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Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the taking-the-back-seat dept.

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.

63 of 674 comments (clear)

  1. We're heard this line before by cybermint · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:We're heard this line before by DominoTree · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    2. Re:We're heard this line before by MoonBuggy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:We're heard this line before by Haydn+Fenton · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:We're heard this line before by dougmc · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.)

    5. Re:We're heard this line before by Juanvaldes · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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?
    6. Re:We're heard this line before by man_of_mr_e · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
    7. Re:We're heard this line before by Rew190 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    8. Re:We're heard this line before by Eric+Giguere · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here are some articles I wrote related to this topic:

      Eric
    9. Re:We're heard this line before by killjoe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    10. Re:We're heard this line before by upsidedown_duck · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      -- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
    11. Re:We're heard this line before by Kizzle · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      --
      Hacker Media
    12. Re:We're heard this line before by Rew190 · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    13. Re:We're heard this line before by AvantLegion · · Score: 4, Insightful
      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?".

    14. Re:We're heard this line before by Wiseleo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Leonid S. Knyshov
      Find me on Quora :)
  2. If they have to say they aren't worried... by geoffrobinson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    they are probably worried.

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

    --
    Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
    1. Re:If they have to say they aren't worried... by nizo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I Am My Own Worst Enemy
  3. A year?! by Xtifr · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  4. Worse=better by j_heisenberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. browser security check by exhilaration · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

    1. Re:browser security check by stratjakt · · Score: 3, Informative

      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).

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
  6. Why should they worry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  7. Re:Working with phishers? by mcleodnine · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    --
    one better than mcleodeight
  8. The second F! by SuperJason · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    That is all.

  9. And they're NOT a monopoly? by Night+Goat · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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

  10. Some other famous quotes... by H_Fisher · · Score: 5, Insightful
    ...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."

  11. Re:extensions by Alien+Being · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Is IE really an extendable platform?"

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

  12. Firefox is safe now. by af_robot · · Score: 4, Funny

    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 :)

  13. Opera 7 passed. by eddy · · Score: 3, Informative

    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

    --
    Belief is the currency of delusion.
  14. "Conflict", Microsoft-style by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 3, Funny

    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 ...

    --
    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  15. I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work. by zymano · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  16. Microsoft is install-driven by ehack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    --
    This is not a signature.
  17. Head Start? by __Maad__ · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.
    --
    -- Maciek
    1. Re:Head Start? by N7DR · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

    2. Re:Head Start? by moosesocks · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  18. I'm not worried either. by robyannetta · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

    --
    - Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
  19. Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits by MikShapi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    -
    1. Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits by IpSo_ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
    2. Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits by roca · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > 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.

    3. Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits by finkployd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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

    4. Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits by roca · · Score: 3, Informative

      > 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.)

  20. Why do Microsoft need a browser? by Andy_R · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    1. Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? by beejay54 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.)

      --

      -- Bored? Check out my Portfolio
    2. Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? by Rew190 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? by labratuk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
  21. Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla by artifex2004 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  22. In other news... by ThousandStars · · Score: 4, Funny

    Edward John Smith not worried about icebergs.

  23. Brainstorm by t_allardyce · · Score: 4, Funny

    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..

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    This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
  24. The default homepage by KalvinB · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Work Safe Porn
  25. Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work. by Jussi+K.+Kojootti · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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...

  26. Re:Working with phishers? by heptapod · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Deep breath.

    You must be new here.

  27. Re:Extensible? How about extensions by Jason+Earl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  28. Re:The same old, same old theory. by Rew190 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?

  29. Re:The same old, same old theory. by MikShapi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    -
  30. Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alpha by GFLPraxis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  31. It all goes back to the OS by Infonaut · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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!"

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
  32. Wikis don't work for technical documentation. by KevinDumpsCore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  33. Go-faster tweak for Firefox by Valiss · · Score: 4, Informative

    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!

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    -Valiss
    1. Re:Go-faster tweak for Firefox by Repugnant_Shit · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Vote for global prefs bug
  34. Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  35. To protect their cash cows. by SlashdotMeNow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  36. Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph by AkaXakA · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  37. Firefox is in trouble. by yakofdeath · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.