses Microsoft technologies.

Re:Worse=better- Future fast approaching.

[j_heisenberg]

"Also Microsoft can utilize their Monopoly to do things that others "bound by standards" couldn't do as easily.* If you know your API has 90 % of the market? Then many things become possible(1) Also with the influx of .NET and XAML, they have a much better foundation than the old API's gave them."

No, to the contrary. Isn't it funny that just when they won the browser war against Netscape, they basically stopped all development on IE? Bringing out new features, better API etc. would lead to better Webapps. That would make more and more MS apps obsolete, like Outlook (Gmail), Frontpage (maybe FCKEditor), Money etc. etc. In the end, if there were enough Apps to use on a browser, you could switch to Linux, or to any OS supporting a browser - OpenBeOS, BSD, whatever. Conspiracy & speculation, but still...

Re:Worse=better- Future fast approaching.

[16K Ram Pack]

If Gmail also had features like tasks, calendar and you could share them around, then it would cause serious damage to Microsoft. I'd love to have all that information looked after by Google. No more dealing with having to talk to my desktop away from home - just get on the web and do it.

This is the new paradigm - services not software. Microsoft are probably fighting a losing battle on this one.

There's already been some apps that have been replaced by the web. Particularly where the storage was large, but the reply small. I don't use route planning software, I use route planning services (from either the AA or RAC). They aren't as pretty or quick as the software, but they get me the answer I need. They are updated constantly by the organisations, mean I don't have to go finding CDs to operate them.

At one time, offline mattered because online meant dialup at a home or an office. With wifi, 3G, broadband etc, it's there when and where you want it.

Incidentally, a lot of my customers want webapps, not desktop/server apps. For a whole host of reasons including simplicity. If you are a business, it's much simpler to get someone else to host/manage a solution outside than go and talk to the tech support people and deal with the implications on existing servers/server rooms/desktop rollouts. It's also that it means that their staff can talk to the systems from anywhere. In Edinburgh and want the latest figures? Find an internet cafe or hotspot and go read them.

Brainstorm

[t_allardyce]

I've been thinking about some innovative new features for Firefox and ive come up with a few that should really push the competition..

1) 'Pusher' Technology - it would allow any website to 'push' un-signed software onto the users machine and run it totally automatically, this would be a boon for ease-of-use, it would also be able to force software to install without the users permission, bringing desktops into the DRM age peacefully.

2) 'PickPocket' - an extension to Mozilla's engine that would allow websites to access credit cards and other personal info without the user needing to lift a finger, this would speed up internet transactions and quickly fill the gap in the as yet un-patented '0-Click Shopping' arena.

3) 'MediaManager' technology will allow the user to enjoy a rich multimedia experiance by passing full control of the users speaker volume, microphone, web-can, monitor and force-feedback(r) joystick, we know users want to see your advert and they want to see it in full-screen video, lets not beat around the bush waiting for them to click on it..

Re:Brainstorm

[superpulpsicle]

Hey you forgot...

4) OS-Bundle-Technology - the browser needs to be locked into the OS permanently thru a billion registry keys. This way it will prevent competing no-good browsers to install.

Re:Brainstorm

[t_allardyce]

I like it! Can we hardcode it into the Linux kernel?

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

They just don't get it. Somehow, somewhere along the way, they lost the notion that they have to please their cutomers to keep them. This is arrogance in the extreme!

By 2006, I will be Microsoft-free. This news just doesn't interest me.

A 3rd option.

[khasim]

All of that does not look like good marketing to me, but MS lives on good marketing and little more, so it would appear that there are two possible outcomes here: either MS has something up its sleeve to counteract all of the things going wrong for their image lately, or that they honestly believe in their own untouchability, in which case they might just have a hard fall coming before Longhorn is out the door.

The 3rd option: Microsoft doesn't have any plan and is hoping that claiming that they aren't worried will slow the defection rate long enough that they can come up with a plan.

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[HeLLFiRe1151]

The folks who made the extensions for Firefox should patent and copyright them and start suing MS.

lack of foresight?-A Sight Slight.

[Anonymous Coward]

"A company won't go far with an attitude that reflects the quote above."

As oppossed to OSS "A thousand eyeballs..."

Access to X-Windows apps from within web browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

More then 5 years ago I had seamless access to X Windows and X applications from within Web browsers (using WebTerm X).

I was great!!!

Why nobody cares to implement this using Mozilla/Firefox and CygwinX?

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[DoorFrame]

I actually don't like or use tabbed browsing, I prefer to be able to see my windows on the task bar... but yes, I'd consider Maxthon. Let me go take a look at it.

Side note, I've had almost no trouble with sites that don't take Mozilla. I guess I've been fortunate in that respect. The one site I've had trouble with? You guess it, /.

Read your history!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to make a point of it, Rome was fighting someone they considered barbarians for most of their nearly 1,000 year run as an empire (and this isn't counting the Eastern Roman Empire, which struggled on until 1453 AD). After the celtic sack of Rome in 390 BC, it wasn't sacked again until 410 AD. Circa 200 AD, Septimus Severus had the "barbarians" well under control.

Also, I highly doubt that Rome had the largest army of its time. Effective, yes; but the Romans maintained about thirty legions. At full strenght that's something like 180,000 soldiers scattered across the mediterrainian world, fighting each other nearly as often as fighting "barbarians."

If you want a decent look at the Roman army and military strategy in the Empire, read "Rome and the Enemy." Until then, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop spreading misinformation about a civilization that already suffers from popular ignorance.

IE is not allowed in the next version of widows...

[ArGeRuS]

... would be a very interesting thing for a court to sentence Microsoft to obey.
That would open up a new market for browser-applications (made exclusivly for mozilla/firefox or perhaps some form of Mono integration... baaah, I'm just babbeling...

Bong bong..

Browser based apps

[L.Bob.Rife]

but honestly, is anybody still thinking that an entire OS can be replaced by a web browser?

At my workplace, I've implemented new browser based apps, and love them.

Everything is centralized, so I don't have to worry about maintaining software on 50 different machines.

There are no OS specific requirements. Any company computer can now run ANY os that has a browser, and still be able to do ALL of the core company work.

That means, I can give people a bare bones box, with no hard drive, and a knoppix cd, and they can do everything required for work.

Unless MS does somethign which makes me really want to use IE, then there is no reason to even be using MS.

Re:Browser based apps

[Anonymous Coward]

So noone at your work uses word processors or spreadsheets?

The default homepage

[KalvinB]

Currently the default page for IE is www.msn.com

If some other browser gets the marketshare then MSN loses exposure which costs MS ad revenue.

FireFox doesn't offer anything that MS can't offer in IE. It's also far easier to recreate than to innovate. This is why they aren't too worried. It's simply an issue of economic viability as to whether or not MS will implement those features and push the updates out the door.

Re:The default homepage

[Anonymous Coward]

>If some other browser gets the marketshare then MSN loses exposure which costs MS ad revenue

True, as far as it goes, but your intended implication is wrong. From my recollection of their financial reports, MSN reached break even just within the last couple years largely on the strength of its dialup access business, not advertising. Not to say that it wouldn't hurt them, just that it's probably not as big a factor as you think.

The same old, same old theory.

[Man in Spandex]

This excuse is getting old.

Same thing can be said about Apple's OS-X operating systems or linux distributions.

IE doesn't have bad coding. IE is just good coding gone bad when put in practice for users like you and me. For a company as big as Microsoft, they have no valid excuse to not improve a software which is used by most internet users. People saying M$ doesn't care because they want to focus on competing software where profit can be made are somewhat right but like I said, they have divisions concentrated in specific fields so why not change the plans of the devs working on IE?

The statement of "If this was more popular, then it would be as exploited as.." is far from being false but putting that aside, with the many years that M$ "could" of worked on IE after its competition with Netscape, one wonders if its M$ that just don't give a shit anymore or if its because FF isn't popular enough to get the attention from crackers/exploiters.

My sqrt(4) cents

Re:The same old, same old theory.

[Rew190]

Same thing can be said about Apple's OS-X operating systems or linux distributions.

The same thing IS said about OS X and Linux, and although parent poster's opinion may be totally wrong, it's assinine to simply dismiss it (which you didn't seem to do, I just hate the raw ignorance of that stance). It's quite logical; the kiddies want to do a lot of damage, so they're going to code for the most popular platform out there so they can do the most damage. The whole theory really hasn't been tested too hard because there aren't many products MS competes against where it doesn't have a much larger market share. Apache is an excellent example, though. Personally, I think the whole reason MS/IE gets hit so much harder than anyone else is a combination of the two ideas; firstly, that IE was designed insecurely and this has plagued it, and secondly (but more importantly, IMO) that the kids are targetting IE users since they represent the vast majority and are probably not going to be technically inclined.

so why not change the plans of the devs working on IE?

I would imagine it's a combination of the numerous hacks they have to keep up with due to the obviously flawed security on IE.

with the many years that M$ "could" of worked on IE after its competition with Netscape, one wonders if its M$ that just don't give a shit anymore

I think it's extremely easy for /.ers and techheads to forget that while MS is probably (cough definitely cough) not ethical, they are an extremely successful business. With this in mind, it seems silly that they would simply let Firefox run over IE. This browser war will be interesting, because it's no longer a matter of out-funding a company, since they're now against an open source model which doesn't really need money. I'd guess the IE developers are starting clean slate with the browser instead of trying to patch swiss cheese in an effort to hit FF hard when Longhorn debuts. What I find highly unlikely is that MS hasn't learned its lesson and are well aware of what they need to do with IE to get it up to snuff.

...or if its because FF isn't popular enough to get the attention from crackers/exploiters.

That's probably the case. Also keep in mind that the majority of FF users are probably more technically proficient than IE users, so clearly the softer target, for now, is IE.

PS: Can we please stop doing the "M$" thing?

Re:The same old, same old theory.

[MikShapi]

Spoken like a true engineer.

You just led me to another simlpe observation I haven't made before:

The second *big* difference in this respect between IE and FF is the goal of the project.

IE is written by a commercial entity. Their goal is to get maximal revenue for minimum investment.
This is not a bad thing, it's the underlying principle of what we call an economy and the presence of which differs us from Afghanistan.
If they recon adding certain features to a product will not gain them anything substancial ($$$), they will not allocate the resources to do so. Period. The way I see it, it's totally understandable. I perform the same decision with my money every day.

FF is written by a group of volunteer engineers. Their goal, at this stage at least, is their product. Making it stick out due to is superb engineering.

For me, as an engineer, this definitely makes FF preferrable.

The point however is, this advantage also drops off once a certain critical-mass has been reached - only this time it's MS who closes the gap by becoming better rather than FF by becoming less secure.

Once enough people leave IE due to it lacking whatever it is they want, MS will reprioritize adding said features and IE will catch up, or, if we look at what happened in the past and the fact that the open community has more creativity and less red tape than MS does, they will probbably wait for FF to set the new requirements, then implement them in a robust way everybody from poweruser to 'Joe Sixpack' can use, surpass FF by a couple of steps, and FF will fall back to being in the same 2nd place it is in now. Then they'll lay back, and FF or its future counterpart will redefine 'cutting-edge' again. Ad infinum.

In short, this second advantage of FF is just as circumstantial as the first.

Re:The same old, same old theory.

[tepples]

PS: Can we please stop doing the "M$" thing?

On Slashdot, I use "M$" only in subject lines to gain seven extra characters vs. "Microsoft". And unlike "MS", it doesn't also mean "multiple sclerosis", and it hearkens back to Microsoft's early days as a vendor of BASIC programming language interpreters, where 10 LET M$ = "Microsoft" was a valid statement.

Re:The same old, same old theory.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Most script kiddies start in Windows, so they learn about what they have in front of them
2. Windows is horribly designed and an easy target
3. It also happens to be everywhere so it makes the ability to leverage hacks even better.

Re:The same old, same old theory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Software is not like a bridge. The more people that use it dosn't make it weaker and less stable. Good software is judged by its code.

If a bug is written and nobody finds it, does it still exist. Yes.

Uhm...

[Alien Venom]

I don't like typing URLs in manually with Internet Explorer, that's why I use Firefox.

Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox
Well, they should be. Let's not forget about the Remote Command Execution Exploit and the HTML Help Control Local Zone Bypass Exploit, all thanks to our favorite Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

And the Firefox developers aren't even trying to fix the bugs people want fixed.

I've watched Mozilla development for a few years now, and I can tell you that this is actually a good thing... By listening to everyone you end up with (among a million other things) a kitchen sink. The developers must follow their own vision, otherwise there is no vision. If that vision turns out to be wrong, someone should fork and prove it.

Now, I'm not saying your pet enhancement-bug isn't important, just that the devs have decided it's not worth the amount of work at the moment. Remember that there are over 5000 open non-enhancement bugs on the firefox product only...

Also, the enhancement you're talking about is going to be very, very difficult to implement without breaking stuff. I'm 99% sure that it's not even possible to do it without breaking some valid web-pages with onload and onunload javascript (and no, Opera hasn't succeeded in this, see this for an example). Unless you have a solution for those problems, I suggest you choose a different tone for your critique...

Firefox browsing speeds

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fairly long-term Firefox user anyway but until today I had thought that it was not much better than IE for browsing speed. However I just read this article from The Inquirer about how to make Firefox fly along - takes about a minute to change a few settings. If you're on broadband this is superb, particularly on sites with a lot of small graphics eg news.bbc.co.uk

Re:Firefox browsing speeds

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

I don't think you should set maxrequests to 30. If everyone did this, 10 simultaneous users would mean 300 connections.

Re:Firefox browsing speeds

[CypherXero]

What's with everyone talking about this? I've been seeing this ALL OVER THE PLACE in the past few weeks! I've been using these tweaks ever since the browser was called Firebird. It's nothing new. It's probably someone who found this information out, and is spreading it like it's new.

Re:Firefox browsing speeds

[BladeMelbourne]

Well I've been using these tweaks ever since the browser was called Phoenix and the complete source code was only a few lines long, printing out "hello world". It's nothing new. :p

These settings also work in the Mozilla Suite. The checkboxes to enable pipelining are in the Preferences under Advanced -> HTTP Networking, however the max connection setting defaults to 4 (which can only be changed by about:config).

The Mozilla Suite has many more options configurably by GUI, without resorting to about:config

Re:Firefox browsing speeds

[CurbyKirby]

I don't think you should set maxrequests to 30. If everyone did this, 10 simultaneous users would mean 300 connections.


I'm probably missing something here, but my limited understanding of http pipelining says a client's maxrequests is the max number of requests to pipeline through a single TCP connection.

So 10 simultaneous users using pipelining browsers on a page with 30 GETs would hopefully result in 300 transfers over 10 TCP connections, whereas those 10 users getting those same files with a "traditional" browser would result in 300 TCP connections, contrary to what I think you said.

Mediawiki

[solferino]

One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces

The software exists - now it's just up to you and other ppl with the same need to scratch your own itch.

Re:Firefox is safe now.

[someonewhois]

Dude, what're you talking about? XUL has issues too. XUL can spoof any site, and spoof SSL certificates. On top of that, XUL can be launched automatically, without any confirmation. You click a reletively-normal link, looks like a PHP file, and it takes you to a PayPal spoof where you're to login to see $500 in your account. Bam, there goes your password! At least ActiveX has a yes/no check. (Proud Firefox user here)

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[carl0ski]

[And the Firefox developers aren't even trying to fix the bugs people want fixed. Like the bug about needing a "FAST BACK BUTTON" like in opera (has over 100 votes at bugzilla and they wont fix it) or even a rewind.] dude that isn't a bug (bug = error glitch) the Moz team dev chose for it to behave that way i spose they regret it now. but would you give them a break that is a core feature it can't be fixed with an extension or little patch. they are going to have to change the core a bit. It will probably show up in februrary/march when Firefox 1.1 is released.

tip of the iceberg

[shadowsurfr1]

Those vulnerabilities would only be the tip of the iceberg. It's a wonder MS doesn't hire people to try to find faults in the browser.

Re:tip of the iceberg

[rdean400]

Why would they when they have a bunch of people doing it for free? :-)

Re:tip of the iceberg

[shadowsurfr1]

Good point.

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[Jason Earl]

Microsoft wants Windows users to have plenty of reason to switch. They just want them to switch to Longhorn.

That's actually the biggest problem with Microsoft's current business model. With each new generation of their software they have to convince a substantial portion of their install base that to upgrade. If Microsoft releases Longhorn and customers decide that they would rather stick with Windows XP then Microsoft is just as screwed as if Linux had achieved Total World Domination. Microsoft's biggest competitor is old versions of its own software, and the competition gets harder to beat with each new iteration.

That's why Microsoft isn't interested in coming out with another version of IE for XP. Instead Microsoft would much rather bundle the new version with Longhorn in the hopes that it might persuade some XP users that now is the time to upgrade. After all, without WinFS, and with XAML being backported to XP there is going to be precious little that would persuade customers to upgrade. A new version of IE might very well be the biggest reason to upgrade to Longhorn from XP.

"innovative"

[v1]

It seems like anytime MicroSoft says it's "innovating", they release a product with features that look suspiciously like those employed by three competing products that have been on the market for the last year and a half.

What makes you think

[mcc]

That Microsoft's public comments actually reflect their internal views?

All that Microsoft publicly stating they aren't worried about Firefox means is that Microsoft wishes to externally project the appearance they are not worried about Firefox. We can't really infer anything more meaningful than that.

No, It is the bad design by marketing decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it is not the code quality, it is the design! Half of IE's problems come from MS's design, it has been made twice as complicated and twisty as needed to be proprietary and not to cooperate with other software and ensure MS lockin. Witness Active-X! Look at DLL hell! The kludge that is the windows registry & DCOM! Marketing at MS overules good coding and design practice. Everytime.

Re:No, It is the bad design by marketing decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

... And I assume you know that because: (choose one)

a. Everybody just knows that (Shit, then why don't I?)
b. You somehow have the IE source code at home
c. You are/were an MS employee and IE dev

Open Source.

[SharpFang]

So far Linux was claimed to be the "Open Source Flagship Product", and was gaining a reasonable share of interest, but was way too far from people's interest. Too many hobbles to jump at it, at once, too "nerdy" and too far, and not -quite- ready for desktop. But people who accepted Linux, learned to value Open Source solutions and were going away from Microsoft.
Now Firefox is on the lead, gaining popularity faster than any other open source release before. And its "open source propaganda" is what Microsoft really fears. People see "No popups? No banners? No spam, no hooks attached, no spyware? And all for free? How?" and they will try to find out, and learn about Open Source movement. Effect? Instead of upgrading from XP to Longhorn, they will upgrade from XP to Mandrake.

Microsoft tries to maintain its dominance by "security through obscurity" - "there are no other operating systems", "there is no Open Source", "Linux doesn't exist". They try not to mention alternatives, keep people's interest away. No support for "foreign" filesystems and not even a mention of their existence. Only Fat32 and NTFS exist. There's no other browsers. The Internet is the blue "e" icon, it says so! What are these partition types? Most apparently unformatted!
Firefox removes the wall, lets people see there are alternatives and they ARE better. Obscurity vanishes. Most gladly MS would ignore existence of FF at all - never mentioning it, so nobody hears the name, so nobody ever thinks of it... or of any other alternative.

Innovations?

[sabNetwork]

At Microsoft, "innovations" are new ways to lock out competitors.

Look for patented IE-exclusive features in their next version.

--

Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alpha

[GFLPraxis]

Microsoft had BETTER improve IE7. I have it in the latest build of Longhorn (it's still in Alpha so there is a lot of improvement room).

It's a peice of crap. It's got a few minor improvements over IE6 (popup blocking, more security stuff), but adds:
1) The buttons are different sizes and placed in strange places to make it look more 'modern', but all it does is confuse the person using it.
2) On the File-Edit-View-etc bar, the background is light gray and the text is white. Very hard to see.
3) Back and forward buttons above the File-Edit-View bar, everything else below, and very small.
4) No major improvements over IE6 SP2.
5) Slow page load times.
6) Bloat- FireFox loads twice as fast.

In short, the current IE7 builds look bleak. Hopefully they'll improve for MS's sake, but otherwise, they're really not doing much other than ripping off Safari's look and rearranging the buttons to make it harder to figure out.

Slightly offtopic ...

[Anonymous Coward]

He, he. I recently interviewed with MS for a Security related dev position. I could not believe how many times I heard the word "innovative" where a simple "working on" would have been enough. All the MS employees do drink the Kool-aid. By the time it was about 3:00 pm and two more people still to interview me, I wanted to run away from there.

And the interview was not as bad as the one I had to endure to get my current job in the Valley.

BTW, there was a "Open Source is communism" poster that I saw in one of the cubicles. Pathetic.

How do you get a patch is to OSS?

[oliverthered]

If you look at most OSS projects the only way to get code updates in is via the path mailing list.
A new poster will have and changes vigorously scrutinised, and even for the more regular project members there are quite a few people reading the list who will validate the patches whoever they are from.

Having said that trust levels are a bit mixed, the code of more frequent contributors tends to get glanced over causing bugs to needlessly be introduced.

The main problems I have found with OSS are:

Too few standards and integration, as a obvious example look at config files or command line arguments(what do I do for: help, version, verbose?). I think this is because the amount of organisation required to standardise software is quite high, and no one likes doing that kind of nitty-gritty work anyway.

Feature creep.

a: When a new version is released typically it has, stable functions, new slightly buggy functions and unsupported or beta functions that break 50% of the time. Commercial software would have dropped the broken functions regardless of how important they are.

As an example KDE document relations tool bar.

b: OSS never seems to stop being developed, why can libxyz or whatever be written and put on a 6 month update cycle to take account of any changes. If libxyz really needs all this extra functionality why mot make a separate library and agree some standards so everyone can use it? If it's still being hacked, do a re-write with a better architecture that doesn't require so many updates.

As an example, emerge -up world tells me ...
sys-libs/db, come on guy's freeze berky db and start working on a more advanced db instead of trying to hack improvements in.

Re:How do you get a patch is to OSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at most OSS projects the only way to get code updates in is via the path mailing list.

Heard of CVS?

Having said that trust levels are a bit mixed, the code of more frequent contributors tends to get glanced over causing bugs to needlessly be introduced.

Your underdstanding of trust levels appears mixed up :-p to me. Regular contributers have proven that a) they are trustworthy b) are competent at writing code. As a result, they a) usually only get their code reviewed by their peers in trustworthiness and competence, a lesser number of people b) their code usually passes this scrutiny. What you are saying implies that all code is flawed (which it is :) but that code written by experienced contributers is just as flawed as code written by unexpereinced contributers, which isn't really true. Saying that code being accepted without much comment is a sign that a project isn;t putting appropriate New contributers face strong peer review because a) they haven't proven that they're trustworthy or compentent and

Too few standards and integration, as a obvious example look at config files or command line arguments(what do I do for: help, version, verbose?). I think this is because the amount of organisation required to standardise software is quite high, and no one likes doing that kind of nitty-gritty work anyway.

Funnily enough, you'll find that code written by the same people/organisations generally follows the same interface formats (config files, arguments, etc.) as other software written by the same people/organisations. You haven't installed many third-party command line tools in Windows, have you?

I'm curious as to why you think completely different programs need to have the exact same format for config files. Does my logrotate program's config file need the extensibility of Apache2's config language? Or does it need the complexity and flexiblity of Sendmail? Either you understand how to use a program (from any of a variety of sources like websites, man pages, info pages, README files, mailing lists, manuals/textbooks or commandline usage summaries, which are usually extracted in some form from a program with little effort) or you don't, which isn't entirely the program's fault. And Linux already has the LSB, which handles challenges far greator between distributions than say the different versions of windows, which have no real system layout standard between them (rather what Microsoft decides is cool for that release).

Finally, in the real world, which programs usually have better standards compliance, proprietry or open? I'll leave that as an exercise for the parent to discover, should they ever actually try to use/implement services based upon standards.

Commercial software would have dropped the broken functions regardless of how important they are.

I want to live in your world.

As an example KDE document relations tool bar.

First you link to a duplicate report of the bug, second you don't even read it or the original report to understand that it's an old feature that's been broken by other changes and doesn't manifest itself for everybody, that there's several workarounds listed and finally the fix got committed to CVS 9 days ago and will most likely be included in the next maintinence release of KDE. Or you could even get the changes out of CVS, patch the source code of the 3.3.x release you already have and try compiling it. When was the last time you got support like that from a commercial software package? For free even?

b: OSS never seems to stop being developed, why can libxyz or whatever be written and put on a 6 month update cycle to take account of any changes. If libxyz really needs all this extra functionality why mot make a separate library and agree some standards so everyone can use it? If it's still being hacked, do a re-write with a better architecture that doesn't require so many updates.

What are

Re:How do you get a patch is to OSS?

[oliverthered]

'Heard of CVS?'
Yes, most projects I've seen don't give direct CVS access.
www.kernel.org, and parts there of.
www.winehq.org
www.sourceforge.net/projects/ eciadsl

'Regular contributors have proven that a) they are trustworthy b) are competent at writing code.',

but they are still human, I've seen some tripe get into CVS from 'trusted' developers and some gems get missed out from newbies. This is my experience and understanding.

'I want to live in your world.'
Go on then, I haven't worked on a commercial project for the past 5 years that's let 'looks nice but doesn't work' features in, prior to that I worked for a small company, which probably faced similar problems to OSS. (no QA, tight budget)

'First you link to a duplicate report of the bug, second....'
1: It was the first one that came up, their are many.
2: Wasn't my point that unsupported broken features get put into release?
The plugin is on by default, and the work-around are of the rm -rf * nature, and the number of duplicate reports show how easy it is to spot, even if all aren't affected. The fix is to disable one of the features, which is the only viable workaround so far, and isn't exactly 'fix'.

3: Anyhow, that was one example pulled off the top of my head, I can list may partly working features if you want?

e.g. there's a feature in Ceversa where if you change the name of a tag it updates the name in the matching tag... well.. sometimes. Also most code-completions are broken, or so partly implemented that they are more or less useless.
And then there's office workspace.

(I'm not picking on KDE, it's just that I use it the most so it's easiest to real off stuff)

I'm sure you can also list a few features in a commercial app that are buggy, but on average I can list double in any OSS equivalent.

4: CVS patching isn't an option, I'm a major company and can't afford to be running a 'custom' version of software and don't have time to remove unstable features. Last time I had problems with my SDLC card I got in touch with the manufacture, reported the bug and got an updated driver a month later. maybe not instant turn around but good. I'm also on several standards bodies where I can have an active input in to the next release or next major version of a standard, sometimes turn around is hours for bugs.

'What are you doing? Following the development branches of all your programs?'

Kernel 2.4, VM changes.
Kernel 2.6, not branching to stable and dev leaving it upto distros to stabilise.
Gentoo kernel > 2.6.8 dropped the supermount patch, and replaced with.. well.. ivman, which doesn't do the job properly and even the ivman site says that it's just a prototype.

When you upgrade Berkely DB you have to go and fix the database, not the best usability I've seen.

That's 4 biggies.

Yes I do know what emerge -up world does, I just ran it to tell me what update were about, and yes I do know that ebuild bugs get fixed too, db seems to appear quite often, again this was something that I just picked. Other software that comes in the default install of a lot of distributions is frequently unstable or suffering from feature creep, look at emacs, still going, but for anything other than a text editor I'm sure you could find better choices out there.

No I'm not a troll just because I don't say well done lads, good job and let me pat you on the back, I do as much OSS work as possible and try to fix some of the things I have mentioned, which is I how I have come to know the process. I also fully appreciate the often voluntary work that people put in, but that doesn't mean that it is perfect or even 'commercially' viable.

Projects that have made it are things like: Firefox (they will tell you to cut all the crap out of you OSS if you want acceptance!)

Samba, very long development cycle between major releases and I don't see such frequent updates as other projects.

And a few other's like apache &co, but I don't know enough about their pros and cons to comment.

Re:How do you get a patch is to OSS?

[oliverthered]

'Funnily enough, you'll find that code written by the same people/organisations generally follows the same interface formats (config files, arguments, etc.) as other software written by the same people/organisations. You haven't installed many third-party command line tools in Windows, have you?'

well, code written by the same people may have the same standard, but code written by different people (just look across the whole of kde packages) doesn't, why not?

I even offered to XHTML and bobby the kde-apps web site twice, with no reply, and I'll gladly take your app and check that it's command line prams are against a defined standard.

I don't seem to remember having any problems with the command line under dos/windows(\r recursive \? help ...) ...well until I installed some OSS!

Windows, registry. Horrible, but it's a standard format, if you look in the registry there are keys (can't remember off the top of my head) that tell you were to put applications, where to put configuration, where to put system files, what is in the path etc... The registry also tells application were to locate various components.

'I'm curious as to why you think completely different programs need to have the exact same format for config files.'

Why not, which is easier, less bug prone.

Everything using the same format or everything using different formats?

Lets say I pick XML with optional XSD, the comments from the XSD can be used for or generated from documentation etc....

Why can't your logrotate, passwrd, fstab, appache2, XF86Config, inittab, modules.conf, kio_locate.protocol, hosts, printcap . ls /etc...
use that as a format?

(the names given is passwd configuration file and the names in the API don't even match!)

I can even validate my configuration file against the XSD, no more trial and error to find that you've got a rogue char in fstab, or an incorrect fstype.

Re:How do you get a patch is to OSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting reply, thanks.

Sorry about thinking that you were a troll.

It all goes back to the OS

[Infonaut]

In the end, if there were enough Apps to use on a browser, you could switch to Linux, or to any OS supporting a browser - OpenBeOS, BSD, whatever.

That's it in a nutshell. Despite all the other endeavors Microsoft engages in, without the monopoly rents they receive from Windows and Office, Microsoft is dead in the water. They know this, and are doing everything possible to extend the Windows monopoly to the Internet. Once the majority of their customers realize that the OS has become of secondary importance, they're screwed.

For them it's about leveraging their browser dominance until the browser is fully integrated into the OS with Longhorn. They're relying on the ol' FUD train to keep things going in the interim. All declarations of confidence aside, they know that there is more pressure on them than ever before. With a year or more before Longhorn's arrival, I expect to see Microsoft talking more and more about how wonderful the browsing experience will be in Longhorn, while painting Firefox et. al. as relics of a bygone era.

Before long I expect to hear Ballmer say something like, "People just don't understand that the rich browsing experience built into Longhorn is going to make the tired old standalone browsers look pathetic!"

Wikis don't work for technical documentation.

[KevinDumpsCore]

One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces.

Wikis don't work for technical documentation! In order for technical documentation to be usable, it has to be clear, complete, correct, and current. That is the bare minimum. In order for it to be good, it also has to be consistent.

Wikis don't guarantee any of the above criteria. Wiki advocates have even argued against completeness because it discourages participation. They've also decided against correctness in favor of a neutral point-of-view. Many under-edited contributions from different people also guarantee duplication, contradiction, and inconsistency. If anyone tries to straighten out the mess, then revert wars are the result.

So take it from a documentation volunteer, the best results are produced by a central maintainer. The maintainer coordinates contributions and edits them with the reader in mind. The maintainer can either be a person or a team, depending on the size of the task.

Re:Wikis don't work for technical documentation.

[pilkul]

Wikis for technical documentation have indeed proven themselves to suck, but the reasons you offer why are largely wrong.

Wiki advocates have even argued against completeness because it discourages participation. They've also decided against correctness in favor of a neutral point-of-view.

Nobody really argues against completeness; an ideal wiki article is very complete (it's one of the Wikipedia Featured Article criteria), and it's only the initial versions that are not required to be. As for NPOV, it can only differ from truth in the case of controversial topics like George W. Bush; for technical issues like XUL format, ignorant people can be easily convinced that they are wrong.

Many under-edited contributions from different people also guarantee duplication, contradiction, and inconsistency. If anyone tries to straighten out the mess, then revert wars are the result.

This is closer to the root problem. The main trouble with technical documentation wikis is that they tend to be a total mess. However, they're not like this because of "revert wars": in my experience on Wikipedia, revert wars almost only happen because of controversy, which again is not present in technical topics.

The core reason Wikipedia works and technical documentation wikis don't is that Wikipedia is very big and has a dedicated swarm of editors to fix and reorganize any poorly written article. Nobody feels responsible for technical documentation wikis, so they stagnate and accumulate cruft. In a word, public wikis need a community to work properly. Wikipedia, and a few other wikis, works because it has one; most small wikis (like technical docs) fail because they don't.

What about BOB???

[Belial6]

Don't forget the MS BOB market?

I forsee a beating or two in redmond tonight...

[mr. methane]

... after Walter Mossberg (WSJ's technology columnist) gave out a strong recommendation to use Firefox, describing IE as a fundamentally compromised product implemented in an insecure OS.

Ouch.

I still have to use IE for a couple of sites - mostly ones inside my own company. And that's fine; I trust my own IT people and my own HR department. But using IE to casually browse the web just seems like a very bad idea.

Why should they bother?

[IceRa]

As long as Joe Average does not care what browser (even what OS!) he uses and corporations fiddle with firewalls, proxys and virus protection around the flaws of that crappy IE - Microsoft has no reason to change anything!
Why use money and bother themselves and their customers with updates or changes (and the risk of something going wrong/incompatible)?
They just sit there, count their $$$ and ignore Mozilla/Firefox, at least for now...

crufty code?

[selfdiscipline]

isn't it possible that microsoft does see firefox/opera as a legitimate threat, but can't do anything about it because IE code is such a huge mess that they have to rebuild it from scratch (which they are doing anyway for longhorn)?

Mod up

[bogie]

Just was I was going to say. Everywhere where MS has attempted to branch out to outside of their core technologies of Windows and Office has been a failure. The one notable success is PDA's. MSN, MSNBC, IIS etc as has been pointed out never lead to a monopoly in everything.
So no like the parent pointed out just because MS decided to enter a market doesn't mean they will come to dominate it. Microsoft smartphone anyone?

Re:Mod up

[spectre_240sx]

Out of curiosity, how would we know that one of the broken up sections was not doing something to help one of the others? Is that something that would be watched?

Re:Mod up

[16K Ram Pack]

What's Smartphone doing?

Are companies deliberately avoiding it and going with Symbian?

Re:Mod up

[jsebrech]

What's Smartphone doing?

Are companies deliberately avoiding it and going with Symbian?

The problem with the microsoft smartphone platforms were that they were and slow, and/or difficult to use, and more importantly they were all bulky pieces of pocketweight. This has been amended with the most recent versions of their software and phones like the orange c500. I expect it to really take off, since it's finally competitive with the symbian phones. I know I'm getting one within the next two months.

Re:extensions= powercons not toolbars

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet Explorer does have a rather open architecture-- it's a proven fact ...but you have to have an open mind --and the less evil search industry--to see it. As I see it "geekdom" has proven itself a useless-naked-internet-emperor in allowing the long available potential to go unrealize.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fast back feature is not a core update at all it is a feature that has been part of mozilla for a very long time. I have always been able to use *fast back* in linux throught the thumb button on my mouse. However, that feature will most likelly never see the light of day because it is probably the most annoying feature ever. As an extention yeah but never as an official feature. Plus come one who uses Opera ( >1% of the market maybe). So if you like Opera with all the crap that comes with it go ahead and use it. OSS is not about competition. OSS is about options and freedom.

The only problem that firefox/mozilla has is that when you have a lick that says close window and you are in a tab it does not work. But that's an easy fix (oh yeah and opera has it lol).

Go-faster tweak for Firefox

[Valiss]

Yet ANOTHER reason Firefox is a great browser is the great plug-ins and tweaks the community produces!

[ from boingboing.net ]

Here's a great go-faster tip for Firefox, the free, rock-solid, secure browser from the Mozilla Foundation:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down
and look for the following entries:

network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipeli ning.maxrequests

Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This
means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it
"nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the
amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

Enjoy!

Re:Go-faster tweak for Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap that makes a HUGE difference in page load speed.

Thanks

Re:Go-faster tweak for Firefox

[Just Some Guy]

You forgot:

4. Google for a website that has content similar to the one that you just got IP-blocked from for slamming the connection with a zillion parallel requests.

Re:Go-faster tweak for Firefox

[Repugnant_Shit]

I would say *not* to set the maxrequests to a number like 30. 3-6 should be good enough. You don't want to hammer a site with 30 simultaneous requests.

Re:Go-faster tweak for Firefox

[rsteele19]

Also linked to from the boingboing article, some reasons why these tweaks might not be a good idea:

Yes, enabling HTTP pipelining can dramatically improve networking performance. The downside, and the reason it's not enabled by default, is that it can prevent Web pages from displaying correctly.
The second change, setting the initial paint delay at zero, may get you some content on the screen faster, but it's worth noting that it will dramatically slow down the time it takes the entire page to display.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/007164 .html

Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say? Mod me down as a troll, but even if people jump ship en masse to Firefox, that is not a problem for Microsoft. There are several reasons for this - times today are very different from the good ol' days of their browser war with Netscape.

During the browser war between Microsoft and Netscape, Microsoft's primary worry was not people using Netscape Navigator as much as the Windows platform losing importance. Remember Andressen's quote saying that when Netscape was done, Windows would be reduced to a set of poorly debugged device drivers? Its easy to say that was foolery in retrospect, but Microsoft was sincerely worried about that. As far as Microsoft knew at the time, Windows could have lost importance in the same way that minicomputers declined after the rise of the personal computer.

Fast forward to the twenty first century. Microsoft is having a crapload of problems with spyware and this product called Firefox is getting rave reviews. But the worries of the mid nineties are gone. The reason that Microsoft stopped IE development is because they do not want to see web apps get more powerful; they hope that when Longhorn comes around, people will write distributed .NET apps.

Firefox does nothing to stop this future. While Firefox is a nice app and IMHO better than IE, it is not pushing the frontiers of web application capabilities, the way that Netscape did in the nineties. As nice as it is to not worry about slimeware, Firefox is just enabling the same ol' web.

As nice as Firefox is, it is not enabling people to switch away from Microsoft technologies other than IE itself. People are not switching to Linux because of Firefox. When Longhorn comes out and Microsoft starts hyping .NET web applications, from MSFT's perspective it is fine if people use Firefox 90% of the time and use IE for the 10% of .NET mission critical apps. As long as those apps exist, people are still tied into their platform.

Perhaps at some level, Microsoft risks losing mindshare from Firefox. But even if this is the case, they risk to lose much more mindshare by acknowledging Firefox as an issue so their response is expected.

Re:Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[bnenning]

When Longhorn comes out and Microsoft starts hyping .NET web applications, from MSFT's perspective it is fine if people use Firefox 90% of the time and use IE for the 10% of .NET mission critical apps. As long as those apps exist, people are still tied into their platform.

But that's the key; if Firefox achieves that level of popularity, not many developers will write IE-only apps.

Re:Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[Bisqwit]

While Firefox is a nice app and IMHO better than IE, it is not pushing the frontiers of web application capabilities, the way that Netscape did in the nineties. As nice as it is to not worry about slimeware, Firefox is just enabling the same ol' web.

Answer 1: That's not its job after all. It's currently W3C whose responsibility is to develop the web standards. The Mozilla developers do a good job in implementing them.

Answer 2: They do. Do a little research about XUL. Unfortunately I couldn't find an example application.

Re:Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[Christianfreak]

Um what about Firefox's (and Moz's) XML web building platform?

XUL > .Net. Its more secure and if it gains acceptance, Windows will become a collection of buggy device drivers.

Re:Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's the key; if Firefox achieves that level of popularity, not many developers will write IE-only apps.

Perhaps that will be true on the Internet at large, but that does not necessarily apply to internal corporate apps. As long as IE is bundled with Windows, people are free to write IE only apps as much as they would if Firefox never existed. MIS managers have no problem with mandating the use of something that comes with the OS.

And it is with deep pockets corporations that things really matter, not grandma playing solitaire.

Re:Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer 1: That's not its job after all. It's currently W3C whose responsibility is to develop the web standards. The Mozilla developers do a good job in implementing them.

As a geek, I agree 100%. As someone that watches the software industry at large, I think that Microsoft should be thanking the W3C, for the W3C is doing little or nothing to push the boundaries of web app capabilities.

Answer 2: They do. Do a little research about XUL. Unfortunately I couldn't find an example application.

Perhaps XUL is as good as they say, but it has zero mindshare and noone at all is using it. I cannot simply attribute it to lack of market penetration on Mozillas part, for if that were the only issue, you would probably have been able to find at least one single example.

I don't know much about XUL. I've heard that it is hard to develop on and the documentation is very poor. Perhaps if good IDEs came out or some other tools that make it as easy to build XUL apps as it is to build as .NET apps. If that happens, then Firefox will be of critical importance. But it is clear that Firefox alone is not the answer.

Re:Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

XUL has zero mindshare. .NET is used today. See my reply to the sibling post.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why be afraid of something that isn't there?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a hint: Firefox isn't going to work on Longhorn. ;)

Safari blew up

[dusanv]

On the first test. Browser version 1.2.4. Oops. How does Konqueror fare?

Re:Safari blew up

[plj]

I've tried to understand Safari's shortcomings and have even defended it on /., but I think my cup just leaked over. Following the crash I wrote this to the crash report I sent to Apple:

Please describe the circumstances leading to the crash and any other relevant information:

Running browser SECURITY TEST at http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/ is what crashed Safari this time - in addition to the n+1 other situations where it normally crashes (generally involving ridiculous memory consumption indicating huge memory leaks).

Now, if Mac OS X Panther as a whole would be so badly programmed as Safari is, I'd probably gladly switch to some crap from Redmond. See, Internet Explorer for Windows, even while being hugely insecure without virus scanner and continuous patching and having horrible CSS support, has much, much greater stability than the newest version of Safari.

Luckily, though, real alternatives exist - alternatives like Camino, Firefox, Opera and Omniweb. They all do not take advantage of all the fine features (those like Keychain) of Mac OS X and Cocoa API as well as Safari, but they really do have much greater stability comparing to Safari.

So shame on Apple's Safari & WebKit team. Safari has been like this for a really long time, and does not seem to get better at all. If you just can't figure out anything better, you should drop Camino altogether and move to back Camino, which, despite it's shortcomings on feature side, at least runs very smoothly, and besides uses much more widely supported rendering engine than Safari, which is a plus too.

I do wonder, though, whether someone at Apple actually reads these crash reports I'm sending to you? Perhaps I should send them directly to Mr. Jobs' mailbox instead?

Well, anyway, if you want to argue with me about all this, please don't hesitate to mail me at [address here] But I really think the best thing you could do would be just start fixing those bugs instead - and designing them out completely, for that matter.

Yours sincerely,

My favorite quote

[El_Servas]

...a lot of conflicting requests around: 'Hey, give me tabs right now' versus 'I want stability, I want a platform that won't break...

So, they can't innovate or add new features without unstabilizing the whole thing....

That's like recognizing that your product isn't that versatile or manageable...

To protect their cash cows.

[SlashdotMeNow]

MS makes most of it's money from Windows and Office. If they lose Windows and Office they can shut down shop. So they must do whatever they can to protect the income from those 2 areas, and specifically Office because Windows is nothing without Office for the average user.

Now the problem with the web is that browser-based apps (think gmail) threatens Office and by extention Windows. We live in a time where bandwith is cheap and fast enough to run a high-quality spreadsheet or word processor as a web application. The ONLY thing stopping this from happening is the pitiful state of IE. If they made IE as good as it can be, they'll be opening the floodgates for web-apps that can replace Office.

If IE matures enough for this to happen, all applications can be web-based and run off ANY COMPATIBLE BROWSER on ANY PLATFORM. Thus I can move my grandma to Linux with Firefox 3.0 and she won't even know that something has changed, because she was already accessing all her apps via a browser. This can also happen if Firefox becomes the de-facto standard browser, and they start implementing all these new and great standards that's waiting to unleash the power of the web-app.

So that's why IE has changed almost nothing since the monopoly. MS realises that improving it is digging their own grave.

My company develops software for a specific vertical market. All web-based. It's great for our clients because they can access their data from anywhere, any time. It's great for us because we can upgrade and improve the system whenever we feel like it without sending out upgrade disks. 90% of all support calls we take right now is because of IE (spyware / 'special' toolbars). Lately we've been installing Firefox for all clients when training them, and that's helped a lot.

So all we can hope for right now is for Firefox to improve their browser as much as possible to try to become the standard (60% of the market would do it I think) before Longhorn. I don't know what MS plans for a browser in Longhorn, but I know it will be bad for all other browsers.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[majest!k]

Windows is nothing without Office for the average user.

You're missing the word business after "average" in that sentance. Most home users don't use Windows for Office, they use it because thats what their computer came with.

If they made IE as good as it can be, they'll be opening the floodgates for web-apps that can replace Office.

Sorry, did I miss something? What the hell are you talking about? I consider myself an avid web surfer and app-junkie and I've yet to see any such web-apps that are free and open to the public. I am ofcourse assuming they would be free, since your statement inferred Microsoft feels threatened by these apps.

So that's why IE has changed almost nothing since the monopoly. MS realises that improving it is digging their own grave.

Yeah. Improving software within their OS [that would only make their OS more appealing to customers] is definitly digging their own grave.

So all we can hope for right now is for Firefox to improve their browser as much as possible to try to become the standard (60% of the market would do it I think) before Longhorn.

There is no doubt the Firefox dev team will improve their browser as much as they possibly can, however I would consider 60% a pipe dream. The sad truth about most people is that they're lazy. Not dumb, not ignorant, just lazy. To go thru the effort of downloading and setting up a new browser is asking too much. Not to mention the biggest challenge which is just letting them know there IS an alternative.

The reality of the matter is that as long as Microsoft is allowed to integrate IE into it's OS and not so much as provide a shortcut to the Firefox website, there is no hope of IE being replaced as the dominant browser.

Cheers.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[SlashdotMeNow]

Sorry, did I miss something?

Yes, you missed the point.

Yeah. Improving software within their OS [that would only make their OS more appealing to customers] is definitly digging their own grave.

Yes, because if IE (being the standard) can run these cool web-apps, you'll soon have other browsers with the same capabilities. And then you'll have replacements for Office apps that runs on Linux, because all you need is a compatible browser. And THEN you can start switching to non-MS platforms without worrying. When web-apps become as good as native apps, MS can kiss it's monopoly goodbye - and they won't be able to leverage Windows to push their $$$ apps.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[majest!k]

Yes, you missed the point.

Please clarify.

Yes, because if IE (being the standard) can run these cool web-apps, you'll soon have other browsers with the same capabilities. And then you'll have replacements for Office apps that runs on Linux, because all you need is a compatible browser. And THEN you can start switching to non-MS platforms without worrying.

Your logic is so flawed and based on such loose assumptions that I almost feel bad picking it apart... almost. Here's a list of your assumptions:

1) someone will create these webapps in the near future
2) they will do EVERYTHING Office apps do, and comply with all "Office standards" (so as to serve as a realistic alternative to MS Office)
3) they will be cross platform
4) they will be free
5) they will be 100% compatible with all browsers

And then, once those 5 assumptions become a reality, all of a sudden Microsoft will lose its monoply and Linux will takeover the world because people can now use Java-Pseudo-Office on Linux.

Right? Ok. Stay off the drugs.

Thanks.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[SlashdotMeNow]

This is already happening. Gmail is better than Outlook in most respects already. Many other apps are now being built as web-apps. Give it some time and I can guarantee you'll find all the important apps in a web-app flavour.

1) Web apps have many good features over traditional apps. Examples:
- Cannot be pirated
- Can be accessed anywhere
- Easy to upgrade
- etc.
Thus they will happen and in many cases are happening right now.

2) They only need to open Office files and have enough functionality, and most users will find them perfectly usable. I'm a power-user but most of Office's features I never use.

3) No need to be cross-platform as the browser will BE the platform. Duh.

4) No need to be free, they can be adware, subscriptionware or anything that's cheaper than Office.

5) They only need to be compatible with 95% of the browser market, which means IE and FireFox.

And then MS will start to lose it's grip on the market because it can't force users on a specific platform anymore.

I like drugs thank you.

Pleasure. Always good to help the short-sighted.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[majest!k]

I do believe in the power of webapps. I don't believe a webapp-version of Office will ultimately hold the key to Microsofts demise.

If there was such a realistic threat to Microsoft's dominance, it would already be widely known (past development) and actively marketing itself at home users (since they would be the first to adopt it). The fact that there isn't such a thing already is proof that such a product simply will not work.

50% of internet users still use dialup, furthermore, ill go out on a limb and say people will still prefer local apps of Office instead of their webapp alternatives because of 1) usability 2) speed 3) accessibility 4) feature support.

Don't get me wrong, there are definitly powerful applications for webapps, however don't fool yourself into thinking this is Microsoft's Achilles Heel.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[SlashdotMeNow]

The reason (as I said mr ADD) that such an app does not exist is because IE is too shite to allow it. MS knows that in the near future broadband will be ubiqitous and they know that a good enough browser will open pandora's box. Just because it does not exist now does not mean it's not on the horizon. Don't say it won't happen because local apps are intrinsicly better. They're only better because 1) lack of bandwith and 2) lack of a good enough browser. Both of those things will be addressed in the coming years, mark my word. If you can't see it then just wait. Yawn.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[majest!k]

Again, more assumptions...

I didn't bother addressing your "reason" in my earlier post because I didn't give it any merit. However since you insist, let me point out that you have zero proof of IE disallowing any such app. If your excuse for such an app not currently existing is because of Microsoft, then either back up that claim (since you seem to rely so heavily upon it), or come up with a better excuse.

I would suggest pointing me to a URL with such an app already developed that I can access from a non-IE browser (which, must NOT work correctly under IE).

Have a good one.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[SlashdotMeNow]

Like I said, duh, such an app cannot exist because writing an app that's not supported in IE would be dumb. You bore me.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[majest!k]

Okay, so your unfounded theory is based on loose assumptions and flawed logic regarding an app that doesn't even exist.

Like I said, stay off the drugs.

Re:To protect their cash cows.

[SlashdotMeNow]

Yawn.

It's a matter of priorities.

[rsheridan6]

If they give away their improvements to IE, they protect themselves from encroachment on their turf by Firefox, but then that's one less reason to upgrade to Longhorn when it comes out. If they don't give them away, they sell more copies of Longhorn, but their market share erodes. It looks like they decided to accept the risk in order to make more money. MS still has a commanding share of the browser market, and there's a good chance they'll get a lot of Firefox users back with Longhorn anyway.

Personally, I would err on the side of protecting the monopoly, but I'm not going to argue with multibillionaires over business decisions.

Translation:

[JoeCommodore]

We better not really fix/enhance IE in XP so people will have a good reason to plunk down the "big bux" for Long horn upgrades in two years.

Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph

[AkaXakA]

But the real question* is:

Are more standards suppoted? Does it fare well with xhtml sent as xml+xhtml? Does it support (more) CSS2 and CSS3 ?

*As far as my webdesigner mind goes... As it doesn't matter to me _which_ browser is dominant, as long as it supports standards fully.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Systematic bias

[tepples]

A site concerned about the browser war would be much more likely to brag^H^H^H^Hdisclose its UA statistics. It would appear that disproportionally many power users visit such sites, and if power users are more likely to switch to G*cko or Opera, then published stats might have a systematic bias in favor of G*cko and Opera.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox doesn't add new features. Instead you're expected to download one of two hundred nearly-obsolete extensions, updating it as necessary.

I'm the Nazi Slogan Spelling Nazi

[tepples]

It's "Sieg Heil". German uses I before E when sounded like English long E.

(sorry, couldn't resist \X\ )

Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph

[IO ERROR]

6) Bloat- FireFox loads twice as fast.

They probably have debugging code built into it. It is, after all, an alpha. As for the rest of it, it sounds like all they did was rearrange the UI, and if that's all they've done, then all it will do is confuse people.

Childish Logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument regarding apache is along the lines that if you can demonstrate a secure OS project, that immediately implies *everything* that is OS is secure just because it is OS, while if you can point to an insecure closed-source project, that immediately implies everything closed-source is insecure.

If you can't see the sheer wrongness of such a claim then we have no logical basis for a debate.

Yes. Apache is secure. Samba is secure. O/F/N BSD is secure. So? Is sendmail? Has there been a shortage of exploitable linux (OS) software (even after it was open to the public for years? What about secure closed-source commercial software? Are you claiming Cisco or any of a variety of commercial firewalls dont exist?

This immature american tendency to draw everything up in black and white, good vs. bad, lionize what you like and demonize what you don't - like life was some Fox News channel - it's as pathetic when fanatic OS advocates do it as when microsoft does.

The reality of the matter is that there is no good and bad, no absolute right way and absolute wrong way, no one big ultimate answer to everybody's needs. Nothing's perfect, everything's just a mixture of pros and cons you need to weave your decisions through.

Cope.

Microsoft doesn't have too

[Protocron]

Let me preface this in saying I am a Debian user. I got positively moist when I first used apt-get. So.... You can look at the business model of M$ and tell that they do not need to address the problems of IE. Security or otherwise.
As a previous poster pointed out, the new version of IE is due out in a year or two (optimistically). During the 3-5 years that Mozilla/Firefox has been in developement, they have reached compatibility with IE. Even that is subject to debate (for or against the BEAST.)
Currently this is nothing that is revolutionary in the browser world. And by that I mean in ideas. What Mozilla/Firefox does is exactly the basic functionality of IE. The last major achievements were done by Opera/IE and Safari. I'm sure there is something that Moz/Firefox incorpirates that is somewhat new, but overall there is nothing that Mozilla/Firefox could do that dethrones IE. IE should and probably does monitor everything that mozdev does.
All of that said, The Beast will focus strictly on the developement of the newest OS, browser and Monolithic products. As soon as everything is ready and tested, Market Market Market!!! The newest OS will nulify Moz/FF upon installation, and then they have their captive audience.
As we all know, the Marketing will only allow for you to get the latest and greatest features by upgrading to latest and greatest version of M$ Windows. By then 2000 will probably EOL.

It's all about the marketing. On that note, where's the Open Source Marketing department. We are severly lacking in that department. Well that and marketing execs are a bunch soul sucking ticks on the bottom side of humanity. But that's a whole nother rant.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[arpy]

I've watched Mozilla development for a few years now, and I can tell you that this is actually a good thing... By listening to everyone you end up with (among a million other things) a kitchen sink.

Ahem.

My take...

[initialE]

What I think is that everyone's got the wrong way of looking at things. Before XP SP2 came out, if I were to tell you that there was no chance you could surf the web and not get bludgeoned with some spyware, keylogger or trojan, it would be enough to make people swear off windows and move to linux. Either that or never surf for porn anymore (bleah, I need my porn). Firefox, Opera and other browsers changed all that. They proved that you can still use the OS that you're most familiar with and still have some peace of mind when you go surfing the internet. In that view, FF actually saved the business for Microsoft.

World without sigs

Like Penn & Teller would say

[Skrekkur]

BULLSHIT! of course they worry, just dont want people to think they worry

How soon do we learn?

[WheelDweller]

"Oh boy, are they actually working side by side with the virusmakers and phishers?"

What....are you new here? Of course they are. Any other company would have squished the bugs like, well, bugs!

Every release cycle, the same old story: miss release dates, scare the investors a little, then release it, make it use double the hardware it requires, and after a short period of trouble-free time, the virus writers break through and so does the anti-virus people. All the while Microsoft promises to make the next release virus-free.

Fer cryin' out loud; they've been doing it for two decades...

Wow, the sheer vanity

[Anonymous Coward]

You're working on the underlying assumption that where YOU can spot a true techie coder for whom coding is a passion rather than a job, Microsoft can't.

I understand this assumption gives you the warm fuzzies and makes you feel so much better (probbably in more than one sense), I'm just trying to point you to the *extreme* dubiousness of it.

Re:Wow, the sheer vanity

[labratuk]

You're working on the underlying assumption that where YOU can spot a true techie coder for whom coding is a passion rather than a job, Microsoft can't.

Yep. It's called an opinion. I mean, why for instrance should anybody be able to criticise a government when they've got thousands of officials making decisions for them and you're just a little nobody. Who would have the sheer vanity to do that?

If you're saying that having an opinion is vanity, then yes, you're probably right. Because the idea of an opinion is that you think you're right and that the other person is wrong.

Its MS standard business practice....

[3seas]

... to make such announcements regardless of the real outcome.

I.E. when they hear of a competitor working on something they suddenly have an announcement that they are doing something similiar but better.

Even if they never come out with it the threat from MS competition can cause additional pressure..

In honesty, it is best to ignore all anouncements comming from MS, unless it is regarding current product that you can actually touch.

You missed...

[Anonymous Coward]

"There are Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq" - George W. Bush

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[DosBubba]

In about:config set the following (assuming you have 32MB of ram to spare) browser.cache.disk.capacity 0 browser.cache.disk.enable false browser.cache.memory.capacity 32768 browser.cache.memory.enable true This sets Firefox to store the cache data in RAM, not on your harddrive. Works about as well as Opera.

Make That Two

[Master of Transhuman]

"That just gives the MozBoys a year head start"

If Microsoft thinks they'll get Longhorn out the door in 2006, plan on 2007 - even without WinFS. I wouldn't be surprised to see Avalon scaled back this coming year if they really want it out the door in 2006.

Face it, Windows is now so bloated and full of crap that Microsoft can no longer add features or even wholly rewrite the system anymore.

I predict Longhorn will be Microsoft's demise - just like many other software companies came out with a bad release and faded from the scene. Of course, Microsoft's "fade" will look more like Custer's Last Stand and probably take another ten years and involve numerous patent lawsuits against anyone and everyone.

Can you say "SCO writ large"? I knew you could.

And in the meantime it's an extensible platform...

[acelondon]

"And in the meantime it's an extensible platform..."

1. Don't start sentences with "and."
2. If by extensible you mean so riddled with security holes you can't even open it and not be worried, then yes.

-London

Microsoft's definition of Inovative

[nagora]

• Implementing PNG support
• Implementing CSS support
• er...
• Actually, probably neither of those: they're hard.

TWW

Link Segfaults Firefox

[nbritton]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrdigital/1658199/
I f I click on that link in firefox it segfaults
---------
Corrupt JPEG data: 1140 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd9
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
---------
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041230 Firefox/1.0
---------
Build platform
target
i386-unknown-freebsd5.3

Build tools
Compiler Version Compiler flags
cc gcc version 3.4.2 [FreeBSD] 20040728 -Wall -W -Wno-unused -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -Wno-long-long -O -pipe -march=pentium2 -O2 -pipe
c++ gcc version 3.4.2 [FreeBSD] 20040728 -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions -Wall -Wconversion -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-align -Woverloaded-virtual -Wsynth -Wno-ctor-dtor-privacy -Wno-non-virtual-dtor -Wno-long-long -O -pipe -march=pentium2 -O2 -fshort-wchar -pipe -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/X11R6/include

Configure arguments
--enable-crypto --disable-tests --disable-mailnews --disable-composer --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2 --enable-official-branding --prefix=/usr/ports/www/firefox/work/fake --x-includes=/usr/X11R6/include --x-libraries=/usr/X11R6/lib --with-system-jpeg=/usr/local --with-system-zlib --with-system-png=/usr/local --with-system-mng=/usr/local --without-system-nspr --with-gssapi=/usr --with-pthreads --disable-auto-deps --disable-bidi --disable-dtd-debug --disable-jsd --disable-ldap --disable-pedantic --disable-profilesharing --disable-installer --enable-single-profile --disable-profilesharing --enable-image-decoders=png,gif,jpeg,bmp --enable-extensions=cookie,xml-rpc,xmlextras,pref, transformiix,universalchardet,webservices,inspecto r,p3p,gnomevfs --disable-debug --enable-optimize=-O2 --enable-strip --disable-logging --enable-xft --disable-gnomevfs
----------
firefox-1.0_6,1
j peg-6b_3
----------
FreeBSD spectra.intranet 5.3-RELEASE-p2 FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE-p2 #16: Fri Dec 24 04:47:03 CST 2004 nbritton@spectra.intranet:/usr/src/sys/i386/compil e/SPECTRA i386
----------

Re:Link Segfaults Firefox

[Bert64]

Works fine for me (on linux) using gcc 3.4.3 and jpeg-6b.. i also have somewhat more aggressive cflags...
That page tho, the main image uses a flash plugin, is there even a flash plugin for freebsd?
I dont think mine is built to use gnomevfs tho.. maybe theres a conflict with some other libs you have? maybe your version of X or something, or perhaps some of your libs were built with a different compiler version, that can cause issues sometimes... I have never had firefox (self compiled) crash on linux since i've been using 1.0, 1.0pre's crashed a bit, but 0.9.x was rock solid too.. And i use firefox daily both at home and at work.

Makes perfect sense not to be worried

[Junks Jerzey]

Think about it...what does FireFox offer that's over and above IE in terms of usability:

1. Security.
2. Tabbed browsing.
3. Popup blocking.
4. Various little things, like a better Options dialog and nicer text searching.

Now let's look at this from the point of view of a multi-billion dollar sofware development house that already has an existing and popular browser (i.e. Microsoft):

1. The big security problem is allowing ActiveX controls. You can already fix this by raising your security level to High. Microsoft can make this the default in ten seconds of developer time.

2. Tabbed browsing is nice, but how long would it take to add to IE? A week? A month? Microsoft could do this in a hearbeat, and likely already has internally.

3. Popup blocking is something that Microsoft added as part of XP Service Pack 2.

4. Again, as with #2, these would be doddles for Microsoft to add.

Now what's more likely here is that Microsoft is thinking big and has something up its sleeve that the FireFox guys aren't even considering. The worry, for those people who insist upon viewing this as a battle, is that FireFox is going to look like an improved and polished version of IE, and the next IE is going to be leap beyond it.

Because FireFox has problems...

[IcePop456]

As much as I hate IE, I am startnig to hate FireFox. Ok so FireFox doesn't crash, but I've found numerous sites that do not display properly. The most annoying is www.titantv.com. I have notice numerous other sites do not format properly. Yes it is open source, etc., but I'm not a programmer nor should I be. So, I still use IE because I absolutely hate broken products. I use IE for known sites that do not work in FireFox and I use FireFox for new sites because IE crashes with some Jave bugs. Am I the only one sick of broken sh*t released to consumers?

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[BladeMelbourne]

FireFox is more standards compliant than MSIE. If sites do not display properly, it is due to poor web development and the lack of adherence to standards.

For the site you mention:
www.titantv.com is NOT valid HTML 4
www.titantv.com is NOT valid CSS

Validation of both shows about 50 errors - some of them very serious and obviously wrong.

FireFox isn't broken, some web sites are. You should be clicking the "contact us" links on sites that render badly, and ask them to clean their act (and code) up.

Don't ditch FireFox dude... more sites will work with it as time passes.

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[IdntUnknwn]

TitanTV actually displays just fine for me.

You'll hafta remember that in many cases the reason webpages do not work/display properly in Firefox is because they are coded specifically to work with IE. That doesn't make it Firefox's fault, that doesn't mean Firefox is a broken product. Firefox's aim is compliance with standards, not compatibility with IE.

Its true that Firefox isn't a perfect product, but calling it "broken sh*t" makes me believe you're making an overgeneralization and blaming Firefox for what is really IE's problem: non-compliance with standards. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[IcePop456]

I was hoping someone would point this out. I agree IE has done things that are not correct. But the fact is a high, very high, extremely high majority of people use IE. Therefore sites are coded for it. I would therefore expect anyone who wants to make the better browser would take this into account. I'm not expect FireFox to continue with non-standard coding, but they should at least be able to dectect IE code and therefore handle it properly. I would never attempt to replace something without at least handling everything it can do.

As for broken sh*t, I'm just getting fed up with a lot of things. My PVR for my cable box (Motorola) should beconsidered an "alpha" version because it has so many problems (lock ups, choppy display, MPG like quality afer a few minutes of viewing). All of these problems are fixed by watching a time delayed version (i.e., just hit pause and then play as fast as you can). It was obviously programmed to prioritize the recording - which is the better of two choices. I just think it is unacceptable. My remote for my receiver crashed the other day and I had to remove the batteries. The first Sony VPL-hs20 projector randomly switched inputs. Had to replace it. It seems like companies rather just get a product out than get it working right. I should know, I'm in the semiconductor company and fight this all the time. Cars have recalls for things like air bags not timed right. C'mon - if you tested it you should have found that. It isn't like a recall where a bolt can break if x,y,z, 1,2,3 happen on a full moon. My Dell Axiom x50v displays lines in full screen mode during video playback. It does it for all videos. Therefore, it is unacceptable for them to say they didn't see it.

I'm a test engineer for a living and my job is to verify things work. I cannot get away with the junk quality I receive in my house. I think consumers should hold OEMs as responsible as they hold their suppliers. nVidia is pissed at us because we had 2 bad units in about 10million sold to them. I own 3 nVidia cards - all have broken fans. My brother has a new 6600XT - vibrating fan already. Completely unacceptable. There comes a point in time when Walmart quality is not allowed at any price.

Therefore, I apologize to the FireFox fans, but I am just disappointed in the product. I have high expectations and I hope everyone starts to as well. Version 1 should be the only one unless there are new features. We have to set a mandate that Version 1.1 is not acceptable. Companies should only be allowed to use it in rare circumstances. Nowadays, who cares about the firmware. "We can always have them patch it later on". Not if I gave the MP3 player to my Mother who barely can use a mouse....

Although I doubt they will follow it, I was very impressed with Tom's Hardware when they said the would not test cards until they are the final version. Companies only look at the bottom line. If we do not but their crap, they will find out the hard way. I for one will not by a hard drive without a 3 year warranty. If you can't give me that, then why should I even remotely trust your drive? I may even fork over a few extra bucks for the quality if it was offered...

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[sehnsucht0x90]

"But the fact is a high, very high, extremely high majority of people use IE. Therefore sites are coded for it." ... "I'm not expect FireFox to continue with non-standard coding, but they should at least be able to dectect IE code and therefore handle it properly."

Yeah then remove tab browsing, search enhancements and all the mayors features to make FireFox more comfortable to IE users.

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[Burrito Bandito]

Well, I AM a programmer (specifically a web developer). And I can tell you that if a website does not format correctly in Firefox, it's because the WEBSITE is broken, NOT because Firefox is broken. And, yes, I'm sick of broken sh*t (like IE-only websites) being released to consumers.

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[IdntUnknwn]

I'm not expect FireFox to continue with non-standard coding, but they should at least be able to dectect IE code and therefore handle it properly.

First, there is no easy way to detect IE code. IE code is simply broken HTML. How should a standards compliant browser deal with broken HTML? Should it emulate IE? Why? So that websites will continue to code for IE and continue to do things improperly? What was the point of having a standard then?

Suppose a company, such as Microsoft, took a standard, such as Mpeg4 video, and bastardized it into WMV. Should further Mpeg4 video codecs support the bastardized form of Mpeg4?

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[IdntUnknwn]

Version 1 should be the only one unless there are new features. We have to set a mandate that Version 1.1 is not acceptable.

BTW, that sounds like the Debian release cycle. You do realize just how long it will take between releases, right? Even if all found bugs have been fixed, the developers would need to wait many more months to make sure that no further bugs are found. This would definitely create unrest among many users. Would you be willing to wait a year or two for the next version? So much for the headstart that Microsoft would be giving Firefox.

And even if the Firefox team decided to wait months and months to ensure no further bugs, there will undoubtedly be bugs when the product is finally released. It is impossible for a product to be perfect. It can come close, but there will always be something wrong. Should not these bugs be fixed ASAP? Shouldn't a new version be released ASAP addressing these bugs? But wait, you don't want a 1.1 version. Ok, then under your logic everyone must wait another year or two for the next release. That doesn't seem quite right to me.

It's not like the Firefox developers decided to release a half-ass product for the hell of it. Why would they? They didn't have a corporation on their backs forcing a deadline. Of course they did the best they could for the 1.0 release, they weren't sitting around thinking "hey this can be fixed later in 1.1." They're certainly not lazy, after all many of these people are devoted enough to work on the Mozilla project in their free time. Its just that bugs are the reality in software development. We unfortunately don't live in the ideal world.

As a test engineer, have you always been perfect in your testing? Have you managed to catch every single problem?

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[IcePop456]

Of course I don't catch everything. My point is that alot of the stuff I get now have OBVIOUS bugs. So, what I am demanding is that we as consumers should not openly allow all these patches. Like I said, there will always be the case that when x,y,z on a full moon occurs, something bad happens with the product. That's fine. But when air bags do not deploy at regular crash test sites for cars, Sony projectors just switch inputs (big percentage of them do that by the way), and the nVidia 6800 AGP chip will not do hardware acceleration for HDTV video after all, it has to make you wonder what other crap we are getting just so we can get it.

Yes, I am willing to wait some time for new releases. I would have never upgraded to WinXP from Win2k if it wasn't for the better firewire support. I just never had the need to. Although I am an engineer, I want the computer and other items to "just work". I'll tinker with it if I want to get it to do something new - not just operate as they promised it should.

In the hardware world, we aren't given the chance to update the product after customers get it. (OBVIOUSLY) So, it is demanded that we get it right the first time. Sometimes we don't and there is enough wiggle room in the design that some firmware can correct things. I think the same mandate should be for software. For example, Sony's new MP3 player - that cannot play MP3's yet because the fireware still doesn't support it. What the heck is that all about? Is anyone suing nVidia over the flawed AGP version of the 6800? They obviously marketed a product that could not do what they said it could (hence the 6600 and pci-e 6800 are a different chip)

Obviously I'm idealistic with this but if we give them an inch, they will take more.

Re:Because FireFox has problems...

[IdntUnknwn]

So what specifically is wrong in Firefox 1.0 that you would like fixed? Take note that incompatibility with badly written IE code isn't a bug, but more a conscious decision by the developers to remain strictly standards compliant. Note that disagreeing with this decision doesn't mean that the product is flawed, but more that you disagree with the developers' viewpoints. In which case it isn't right to call it a broken product.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph

[cnettel]

The real question is why we should judge from current Longhorn builds regarding anything at all. Important bits and pieces, especially in userland, was changed and/or added quite late in the game in both Windows 2000 and XP. They obviously didn't come out of nowhere, but they were not in the normal build tree.

Mozilla 1.7.3 passes

[veg_all]

The Browser Security Test is finished. Please find the results below:
High Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Medium Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Low Risk Vulnerabilities 0

on gentoo amd64, FWIW...

okay

[Anonymous Coward]

okay since they are not worried and IE is such a superior platform then why don't they let the dells, gateways of the world put opera, firefox, mozilla, and netscape on the pcs they sell with their wonderful os on it.

Then lets see what gets used.

Oh and if you are a developer for a website and you use active x and anything that ties your website to one browser whether it be intranet or extranet you should fired on the spot and sent back to school.

This is why microsoft is not worried. They know the dipshit developers are locking their CUSTOMERS into one browser by not allowing anything other than IE to access their site.

You all should be fired on the spot - no questions asked along with every one of your managers who approved locking your CUSTOMERS into one browser.

Hmm De-facto standard.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenOffice is graded against Microsoft Office Fileformats format comes in with a 95% note Microsoft Access in not included. This is 1.1.3 version 1.1.4 is higher.

Please note 95% is higher than Microsoft Office 2003 what comes in with a 92% when compared against documents from all version of Office before it.

Basicly OpenOffice is playing catch up with this fileformat but is doing it better than what microsoft has expected. Snaping backward compad ie not being able to open old document correctly is a Microsoft problem what is getting worse.

Note Version 2.0 this year of OpenOffice will be far more compad than all other versions.

De-facto Standard is not a real standard because it is only De-facto and can be defeated because it is not compad. PDF is the De-facto standard for Business to Business data.

Re:Hmm De-facto standard.

[BladeMelbourne]

Compat is probably a better abbreviation Compatible.

You can check the spelling of your posts by copying your text into OO and clicking Tools -> Spellcheck (or F7).

Oh and version 2.0 will not be out until next year... 2005. Dont jump the gun buddy :p

Re:Hmm De-facto standard.

[lunatik17]

I'm compelled to point out that 2005 isn't that far away ;)

Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph

[Flammon]

Shhhhh. Don't tell them. Let them figure it out on their own. Then again, they'll probably ignore anything you say here because the're not into the FOSS thing yet so any contributions such as the one you have just made will probably be ignored. Now, any constructive criticism for the Moz guys would be alright, they'll probably listen. If not, you could always patch your own version or write an extension.

Smart move by MS!

[Anonymous Coward]

By not "showing off" new ideas for IE in Longhorn, they prevent the OSS cloners from copying it in Firefox until it's way late.

Firefox has very little in terms of new concepts in it, just like many of the OSS clones.

Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox

[Anonymous Coward]

Cheer up folks. It's times like these that we all should be rejoicing for Microsoft's stupidity.

otherway around

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not worried about Microsoft, but I'm more worried about how their users will fair.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats not a bug that needs to be fixed. It's a feature request that needs to be discussed, approved and finally implemented.

STFU bonch

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words,

[xgamer04]

In other news, Goliath unworried about David.

design in security

[oo_waratah]

Often security has to be designed into an application. Because large parts of firefox were re-engineered lately they are security because they have been considered and implemented from scratch.

Microsoft COULD use many developers to make IE more secure however it is unlikely that they will because there is no business plan for it. Also it is not about the code but the design and goals of the IE application that leads to some of the security problems.

Finally there are people that specifically target security issues in FireFox because it is a banner software for FOSS.

Your general comments on FOSS is correct a lot of software developed under FOSS do not have a lot of built in security or security concious programmers. There are simply too many to make this comment meaningful. Secure programming is hard and not that many people practice it. In a lot of ways I doubt that a significant percentage of IE programmers have specific security programming training which makes them no better than the rest of the world in this regard.

Finally let us discuss vunerabilities and reaction times. When vunerabilities are actually located they are removed faster from FOSS software than proprietary software. This is fact. So if there is an exploit I can expect that exploit to be closed faster on FireFox than IE as proven by historical data.

Re:Do your research before trolling.

[powerlinekid]

He was talking about Longhorn Alpha and IE7 you idiot.

"just work"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, both Windows and Macintosh are very far away from "hardware and software just working".

In fact, if you compare apples and apples, namely pre-installed Linux, Windows, and Macintosh hardware with vendor-supported hardware and software, Linux is already ahead of both Windows and Macintosh in terms of things "just working".

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[thepoch]

A new version of IE might very well be the biggest reason to upgrade to Longhorn from XP.

That's really sad. Maybe this is what browser makers have to market.

Firefox: "FREE download. Compare that to a $200 upgrade of IE."

Opera: "Only $37! Compare that to a $200 upgrade of IE."

Safari: "Only a few thousand dollars! You get a new hardware as well! Compare that to a $200 upgrade of IE."

Of course, I doubt IE will be the only reason to upgrade to Longhorn. Customers will be forced to upgrade whenever they buy a new machine preloaded with Longhorn. Customers will also be forced the momeny Microsoft says "We will no longer provide security updates to Windows before Longhorn." At that momeny they either switch to Macs, Linux, or get screwed by MS again.

Anyway, majority of my Internet-using clients are now using Firefox. So I'm doing my part and hopefully making Microsoft sweat a little more.

Firefox is in trouble.

[yakofdeath]

Firefox will do fine for the next year or so, but when MS releases Longhorn and its new browser, Firefox is going to have to have something that the new MS browser doesn't. MS isn't stupid, they realize what advantages Firefox has over IE, and they're going to improve their browser. Once Longhorn comes out, the average user is no longer going to make the effort to switch. The only reason Firefox is doing so well now is that IE is really terrible. The new MS browser will be better, and Firefox will have to get better also.

Microsoft is targeted because they started the war

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has never dealt fairly with their clients. They have stolen so much from so many over the years that they have created a general sense of hatred towards them from anyone who is a developer who didn't want to buy into their corporate ponzi scheme.

They provide interfaces that are like quicksand to the developers who pay money to use their products.

Microsoft gets what they deserve. They started the war in cyber space and they are getting the brunt of the 'script kiddies' because if microsoft had their way these kiddies would be Microsoft slaves or unemployed. People don't like being playd as chumps by lawyer run companies like microsoft, so there is an element of folks who will attack back.

So stop cry babying about microsoft bashing. They get what there karma demands that they get as far as I can tell.

It goes back 20 years all the stuff that they did. And it is a long list of things that they did to screw the government and all the users.

It hasn't been all that difficult

[westlake]

That's actually the biggest problem with Microsoft's current business model. With each new generation of their software they have to convince a substantial portion of their install base that to upgrade

XP was released in August 2001. It now has 60% of the entire PC market. Linux and the Mac are so far distant as to be scarcely visible at all. OS Platform Stats

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that XP owns 90% of the home PC market. When Longhorn goes gold it will become the standard install on every OEM system and for most buyers the upgrade will be automatic.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[Christianfreak]

Couldn't you write extensions that add these features for people that want them?

Its not a bug, its a feature request. Perhaps the developers don't think its something that needs to be in the core of Moz/Firefox.

MS software is crap; Firefox is superior

[dh003i]

It's a fact.

Anyone who's used Firefox knows it's better than IE. It has 10% market share already. More and more people are coming to use it. The things keeping people with MS IE are familiarity and search-costs.

However, people get sick of popups and virus'. You know, most people I know who've gotten food-poisening at a restaurant never go back to that restaurant again. It takes some 200 good experiences to negate just one bad experience with a company.

Conflicting Features eh...

[ATN]

there are a lot of conflicting requests around: 'Hey, give me tabs right now' versus 'I want stability, I want a platform that won't break, I want to make sure I have extensability, I want to make sure have manageability,' "

Wait a minute doesn't firefox have all those?

Could someone please explain to me how tabs conflict with stability, extensability, and manageabilty?

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[Phroggy]

Most people don't upgrade their OS, they buy a new machine with the new OS on it.

The MozBoys

[lousyd]

That just gives the MozBoys a year head start.

Yeah, probably the girls, too. Or is there something special to developing software when you have a dick?

Re:The MozBoys

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to have a dick to be a boy. You are propagating a heteronormative orthodoxy. Paleo-feminist poseur!

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[jesser]

By "fast back button" do you mean adding a gesture to go back or increasing the speed when you click the back button?

Re:Microsoft is targeted because they started the

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame, so damn lame.

>> Microsoft has never dealt fairly with their clients.

Bull. Microsoft deals as fairly with their clients as any other corp. It's the competition they don't deal fairly with, and being in a dog-eat-dog business world they don't owe them nothing.

>> They have stolen so much from so many
Taking somebody's money with their concent in return for a product is called business, not theft.

>> They provide interfaces that are like quicksand to the developers
Again, bull. Said "quicksand" interfaces being the reason there is about 100 times more software available for windows than for all the other platforms put together.

>> People don't like being playd as chumps by lawyer run companies like microsoft
Yep. It's definitely those lawyers that are responsible for getting 99% of the non-computer-savvy users to use a word-processor, email and the internet. They just sued them till they became more educated.

>> So stop cry babying
Look in the mirror and say that again.

You're one of those braindead & brainwashed anti-MS drones who's been repeating this shit ever since 95 came out.

You cannot "convict" anyone in a civil case.

[westlake]

U.S.v. Microsoft was a civil case that ended in a settlement, as most do. No one is ever "convicted" in a civil court, because no one is on trial for a crime. There is a finding of fact and a decision based on the law. Remedies are found, but punishment is rare and kept in strict proportion. Demanding your pound of flesh invites disaster.

My favorite quote...

[calculi]

"I think XP SP2 is still the best browser overall when you look at the full set of criteria for choosing a browser." Service Pack 2 is a browser now? And this guy's a team leader at CERT? I guess the criteria for choosing a browser now is choose something that isn't a browser. Now that I think about it that might be the ticket to safe and secure browsing!

Another good quote:
"There are a lot of conflicting requests around: 'Hey, give me tabs right now' versus 'I want stability, I want a platform that won't break, I want to make sure I have extensability, I want to make sure have manageability."

Read: Features and security are conflicting requests for Microsoft. No surprise there.

Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph

[Anonymous Coward]

I am on a Windows PC today (which is rare). After I went to Windows Update and installed Windows XP SP2 and all the security updates this PC desparately needed, I noticed that IE ver. 6.02900.... already has pop-up blocking. Just to let you know.

Would be nice to get a screenshot of IE7. (A picture is worth a thousand words.)

--A Mac user.

P.S.: On the Mac, IE is pretty much a joke that nobody uses (5x slower than Safari at loading pages). Most use either Safari or Firefox. Camino is consistently behind in usability , security, and feature updates and isn't worth bothering with. Safari tends to be faster and have a nicer bookmark management, but no quicksearch support. Firefox gets page layout and encoding right much more often, and has built-in quicksearch support.

Hey Fanboy!

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of that, they are being slaughtered by Apple who keeps coming out with great things that people need to buy. Apple keeps redefining what the computer experience is.

Only if you already have both feet firmly planted in Apple fanboy soil. I haven't heard of one single thing from Apple that I need, or even want, and they sure ain't redefining anything that I can see.

Then again, Linux isn't redefining much either, just keeps on keeping on - which is worth a helluva lot more.

Re:Hey Fanboy!

[johnnyb]

Well, given that I've never owned a Mac, it would be difficult to classify me as a "fanboy". But let's look at what Apple has done:

iTunes -- the first real, legit music source

iPod -- this has really changed the personal electronics landscape

Mac OS X -- this is the best OS I've ever used. Installing programs is as easy as moving an icon from the CD to your Applications folder. Every device has superb video integration -- each part works well, and works well with each other. On top of all of this, it works great with UNIX and you can even run UNIX applications like GIMP very seamlessly.

I think it could easily take 75% of Microsoft's home market away, and 25% of their business market away if anyone ever bothered to try one out.

And, rumour has it that they are going to release a PC in the sub-$600 price range. Their laptops are pretty cheap already. $1000 for a decent one.

With apple, even the third-party applications are better and have better integration. With Windows and Linux, they both suffer from "too many cooks". With Apple, the whole thing takes a pretty unified vision.

Also, Apple's integration w/ Java is pretty killer, too.

Internet Cafes

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing people need to do is influence the choice of browser in 'internet cafes', the world over. Too many of them are still only offering IE as the only choice.

Today I recommend that each Firefox or Opera fan go down to their local internet cafe and suggest to them that there is an alternative worth offering :)

www.scienceblog.org

FireWhat?

[zagmar]

Ask any typical user of Windows about FireFox.

Your answer? FireWhat?

For the 1% out there that are dickless enough to care, Firefox is great. For the 99% of folks in the real world, who gives a flying rat fuck?

MOD UP!

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Come on, mods!

Grandparent gets "+5, insightful" for advising people to trash web-servers and the actually insightful replies get nothing...

Re:MOD UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]Grandparent gets "+5, insightful" for advising people to trash web-servers and the actually insightful replies get nothing...[/quote]

I think you are wrong. Nobody is trashing web servers. If a page contains 49 elements, the browser *WILL* go fetch all of them. Whether it does this by fetching 49 single ones, or 30 in one go over a pipelines request will not make a difference to the webserver.

Well, ok, I lied. It will make a difference. A positive one. Instead of seeing 49 connections, the webserver will see only two - one for 30 elements and one for 19. Thats actually better!

Tels

I don't think Firefox is the issue...

[Chordonblue]

It's going to be security in general. MS doesn't want to truly fix IE because that would mean having to re-write large portions of OS code (XP Service Pack 3?). That's why they're waiting until Longhorn. The effort would be enormous.

But with this new under $500 mini iMac coming, THAT should scare MS. I know a lot of people I'll be recommending it to (provided it lives up to the hype on release), simply to get out from under all the spyware and viruses.

Remember, a 1.2 GHz G4 is a LOT faster than a 4 GHz spyware-laden PC. And the eye candy of Tiger (OSX 10.4) will blow consumers away...

See my journal for more mini-iMac ruminations...

Re:I don't think Firefox is the issue...

[16K Ram Pack]

Is that true? I'm not trying to start a flamewar or anything, but I honestly don't know a single Mac user.

The one thing I'd need to do is to be able to remotely access some Windows servers. Can that be easily done on a Mac?

(Heading to Apple store in London next month to have a look at Macs).

But MS' answer isn't .NET, it's XAML

[Otis_INF]

... and XAML will be run by .NET 3.0, and will be the base of windowish GUI's which are build with web-based technology. THAT will be the next thing MS will offer.

True, with XUL you can do the same thing, or try to mimic it a bit, but the problem with XUL is that there isn't a big power behind it which controls the desktop or a large part of the desktops. MS will move to XAML powered GUI's within 5 years time, so all developers on windows will too. Browser? not needed.

I'm no Microsoft Apologist(R), but come on...

[kiddailey]

In the default .NET installation, yes - it favors IE. But to make the blanket statement that all of the built in controls won't work properly in other browsers is nothing but FUD.

To complain that Microsoft made a new development framework defaulted for their browser, but at the same time included a vast amount of flexibility to modify it as you see fit is also nonsensical.

There are plenty of tutorials and samples for configuring the .NET engine to render the same in all modern browsers, and it's hardly as difficult as you make it out to be. I agree -- if you can't figure out how to include a BrowserCaps block in machine. or web.config to change the rendering mode, ASP.NET is probably not for you. Personally, I've had very little difficulty writing apps that work identically in all of the major modern browsers.

The only included controls that I have experienced trouble with are the built-in validation controls - though I admitedly avoid most of the built in ones. There are much improved alternatives to the built in validation controls -- a few of which are completely free and/or open source. You can of course, easily write your own as well.

As far as the other controls go, there are equally as many alternatives that are cross-browser compatible with little or no effort. A few minutes in ASP.NET's Control Gallery will get you started. And again, you can always write your own.

I'm no Microsoft Apologist(R) for sure (owning 5 Macs to my two PCs and lots of Apple stock), but to say that ASP.NET is crap because it doesn't work right in non-IE browsers is ridiculous. In my opinion, ASP.NET is one of the few things that Microsoft has got mostly right.

In regards to portability, look towards Mono.

That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement (it's still officially at version 1.1 after all). I would love to see out of the box browser compatiblity and VisualStudio.NETs HTML handling is atrocious -- constantly mangling my hand-formatted code when switching into design mode. I anxiously await a production release of v2.0 where it is rumored that these items, among others, have been addressed :)

A bit OT here...

[Chordonblue]

The mini iMac is a rumor that won't be confirmed until Jan. 15th (MacWorld), but the source is reliable and it is almost certain to be released in March/April. I'm guessing that it's going to be a HUGE hit for Apple just because of the security issues people have been having.

As to remote connection, yes it's easy to do. You can use a Unix-based utility called 'Rdesktop' to connect remotely through Windows Terminal Services, or better still, use VNC and Apples management tool. It allows you to have up to 16 computer windows open on the same screen at the same time, all scaled to fit. Totally amazing!

RDC

[jtcedinburgh]

Microsoft release a version of Remote Desktop CLient (RDC) for OSX. I use it to maintain a web server (protected by a firewall) and it works as well as the Windows version. I need to use ftp to transfer files, however, as there's no native file transfer built-in with RDC. HTH, John

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[zymano]

yes. download opera to compare.

Safari is REALLY safe

[kiddailey]

Safari 1.2.4 (v125.12) is so secure, that when I try to run the test, the browser completely refuses and quits, protecting me from the exploits! ;)

Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph

[xSauronx]

that's not the real question because most people aren't really going to ask it, but rather will ask why are the buttons here instead of where they used to be? Most people don't even *KNOW* about web standards; but if you change the way the interface works even by moving buttons around they'll freak.

This almost isn't worth responding to..

[bmajik]

a) its not a fact
(because first you'd need to define superior in such a way that it was possible to objectively evaluate.. and we're talking about complex peices of software)

b) The things that keep people using MS IE are more/different than you mention.

For instance - I use IE because i rely on trusted activeX controls and seamless NTLM authentication as part of my job. I expect HTML to ALWAYS render correctly and I am not interested in changing my web browser version, or screwing with it's settings, or what have you.

At home, FIrefox is a refreshing change from IE - for many sites, firefox just does what i want - it lets me go to a web site without asking me lots of questions or doing things i dont want my browser doing. I'll concede that at this point, Firefox seems to have the home-web-surfer problem space pretty well under control (although the occasionaly rendering glitch is annoying)

OTOH, If MS could get away with turning off ActiveX and the other things in IE that the firefox nazi's always harp on, don't you think they would ? ActiveX is still a big part of IE because people use it. You might not, but you clearly aren't the entire software market.

There are not 12 editions of IE, each with a different feature set for different target markets. There is 1 browser (although you might consider IESE in W2k3 a separate "experience"). If business users rely on Active X, security zones, functional javascript, etc, MS can't very well take all that stuff out of the product because some home users can get away without it.

I don't mean to suggest that i think IE is optimal - there are plenty of things it could do better. There are lots of firefox (and other browser) users internally at MS, and the right people at MS are listening to what people don't like about IE. I don't have any more details than that.

Finally, I use IE primarily on every machine i own. I have neither popups or viruses. It's not like IE automatically means your machine is screwed. No software can be as functional and as feature rich as somebody wants while keeping stupid people from getting themselves in trouble. Firefox solves this by doing less than IE and by being a less attractive target for attack.

Re:This almost isn't worth responding to..

[dh003i]

Superior means it serves the majority of the target audience (which doesn't need activeX) better. Crap like ActiveX and Flash is annoying and hindering to users. I'm particularly annoyed when financial websites (Fidelity, MBNA, Chase, etc) use unnecessarily fancy crap that slows me down; however, it renders fine on Firefox.

IE is the most worthless browser I've used. It has very poor security. It does allow popups (maybe you have some external popup blocker, because none comes by default with IE). It crashes frequently and is unstable. Its so crappy that you can't even adjust the font size to what you want on half of the webpages out there (e.g., ESPN). Even on websites where you can resize the fonts, you only have 4 options. In Firefox, you can make the font as large as you please. It renders HTML in non-standard fashion. Unlike Firefox, which is XHTML compliant, IE violates numerous standards, and invents ad-hoc standards of its own.

ahem...

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be "DINOSAURS COULDN'T TALK!"

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

I never said to sue

[Elfich47]

I just said that the populace was uneducated on the subject. A great many people look at it as "Well that's what I've got and I'll use it" not realizing that there is an alternative. Yes that means a large percentage of our populace never checks its assumptions. I don't like that either. Or worse when they are forced to check their assumptions they sue to try to maintain them rather then change.

flight Sims?!?!

[DABANSHEE]

They're doing ok in that dept but you're right in regards everything else.

Re:Firefox is safe now.

[handslikesnakes]

XUL doesn't have a confirmation dialog because it doesn't need it. AFAIK it can't really do anything that couldn't already be done with HTML & Javascript (except for spoofing browser controls, but that's the whole point of XUL in the first place, innit?).

Ad Revenue? LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, I want you go to www.msn.com and count how many ads you see. If you think any browser war is about the default home page then you are a hopeless idiot. Its pretty sad what passes for "Insightful" on Slashdot these days.

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[Jason Earl]

No doubt Microsoft realizes that the current list of features for Longhorn is pretty sad, and that is why most of the early Longhorn users are almost certainly going to be those folks that were in the market for a new machine when Longhorn was coming out. However, both Microsoft and the computer OEMs are counting on Longhorn to actually drive sales. If Longhorn doesn't have cool new features then folks might decide that their existing XP machine is good enough for a while. Heck, there is still a sizeable group of people using Windows 98. If Windows XP isn't enough to get people off of the Win9X versions of Windows then Microsoft is going to be hard pressed to get people to upgrade XP, and a fancy new version of IE is about all the ammunition that Microsoft has got.

Microsoft is definitely sweating the Longhorn launch. Microsoft needs to start producing some growth, or investors are going to start to wonder why MSFT has a price/earnings ratio well over 30.

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[Jason Earl]

Yes, but the new versions of Windows generally are one of the reasons that people purchase a new computer. With Longhorn (as it currently stands) there is very little reason to chuck your current computer and get a new one.

For example, there was plenty of reason for all of the folks running Windows 98 to go out and get a new computer running Windows XP. XP was about a million times better than Windows 98. With Longhorn that incentive simply doesn't exist. The primary difference between Longhorn and XP is going to be a new version of IE (everything else is going to be backported to XP).

Microsoft has a price/earnings ratio of well over 30. It needs to provide some growth. Microsoft execs have been promising investors that growth with Longhorn, but unless they can get people excited about the upgrade it simply isn't going to happen.

Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work.

[jesser]

I asked an "Did you mean A or B?" question and you responded "yes". My question demonstrated that I knew about Opera's features, and you responded "download opera to compare". Either you are trolling or you misunderstood my reply to your comment.

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[Phroggy]

Yes, but the new versions of Windows generally are one of the reasons that people purchase a new computer.

I respectfully disagree. It has been my experience that malware and registry corruption are the main reasons people buy a new computer: their old one no longer works as well as they think it should (it's slow, it crashes, they get weird errors, things are broken), and it's easier to buy a new one than to try to fix the old one (and not that much more expensive, since they'd have to pay somebody to fix it, then pay somebody else to solve the new problems created by the first guy).

Re:Extensible? How about extensions

[Jason Earl]

That's an excellent point. I would agree that in recently malware has become one of the main reasons that people upgrade their machines. However, that's a fairly recent phenomenon. Even worse (for Microsoft anyway), it is not a problem that a new computer running Windows is likely to fix over the long run.

Computers may be fairly inexpensive these days, but if folks start having to purchase a new one (and migrate all of their files and applications) every year then the idea of switching to an entirely new operating system isn't going to seem like such a bother.

When push comes to shove Microsoft is going to have to entice consumers to purchase a new machine, and a new version of Internet Explorer just ain't bait enough. Especially if the only advantage that a new version of IE has over Firefox is the ability to catch IE malware.