Speakeasy Embraces Firefox

SWEET! by 69sofine · 2005-01-26 06:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

hope more companies start doing that

Re:SWEET! by essreenim · 2005-01-26 06:12 · Score: 2, Informative

I'm sure they will. In allot of the internet cafes I've been in in Dublin, you have a choice of IE, Opera or Firefox.
Re:SWEET! by NardofDoom · 2005-01-26 07:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yes, because I want my browser "recommending" links to me and plastering its logo all over the place.
I hope *fewer* companies start doing this, and more companies make web sites that don't rely on IE "standards" to function properly.

--
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!

Branded by mboverload · 2005-01-26 06:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

Lets just hope they keep the name Firefox somewhere on the program so they can tell their friends.

Re:Branded by FrYGuY101 · 2005-01-26 06:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

At the very least, let's hope this provides a critical mass which means that site operators have to deal with IE AND Firefox, rather than simply viewing FireFox as a negligable market.

--
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."

- Seneca
Re:Branded by windows · 2005-01-26 06:05 · Score: 2, Informative

I've posted elsewhere that this idea isn't exactly new. A few years ago, Southwestern Bell was sending branded versions of Netscape Communicator to users who signed up for their service. It was clearly Netscape, however, and not branded to look like some SWBell browser. It just had a couple of modified pictures, including a chance to the splash screen when opening Netscape to indicate it had been distributed by SWBell. The splash screen, however, retained the Netscape logo. I'm assuming this same sort of thing is happening with Firefox.
Re:Branded by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:06 · Score: 1, Informative

Lets just hope they keep the name Firefox somewhere on the program so they can tell their friends.

They do even better. They tell you to download Firefox from Mozilla homepage and then install their XPI.
Re:Branded by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:08 · Score: 1, Interesting

Well it is a double edged sword. What if the stuff they add makes the browser worse (like spyware)? I know of more than one software licence that required you to change the name of the product if you redistribute a changed version of the software to avoid people getting it confused with their "official" version of the software.
Re:Branded by Misch · 2005-01-26 06:12 · Score: 3, Informative

From the download page, it looks like they're just offering a plugin that handles all the customization. Their download page points to here, and their plugin resides here.

--

--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Re:Branded by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:13 · Score: 1, Informative

It's called Mozilla Firefox: Speakeasy Edition.
Re:Branded by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:18 · Score: 0

We could actually do something to reach that critical mass in statistics.
Re:Branded by ianezz · 2005-01-26 07:05 · Score: 1

Lets just hope they keep the name Firefox somewhere on the program so they can tell their friends.
They probably need to ask the Mozilla Foundation because of the trademarks.
Re:Branded by reustp · 2005-01-26 07:26 · Score: 1

I installed the extension to see what exactly it was and for the most part it seems to keep the browser the same. There is an added "MySpeakeasy" menu item, that has various links to sites and a new status indicator on the menu bar (not sure what it's called) replacing the original Firefox one. Other than that it appears to be exactly the same.
Re:Branded by Eridanis · 2005-01-26 07:34 · Score: 1

That's not important: the whole idea behind Firefox is to create a more secure browser and one that has the latest standards by the W3C.

It can be written Firefox, Mozilla or Speakeasy on it, I don't care - I just want a unique core.
Re:Branded by jsebrech · 2005-01-26 10:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

Oh, don't worry, if the ISP's start switching browsers, firefox will become the marketleader. IIRC, once upon a time ISP's distributed netscape by default, IE made valiant inroads, and then the ISP's started bundling IE which led to a mad marketshare rush that left netscape a niche player. I think firefox is edging up to that marketshare tipping point now, where it's going to become the default browser to bundle with things, and thereby getting automatic installs on many, many machines.

Though admittedly, there is much less reason to bundle a browser with your service/software nowadays, when every OS has a browser bundled in by default.
Re:Branded by fiddlesticks · 2005-01-26 10:31 · Score: 1

> Other than that it appears to be exactly the same.

yeah, but do you trust their extension? (tf hat)

--
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Re:Branded by Neoncow · 2005-01-26 10:34 · Score: 1

Right, but they're not just offering a plug-in. It's an officially sponsored plug-in. I presume they'll have their technical support trained to help customers with Firefox.
Imagine this. A troubled customer calls tech support about a spyware issue. Support offers an alternative browser. Customer (hopefully) enjoys the new experience and tells their friends. Isn't this what Firefox needs? Exposure to the public? Well, it's already started to happen and offical promotion by technical support shows that Firefox is getting more and more exposure.

I (and many other /.ers) can only hope that the Mozilla foundation can handle the accelerating exposure.
Re:Branded by kosmosik · 2005-01-26 12:01 · Score: 1

I guess the licence forces them to leave brandings. Once we (in Poland) have a group (this gropu is still here and active) that translated and released tweaked versions of Mozilla suite (that was even before somebody recognized Firefox as a broser) along with sourcecode and few addons as "MozillaPL" - well they had to stop this cause it was in conflict with the license. Locally here it was a loud (sites PL-like-slashdot were alarming about this) case - they had to change the name to original "Mozilla" - so they did, you will find MozillaPL only as sf.net project name, not product name. Few refferences:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mozillapl
http: //mozillapl.org/
http://firefox.pl/

So in summary they used to call their releases as "mozillapl" - f.e. installers files and running programs were named like this, but now it is just Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox.

But I don't know if it is about trademark or license - but now we have also "Novell Evolution" (and RH has to state that in their release). :)

Firefox by geomon · 2005-01-26 06:02 · Score: 1, Insightful

Sigh. I wish more people used it, but IE will just continue to dominate until Microsoft heads to that pasture where all mega-companies eventually end up in (ala AT&T).

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"

Re:Firefox by gandell · 2005-01-26 06:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

So far they've been too adaptive for that. Until people embrace another OS in both the corporate environment and in the home, we're stuck with 'em.
Back to the topic at hand, if pc venders such as HP or Dell would bulk it with their OS, and hide the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, numbers might increase.
I can see the average user wondering where the "internet" went, though...

--
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
Re:Firefox by geomon · 2005-01-26 06:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

So far they've been too adaptive for that.

They *were* adaptive until they had control of the marketplace. Now they dictate the standards and have very little incentive to innovate.

Until people embrace another OS in both the corporate environment and in the home, we're stuck with 'em.

That is correct. But large organizations that reach maturity in their marketplace get lethargic and develop so much bureaucratic momentum that when the change comes, it is usually fatal for the corporation. Only those with a good management structure can survive to keep themselves in the game (ala IBM).

Back to the topic at hand, if pc venders such as HP or Dell would bulk it with their OS, and hide the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, numbers might increase.

I agree, but what do you think the odds are for that happening?

I can see the average user wondering where the "internet" went, though...

I think people who have been using the internet for more than 10 years are already saying that. Those who enter the system 2 years from now probably won't miss a thing.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:Firefox by greechneb · 2005-01-26 06:24 · Score: 1

Every single person I have showed firefox too has used it. Even my wife, who hates when I mess with the computer. I've converted nearly everyone at work, and their home PC's too.

Do your part to help, show it to somebody, and get them hooked. Tell them to pass it on. Think of possible exponential growth - 1>2>4>8>16>32>64>etc...
It doesn't take much to convince people to switch.

Put a positive spin on it!
Re:Firefox by KiltedKnight · 2005-01-26 06:36 · Score: 1

There are multiple reasons why some people won't use Firefox. "IE Only" pages You have to convince developers to stop writing "IE Only" pages. You will also have to get someone to write an extension or plug-in for people to be able to get to their Exchange server e-mails. Corporate policies Some corporations have "authorized" software lists and strictly enforce them on their computers. They have every right to do so, since the machines are their property, mind you. The real trouble lies in some of the contractual agreements some of these places have. The corporate site licenses can actually prohibit you from installing any Open Source Software on your machine. Microsoft will give better prices for people willing to sign those kinds of agreements. This includes, but is not limited to, web browsers (e.g. Firefox, Mozilla), language interpreters and compilers (e.g. perl, gcc), and text editors and other word processing software (e.g. OpenOffice, emacs). Those people get used to using IE to the point that when they go home and surf the web, they want consistency, so they just continue to use IE. I keep telling my brother to stop using it except for those pages where it's absolutely required (Windows Update). He just wants consistency. I'm just thankful that he keeps installing the critical updates as they arrive.
Until you start covering primary reasons why some people won't, or in some cases can't, switch, IE will always have at least a partial hold on the browser market.

--
OCO is Loco
Re:Firefox by GoofyBoy · 2005-01-26 06:38 · Score: 1

>where all mega-companies eventually end up in (ala AT&T).

AT&T today is not the same as the mega-corp one in the past. If you want to see where the mega-corpo one is now, take 90% of the telecom companies out there and add them together.

--
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Re:Firefox by geomon · 2005-01-26 06:51 · Score: 1

AT&T today is not the same as the mega-corp one in the past.

I guess that was my point.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:Firefox by peg0cjs · 2005-01-26 07:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
This is a chicken-and-egg effect. Developers will stop writing IE only pages when critical mass demands it. Until then, install the IEView extension & complain to your bank/post office/office supply store/whoever is writing non-standard html.
I have personally converted both my wife (fairly tech-savvy but resistent to change) and mother-in-law (pretty low-tech), and both prefer Firefox hands down. The trick is:
1. Install Firefox.
2. Set it default and hide IE icon.
3. Install a small handful of useful extensions.
4. Give them the 10 second rundown.
5. Everybody Profits!
On the converting bad corporate citizens front, I am pleased to say that the last IE Only site I regularly visit (epost.ca) has re-coded to be standards compliant and now works fine in Firefox. When I complained to them 6 months ago, their initial response was "We code IE cuz 97% of our traffic uses it", but they eventually saw the light.
--
Karma: Excellent (Mainly due to Bill & Ted's Karma Adventure)
Re:Firefox by greechneb · 2005-01-26 07:14 · Score: 1

Install one of the plugins that allows certain websites to open in IE. Thats what I've done in the past. - I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head though...
Re:Firefox by GoofyBoy · 2005-01-26 07:27 · Score: 1

Ok, I can see your viewpoint and agree with you. But what I'm saying is that not all mega-corps implode and disappear. The "WorldCom"s of the world are rare. There are more Standard Oil and Walmarts that survive the years.

--
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:41 · Score: 0

As someone who's been using the Internet for 10 years, I've never had an icon on my desktop labeled "Internet". Ever.
Re:Firefox by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 11:29 · Score: 0

Launchy!
Re:Firefox by innerweb · 2005-01-26 12:23 · Score: 1

The only reason AT&T went to pasture is the US government put them to pasture. MS has been able to *prevent* that with creative financing so far.
InnerWeb

--
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Re:Firefox by geomon · 2005-01-26 17:51 · Score: 1

The only reason AT&T went to pasture is the US government put them to pasture.

The government created the terrible business model for AT&T that lead to the failure of their wireless division?

That would be news to me. I thought they fucked that one up all by themselves.

Thanks for clearing that one up.

Are you saying the Justice Department caused their long distance group to lose market share to Sprint?

I thought increased competition did that.

MS has been able to *prevent* that with creative financing so far.

All the creative financing in the world will not prevent what a bloated, lethargic bureaucracry can do to a monopoly.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:Firefox by innerweb · 2005-01-28 17:05 · Score: 1

How do I explain this. Ma Bell existed for a long time as a monopoly. They destroyed all the competition through anti-comptetive means (except a few initial purchases and settlements.) The government forced them to open their systems to competitors and forced pricing that allowed others to compete. MCI brought a law suit (one of many by several companies over the years) that eventually led to the breakup of Ma Bell into the baby bells (and AT&T).
I do not know where you got your attitude from, but to sum it up, the government did break Ma Bell up. Them are the facts no matter what anyone else told you. They are in the law books now. Have you forgotten Ma Bell and the government's lawsuits (as well as MCIs) against Ma Bell? I really did not think it was that long ago, but maybe it really has been more than a few decades.
All the creative financing in the world will not prevent what a bloated, lethargic bureaucracry can do to a monopoly.
That is why we have anti-trust laws. A business with enough power and the right ability to lock consumers in can keep competition out. Very simple. If there is no basis for a competitor to compete on, no matter how good the product (ok, telepathy would be a product to lock out), the market is not going to be opened. This has been demonstrated many times over in this countries history (as well as the world's history). And, yes, creative financing is almost always the root that keeps the monopoly alive, not competitive products or services. Some will argue that if you wait long enough, a monopoly that does not provide the better products and services will fall apart. The reality is that a monopoly prevents or limits the better services and products to its own advantages. It might just happen if we wait long enough. But, then again, most people are interested in things being fixed in their own lifetimes.

InnerWeb

--
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.

Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

Fewer Malware programs target FireFox, less security vulnerabilities, means less bandwidth is used by said malware and more by the actual customers.

Kudos, Speakeasy.

Re:Makes sense... by greechneb · 2005-01-26 06:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes, but unfortunatly, even though firefox is superior software, eventually there will be spyware targeted to firefox. The spyware and malware writers aren't stupid, unfortunately, and they'll find any way to fool stupid users.

I'm not saying it will ever be the epidemic IE has, but there will be some spyware that will fool users, whether it be a toolbar, or some other "add on" that sounds good to users.

Build smarter mouse, someone builds a better mousetrap unfortunately.
Re:Makes sense... by .Spyder78. · 2005-01-26 06:09 · Score: 1

Fewer Malware programs target FireFox

As of right now, but that seems like it will soon change. I've already experienced some webpages with Firefox that prompt me to install some sort of XPI extension in the same way random pages prompt you to install ActiveX components in IE.
Re:Makes sense... by adamjaskie · 2005-01-26 06:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Except that Firefox does not do ActiveX, so writing malware for it is that much more difficult. Possible, sure, but quite a bit more difficult.

--
/usr/games/fortune
Re:Makes sense... by mboverload · 2005-01-26 06:11 · Score: 2, Informative

The latest version now automaticly blocks that popup for any site other than the official one. You have to jump through a few hoops to install an XPI from an untrusted source.
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:15 · Score: 1, Informative

At least Firefox (by default) blocks sites from installing addons etc. without your permission. Heck, you can't even install a browser addon yourself unless you specifically add the site to your whitelist.

Not to say this will prevent all problems, but it's a hell of a lot better than the way IE used to be (and still is for a lot of people -- install now, ask questions later if at all). This should at least make things harder for spyware/malware writers.
Re:Makes sense... by Masami+Eiri · 2005-01-26 06:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yeah, but Firefox has XPI extentions. Granted, you have to whitelist to install, but there are stupid users out there.
Re:Makes sense... by flahavin · 2005-01-26 06:20 · Score: 0

Yeah...but the main problem with IE is that is an integral part of the operating system. Software can be installed systemwide, atleast if spyware makes it way to firefox, it will be limited to firefox. Only if the browser is open your exposed, and wiping it out it as easy as an uninstall, and put on the lastest version.
Re:Makes sense... by CDMA_Demo · 2005-01-26 06:26 · Score: 1

don't transgaming have an axtivex mod for mozilla?
Re:Makes sense... by y86 · 2005-01-26 06:34 · Score: 0

Sounds like "speak easy links" that will be added to this browser are the type of advertising that firefox users try to avoid.

I agree with this post on a software level for sure. Firefox isn't integrated into the shell so even if gets rooted; it shouldn't be able to cause as much trouble. It may get corrupted... but you'll still be able to open My Computer on your next boot ;-)
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:34 · Score: 0

I quite agree, while I adore Firefox and it's OS development, there will always be threats to security. It's no panacea

http://www.nd.edu/~jsmith30/xul/test/spoof.html
http://www.nd.edu/~jsmith30/xul/test/ssht.png
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:37 · Score: 0

Or stupid horny users.

"PornBar! Install now to get free hardcore porn with a single click! Simply follow these instructions to be able to receive PornBar!"
Re:Makes sense... by LetterJ · 2005-01-26 06:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

While a nice thought, it's not really as safe as you'd like to believe. More than once already, I've seen a site pop up an XPI installer asking for permission. In one of those cases, someone else was at the keyboard and just clicked without missing a beat. Didn't read it or anything. Any browser with any sort of extension mechanism is vulnerable to people just OK'ing whatever they're asked and allowing the installation.

--

The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Re:Makes sense... by abxpacketloss · 2005-01-26 06:38 · Score: 1

I've read that some sites were using xpi's to try and install some nasty stuff such as this...

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=64 34 1

Not sure if this is still an issue since that was quite a while ago (2003)
Re:Makes sense... by zootm · 2005-01-26 06:38 · Score: 1

A good point. And, despite its occasional (serious) security flaw, you still have to whitelist most ActiveX-based malwares. I guess it's only a matter of time -- this is just what happens when "good software" goes mainstream. Abuse becomes rife.
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:00 · Score: 0

Good. The more people looking to exploit a product, the more people there are that are looking to secure a product. And while Firefox is more secure out of the box, security isn't like pregnancy - you can never be "secure", just "more secure". The only truly secure system is one that has no input or output system, and is locked in a vault nobody can open.

That said, most malware these days comes from installing other garbage - bittorrent apps, kazaa, emule, exeem, Windows - than comes from web pages. Except porn. That's always the exception.
Re:Makes sense... by modge · 2005-01-26 07:02 · Score: 1

Some one certianly does. The version of firefox i'm using to write this now however is well and truely free of it.

--
I am a sig
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:05 · Score: 0

Actually, if you go to many crack/serial sites, such as http://www.cracks.spb.ru/ some java thing will pop up asking you to install something from integrated search technologies.

A friend i turned onto firefox went here and clicked yes..I had to spend HOURS removing spyware. Doh.
Re:Makes sense... by northcat · 2005-01-26 07:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

Interesting point. And less badwidth used by malware == lesser costs for Speakeasy.
Re:Makes sense... by araemo · 2005-01-26 07:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

A bigger problem is when legitimate sites w/ activex that needs to be whitelisted have a 'support' page that recommends changing the security settings so that whitelisting is no longer necessary.

I can't list any of these because I have not had to use an ActiveX control that required whitelisting since windows 98, but I have still seen these around.. "Change your security permissions from 'disable' to 'allow' or 'prompt' to make our site work." Rather than "Add our site to your trusted sites zone to make our site work."
Re:Makes sense... by Pierce · 2005-01-26 07:50 · Score: 1

I don't know what version it was first implemented in, but there is a restriction to prevent sites other than the Mozilla Update page from even prompting for XPIs. There is also a 2 second delay for XPIs that are not digitally signed from that page.
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:03 · Score: 2, Informative

I'm guessing you aren't familiar with speakeasy? These are the people that offer the "SLASHDOT DSL" package. They *target* nerds, geeks, et cetera. Their tech support will walk you through installing bugmenot and adblock.....
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:08 · Score: 0

Ignorant != stupid. People like you are exactly the reason people remain ignorant. Whenever they look for help, people like you are taking a big shit on their heads.
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:10 · Score: 0

That would be:
"eventually there will be spyware targeted to firefox on windows"......

After a greater amount of time:
"eventually there will be spyware targeted to firefox on linux"......
Spyware is more of a Windows problem than an IE problem - in my experience....
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:30 · Score: 1, Insightful

Except that when this browser goes mass-market, the base platform 90% of users will run on will be Windows. It doesn't matter one jot about how you slice it, the popular software packages will always have the biggest outbreaks/epidemics.

Simply having firefox doesnt negate the primary point of infection, people saying yes to stupid emails and installing the fantastic patch they provide.
Re:Makes sense... by stephanruby · 2005-01-26 08:51 · Score: 1

Except FireFox hasn't been written to be remote-controlware, but IE has.
For many companies, the temptation to remote control their customer's computers has been too great, and once a company can remotely control their customer's computer -- hackers will eventually figure out how to do the same.
And as to the marketshare argument, don't forget that Apache has a far bigger marketshare than IIS, and Apache is far easier to use than IIS, and yet Apache is a lot more secure than IIS.
Re:Makes sense... by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2005-01-26 08:53 · Score: 1

Was this before or after Firefox added the XPI install whitelist feature? I know there were a few shady sites trying this, but as far as I know this problem has been solved as of the 1.0 pre-release version.
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 09:21 · Score: 0

It doesn't matter one jot about how you slice it, the popular software packages will always have the biggest outbreaks/epidemics.

The evidence simply does not support this claim.
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 09:29 · Score: 0

For one thing, page spoofing is not a Firefox problem. It's a problem with the web in general. If you are so concerned about it, better get off the web.

Besides that, Firefox already does a number of things to protect the user from scam sites. The status bar cannot be hidden by default, so a scam site with its own status bar won't look right. It also warns about suspicious URLs.

Of course there will always be threats. If you want to avoid all threats, the only way you are going to be able to do it is to unplug your computer. If you just want to minimize the threats while still being able to use your computer, use good quality software like Firefox.
Re:Makes sense... by AstroDrabb · 2005-01-26 09:42 · Score: 1

Firefox has a number of better features over IE that help prevent this type of action.

No ActiveX support
XPI's can only be installed from a whitelist
Automatic Updates
Having no ActiveX support removes a ton of possible holes. The XPI install whitelist means you get a big ugly warning and the install gets BLOCKED for any site other than update.mozilla.org or ones you you put in your whitelist. The Automatic Updates happen as soon as you fire up the browser. This means that if some cleaver spyware got into Firefox, end-users would get an update _very_ fast. IE doesn't send down any updates to prevent spyware or activeX attacks.
While Firefox will never be perfect, it already is far more safer on the net then IE has ever been. The only obstacle now for a much better "Web community" is to get Firefox on more peoples desktops.

--
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Re:Makes sense... by jsebrech · 2005-01-26 09:52 · Score: 1

xpi will not be the way these things install themselves. It's much easier to simply make an executable and put it on a site, enticing users to run the file after downloading. After all, messing with the xpi whitelist is more work than clicking a few links and having an installer open.

Unless a security flaw is found in xpi which allows circumventing the whitelist ofcourse.
Re:Makes sense... by the_truk_stop · 2005-01-26 09:57 · Score: 1

Build smarter mouse, someone builds a better mousetrap unfortunately.
Absolutely...except that I think that the mice are the mal/ad/spyware writers, and Firefox is the better mousetrap. Remember that update.mozilla.org is the only default place to get extensions from, and I know that Mozilla's not going to let *ware masquerade around as valid software on their site.
Re:Makes sense... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 09:57 · Score: 1, Insightful

Except that mozilla/firefox have XUL and there are quite a bit of open bugs about the type of malware type behavior you can do with it.

If not ActiveX there will always be some activex type technology which can never be 100% secure and could e used for malware.

And this is ignoring the whole plugin affair. You really think that the firefox plugins on the website are checked? There is no limit to what can be done with them in a much easier way then activex

So while IE is bad and I am happy that FF is getting more popular, lets not sit with our fingers in our ears and pretend were perfect too...
Re:Makes sense... by Spy+Hunter · 2005-01-26 17:42 · Score: 1

Actually, installing a Firefox XPI extension is *much harder* than downloading and executing an executable. There are like 10 steps involved, and some of the steps are quite non-obvious to nontechnical users, with plenty of warnings in red text, and even a timer you have to wait through. Whereas downloading and executing a program takes at most 4 clicks with one unremarkable warning dialog. So using an XPI to deliver malware would be pretty stupid and pointless, when you could just offer an executable to download.

--
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}

This isn't exactly new.... by windows · 2005-01-26 06:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

This isn't exactly new. When I signed up for dialup service through Southwestern Bell back around 1996 or so, I was mailed a CD with Netscape Communicator 4 branded with SWBell logos. I wonder what took so long to have this done with Firefox. After all, Firefox can trace its roots to Netscape. It is good to see Firefox being embraced by a rather large ISP, however.

Re:This isn't exactly new.... by mboverload · 2005-01-26 06:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

Netscape paid them that time. This time it is because Firefox just plain rules. Even better, NO licensing to deal with, which makes Firefox an attractive option for any company distributing or recommending it.
Re:This isn't exactly new.... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:11 · Score: 0

That's essentially what this is. It just replaces the throbber with a speakeasy logo/link, and adds a menu of bookmarks to various speakeasy pages and other useful sites (google, thinkgeek, fark, userfriendly, etc).
Re:This isn't exactly new.... by jxyama · 2005-01-26 06:28 · Score: 1

it may not be "exactly" new but don't you think the fact this is the first time something like this was done with firefox is newsworthy, at least to many /. readers.
i don't understand this "this isn't exactly new" attitude. are you implying that since it's not "new," it's not newsworthy? if not, what exactly is accomplished by the proclaimation that "this isn't exactly new" and bringing up semi-relevant example from 8 years ago?
if someone overclocks a newer processor, it's not newsworthy because overclocking has been done with other processors?
Re:This isn't exactly new.... by windows · 2005-01-26 06:31 · Score: 1

I was only asking why this hasn't been done before with Firefox and why it's taken so long for a major ISP to embrace it. One would think ISPs would be quick to encourage their customers to use alternate browsers and to make the transition to them as easy as possible. If nothing else, ISPs generally don't want worms and other harmful traffic on their networks.
Re:This isn't exactly new.... by jxyama · 2005-01-26 06:39 · Score: 1

sure. but nothing in your orig. post suggested that. you just said, this has been done before with netscape. and since back in 96, malware/worms based on browser exploits were much, much less of an issue than they are today, it suggests to me that southern bell probably offered netscape for branding reasons and not for internet safety issue. since speakeasy seems to be doing this for internet safety issue. don't you think this is more "new" than you originally thought?
Re:This isn't exactly new.... by LuSiDe · 2005-01-26 08:04 · Score: 1

Right, it ain't anything new. I remember Netscape and MSIE for Windows from my ISP's CD having their logo in it and automatically having their homepage as my startpage. I remember Netscape 4 on my SGI having the SGI logo instead of the Netscape one. And thats just a few examples. There are many more!

--
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.

google?? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:02 · Score: 0

Why google? Speakeasy users want p0rn!

Re:google?? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:39 · Score: 0

porn. There you go. Please refine the search as you see fit. I mean, if people would learn to spell, they'd be able to get so many more shots of sweet T&A.

Good way to spread it by Kethinov · 2005-01-26 06:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

Many ISP customers just do exactly what their ISP tells them to. If this ISP starts shoving Firefox down customers' throats, Firefox market share could drastically increase over IE's.

--
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!

Re:Good way to spread it by SStrungis · 2005-01-26 06:16 · Score: 1

Most of my middle school students have no idea that there is another option besides Internet Explorer for their web access. It's either IE, or AOL for them. Most folks use it because it is there and seems to work...Not because it is better or worse.
It is true for the most part. Any non geek puts in the CDs that the ISP gives them and away they go. Dialers, browsers, and other annoyances get installed as the cd has an autorun script.
Scott
Re:Good way to spread it by MixmastaKooz · 2005-01-26 07:03 · Score: 2, Informative

But Speakeasy isn't your normal ISP: I would say it's a geek's ISP because they offer things that a normal dsl user wouldn't think about like 2 static IP's, one-link service (no need for a dial tone), and most importantaly, no bandwidth caps: the bandwidth you buy is yours! It's great that Speakeasy is endorsing Firefox, but I suspect that their user base has a significant Firefox adoption rate already! Which is great, but I wish a SBC or Earthling would go this route too! Here's to hope! (Disclosure: I do subscribe to speakeasy one-link, and love it. Tell them Mixmastakooz sent you!)
Re:Good way to spread it by hobbesx · 2005-01-26 08:05 · Score: 2, Funny

You're not kidding. I once worked for a small ISP that had a picture of a mountain at the top of their homepage for years. The browser install software would set their page as the default page. It turns out that they had used a copyrighted image for the original webdesign, and replaced it with a different mountain picture. I couldn't believe the number of calls we got, complaining that 'the mountain is different', 'my mountain is gone', or 'I can tell that I'm not getting online, because the mountain doesn't look right'.

The only time I've had that many calls about the webpage before, was the time we auto-redirected the main page through a random babelfish language. Nothing quite as fun as getting a call that claims the 'Net is broken, cause it's in Spanish.

--
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
Re:Good way to spread it by dirvish · 2005-01-26 10:46 · Score: 1

Working tech support for an ISP I often have opportunity to switch people over to Firefox. Even if I wasn't a Firefox fan it is often the best/only option. Some people call in w/ IE installs that are so hosed they won't load web pages or crash frequently, so short of an OS reinstall Firefox is their best solution. It would be awesome if the ISP I work for officially endorsed Firefox like Speakeasy has but I don't foresee that, it would likely cause more confusion than management wants to deal with. As I have mentioned a good number of people don't even know what a 'web browser' is. Telling them to install Firefox would blow their minds.

--
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,

support calls by grub · 2005-01-26 06:03 · Score: 5, Funny

Weenie: Good morning, Speakeasy Help Desk. How may I help you?
User: Slashdot renders wrong in your ghey browser~()@*!@!(*
Weenie: Ah, just ctrl-minus ctrl-plus.
User: Woot! Thanks, mang!

--
Trolling is a art,

Re:support calls by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:07 · Score: 0

User: (after hanging up): Why is it that Slashdot is the only page on the 'net that doesn't render properly? Oh, yeah, Slashdot is for teh ghey by teh ghey!!!
Re:support calls by greechneb · 2005-01-26 06:08 · Score: 1

Fortunately, the fix is already in the trunk, and Firefox 1.1 is scheduled for release in March 2005. Hopefully that will be the end of that problem.
Re:support calls by aero2600-5 · 2005-01-26 06:09 · Score: 1

Heh, I had no idea Firefox could do that..

Maybe I should RTFM..

Aero

--
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Re:support calls by generic-man · 2005-01-26 06:10 · Score: 2, Funny

User: Slashdot renders wrong in your browser
Weenie: Well Slashdot is idiot because they do not code to XHTML 1.1 Strict with CSS3 like everybody else does.
User: Oh that makes sense then.
Weenie: Please sign my Internet petition to force them to use valid web juice or I will boycott them.
User: OK I'm hanging up now.

--
For more information, click here.
Re:support calls by geomon · 2005-01-26 06:10 · Score: 1

Oh, yeah, Slashdot is for teh ghey by teh ghey!!!

U R here. R U ghey?

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:support calls by adamjaskie · 2005-01-26 06:14 · Score: 1

No... more... reflow bug? IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!! Certainly took long enough.

--
/usr/games/fortune
Re:support calls by Masami+Eiri · 2005-01-26 06:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

If you've got a wheel-mouse, then you can hold control and roll the wheel forward then back.
Re:support calls by naelurec · 2005-01-26 06:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

I have been using the SlashFix extension and since installing, I have not had that issue anymore. hurray! :)
Re:support calls by notthe9 · 2005-01-26 06:48 · Score: 1

You're right, firefox should support all code that some webmaster decides to make up. I'm considering a tag, and I'll be pretty pissed off when everyone does not support it.

How much sympathy am I expected to have for a site that has hundreds of deviations from the code set the claim to follow (a problem they recently kind of solved by switching from claiming HTML 3.2, I believe, to claiming plaintext, which is clearly BS.)

Yes, I realize that this is what you were trolling for, but who cares?
Re:support calls by orasio · 2005-01-26 07:37 · Score: 2, Funny

Wrong.
It's spelled "Uruguay"
http://www.seorf.ohiou.edu/~ae295/frames/simpsons/ homer2.html
Re:support calls by Vengie · 2005-01-26 08:07 · Score: 1

Yes. Problem? Move to a red state, and not the ones where LCR has a notable presence. Oh, and not to any of the ones that still have a sane court system. (Lawrence v Texas proves that there is plenty of intelligent life in the Lone Star State.) Slashdot.org has plenty of homo-mac fanbois, in case you haven't noticed....and a ridiculous percentage of accepting, comfortable heterosexuals. (Despite assertions to the contrary...most of my geek friends are now married (!) and none have ever offered even the slightest homophobia. Smart geeks tend not to be xenophobes, homophobes, or racists....)

--
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
Re:support calls by geomon · 2005-01-26 09:13 · Score: 1

Okay, that one got me laughing hard enough to blow coffee.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:support calls by geomon · 2005-01-26 09:20 · Score: 1

Yes. Problem?

What, your being gay?

Hell, how can I have a "problem" with you. I've never even met you.

You have obviously mistaken the intent of my post. Read back a few posts.

I also think Lawrence v. Texas had even wider ranging consequences than just homo"sexual" relationships. The controversy of the decision (by a conservative bench, no less) has convinced religious conservatives to push for a Constitutional amendment.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:support calls by tonyr60 · 2005-01-26 10:04 · Score: 1

Sure can. And it makes the page scroll up and down as well. Does not change the rendering though.
Re:support calls by Vengie · 2005-01-26 11:07 · Score: 1

The problem that religious conservatives will face is that the judges that have typically sided with them have done so in the name of states rights and preventing a large federal government from existing. When you call the bench "Conservative" -- you are correct, but you are forgetting what the word means. Conservative vs Liberal actually refers to your interpretation of the commerce clause. Hence, CONSERVATIVES have no problem with you (royal you, not you specifically) buying your nra-sponsored armor-piercing-napalm bullets in Texas, and also (at least in theory) have no problem with my sodomy in new york. Basically, stay the fuck out of my backyard *and* my bedroom. The issue comes up with bills like DOMA ... a "conservative" base finds such things an anathema, as they put the federal government where it doesn't belong. *That* is why the bench voted the way they did -- the Commerce Clause has been far too abused. It is high time that Thomas put his votes where his mouth has been with regards to the abuse of the commerce clause (Ashcroft v. Raich comes to mind....) For as much as you think that *RELIGIOUS* "Conservatives" wield such ridiculous power over the legislative and judicial branches, I am glad to say they do not. Many of my fiscally conservative friends, all of whom typically vote republican, are abhored at the idea of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Please, don't confuse "Conservatism" with "Religious Nutjobs." For the record, gay marriage is the new political bread & circuses -- distracting the nation from far more important topics. [As one of my straight co-workers says, "WHO THE HELL CARES? Don't we have more important things to worry about...like war, and the fact that the dollar is in the shitter?"]

Also, re-reading back a few posts, I realized you were responding to the gp's stupidity. Unfortunately, you dropped down to his level and instead of eloquent bitchyness, I read only similar stupidity. My apologies.

--
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
Re:support calls by Spunk · 2005-01-26 12:11 · Score: 1

I'm sorry, but you are misinformed. Ctrl + mouse scroll is exactly how I change the font size (thus fixing the Slashdot bug).

It also does NOT move the page up and down.
Re:support calls by Rocinante · 2005-01-26 13:35 · Score: 1

I think the gp post is referring to the fact that you can redefine the behavior of the mouse wheel. Check the mousewheel.* prefs in about:config. I also have ctrl+mousewheel scrolling full pages, and alt+mousewheel changing text size.

Is there a way to change this behavior in Konqueror?

--
Just trying to open someone's head! I mean "mind!" Open someone's mind, um, to the possibilities! With explosives!
Re:support calls by geomon · 2005-01-26 17:44 · Score: 1

When you call the bench "Conservative" -- you are correct, but you are forgetting what the word means.

Actually, I'm a libertarian. I am quite familiar with how the name has been co-opted.

I couldn't find anything else to disagree with in your post.

Thanks for the apology.

Keep the government in its place: Vote Libertarian.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:support calls by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-27 06:58 · Score: 0

That sounds like Speakeasy.
I was impressed with them before, but pushing FireFox!?! Wow, does it get any better. I just love them.
Re:support calls by takkaria · 2005-01-27 07:34 · Score: 1

I just use the "Light (reduce the complexity of Slashdot's HTML for AvantGo, Lynx, or slow connections)" option. Less HTML, simpler layout, and easier on the eys.
Re:support calls by generic-man · 2005-01-27 10:10 · Score: 1

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

--
For more information, click here.
Re:support calls by notthe9 · 2005-01-27 14:52 · Score: 1

I have not used that blog in several months, and have since programmed a standards-complient blog of my own: never liked that MT was not complient. That being said, I would not blame IE or Opera or Firefox for when I had a problem with it. For that matter, I don't fall for the kind of pitfalls the article talks about: I make sure all my sites display immaculately in IE. Further, I would never say a number of the idiotic things from that article it was implied pro-standards people support, please don't think I'm that zealous or unobservant.

Overall, though, the article writer seems just silly to me. They act as if standards advocates do not realize they have to code for IE, then concludes with the claim "it's not HTML that breaks compatibility, but rather JavaScript." That last claim is simply not true: I have written a number of sites without a touch of javascript (don't know the stuff well) and had them render differently in different browsers, I'm sure we all have. They end telling us, "Asking someone to rewrite their IE web application for Firefox is asking them to break their application in a totally different way." Precisely, and that is WHY we need to standardize it in SOME way.
Re:support calls by generic-man · 2005-01-28 03:35 · Score: 1

Web "standards" exist only in the minds of geeks. The W3C honestly doesn't care what your web browser does; it just publishes recommendations that are purposefully vague. You can never, ever be guaranteed of pixel-perfect compatibility across multiple browsers.

Many web sites look ugly in Firefox, and that's fine by me as long as I can read them. (I miss Opera's one-click option to toggle a custom style sheet for particularly ugly pages; perhaps someone has hacked up a mediocre extension to mimic this functionality in Firefox.) I wouldn't consider a web site to be "broken" until I am unable to navigate through it using whatever smashed-together UI scheme the designer chose. Some of those work with IE, some of them use IE-specific JavaScript, and others are specific to Firefox (because they use cool CSS voodoo majik).

--
For more information, click here.
Re:support calls by notthe9 · 2005-01-29 07:52 · Score: 1

Web "standards" exist only in the minds of geeks.

Webscripting exists only in the minds and text editors and servers of geeks. It's not as though W3C has the right to dictate the standards inherently, but rather that I believe we should adopt SOME standards, something many scripters have.

The W3C honestly doesn't care what your web browser does; it just publishes recommendations that are purposefully vague. You can never, ever be guaranteed of pixel-perfect compatibility across multiple browsers.

But if all browsers interepret scripting in the same, documented way, it comes closer to this. When a site I write validates with W3C, it has without exception as of yet looked how I want it in Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Will there always be a compatibility problem? Perhaps. But adoption of some standards will help it be a minor problem, not something that is the bulk of web design.

Ads? by wdd1040 · 2005-01-26 06:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

Links that Speakeasy chooses?

As in their paid advertisers? What's next? Companies integrating spyware into Firefox and redistributing it?

--
wdd

Re:Ads? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:05 · Score: 1, Insightful

Heh, a bit far fetched to go from harmless links to spyware.
Re:Ads? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:09 · Score: 0

What's next? Companies integrating spyware into Firefox and redistributing it?

If you're the ISP providing the software and don't care about losing customers then why integrate the Spyware into Firefox? Just give it to them to install directly.
Re:Ads? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:35 · Score: 0

The links are stuff like Achewood.com, Pitchforkmedia.com, Gaming sites, BBC, NPR Stations, Independant radio stations, and Powell's books... among others.
Re:Ads? by Kentsusai · 2005-01-26 10:20 · Score: 1

Quite possible. Firefox is open source. They won't need to put in a toolbar or anything.

Let's hope no sickos do this to the open source community.

Maybe we will have to start educating the common user to check MD5 sums.

Wanted by dsginter · 2005-01-26 06:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

What we need is sort of what AOL was rumored to be doing with the next version of Netscape - IE integration. Before the flames start, hear me out.

Some websites require IE right now. It would be nice for n00bs if they could use Firefox or any alternative browser without this worry. With an IE integration feature, we could amass a list of the websites that need IE rendering and Firefox could automatically render them with IE, if needed. Everything else gets Gecko. And maybe "the community" could put together an action team to help those on the list get off of the list.

Perhaps there could be job creation involved, to boot.

--
More

Re:Wanted by lordkuri · 2005-01-26 06:07 · Score: 1

With an IE integration feature, we could amass a list of the websites that need IE rendering and Firefox could automatically render them with IE, if needed.

I'll pass thanks... since I'm guessing that an ActiveX control would trigger that? I use Firefox *because* it doesn't have ActiveX.
Re:Wanted by jimktrains · 2005-01-26 06:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

As a web programmer, it bothers the h*ll out of me to see something that says "This browser not supported." I have no trouble writting some complicated stuff that works in ALL browsers and platforms. I use standrd XHTML, CSS, and javascript. What annoys me is that IE doesn't support all sights... the "hover" midifyer in CSS doesn't work for anythign but a href's, not even jsut a tags, it must have an href. I mean geeze, jsut work. Firefox and Opera are my favorites to use. As for ActiveX, I never saw a need for it. I coudl always accomplish what I wanted to via a standard, excepted way.

--
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Re:Wanted by KiltedKnight · 2005-01-26 06:13 · Score: 1

There are a couple of problems here. Some sites require IE because they want to use some kind of known feature (bug?) or extension (security hole?) in order to render the page a certain way. Sites doing this will frequently do some kind of user agent test and determine what browser is trying to access the site. If it's a non-IE browser, it gets redirected to a page saying, "IE is required to view this site," or something like that.
The other sites just serve up broken HTML. This can be checked by trying to parse the page in the GRE and having it come back with a return code of some kind to say, "Successfully parsed," vs "Invalid HTML." If it comes back with the "Invalid HTML" response, you can then pass it off to IE to see if it will render there.
Overall, by doing this, you defeat the purpose of using Firefox, and you continue to undermine any standards set forth for what proper HTML should look like.

--
OCO is Loco
Re:Wanted by sloanster · 2005-01-26 06:16 · Score: 1

What we need is sort of what AOL was rumored to be doing with the next version of Netscape - IE integration. Before the flames start, hear me out.

Some websites require IE right now.

The absolute worst option would be to continue to enable those disfunctional websites which either through incompetence or collusion with microsoft are rejecting customers who choose to use web browsers and/or operating systems other than the common microsoft variety.

They need to be brought into the limelight, and complaints directed to the management, so that the process of fixing them can begin, and if the management persists in rejecting business from non-msie customers, then perhaps those businesses really ought to go the way of the dodo bird.
Re:Wanted by Rude+Turnip · 2005-01-26 06:16 · Score: 1

That provides no incentive for lazy web site developers to properly code their web pages for W3C compliance. I'd rather see users get angry and write letters and voice their intent to webmasters that they *will* go to the competition if they don't straighten up their sites.

Some time ago, I wrote a very lengthy email to <a href="http://bvmarketdata.com>bvmarketdata.com</a> , a website to which we pay a subscription at our office. Their website is a front end to a database that tracks acquisitions of small companies. Anyway...

The email is archived away now, but the gist of my message was that it was asinine to deliberately code a site to a specific browser when there are international standards available. I then cited other websites with far more complex database frontends that work fine with all browsers. Luckily, our industry group's email newsletter is now promoting the use of Firefox, so that may put some pressure to this particular site.

--
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Re:Wanted by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:22 · Score: 0

OK, let me know when the Linux version is ready.

Oh, there is no IE for Linux? Guess you didn't think out your solution very well did you?
Re:Wanted by Secrity · 2005-01-26 06:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

This is a modified form of the game of "Chicken". It would be a good thing if Firefox waits and sees whether it needs to lower itself to the level of the broken websites. Firefox is currently gaining market share. If Firefox stops gaining market share before the majority of the important IE only websites get fixed, then it would be necessary to make Firefox work with non-compliant websites. If Firefox gains sufficient market share without pandering to broken (IE only) websites, then the broken websites will have a strong incentive to work with standards based browsers. If Firefox panders to the broken websites, then the broken websites will have no incentive to fix themselves to work with standards based browsers
Re:Wanted by dsginter · 2005-01-26 06:26 · Score: 1

The absolute worst option would be to continue to enable those disfunctional websites which either through incompetence or collusion with microsoft are rejecting customers who choose to use web browsers and/or operating systems other than the common microsoft variety.

Did you not read yesterday's article on IBM's Linux migration? They're pretty much stuck because they need IE for so many things. If they could have a browser that would render with IE on-demand automagically, then they could switch to that browser *right now*.

But, because everyone wants to be an idealist, this browser doesn't exist. This means that they'll stick with IE since it is much less work.

Once they've got the list, they pretty much have a plan of attack. Just prioritize the we apps that require IE and then start hacking them into cross-platform goodness. The best way to get that list would be the browser that I've described. Just put a "fix site" button in the hypothetical browser and the entire workforce will find the sites for them. No work needed - just harvest the results and automatically clear them from the client PCs once the apps are fixed.

This is *the only* strategy for a migration since it is not practical to do it with the flip of a switch in most cases.

--
More
Re:Wanted by stanleypane · 2005-01-26 06:27 · Score: 1

What's to stop anyone from intentionally triggering the IE side of the browser? Seems to me that your idea would be accomplished in the easiest fashion by just making calls to the IE engine. If that would be the case, you're going to get ActiveX in the mix somewhere. This would make Firefox as vulnerable to ActiveX malware as IE already is.

Back to square one. I happen to like square one, by the way. Firefox does just fine without rendering all the BS developers get away with when coding pages for IE only.

Disclaimer: I've never coded anything involved with web browsers, so I could be completely off base. Either way, there are still negative points to be made on the topic as pointed out in earlier replies.
Re:Wanted by pyros · 2005-01-26 06:29 · Score: 1

Maybe IE just cnat wrok around you're spelinlg and gramamr. :)
Re:Wanted by miffo.swe · 2005-01-26 07:00 · Score: 1

Much of portals and intranets are made up of activex. Ugly hacks to hide the fact that they cant code very well.

What IBM should have done is to switch the backends first and then gone for the desktops. Regardless of what the future would hold the effort on making the backend more flexible would be an excellent investment to get return on later on.

This could serve as an exemple for everyone, dont lock yourself in and throw away the key, use open standards whereever humanly possible.

--
HTTP/1.1 400
Re:Wanted by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:02 · Score: 0

Yes, I'm sure IBM is actively working on FIXING the BROKEN applications. The solution to a problem is not to break other applications to work with a broken one, but rather to just fix the broken applications. Its a better fix, and I'm happy Firefox is doing that. I don't want IE and its security bugs emulated on Firefox and Linux, thank you very much. I prefer a better web where I can browse more efficiently with virtually no annoyances.
Re:Wanted by Headcase88 · 2005-01-26 07:08 · Score: 1

Which is a bit ironic considering one spelling mistake in a computer language can completely mess up the code.

--
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Re:Wanted by Jahz · 2005-01-26 07:37 · Score: 1

The faster IE is replaced by FireFox/Netscape/Safari/Mozilla, the better. As long as webmasters can get away with saying, "Opps, your browser is too standards complient!" they will be slow to fix/rewrite their sites.

Once companies start to lose significant money due to lack of cross-browser compliance, you will be amazed at how fast they fix their sites.

--
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Re:Wanted by Smallpond · 2005-01-26 07:46 · Score: 1

Its not too surprising that they don't have a native Linux client for Lotus Notes, that would be a huge undertaking. But its really funny that they haven't fixed their own internal help desk software. Some managers should be getting replaced for that.

I notice that any email documents I get from IBM are RTF now instead of DOC, so I am guessing that some parts of the company have taken the directive to heart.

First time I've ever heard a company CEO ask for a "Windowless Office".
Re:Wanted by Kashif+Shaikh · 2005-01-26 08:13 · Score: 1

Why not just emulate IE's broken behaviour(with active X of course). Sure it would be 'non-standard' but there will be a button, but we're all pragmatic bastards and what things to just work. Simple way: Implement a new checkbox, "Use IE Emulation for this web-site" and save resultant web-site to list. Now I don't know how hard this will be i.e. you may need two different HTML renderers. Kashif
Re:Wanted by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:18 · Score: 0

Not that you're being insensitive, but parent post is archetypical dyslexic....he could be trolling, but might actually have a learning disability.
Re:Wanted by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:21 · Score: 0

It is impossible to provide 100% bug for bug MSIE emulation. Even Microsoft can't do that as their security fixes often break certain sites that rely on a buffer overrun or other security hole to run. I wouldn't be suprised if some ActiveX controls patch MSIE as it is loaded into memory, which means anything that is not an identical copy of MSIE will fail. If you don't believe this is possible check out Bleem which used a MapLS/UnMapLS trick to get ring 0 without using a Vxd and Ultima 7 which used a bug in it's memory manager. Even if you didn't need true bug for bug and offset (for in-memory patching) level compatability, making ActiveX work on anything except Windows is impossible as an ActiveX control can use any Windows API including undocumented ones and can even load device drivers. There is no way a wine based ActiveX layer could handle ActiveX controls that want to install vxd/sys device drivers even if wine could implement every Windows API including all the bugs exactly as Windows does.
Re:Wanted by sloanster · 2005-01-26 09:15 · Score: 1

Did you not read yesterday's article on IBM's Linux migration? They're pretty much stuck because they need IE for so many things.

Yes, I read the IBM progress report, and their internal active X issues are not the issue here. That was a discussion of an internal legacy environment where they could dictate and control the browser, so as to make their application work. The internal captive audience really has no choice of browser in that case.

Also, IBM are not "stuck" as you say. It's something IBM can and will fix, but it will take time, and thus in this sort of environment your proposal might make sense.

A public internet website, however, is a different matter entirely. The website management can not (and should not try to) dictate the choice of browser on the remote customer's desktop. For them to deploy ms-windows specific things like active x is basically to tell all non-msie customers to go take a flying leap. Those customers have every right to find another firm to do business with, and they will take their business elsewhere. Those types of sites should perhaps simply be allowed to come to their natural conclusion, not to be propped up artifically with all sorts of elaborate client side hacks.
Re:Wanted by jsebrech · 2005-01-26 10:13 · Score: 1

You don't know if a site requires IE features until you're actually in the middle of parsing/rendering it (which is a pipelined operation in modern browsers).

Personally, I think what would be better is to modify the gecko engine to have a validation framework, so it becomes possible to put a smiley face on the statusbar that smiles for standards compliant sites, looks average for sites that aren't standards compliant but still are perfectly renderable, and a frown for sites that can not be rendered in a browser that wishes to be standards compliant.

There's a bug for this in bugzilla, but it was marked WONTFIX because there is no validation framework in gecko, and nobody wants to spend the time adding one and getting it performant.
Re:Wanted by jimktrains · 2005-01-26 10:50 · Score: 1

If your refering to my reply, then I guess I didn't read it over. And also, your logic is flawed as in that the Javascript language is universal, so it is not my fault that IE can't handle my coding (which runs well and there are no flaws in it). I do find it in bad taste to mkae an entire reply to someones typos (even thought I accknolege that mine are fairly bad). At least make comment to soemthing pertaining to the topic, then add your bitterness.

--
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Re:Wanted by iabervon · 2005-01-26 11:57 · Score: 1

Alternatively, Firefox could give a warning about possible security vulnerabilities before passing things off to IE. I bet masses of novice users calling up their banks worried about security risks would do more to get sites to ditch IE-specific features than anything else.
Re:Wanted by Secrity · 2005-01-27 12:45 · Score: 1

I agree with you about Firefox rending standards based HTML just fine. I was suggesting a possible tactical maneuver in the event that Firefox is unable to get a sufficient market penetration to cause all of the major websites to become standards compatible. Also, I wasn't including Active-X in the hypothetical compatibility model. I was only referring to the rendering portion of the browser being able to display broken MSIE HTML.

speakeasy 7 by natedubbya · 2005-01-26 06:04 · Score: 2, Funny

The name, speakeasy, was used 7 times in 6 sentences on this post. Try some shorter pronouns, I hope we don't charge by the letter.

Re:And so it begins by geomon · 2005-01-26 06:05 · Score: 3, Insightful

And by that, I mean the security holes creaping in.

That very well could be.

The difference between IE and Firefox will be in how well they respond to the bugs that are found.

--
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"

Well by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:05 · Score: 0

They'll probably tell their friends about speakeasy, not firefox (if the past is any guide, prime example: aol users).

I don't know if that's such a bad thing. People who won't normally use firefox will be using it, and this just increases the userbase; even if 20% of those people learn about firefox and recommend it to their friends, that's a bonus. Kudos to speakeasy. I hope more companies follow suit. (Who wants to bet earthlink is next?)

Shoving? by Spy+der+Mann · 2005-01-26 06:05 · Score: 1

Wouldn't you rather say... spoonfeeding?

Want shoving? Install winxp and start browsing the web.

Re:Shoving? by kaustik · 2005-01-26 08:38 · Score: 1

Or just as bad, run Windows update in a corporate environment. Then watch the phone start to ring as users think that their Outlook profile has been deleted. Damn Outlook Express needs to put shortcuts to itself everywhere each time you install a service pack or IE upgrade...

Speakeasy by mboverload · 2005-01-26 06:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

Speakeasy seems to be pretty in tune with the "geek/nerd" community. This shows they have smart managers or a persuasive IT department.

Anyway, we should commend them greatly. Now we can say that ISP's even recommend it.

Re:Speakeasy by aero2600-5 · 2005-01-26 06:13 · Score: 1

They're a good deal for the bandwidth too. There aren't too many other ISPs that care about giving you a large pipe to upload with.

Aero

--
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Re:Speakeasy by Osty · 2005-01-26 06:47 · Score: 1

They're a good deal for the bandwidth too. There aren't too many other ISPs that care about giving you a large pipe to upload with.

Really? I wonder why they tried to charge me $260/mo for 1.5/384 ADSL, then? This was a few years back, around the time Concentric/XO was going under. I had been on XO, and figured it was time to switch before the company disappeared out from under me. So, I switched to Speakeasy for whatever the price for 1.5/384 ADSL was back then ($79 or $99, something like that). Everything went smoothly, and in fact they didn't even bother charging me for the first three months (their fault for not putting me in their billing system, but just because it was there fault doesn't mean I didn't owe them money). When I finally called them on it (who wants to get a $1000 bill at the end of the year when they realize they hadn't been billing me?), not only did they want to charge me for the months they screwed, but they wanted to charge at a rate of $260/mo. Apparently the loop XO was using for their $99/mo 1.5/384 ADSL was a $260/mo loop for Speakeasy to reuse. Good of them to tell me that when I switched!

Speakeasy's not much in the service department, either. After the whole ADSL fiasco, I ended up switching to an SDSL line instead. It worked well, except for weekly outages of a few hours or so. Every time that happened, I'd call up Speakeasy, sit on hold for 2-5 hours, and just when I finally got a live person on the phone my DSL line would come back up. Great. They wouldn't troubleshoot the line unless it was down when they talked to me, so I was never able to get anything done about it. That went on for a year and a month (hey, that's exactly the same amount of time it took for the warranty on the modem to run out!). Finally, some bright tech suggested it was the SDSL modem (never mind that I had suggested that before and they blew me off, and unlike cable modems you can't exactly go out to the store and buy your own SDSL modem). And because the modem was out of warranty, I would have to pay to replace it (something like $200). Well, fuck that. We fought for about a week, with me pointing out all of the many different times I called on this issue, showing that the problem existed while the warranty was in effect, and they eventually relented.

I was forced to move to cable when I bought a house, as it was outside of DSL area (17,000ft from the CO). I had other issues with the cable connection (for future reference: If your cable connection is up during the day and goes down at night, following a heat/cold cycle, have the cable tech check the outside lines for water damage), but I'm so happy I'm off of DSL. The SDSL upload was awesome, and I still miss my block of static IPs, but Comcast's service has been excellent aside from the water damage incident (can't really blame them for that, can I?).
Re:Speakeasy by Halthar · 2005-01-26 06:57 · Score: 1

I have had a Speakeasy account for the past 6 months or so and the service they offer is top notch. I had originally had a DSL line from Verizon which worked very very well, but I wanted more bandwidth and some static IPs. When I originally signed up for Verizon it was guestimated that I was about 3500ft from the CO in my area. As it turned out, this wasn't the case. Recently my DSL line started to go down quite a bit during bad weather. So I called Speakeasy to get them to look into it. I got what was by far the best support that I have gotten from any company ever. As it turns out there isn't much that can be done about it aside from throttling back my line from a 6Mbps line to a 3Mbps line aside from putting the line in Safe Mode which kills my upload speeds. Turns out I am 13,500 ft from the CO which is well beyond what would normally work okay for a 6Mbps line. It's working well enough for my needs so I am keeping it the way it is unless it gets unbearable (a few times a month of 15 minutes of outage I can deal with).

Anyone looking for a truly geek friendly ISP should check them out. They are most definitely a top notch company. I have only personally dealt with the support staff a few times, but they truly are good. I have spoken with the same support person twice for two different reasons (one billing which wasn't their fault or mine, one actual DSL support), and he actually remembered me. Either they keep a log of everything, including what is said during random conversation while waiting for a status update about something, or their support folks are just that good.

I get the feeling in dealing with them, that from the top down these are all technical folks including the management. They truly do seem to "get it!". They encourage bandwidth sharing, including being willing to handle the billing for you if you want to share the cost between you and your neighbors. They allow you to run servers, game servers or other. They have stated they will not port block anything, which ties into running servers. They actually have a reasonable rate for getting static IPs and include static IPs in their package deals for even residential users.

They are by far the best ISP I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with, and I have worked for a few. This move to Firefox is really just icing on the cake.
Re:Speakeasy by MixmastaKooz · 2005-01-26 07:16 · Score: 1

I'll second that! The bandwidth you buy is yours! I think that's awesome! I also had to deal with their customer support EXTENSIVELY!! One was their fault (they billed me twice, but were very, very apologetic, and helped me out quickly) and the 2nd and 3rd wasn't their fault (SBC had misdiagnosed a problem in the initial install for one-link service and I also had intermittency during bad weather). I highly recommend them!
Re:Speakeasy by aToaster · 2005-01-26 11:00 · Score: 1

Agreed, I've had Speakeasy for quite some time now and their service/pricing/bandwith is top notch. Although... once FIOS comes in... I might be tempted to switch.
Re:Speakeasy by jacrawf · 2005-01-26 13:38 · Score: 1

It's a lot of both. The owners/founders are a pretty geeky bunch, their engineers are ass-kicking, and even their dedicated account reps all tend to have a pretty technical background. When there is a problem it is fixed rapidly and competently. I'm very happy to do business with Speakeasy.
Re:Speakeasy by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 14:21 · Score: 0

So why have I been without dsl for almost a month now and anytime I call speakeasy support they have no fuckin idea what is going on? I have yet to ever recieve good customer service from an isp, speakeasy is no exception.

Does Anyone Know? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:06 · Score: 2, Interesting

How they have modified it? Have they simply added their own set of extensions, sort of an "extension distribution", including a theme extension for branding purposes? Or, have they embedded part of the code in another "shell" of sorts? If so, what is the container technology, i.e. MFC/Java/C++, etc. Also, does this mean that it will be incompatible with Firefox, or at least not compatible with its extensions?

Re:Does Anyone Know? by loconet · 2005-01-26 06:15 · Score: 1

If you click on the link on the summary, you see that is actually just an extension (xpi). I'm tempted to install it and see what it is that they modified.

--
[alk]
Re:Does Anyone Know? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:31 · Score: 0

Thanks, I downloaded the XPI file (essentially a zip file....How To Create A Firefox Extension and it seems to be no more than a re-branding with a couple of hard-coded links (speakeasy home page). No new functionality.

Still, it will be interesting to see what happens with all the extensions that are bound to be created. Here's an idea. It would be nice to be able to create a snapshot of an extension set, and then "browse" other extension sets, just to see, for example, what my friends' browsers look like. :) Thanks for the info!
Re:Does Anyone Know? by loconet · 2005-01-26 06:35 · Score: 1

Ok so curiousity got to me and I installed it. From what I've seen, it only changes the Home Page Icon at the top right and it adds an extra menu to the right of Help with some pretty useless links - It just seems to be a bunch of bookmarks. You can view a screenshot here. I Wonder if it's doing anything else in the background .. hmm

--
[alk]
Re:Does Anyone Know? by Zardus · 2005-01-26 06:37 · Score: 1

Hey, what's that toolbar you have with Disable, CSS, and Forms on it? That looks like a pretty cool thing.

--
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
Re:Does Anyone Know? by Zorikin · 2005-01-26 06:44 · Score: 1

That is the toolbar that comes with the Web Developer extension.
Re:Does Anyone Know? by zootm · 2005-01-26 06:59 · Score: 1

If you rename the .xpi file to .zip, you can extract it and find out ;) Mozilla extensions are nearly always written purely in JavaScript and XUL. You might (read: will) need to extract a couple of .jar files, but since it's a scripting language, the source is all there.
Re:Does Anyone Know? by loconet · 2005-01-26 07:13 · Score: 1

Yah, I already looked at the code, doesn't seem to be doing anything weird .. hehe.

--
[alk]
Re:Does Anyone Know? by zootm · 2005-01-26 07:13 · Score: 1
Right, sorry for the double reply, but I got curious and extracted it myself. The main "guts" of the extension contains:
- An XUL file which adds the menu and the JS file to the browser window.
- An XUL "About" page for the extension which has no scripting whatsoever other than a window.open call that links to Speakeasy when you click their link
- A JS file with some calls that make the "throbber" (wee animated bit in the top right) link to speakeasy.net, and some code which is called when the Speakeasy menu's buttons are clicked, which does nothing but open the links in the current browser window if mousebutton is 0 (left or main), or a new tab otherwise.
And that's it. The rest of the archive contains RDF files to help Firefox install the extension, and some PNG, GIF and CSS files for styling.

This just in... by Anita+Coney · 2005-01-26 06:06 · Score: 4, Funny

...Microsoft has asked the BSA to investigate claims that Speakeasy is using software without proper licensing and in violation of several patents.

Stay tuned for more on this story as it develops.

--
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.

Re:This just in... by ravenspear · 2005-01-26 06:13 · Score: 1

in violation of several patents

Yes and I'm sure Microsoft had no ulterior motive for this action seeing as how about half of all software in existence violates one of Microsoft's "patents."
Re:This just in... by linicks · 2005-01-26 06:47 · Score: 1

... in an apparent act of defiance, SCO has thrown it's hat in to sue over use of anything open source!
p.s. - The parent post should be modded "+5 Funny", not "+3 Interesting" :)

--

I got nothing...
Re:This just in... by Anita+Coney · 2005-01-26 06:53 · Score: 1

Yeah, it's kind of sad that someone took it seriously. But it's really sad that we live in a world were it COULD actually be serious!

--
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Re:This just in... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:16 · Score: 0

More like, we live in a world where Slashdot doesn't give karma bonuses for "Funny" moderations.
Re:This just in... by Anita+Coney · 2005-01-26 07:47 · Score: 1

You mean people actually care about their karma (the slashdot kind, not the Buddhist kind)?! Does it actually do anything for me? Can it get me deals at newegg or help me with my spelling?

--
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.

support costs by confusion · 2005-01-26 06:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

This probably makes a lot of sense from a support perspective. I've got to believe that most of the calls that support people get are related to the 397 spyware apps competing for keystrokes on the customer's computer.

It problably also has to potential to cut down on spambots & other zombies residing on their network.

Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/

Re:support costs by niteice · 2005-01-26 06:35 · Score: 1

397? That sounds kinda low for the average IE user on a DSL line.

--
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS

Baloney by mapmaker · 2005-01-26 06:06 · Score: 1

Speakeasy's reasoning for this is simple; to increase the reliability and speed of its internet service.

If that was true they could bundle the regular ole Firefox distro. I think what they're really trying to do grub some ad revenue and co-branding out of the current Firefox buzz.

Re:Baloney by worst_name_ever · 2005-01-26 06:10 · Score: 1

I think what they're really trying to do grub some ad revenue and co-branding out of the current Firefox buzz.
So, what you're saying is that by featuring their logo on the version of Firefox that they distribute to their own subscribers, Speakeasy is hoping that some of their subscribers will decide subscribe to Speakeasy. That's brilliant! Step three and profit, here we come!

--

In Soviet Rush, today's Tom Sawyer gets high on you.
Re:Baloney by mapmaker · 2005-01-26 06:15 · Score: 1

Um, no. I'm saying that Speakeasy is hoping that the halo effect can spill some of Firefox's positive buzz onto the Speakeasy brand if they have the two logos next to each other. Building brand recognition and reputation is very important in the corporate world.

And then there's the simple money-grubbing of shoving paid-for commercial links onto a "toolbar".
Re:Baloney by arudloff · 2005-01-26 06:17 · Score: 1

If that was true they could bundle the regular ole Firefox distro. I think what they're really trying to do grub some ad revenue and co-branding out of the current Firefox buzz.

What's wrong with them doing both?
Re:Baloney by sfjoe · 2005-01-26 06:19 · Score: 1

think what they're really trying to do grub some ad revenue and co-branding out of the current Firefox buzz.

You know, they can do both at the same time.
I wish I could say that Speakeasy rocks, but they don't really. They are way expensive. The alternatives are the phone company and the cable company. In comparison, Speakeasy does rock but the bar ain't that high.

--
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
Re:Baloney by jxyama · 2005-01-26 06:48 · Score: 1

by branding it, speakeasy can "appeal" to the less savvy subscribers that it's not just some random new browser. even if people didn't know firefox (and/or knew only IE and distrusts everything else as unfamiliar), they might try and stick with a "speakeasy" browser.
Re:Baloney by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:20 · Score: 0

They have always done this; it's not a new thing for Firefox. When I was on dialup, the version of IE on the ISP's CD always came with their logo on the corner and a bunch of "useful" links already in the favourites.

You know by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

If that's not in the slashdot FAQ, it should be.

/. Doesn't render correctly? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:08 · Score: 0

What's wrong?
As I see it /. pages is rendered correct in Firefox.
What doesn't Firefox render right?

Re:/. Doesn't render correctly? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:14 · Score: 0

The letters down the left hand edge merge into the left hand column. Most of the time it hardly matters. Some of the time it really does make it less readable. The ctrl+ ctrl- thing should show you what it's supposed to look like. Compare to how it normally does.
Re:/. Doesn't render correctly? by Enoch+Root · 2005-01-26 06:29 · Score: 1

I got Firefox 1.0, and I don't see the problem you describe. Slashdot looks peachy.
Re:/. Doesn't render correctly? by EulerX07 · 2005-01-26 06:33 · Score: 1

Doesn't happen all the time, I also use 1.0. I usually just reload the page, gonna use -/+ from now on.

You notice more if you hit slashdot 20-50 times a day...
Re:/. Doesn't render correctly? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:40 · Score: 1, Funny

You notice more if you hit slashdot 20-50 times a day...

Wait, I think I see the problem.
Re:/. Doesn't render correctly? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:58 · Score: 0

And then there's the times when no text in the article will render at all due to this problem. Sure, a simple ctrl+, ctrl- fixes it, but you'd think that such an OSS supportive site would, I don't know... find a fix rather than a manual workaround.
Re:/. Doesn't render correctly? by SoTuA · 2005-01-26 07:57 · Score: 1

It's not that it didn't render, it's that the text rendered about a screen to the right (ergo in the black)

Who cares? by HarveyBirdman · 2005-01-26 06:10 · Score: 0

Just connect the spigot to my house, and get the fuck out of my way. I pay you every month, you give me uncensored bandwidth. Anything beyond that begins to tick the needle on the annoyance meter.

--
--- Ban humanity.

Re:Who cares? by stanleypane · 2005-01-26 06:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

Your opinion is in complete disregard to the other 90% of users on the internet. There spigot is going to be spewing toxic waste into their house in no time at all. In turn, we all suffer.
Re:Who cares? by outZider · 2005-01-26 06:37 · Score: 1

Well, that works, then. They offer a branded browser, you don't have to take it.

I use Speakeasy myself, the OSTG plan that is advertised pretty often around here. I couldn't be happier.

Okay, maybe more upload bandwidth. Can't argue with the price, though.

--
- oZ
// i am here.
Re:Who cares? by dcocos · 2005-01-26 06:42 · Score: 1

Just connect the spigot to my house, and get the fuck out of my way. I pay you every month, you give me uncensored bandwidth. Anything beyond that begins to tick the needle on the annoyance meter

You've basically boiled down speakeasy's terms of service. As for bundled software, I never received any software from them. Just a modem and 6/768 connection, with 5 static IPs and no limits on what I do with it. http://www.speakeasy.net/tos/
Re:Who cares? by FunWithHeadlines · 2005-01-26 07:03 · Score: 1

Your post is hilarious because you clearly do not know Speakeasy. What you described is how they operate, and I mean 100% accurate. So you wound up whining about a problem that doesn't exist.
Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:37 · Score: 0

Who cares about what the rest of the Internet wants? If they want something, there will always be a third-party to provide it. My ISP should provide a pipe, and that's it. They can take their software and shove it. Amazing how difficult it is to find a dialup ISP that doesn't have some form of stupid dialer, isn't it?
Re:Who cares? by Whumpsnatz · 2005-01-26 15:26 · Score: 1

Exactly. Links that they recommend? Yeah, right.

I use a Mac anyway, and Safari works fine for me. As for intruders on my PC, I've found that a firewall + little ol' ZoneAlarm eliminates any and all crap like spyware and virii, even on an old Pentium II laptop using a never-updated W-oes Me. Oh, and NOT using Outlook or IE. Ever.

Wrong place to start by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:10 · Score: 0, Troll

Speakeasy's reasoning for this is simple; to increase the reliability and speed of its internet service.

They might serve their customer's needs (and their own) better by doing something important, like, hmmm, offering virus scanners and firewalls to their customers.

Nice fluff piece, slashdot. How about something with some meat on the bone?

Re:Wrong place to start by grub · 2005-01-26 06:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

Actually by replacing IE they are pretty much ending the use of ActiveX over their network. Less 0wn3ed machines == less spam/zombies/what have you. It is proactive on their part.

--
Trolling is a art,
Re:Wrong place to start by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:00 · Score: 1, Insightful

Nice fluff piece, slashdot. How about something with some meat on the bone?
Oh come on. Switching away from IE is a very high bang-for-buck ratio, lots of benefit for little outlay. You sound like one of those people that just wants a bunch of stuff handed out for free.
Re:Wrong place to start by dooglio · 2005-01-26 07:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

Where I work, our Internet guru bitches about Firefox (and Mozilla's) exclusion of ActiveX support by default. Only because that makes watching embedded WMV impossible (and we are all about video streaming).
I would like to see ActiveX in FF only if it could be treated like extensions; .e.g. you only can download from trusted sites.
Re:Wrong place to start by KiloKitten · 2005-01-26 07:20 · Score: 1

I would like if they would do that. I don't like ActiveX.
Re:Wrong place to start by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:26 · Score: 0

There is an Active-X extention for FF, although I'm not sure if it has trusted site only capabilities.
Re:Wrong place to start by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:02 · Score: 0

Where I work we also do alot of video streaming. But we insist everyone use Realmedia by default, and then offer wmv or quicktime as an option.
Re:Wrong place to start by aled · 2005-01-26 08:37 · Score: 1

There is an extension/plugin/whatever that allows using activex in mozilla. I don't remember what is called, so you will need to do some googling. It should be noted that is obviously insecure.

--

"I think this line is mostly filler"
Re:Wrong place to start by dooglio · 2005-01-26 09:57 · Score: 2, Informative

You can find it here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=2062 13/
Re:Wrong place to start by apa666 · 2005-01-26 12:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

I for one would like to see an open source video streaming format that works well in all the major browsers. There doesnt seem to be one ATM considering that whereever there is streaming content there is either Quicktime, Real or Windows Media. Perhaps this is an area where open source just cannot compete?
Re:Wrong place to start by Lehk228 · 2005-01-26 14:53 · Score: 1

embedded WMV loads and plays just fine in firefox, maybe it's only because i have MEdia player classic installed, but i could have sworn last time i wastched an embedded wmv it was plain windows media player running it.

--
Snowden and Manning are heroes.

News for nerds, stuff that matters... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:11 · Score: 0

Designed for Netscape 3.

Thanks for the tip, I usually just come back later when /. won't render right.

Speakeasy is pretty good. by pyros · 2005-01-26 06:13 · Score: 2, Informative

I used to have DSL with them up in Minnesota. pricaes were pretty good and the plans were pretty flexible. Speed was pretty nice too (I lived like 1000 feet from the CO). But I tought their hosting plans were way overpriced.

Re:Speakeasy is pretty good. by yog · 2005-01-26 08:29 · Score: 1

I'd love to switch to Speakeasy; I like their TOS and I want the fixed IP addresses. However, $49.95 for 1.5M/256K/dialup does not compare favorably with Verizon's $45 for $1.5M/384K/dialup that I currently buy. Furthermore, for an additional $10 Verizon will bump the d/l speed to 3M. In terms of bandwidth, Speakeasy is no longer competitive with Verizon in eastern Massachusetts at least.

I have asked Speakeasy to address the bandwidth question but they have not responded as yet. They say you get better tech support with them, which is great, but the bandwidth is a 24/7 experience while the support is a rare experience even with Verizon. Granted Verizon support is poor but it's just not on the front burner.

Someone, set me straight on this. I'd be happy to switch to the "good guys" if given enough reasons.

--
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Re:Speakeasy is pretty good. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:51 · Score: 0

They are very much competitive. You said yourself, it would be nice to have fixed ip addresses. That means your DHCP. On top of that, are you allowed to host a server with no issues? How are you going to handle dns without paying $25 a domain to dyndns per year? The little price difference and a bit slower upload is worth it.
Re:Speakeasy is pretty good. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 14:25 · Score: 0

From my experience speakeasys support was no better than any other isp I've tried; that is crap.

Speakeasy service is awesome by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:13 · Score: 0

A couple of my friends have switched to Speakeasy and are very happy with them. I still have Comcast but I am also going to switch now. Speakeasy actually gives you more bandwith than they have to and their customer service is superior.

Majority now! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:15 · Score: 0, Troll

I wish more people used it

We could do something about it if someone implemented MajorityNow:

Surfs while your computer is idle to increase the browser usage stats for Firefox.

It was meant as a joke, but I think it could be done for real and it would make a difference in website statistics: I'd run it 24/7 on my office computer and I wouldn't be the only one.

toolbars ARE spyware by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:21 · Score: 0

thanks just what i always wanted, a greedy re-seller that wants to put their crap all over my clean computer, lets hope the crap is easily removed

Re:toolbars ARE spyware by digidave · 2005-01-26 07:00 · Score: 1

No, spyware spies on you, delivers ads, etc. Toolbars can be hidden from the View menu and Speakeasy's custom stuff can be removed by removing the Speakeasy FF extension.

--
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Re:toolbars ARE spyware by bcattwoo · 2005-01-26 07:00 · Score: 1

This is something they are offering their customers. The crap could be easily removed by not installing it in the first place and instead downloading Firefox directly.
Re:toolbars ARE spyware by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:12 · Score: 0

Actually, the "crap" is something that you have to manually install in the first place. According to the instructions They tell you to get firefox from the official site, then install the speakeasy XPI. And removing an XPI is really difficult...

Tools - Extensions - (choose extension) - click uninstall. Then you'd probably be prompted yes or no, maybe followed up with a restart of the browser for it to actually be removed.

Almost makes you pine for the simpler times of removing spyware shoved in by IE! Lets see, run ad-aware. Says it found it, tell it to remove. Hmm... didn't remove it at reboot. spybot? That should get rid of it. Hmm... same thing. Well, I'll run both, then manually remove the files. WHAT? STILL THERE? WTF! Well, I'll cancel every running service that I don't recognize the use of, run spybot and adaware, and... umm... nope. Well, what's this "Giant" I've heard about. Hey... third one actually seemed to do the trick. Hmm... shit. Now Giant's getting bought out by MS, and soon the definition files probably won't get maintained like they should.

Yeah, Firefox with a couple extra links is _SO_ evil. For a good portion of speakeasy customers, these are just things they'd go to every day anyways.

Options.. by aero2600-5 · 2005-01-26 06:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

Speakeasy is wonderful because it's nice to have an option for DSL. If it wasn't for them, there would be no alternatives to Bellsouth other than cable in the area I live in. Now they're supporting Firefox. That just makes it all the better.

Aero

--
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart

"Free" to use.. by wfberg · 2005-01-26 06:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

No money was exchanged between the Mozilla Foundation and Speakeasy, as Firefox is open source and is freely available for use by anyone

Although presumably they will have entered into some arrangement with the Foundation (or The Charlton Company), seeing as Firefox is a registered trademark. This is a good thing as it can prevent people spreading bastardized versions of firefox, such as Firefox Claria edition..

--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty

Re:"Free" to use.. by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:40 · Score: 0

Speakeasy is simply offering a download link to Firefox 1.0, and an XPI that adds their branding and toolbar, so they're clear of trademark worries.

However, if they were to change code in Firefox, and used the use official branding flag as they compiled, then they would need permission from Mozilla. This is why the Debian Firefox package does not use the Firefox branding. The Debian developers wanted to make a modification, and it is against Debian's social contract to allow for special rules that only apply to them, such as permission from Mozilla.
Re:"Free" to use.. by Lurker+McLurker · 2005-01-26 06:58 · Score: 2, Informative

Presumably this is why they aren't offering their own build but a link to the regular firefox download page and an extension. Trademarks don't enter into it as they aren't actually distributing a browser.

--
Mod parent up!
Re:"Free" to use.. by kponto · 2005-01-26 12:51 · Score: 1

I imagine the discussion going something like this...

Speakeasy: Hey, can we distribute Firefox to our several hundred thousand subscribers?

Mozilla: Umm..okay.
k

--
This too, will end.

About Speakeasy in General by $criptah · 2005-01-26 06:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

I love speakeasy. Since I switched to their service from AT&T, I have almost no unexplained downtime and no problems with customer support. Their support reps actually speak fluent English without annoying Indian accents and so far all my issues were resolved within a day and no support reps ever mislead me or gave me wrong info (happened with Verizon and AT&T quite often).

Based on the packages that they offer and on cool things like wi-fi resell and open-server policies, it looks like the ISP is definitely for geeks. Also, I believe that if more ISPs provide users with free software that actually works, IE share will be reduced. 99% of non-techie users that I know use software provided by their ISPs. Anything from browsers to anti-virus programs. If things continue going this way, we'll see more open source products distributed to customers.

I hope Speakeasy continues to do what it is doing and keep its level of customer support along with other innovative ideas that many companies seem to forget as soon as they become profitable.

Re:About Speakeasy in General by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:33 · Score: 0

"annoying Indian accents"

My, aren't you fucking perfect.
Re:About Speakeasy in General by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:43 · Score: 0

I'm sorry, but when you are barely able to communicate simple things, how are you supposed to communicate complicated technical problems?

Good service includes the ability to communicate.
Re:About Speakeasy in General by tribentwrks · 2005-01-26 07:35 · Score: 1

This is exactly why I keep my business with speakeasy rather than switch to cheaper options available in Chicago. Their support rocks, and they don't bother you when you want to try things out with your static IP. Gotta support em!
Re:About Speakeasy in General by $criptah · 2005-01-26 12:01 · Score: 1

I am not perfect. I have nothing against people with accents when they are able to communicate with me, especially if I pay for their service. I work with tons of foreign people, moreover, I am an immigrant myself :)
There is a difference between having an accent or comletely not having a clue what the other person is talking about. My freinds have accents, my co-workers have accents (I have an accent too!), and yet I am able to understand them. If it sounds like English, it is all good to me. However, when I ask a basic question in plain English and the person on the other side of the phone does not understand what I want, it pisses me off. Especially if it happens all the time. Whever I called AT&T support line, I ended up waiting on the phone for at least ten minutes. Then I had to talk to "Paul" or "John" from India. He was not an immigrant familiar with American English, he was an Indian person who could not communicate well enough to be a customer rep. Adding "sir" to every sentence does not help if you have problems with basic language skills.
You must know the language, the culture and the slang of a region if you want to provide good service to people from that area. When I arrived to the States in my early teens, I was not able to understand people because most Americans used American slang for common things. For example, whenever somebody said "it's cool," I thought that people complained about being cold. It took me a couple of months to figure things out and only because I was a kid and I lived in the United States. Culture cannot be learned through books, my friend. Many older immigrants still have problems and this is nothing to be ashamed of. Certain fields, like customer service, require good language and communication skills. It is that simple.

Holy Shit! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:27 · Score: 0

I didn't know you could do that!

Thanks mang!

FireFox is fucking awesome!

Hah hah by gandell · 2005-01-26 06:27 · Score: 2, Funny

Yes, but unfortunatly, even though firefox is superior software, eventually there will be spyware targeted to firefox.

Well, I'll show them if they do! I'll move to Mozilla...
Oh, wait...

--
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.

Re:Hah hah by Walterk · 2005-01-26 13:42 · Score: 1

Well, if you can't move to Mozilla, you could always try Galeon, Camino, IBM Web Browser, ManyOne Universal Browser, Netscape or Epiphany...

--

"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."

Tech Support will Help Promote by brandonp · 2005-01-26 06:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

Sounds to me that calls to Tech Support will end up being a huge promotion effort for Mozilla Firefox. I'm sure Speakeasy will recommend many of it's troubled customers to download their customized version of Firefox.

How many customers does this promotion extend to? I'm sure Firefox will be much closer to that 10% Internet usage mark.

This is fun.

Brandon Petersen

Re:Tech Support will Help Promote by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:48 · Score: 0

I'm a tech here at Speakeasy. I can only speak for myself, but I only use IE for the few pages that absolutely won't work with Firefox.

We think technology that makes the who business in doing whatever it is you want to do on the internet is cool. (except spammers, black hat hackers and crackers---go away, you aren't welcome here, our abuse department will be contacting you soon)

Wireless? We love it, we endorse it.

Firefox? We love it, and we endorse it.

I've been here 2 1/2 years and Speakeasy is about the coolest place I have ever worked helpdesk at.

JWC

It's a plugin by j2brown · 2005-01-26 06:27 · Score: 5, Informative

Yes, I actaully followed one of the links. It's a plugin. The FF download it right from mozilla.org

http://www.speakeasy.net/software/firefox/

jeff
sdg

Re:It's a plugin by j2brown · 2005-01-26 06:30 · Score: 1

I was too lazy to preview, so now I've got to post to correct my own post:

"...FF download is right from..."

Stand by for further corrections.

jeff
sdg

Recommended Links by ad0gg · 2005-01-26 06:32 · Score: 3, Interesting

"... but have the Speakeasy logo and feature a Speakeasy toolbar filled with links recommended by Speakeasy. "

By recommended, I'd assume sponsered links. But after checking they were actually legit links. I have seen other extensions that set their affliate codes, the last one i saw was the amazon search tool which tags all the search results with their affliate code.

--

Have you ever been to a turkish prison?

"Supporting" Firefox? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 06:36 · Score: 0

How are they supporting Firefox? The article says that no money was exchanged, as Firefox is open source.

I believe you mean that Speakeasy is 'distributing' Firefox.

Re:"Supporting" Firefox? by aero2600-5 · 2005-01-26 06:57 · Score: 1

I don't mean support, as in technical support, but support as in they chose it to over IE to distribute. I support Firefox, meaning that I use it and recommend it to friends.

Aero

--
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart

If only they embraced lower prices as well by melted · 2005-01-26 06:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'd be all over their offerings. $39.95 is just too much for low-end ADSL these days. Everyone else is offering it for $29.95. They should at least throw in a fixed IP into the deal to make it attractive.

Re:If only they embraced lower prices as well by Halthar · 2005-01-26 07:17 · Score: 1

Although their price at the low-end is higher, I would actually gladly pay it after having dealt with the company. They have the best support folks I have ever encountered. They have some of the best user policies I have ever encountered as well. There is IMHO a lot more to that 39.95 than you see on the surface. They truly are top notch, and based on my personal experience are most definitely the best in the industry. I have worked for a few DSL providers, and based on what I have seen where I worked vs. what I have experienced as a Speakeasy customer they easily win hands down. Apparently they have some kind of thing going on (may just be in my area) where they hold Covad's testicles to the fire. Basically, if a Speakeasy customer has a problem it gets taken care of VERY fast, in the case of the one trouble ticked I had to open which included Covad in the process it took about an hour to get the results and the tech called me back as soon as he had a better fix on the problem I was having (which I should add the tech actually understood AND recognized that I understood as well). When I called to have a change made to my line it was taken care of while I was on the phone with them (had them take the line out of "SafeMode").

I don't work for them, and I am not going to pimp out my referal number so I can get a kickback when someone signs up because they truly are worth the praise, as well as the extra cost per month. Hell, the fact that when you call the techs they don't treat you like you are a moron is in itself enough to justify the extra cost.
Re:If only they embraced lower prices as well by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 10:25 · Score: 0

How in the Hell is the above link informative? This is about FF getting its fame not about the deals that speakeasy offers.

How is mod'ng this section? Another DSL provider? With my luck this could be mod'd as funny.

From a support standpoint by gandell · 2005-01-26 06:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

Wouldn't it be nice to answer all spyware calls with "I'm sorry, but we don't support Internet Explorer. Have you tried the firefox software that was bundled with your dsl?"

--
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.

Should make it easier for corp. customization by raitchison · 2005-01-26 06:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

As it is unless you are willing to tweak the code and recompile you don't have a lot of options for customizing Firefox (at least not that I have found, I'd LOVE to be shown that it's doable). I think that corporations, that are struggling with spyware on a regular basis would be willing to switch to Firefox more readliy if they could easily tailor it to their needs, choosing default home page, links, install internal CA root certificates etc. For it's faults IE makes it pretty easy to do this, with the IEAK you can customize just about everything.

Re:Should make it easier for corp. customization by Wonko42 · 2005-01-26 06:59 · Score: 1

Open Firefox. Browse to "about:config". Customize to your heart's content. All of these settings are also found in text files in your user profile directory. It would be a piece of cake for a vendor to distribute highly customized versions of Firefox without any recompiling.
As for the IEAK, bleh. It's virtually unusable. When it works, it's passable, but more often than not it crashes whenever you try to do anything useful with it. I'd much rather edit a few text files.
Re:Should make it easier for corp. customization by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:04 · Score: 0

All you have to do to redistribute a precustomized FF browser is ship the application folder with your custom config.js file in it. No recompilation necessary. To expand the browser, you can use XPI, just as they are doing. The built in features of the browser that you can customize all are stored in the default config file which you can change and redistribute with Firefox just as easily as creating an IEAK distribution, if not easier.

Foot shooting by E5Qk6XRwBm · 2005-01-26 06:47 · Score: 0

It's funny, I thought I'd install it, but my current version of Firefox is preventing installation. You know.. to protect my computer, etc. And I'm not sure I do want to install it without seeing a few screenshots or something. There's something about branded things that make me wary. Even dear Firefox!

Re:Wanted Dead, not Alive by miffo.swe · 2005-01-26 06:51 · Score: 1

IE has done more to harm the web than anything i can imagine, virii and spyware included. Why on earth would you want to mimic a browser that is utterly broken to begin? The owners of the sites that are broken should fix them and spank the ones who did them silly. The web should work with every browser that adhere to html standards, not just Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Active X is a horrible thing i wouldnt want in my browser for my life.

--
HTTP/1.1 400

Its an Extension by bogie · 2005-01-26 06:52 · Score: 1

Its not a Speakeasy branded Firefox like everyone keeps saying, its a small extension which adds some bookmarks. *Cough*
Why does everyone keep saying they are distributing a branded version? Am I wrong?

I hope I am wrong and they will start distributing an actual branded version to customers, but for now this looks like simple Extension to Firefox which is hardly worth the headlines and IMHO is kinda deceiving.

--
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch

Re:Its an Extension by TragicLad · 2005-01-26 07:54 · Score: 1

The branding is changing the little dotted circle at the top left to the Speakeasy logo.

--
--- No Boom? No Boom today. Boom tomorrow, there's always a boom tomorrow.

Not just for Geeks by GnarlyNome · 2005-01-26 06:52 · Score: 1

As a Linux Newbie I have found Speakeasy.net to be very good at explaining things to me

--
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers

Purolator by EvilAlien · 2005-01-26 06:56 · Score: 1

Such as Purolator. I've contacted them several times about their extremely annoying javascript browser check that pops up a warning that online shipment tracking requires IE or Netscape 6. I get a typical canned response about their developers looking at Firefox support.

Here is the contact form to reach out and poke them about Firefox: Questions to our Webmaster

--
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'

Re:Purolator by bhtooefr · 2005-01-26 07:27 · Score: 1

Heh... I use my own JavaScript browser check on the site I'm going to ul soon.

It has one small bug, but I worked around it. Opera users who have their browsers set to spoof as IE (the default) will see the IE warning page (I remembered this the hard way when I was on another system, and forgot to change the fresh Opera install to ID as Opera). I decided to take that as an opportunity to educate Opera users ;-).
Re:Purolator by LPetrazickis · 2005-01-26 07:55 · Score: 1

Why don't you just sniff for Opera properly? It's not that hard:

Opera/7.0 (OS; U) [la] Mozilla/5.0 (OS; U) Opera 7.0 [la] Mozilla/4.78 (OS; U) Opera 7.0 [la] Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; OS) Opera 7.0 [la]

Guess the algorithm.:)

--
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Re:Purolator by bhtooefr · 2005-01-26 08:16 · Score: 1

I can sniff for Opera properly... if I wanted to.

I'm sniffing for IE using a small piece of JavaScript, and if it's found, you get sent to another page telling you that IE is evil, and so is UA spoofing (not in those words, though).

I guess I could sniff for Opera, and if I find it, sniff for IE, and send them to an anti-spoofing page, but why? Less work the way I did it, after all...
Re:Purolator by bhtooefr · 2005-01-26 08:18 · Score: 1

FWIW, the code is:
if(navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer") { window.location = "ienotice.htm" }
ienotice.htm being the page that has the warning, of course.
Re:Purolator by Myen · 2005-01-26 08:38 · Score: 2, Interesting

Instead of using JS (which can be turned off), maybe consider using IE's conditional comments? If you're just targetting IE anyway, that's ideal - no way to turn it off (AFAIK), and only works for IE-based browsers.
Re:Purolator by bhtooefr · 2005-01-27 01:57 · Score: 1

Yeah, but I WANT to target non-IE-based browsers that are spoofing as IE, also. In addition, I figure if someone's turned off JavaScript, they're trying hard enough to actually care to look at my site even though I'm trying to stop them.

Same here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:01 · Score: 0

I've been using Mozilla/Firefox for almost 2 years, and I have never seen the alleged Slashdot rendering bug.

Re:Same here by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 09:11 · Score: 0

Well then, you're just lucky. I see it on about 85% of the page loads when I visit the ./ site. Ctrl+MouseWheel fixes it quicker than a Refresh though so it's not a big deal to me. More of a minor annoyance...

YMMV
Re:Same here by jsebrech · 2005-01-26 10:01 · Score: 1

It's caused by unlucky timing. It depends on your connection type, distance to the slashdot servers, time of day, phase of the moon, and many, many other factors. It's a bug in the gecko engine that is only triggered by non-standard pages, like slashdot, though this doesn't happen uniquely on slashdot. If I'm not mistaken, it will be fixed in the next version of firefox.

Personally I think it's a good thing that slashdot has such hairy html code. The first thing prospective browser makers do is try to render slashdot. And since slashdot puts up a decent fight against being rendered correctly, that makes for better browsers.

Download Popup Blocked by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:07 · Score: 0

Too funny, if you have popup blocking turned on while using FireFox to try and download their plugin. Guess they'll get some support calls on that one.

LOL...Speakeasy? by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:09 · Score: 0

Am I the only one in this faded republic who knows what a speakeasy is?

Re:LOL...Speakeasy? by D3 · 2005-01-26 07:22 · Score: 1

No, that is one reason I chose them as my ISP. ;)

--
Do really dense people warp space more than others?

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by turnstyle · 2005-01-26 07:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

"hope more companies start doing that"

Does that include:

"This custom version of Firefox will have the Speakeasy logo and feature a Speakeasy toolbar filled with links recommended by Speakeasy. No money was exchanged between the Mozilla Foundation and Speakeasy, as Firefox is open source and is freely available for use by anyone."

I know I'm old-fashioned, but I think coders should be paid for their work.

--
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda

List of URLs by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 07:12 · Score: 2, Informative

>>>>>>drudgereport.com/<<<<< >>>>>>kexp.org/<<<<< >>>>>>news.bbc.co.uk/<<<<< >>>>>>snopes.com/<<< << >>>>>>steampowered.com<<<<< >>>>>>waste.sourc eforge.net/<<<<< >>>>>>world.altavista.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.achewood.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.alternet. org/<<<<< >>>>>>www.ampednews.com/<<<<< >>>>>>ww w.anandtech.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.apple.com/trailer s/<<<<< >>>>>>www.applespecialists.com/<<<<< >>> >>>www.avault.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.cgonline.com/<< <<< >>>>>>www.craigslist.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.csn ation.net/<<<<< >>>>>>www.dieselsweeties.com/<<<< < >>>>>>www.distrowatch.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.dnss tuff.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.ebay.com/<<<<< >>>>>>ww w.esreality.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.fark.com/<<<<< > >>>>>www.filecloud.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.filecloud. com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.gamecloud.com<<<<< >>>>>>www .gamecloud.com/index.php?sect=network/map<<<<< >> >>>>www.gamedaemons.net<<<<< >>>>>>www.gamerankin gs.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.gamespot.com/<<<<< >>>>>> www.gotfrag.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.hammacher.com/<<< << >>>>>>www.homestarrunner.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www. howstuffworks.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.imdb.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.kuow.org/<<<<< >>>>>>www.littleradio.c om/<<<<< >>>>>>www.livejournal.com/<<<<< >>>>>>w ww.musicplasma.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.newegg.com/<<< << >>>>>>www.ostg.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.pcgamer.co m/<<<<< >>>>>>www.penny-arcade.com/<<<<< >>>>>>w ww.pewfell.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.pitchforkmedia.com /<<<<< >>>>>>www.planetarion.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www .powellbooks.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.pricewatch.com/< <<<< >>>>>>www.pvponline.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.rad ioitg.com/<<<<< >>>>>>www.salon.com/<<<<< >>>>>> www.schlockmercenary.c

Re:List of URLs by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:53 · Score: 0

wtf is this?

ActiveX by RaZ0r · 2005-01-26 07:17 · Score: 1

What about ActiveX? Won't any user trying to access a site that uses ActiveX have issues?

I know, I know, ActiveX sucks, but unfortunately there are still a number of sites out there that use it. One site that comes to mind is HP's CSN site.

--

- Think for yourself, question authority.-

Re:ActiveX by LWATCDR · 2005-01-26 07:29 · Score: 1

ActiveX evil. Must be stopped. No really what better way to get people to stop using Microsoft only junk on websites than to have the sites start to break on many machines.

--
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.

My Favorites! by D3 · 2005-01-26 07:20 · Score: 1

Cool! My favorite ISP, my favorite browser, and my favorite website all rolled into one!

--
Do really dense people warp space more than others?

Re:My Favorites! by Neoncow · 2005-01-26 11:47 · Score: 1

You mean Bookmarks right? =P

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by shaitand · 2005-01-26 07:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

They are paid for their work, in various ways, not the least of which is free code from their fellow developers.

With luck Speakeasy will pay them with some free code as well.

Good job, Timothy by justdisguyyaknow · 2005-01-26 07:25 · Score: 3, Informative

Thanks for disclosing the fact that OSTG has a relationship with the vendor it's promoting.

Re:Good job, Timothy by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 10:28 · Score: 0

How is this informative? It states that in paragraph?

You all need new moderators? I think the chimps at the zoo have some spare time.
Re:Good job, Timothy by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 10:49 · Score: 0

You all need new moderators? I think the chimps at the zoo have some spare time.
yes, somebody has to moderate you as troll...
Re:Good job, Timothy by strider44 · 2005-01-26 13:36 · Score: 1

lol, they were one of the last ones to promote it. I saw it on many other sites (including Fark) before on here, so I don't think it was an automatic promotion.
Re:Good job, Timothy by _newwave_ · 2005-01-26 14:09 · Score: 1

LOL, the Speakeasy link itself in the last sentence is a referral link. Speakeasy offers a free month of service for every person you sign up through their referral links.
Re:Good job, Timothy by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 15:35 · Score: 0

Thats Slashdot's moto. Yesterdays news, Today!

It is very pointed by BillsPetMonkey · 2005-01-26 07:32 · Score: 1

"It should be pointed that Slashdot (and OSTG) have a partnership with Speakeasy."

It is very pointed, but not relevant.

--
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax

Re:It is very pointed by ndavidg · 2005-01-26 11:30 · Score: 1

I think this is not so much informative as it is a disclaimer. For example, if Fox news is reporting on 20th Century Fox, they would state the relationship with that company. It is regarded as responsible reporting.

Of course, this comes off as a bit of a joke, since Slashdot is not that important... it is not some super conglomerate reporting on itself. In addition, Slashdot is not really a reporting medium, but rather a commenting/discussion medium, and a bit sensionalist at that.
Re:It is very pointed by Adrilla · 2005-01-26 14:30 · Score: 1

But if it wasn't mentioned there'd be a HUGE uproar about how there was no mention.

--

"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
Re:It is very pointed by BillsPetMonkey · 2005-01-27 11:56 · Score: 1

Of course, this comes off as a bit of a joke

Yes, it does but only because the author actually meant to say "It should be pointed out that ..."

--
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax

Nice bookmarks by Anonymous+Custard · 2005-01-26 07:32 · Score: 1

The SpeakEasy plugin is actually a pretty decent set of bookmarks! Nicely targeted at good-for-broadband sites, like the Apple Movie Trailers site.

But that's all it is; bookmarks. Just a little more prominent (it appears next to the Help menu), and impossible to alter.

--
$8.95/mo web hosting

Official? Really? by Saeed+al-Sahaf · 2005-01-26 07:32 · Score: 1

official customized version of Firefox

I offer an "official" official customized version of Firefox too. No downloads yet...

--
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by swv3752 · 2005-01-26 07:38 · Score: 3, Informative

If you had RTFA, you would see that all Speakeasy has done is created a plugin. You still have to install the regular version of Firefox.

And the Plugin just adds some bookmarks and change an icon or two (at least that is what they tell us).

--
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life

Nope - not ads. by TragicLad · 2005-01-26 07:42 · Score: 1

Actually, the links appear to be relatively non-evil.

Aside from the branded image on the browser, all the extension does is add a menu option 'MySpeakeasy' right after 'Help'. Under that option it gives you quick links to Speakeasy's service, followed by other fairly useful sites:

Tools & Resources - links to Wikipedia, Distrowatch, Craigs List, Babelfish and a dozen other sites.

News - links to BBC News, the Drudge Report, FARK, Salon, Urban Legends, etc.

Gaming - Gamespot, Frag, PC Gamer Online, etc.

Media - SHOUTcast, IMDB, Livejournal

Comics - PVP, Penny Arcade, Homestar Runner

Shopping - ThinkGeek, eBay, Pricewatch

I don't believe the ads are paid placement, rather sites that the ISP seriously think are worthwhile.

---

As a sidenote, I decided to install the extension just to see for myself what it was like. I'm always very hesitant about such things, but I had confidence that FireFox would let me spit it out if I found it unpalatable.

Sure enough I was able to add and remove the extension and my FireFox is no worse for wear. All my bookmarks are as they should be. FireFox is back to being 'unbranded' and not a single thing detected by AdAware.

I know I wouldn't of trusted IE for installing anything of the sort - even from my own ISP let alone another.

--
--- No Boom? No Boom today. Boom tomorrow, there's always a boom tomorrow.

Wow! by HarveyBirdman · 2005-01-26 07:49 · Score: 1

I annoyed the Speakeasy shareholders or something. :-)

To my fine critics: You are all pussies, and not fit to lick my boots. :-P

--
--- Ban humanity.

Re:Wow! by FunWithHeadlines · 2005-01-26 08:20 · Score: 1

LOL. That's one way to react when you've made a mistake.
Re:Wow! by HarveyBirdman · 2005-01-26 08:29 · Score: 1

Exactly. Of course, I didn't make a mistake, you dumb hippie. :-) People just missed the point.

--
--- Ban humanity.
Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:55 · Score: 0

That you're an asshole? We figured that out, thanks.

[OT] Disclaimers by zdzichu · 2005-01-26 07:53 · Score: 1

What about with all those discaimers: "foobar is part of OSTG like slashdot" or "foobar have alliance with OSTG which slashdot is part of" ?
I've seen similiar on newsforge and freshmeat. What's the point?

--
:wq

Re:[OT] Disclaimers by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:03 · Score: 0

It makes it more blatently clear if they are self-promoting, and appear a bit more honest.

People won't get pissed off with OMFG!111 OSTG IS SECRETLY PROMOTING ITSELF!11ONE
Re:[OT] Disclaimers by fallen1 · 2005-01-26 09:42 · Score: 1

It is just that: a disclaimer. It basically is heading off the trolls (yeah, right) that will get on and say "ohhh, nice job /.!! you're front-paging news items that are all affiliated with you in some way. what a bunch of corporate asshats you are! go wipe your noses." It's just a nice way of saying "Yeah, these guys help pay our bills but we STILL felt this was newsworthy enough to put on the front page of Slashdot."

--
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~

I'm a Verizon DSL customer right now by melted · 2005-01-26 07:56 · Score: 1

And I don't know anything about their support folks because I never needed support. That's good enough for me. However, if speakeasy provided a fixed IP in their $39.95 offering, I'd gladly pay this additional $120 a year to have it.

Re:I'm a Verizon DSL customer right now by Halthar · 2005-01-26 08:45 · Score: 1

I'm a former Verizon customer, and had no problems with them. I just needed/wanted more speed and some static IPs. The issues I have needed to call Speakeasy about haven't been anything which was their fault or mine, actually. There have been a total of three calls made to them by me. The first issue was the guestimate of the distance from me to the CO being way off. The initial guestimate based on phone company data was 3500ft and some change from the CO, when the actual distance is around 13,500ft. As a result I was having some dropout on my 6Meg line every now and then. They put it in safe mode to see if it would stabalize, and it did. Second was a call to have them take it out of safe mode (the dropouts are only annoying when they are doing phone related construction work near my house, or the weather is very bad). Third was a billing problem, because my credit card company security department had flagged my account because of a charge they thought was suspicious, it wasn't, and as a result they had locked the account as a security precaution for me. I resolved that, and then told Speakeasy to put the charge through. Wait time on the phone in all three of those cases was well under a minute, which after having dealt with a vast number of other companies is definitely a plus in my book.

In all three of those cases I got the best service I have ever encountered from any company, bar none. Verizon was actually pretty good though, and I have nothing bad I can say about them aside from the fact that they don't offer residential DSL at higher speeds in my area, and initially I used the horrible PPPoE software to get Roaring Penguin and patches for my firewall/NAT machine. Roaring Penguin worked well with Verizon's service though, so I can't complain about those 45 minutes of pain.

NOT a flame, but a serious question by gothzilla · 2005-01-26 08:18 · Score: 1

This is in no way meant to be a flame or troll, which is why I'm not posting AC. (Mods be gentle, I'm sensitive back there...)

First let me say I love firefox. I've used new versions of netscape, opera, mozilla, and firefox and FF is my favorite. I am the entire IT dept. where I work and I needed a different browser than IE for more than just security reasons. I am forced to maintain an all windows network as well, so I don't have the option of using *nix.

0.9 ran like a champ. Smooth browsing, no errors except what were caused by websites trying to conform to IE's twisted standards.

When I started upgrading machines to 1.x I started having problems. On average, my users told me that FF would crash 2 to 3 times a day. I went to the forums and read. I did everything suggested. The only way I could get a stable browser working was to go back to 0.9. I also noticed a large number of posts on the firefox forums that complained of the same thing I saw.

Does anyone know when these issues might be fixed? I feel like I have to choose between using an older possibly insecure version of a browser or a newer version that just crashes.

I'm hoping these issues get fixed soon because Netscape will become the default browser here if I can't use FF. My users don't care about security but do care if the browser crashes, and so I have to balance usability with security. Being a 1 man IT department also doesn't give me much room to mess around and experiment. I need working solutions without the hype.

Re:NOT a flame, but a serious question by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 09:44 · Score: 0

Same here. 0.9 felt a lot more stable. Using 1.0 I frequently experience CPU hogging by Firefox and especially problems with Adobe Acrobat integration.

In fact, if I need to view a PDF these days I download it first and use Acrobat in non-browser mode. Irritating? Yes.
Re:NOT a flame, but a serious question by gothzilla · 2005-01-26 09:55 · Score: 1

I've had more luck with acrobat 7 than with 6. I've only tried it on one pc though. Have you tried it?
Re:NOT a flame, but a serious question by phauxfinnish · 2005-01-26 13:55 · Score: 1

I had similar problems when I [b]upgraded[/b] from .9 to 1.0. The crashing went away when I did an uninstall followed by a clean install as instructed by the Firefox site (I don't remember where, google it). It seems that the 1.0 would not overwrite some beta files. Acrobat still sucks to load though.
Re:NOT a flame, but a serious question by Lehk228 · 2005-01-26 15:46 · Score: 1

Acrobat still sucks to load though.

you can unload many of the extra pluins, i have acrobat starting in under a second now, the only function so far i have noticed missing is clicking hyperlinks within PDF's

1)go to Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader\plug_ins
2) move everything except
Escript.api
AWH32.api
IA32.api
Search5.api
Sea rch.api
to Reader\Optional

--
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Re:NOT a flame, but a serious question by gothzilla · 2005-01-27 02:18 · Score: 1

Yeah, tried that, as mentioned in the parent. Didn't help. I even installed 1.x on a few workstations that never had 0.9, same thing.
Sorry but the bottom line is 1.x is buggy and crashes a lot while 0.9 is rock solid. I'm just tired of people hyping a product that does not perform. From an IT point of view, Firefox is gold. From a user point of view, it's worse than IE since IE doesn't crash on a regular basis. So as a 1 man IT department, I have to deal with users who insist I install FF 1.x because of the hype and users who want to strangle me for making them use a browser that crashes.
I've decided to just go netscape anyway. It's similar enough and works with every https site I need it to also, with the added bonus that people actually know what Netscape is from experience.

Re:Wanted Dead, not Alive by RJabelman · 2005-01-26 08:20 · Score: 1

IE has done more to harm the web than anything i can imagine

*ahem*

Outlook?

Why current spyware/malware fails on Firefox by CritterNYC · 2005-01-26 08:21 · Score: 1

Yes, but unfortunatly, even though firefox is superior software, eventually there will be spyware targeted to firefox. The spyware and malware writers aren't stupid, unfortunately, and they'll find any way to fool stupid users.

There have already been multiple spyware apps that target Firefox. XXXToolbar was one of the first. It would auto-launch an XPI install attempt when you visitted a webpage. So, Firefox did 3 things.:

1. They turned of launching XPIs from the onload event. (I think I remember this happening, but couldn't find a reference... anyone?)
2. They added a 3 second delay before the Install button would work when you click on an XPI on a webpage
3. They added a whitelist with only mozilla and mozdev enabled by default so NO websites except those 2 can install XPIs without the user manually going in and updating the whitelist.

And this was long before the 1.0 release that this occured. Basically, every time the scammers have tried to come up with a trick to auto-install (or mistakenly install as with some ActiveX components), Mozilla has come up with a way to cut them off at the knees.

--
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc

Actually you have it the wrong way round!!! by SuperKendall · 2005-01-26 08:22 · Score: 1

What we really need is not an IE plugin for Firefox - instead I would like a plugin to let IE use Firefox as the engine.

This has two benefits. One is that everything looks like IE on the surface, but people are really using a safer browser. The other is that then it becomes mcuh more feasble to write XUL apps that reach a wider audience.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Read other replies by SuperKendall · 2005-01-26 08:28 · Score: 1

The SpeakEasy extension is actually hosted on the Mozilla site, anyone can download it. Is YOUR "custom" extension held there?

I would say being hosted on the Mozilla site is pretty "Official".

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Promotion is support by SuperKendall · 2005-01-26 08:31 · Score: 1

Promotion is a valid form of support. The Firefox people saw fit to spend real money in the NYT to reach more people, just as this effort will also do. In that sense it is real support that would have cost them money otherwise.

This is a win-win pairing - SpeakEasy gets a great browser for free, and FireFox gets a nice promotional boost for free. Plus a lot of credibility for having a large company back the customized use of Mozilla. This may well convince more people to use the Mozilla core (Gecko?) rather than embedded IE.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by aled · 2005-01-26 08:33 · Score: 0

Then the coders should have sold Firefox instead of given it under a licence that allows free use. It seems that they only expect at most voluntary donations, which are by definition, voluntary.

--

"I think this line is mostly filler"

False advertising by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 08:36 · Score: 0

Now, first, let me just say that I really like Firefox - I've had very few troubles with it, and have converted several people. However, it's frustrating to see so much blatantly false advertising going on. Take this line from the SpeakEasy site:

"the Internet's most secure web browser, Mozilla Firefox"

Que? What's the basis of that? FF may be more secure than IE - but that's not saying much! It's still had quite a few vulnerabilities in recent months, moreso than some other browsers. This is not a true statement.

And on mozilla.org:

"Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster, more safely and more efficiently than with any other browser"

Huh? Again, I can name several browsers that are faster and more efficient. It's sad to say, but this is effectively lying! When Microsoft bullshits about its products, we rightly slam them down; here, though, nobody seems to care.

More importantly, there's a danger in this: giving potential users false hope. They install it having been told it's faster than anything else, and it's not. Then they don't trust the OSS community...

I've seen this before with some Linux distros. Advocates talk about it being "so fast" and "lighter than Windows", when in the end it takes much longer to boot and crunches into swap as the mammoths of GNOME and OpenOffice.org munch through RAM.

We've gotta be careful not to disappoint people, or look no better than Microsoft!

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by njcoder · 2005-01-26 08:44 · Score: 2, Funny

"I know I'm old-fashioned, but I think coders should be paid for their work."

Yeah... write a letter to RMS, see if he'll put something that insures that in the next version of the GPL.

--
Open Source Java DAO Generator

Here's what's in the XPI by InvisiBill · 2005-01-26 08:54 · Score: 2, Informative

http://pctech.invisibill.net.nyud.net:8090/MySpeak easy.xpi/ has a copy of the XPI (http://www.speakeasy.net/software/MySpeakeasy.xpi ), all extracted out. http://pctech.invisibill.net.nyud.net:8090/MySpeak easy.xpi/chrome/speakeasy.jar/content/menu.xul seems to have all the new links, if that's what you want to check out. ThinkGeek, Fark, Snopes, Homestar Runner, AnandTech... Quite a variety.

Not the first by asylum · 2005-01-26 08:54 · Score: 1

My company, Backstop Solutions Group, has been distributing a branded version of Firefox since Nov. '03 - before they even settled on the name 'Firefox'.

We're an ASP for investment partnerships, and the main reason we require Firefox is CSS compliance. CSS allows us to easily build some cool UI features into the software, and set a default home page etc. Standardization also simplifies support.

And even though the "Backstop Browser" has our logo in the corner, we're very clear with clients that the browser is based on Firefox. As a result, we've seen clients switching over to Firefox as their primary browser.

Thanks for the advert by Karma+Star · 2005-01-26 09:21 · Score: 1

As for my experience, on the other hand, I HAVE NOT YET RECEIVED A RESPONSE TO A SIMPLE QUESTION ABOUT THEIR SERVICE PLAN. After a week passed, I resent the email to their sales (yes sales) team to no avail. All I wanted to know is if I could use a slightly older broadband modem (a zyxtel prestige 634?) with their service, but apparently those idiots know nothing...

--
Me email iz skyewalkerluke at microsoft's free email service.

Re:Thanks for the advert by SewersOfRivendell · 2005-01-26 19:28 · Score: 1

Your experience seems to be abnormal. I'm another satisified Speakeasy customer, and yes, I have used their support lines (friendly humans! knowledgeable ones!).
Also, I've gotta say have never had a smoother high-speed internet install, even though it involved a strange menage trois between Speakeasy, Covad and SBC. Speakeasy managed the whole thing and kept me updated every day on the progress.

Yeah, but when will Slashdot embrace Firefox? by Forgery · 2005-01-26 09:23 · Score: 1

When will Slashdot embrace Firefox? Slashdot's sub-pages often do not render correctly in Firefox. The layers of the articles often overlaps with the left side contents menus making it unreadable. Sometimes a refresh works, sometimes it doesn't.

Re:Yeah, but when will Slashdot embrace Firefox? by jonwil · 2005-01-26 14:05 · Score: 1

If you read the 1000s of other posts on this or the bugzilla bugs covering it, you would see that its been fixed in firefox mainline but that it didnt hit 1.0 because it was considered too risky.
And that its broken because slashdot spits out bad HTML.
Re:Yeah, but when will Slashdot embrace Firefox? by Lehk228 · 2005-01-26 15:49 · Score: 1

that is why the GP posted about slashdot being broken and did not claim firefox was the problem

--
Snowden and Manning are heroes.

can you... by climbing_monkey · 2005-01-26 09:24 · Score: 1

say advertisement, that whole "oh, you know, Slashdot and Speakeasy are partners" thing. Not that I have anything against either entities...

LOL! by propus · 2005-01-26 09:49 · Score: 1

I was scrolling through the slashdot main page and I read the headline as 'SpeakEasy embarasses firefox' hehe.

Forced to use Internet Explorer by Brandybuck · 2005-01-26 09:56 · Score: 1

I'm being forced to use Internet Explorer by my company. For years I was able to avoid Windows and use FreeBSD/KDE for all my workstation needs. Then it became apparent that MS Outlook would be required if I didn't want to have urgent emails mysteriously disappear. So I switched to Windows, but put on Firefox to avoid the Microsoft browser. Then they started rolling out webapps that required IExplorer.

But just one half hour ago I experienced something that may make me lose my gruntleness. Internet Explorer is now required to DOWNLOAD FILES. Using Firefox I can navigate to the software process page, and with Firefox I can see the link to the software design specification template, but when using Firefox to retrieve that file I get a 404 error. When using Internet Explorer the file downloads fine.

Something this stupid cannot have been coded accidentally.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!

Re:Forced to use Internet Explorer by Brandybuck · 2005-01-26 11:47 · Score: 1

Sigh. I finally got a reply back from the IT department. I quote the entire response: "Is there some reason you can't use Internet Explorer?"

I've thought of a dozen cleverly sarcastic replies, but I want to keep my job... at least until I get my resume cleaned up.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Re:Forced to use Internet Explorer by myz24 · 2005-01-26 12:05 · Score: 1

Just use it and let IE answer that question for you. Let it fill up with spyware and then ask them for help.
Re:Forced to use Internet Explorer by Yuke!Yuke!Marina · 2005-01-26 15:19 · Score: 1

Maybe the User Agent Switcher Extension http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragen tswitcher/ would help?
Re:Forced to use Internet Explorer by Brandybuck · 2005-01-26 17:02 · Score: 1

Nope, I figured out what the problem was. The URLs were all munged. I fixed them and sent the author the corrections. He hasn't responded yet, so I think I pissed him off. Good.

--
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!

What it does: For those too lazy to look. by Dipster · 2005-01-26 10:25 · Score: 2, Informative

The only difference I see is they added a "My Speakeasy" menu after "Help". Inside are some resources for their customers and a bunch of bookmarks to various sites.

Interestingly enough, some of the sites that made the cut are OSTG, DistroWatch, ThinkGeek, and Newegg. Kinda odd for a plugin they're targeting at average users...

Others include Wikipedia, Babelfish, an entire section of gameing sites, and some shopping sites.

No Slashdot though...

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by SilverspurG · 2005-01-26 10:33 · Score: 1

I know I'm old-fashioned, but I think coders should be paid for their work.

The fact that they're still coding says that they still have food, shelter, clothing (most likely), electricity, and Mt. Dew. So they're getting paid somehow, at some level of happiness.

No one forced them to choose GPL. They did because they believe in it, and they can still eat and sleep in a warm and dry place.

No more GPL bashing.

--
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by Neoncow · 2005-01-26 10:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

If Speakeasy is offically supporting Firefox, does that mean that they will provide technical support for their users?

The logical answer is yes. Assuming they do so, Speakeasy is doing two important things for the Firefox devs.

They are promoting the browser to the people who need it (Ie. customers with spyware issues).
They are providing support for Firefox. Freeing up the community's time to persue other tasks (Ie. Developing Firefox)

From what I understand, this is good for the Mozilla foundation.

Lycos WebCentre by dirvish · 2005-01-26 10:51 · Score: 1

Here is another instance of an ISP pushing OSS.

--
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,

Now if only... by razorh · 2005-01-26 11:09 · Score: 1

They'd get around to putting a POP in Knoxville. I've been wanting a speakeasy account for years.

Openess == unintentional stupidity. by kosmosik · 2005-01-26 12:28 · Score: 1

It is like MSIE - with MSIE IPSs can set their own instalations (f.e. installing modem diriver) to change just few strings in registry and than instead of "Internet Explorer" on window title you will get "Internet Explorer - *FOOSHMOO* Welcomes you in Internet", this changes can reach (AFAIR) as deep as toolbar background, spinning "E" icon, bookmarks (as these are just files) and so on.

So things that I always considered as stupid crap are now possible via another way - via open software...

I don't diss OSS here, mind you. I've just have this though.

Yah, MSN is definitely teh R0X0RS... by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 13:15 · Score: 0

Yeah, Speakeasy's such a poser ISP....trying to mac offa Firefox's big name.

*MSN* is teh R0X0RS cuz they use IE!

Grrr by rbarreira · 2005-01-26 14:14 · Score: 1

In their firefox page, Speakeasy says:

"Smooth Downloading
Files are automatically saved to your Desktop making them easy to find."

When I read things like this (and they're also at firefox's official site), it makes me a little bit sick. Actually I dislike this feature and I dislike the fact that Firefox uses it as the default (not asking where you want to save the file, putting it in the desktop automatically).

My point is - they should either change this feature, change the way that they advertise it, or not advertise it at all... Something like "By default, files are saved to your desktop bla bla bla"...

Am I alone in this?

--

The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F

Re:Grrr by DeathPenguin · 2005-01-26 16:04 · Score: 1

This view should be popular amongst Slashdotters, but all in all it seems that people prefer not to think for themselves or just are not tech savvy enough to make many choices. Hence why apps bundled with Windows, no matter how crappy, tend to be the most popular of their kind (eg. WMP, Wordpad, etc). Same goes with filenames and paths, which is why a lot of Windows apps will automatically dump documents in "My Documents and Settings," put music in "My Music," etc.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by zakharin · 2005-01-26 14:48 · Score: 0

If it's anything like Verizon, then what they actually support is irrelevant due to their support being so bad. "Call Compaq and tell them that you need to have at least 50% of your memory free to use DSL." This was on an actual support call (two different techs told me this too) on an XP system with 512MB RAM.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by aussie_a · 2005-01-26 15:04 · Score: 2, Informative

I think coders should be paid for their work.

Fortunately the coders for Firefox disagree with you.

Validator plugin by Duck1123 · 2005-01-26 16:00 · Score: 1

I would love to see something like this incorporated into a plugin of sorts. It would be really nice (and usefull) to have a little icon on my status bar (between my PageRank indicator and Homeland Security button) that validates whatever page I am currently viewing and displays a "compliant" picture if it doesn't find any errors, or the number of errors found if it does.

This would have to be done locally somehow. Otherwise, we'd quickly crash w3c's servers by validating each and every page viewed. (plus we want it to work when viewing Slashdot)

I think this would also help more authors write standards-compliant code. I know I would be really mad if every time I pulled up my website I had to see "431" down in the corner. I would probably stay up all night untill it started saying "XHTML 1.0 Strict"

Re:Wanted Dead, not Alive by Duck1123 · 2005-01-26 17:00 · Score: 1

IE and Outlook are the same thing, Microsoft Windows. (or so Microsoft's Anti-trust team would like us to believe)

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-01-26 17:23 · Score: 0

Then maybe they shouldn't open-source and then freely distribute it?

REJECTED by EnderWigginsXenocide · 2005-01-26 19:17 · Score: 1

Speakeasy to offer Firefox browser Wednesday January 26, @04:36AM Rejected compared to Speakeasy Embraces Firefox Mozilla | Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 26, @01:00PM 0436 to 1300... that's over 8 hours it wasn't newsworth earlier, but it is now. Bloody hell. Go Moderators! So much for being consistant. I figured the mods would be consistant, they usualy approve the same story two, sometimes three times, in a row (famous slashdot dupes.)

--
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups. -- 0 1 My two bits

Re:REJECTED by roseblood · 2005-01-26 19:51 · Score: 1

Welcome to /.

--
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by Vince+Mo'aluka · 2005-01-26 23:34 · Score: 1

I think coders should be paid for their work

Unless you're a Firefox developer, that's not your decision to make, is it? By releasing Firefox under an open source license, the developers have already made clear that it's acceptable to modify and re-distribute the software.

--
You took his stuff. You pound him.

Re:Wanted Dead, not Alive by Secrity · 2005-01-27 12:36 · Score: 1

I wasn't including Active-X in a hypothetical compatibility model. I was referring to the rendering portion of the browser being able to display broken MSIE HTML.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?) by iminplaya · 2005-01-28 11:38 · Score: 1

I know I'm old-fashioned, but I think coders should be paid for their work.

Why? So you can charge more for yours? Are you so worried about the "property" value of your IP? You really sound like you want to prohibit the free exchange of information or anything else for that matter. So what... Should all human interaction cost money? Should we all be so greedy to demand money everytime we answer a question? Lest they acquire something for nothing(god forbid)? Thank goodness there are some people out there who work for real progress and not just looking for easy, fast money. They are our only hope. Those who wish to maintain the status quo are helping nobody. So get over it and try to realize that your work is no different from mine, and quit looking for special entitlements that most people will never recieve. Obviously to you "free" is a four letter word, and the concept should be wiped off the face of the earth. You seem to think that economics is the only thing that should motivate people. I got news for you. Some of us can feel pretty rich without much money. Some of us consider simple peace of mind more than sufficient. Some of us feel actual pleasure when we give something away. Do you wish to deny me that? Just so you can keep your property values up? Yeah, I guess you are old fashioned. You think like a typical 19th century capitalist. They didn't like "free" either.

--
What?

336 comments