Speakeasy Embraces Firefox

xdavexxx writes " Speakeasy, one of the largest DSL providers in the United States, recently announced that it will begin offering a specialized version of Mozilla Firefox to its customers. In doing so, they are one of the first internet companies to offer an official customized version of Firefox to its customers. This custom version of Firefox will keep the Firefox Google home page, but 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. Speakeasy's reasoning for this is simple; to increase the reliability and speed of its internet service." It should be pointed that Slashdot (and OSTG) have a partnership with Speakeasy.

Comments

SWEET!

[69sofine]

hope more companies start doing that

Re:SWEET!

[essreenim]

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!

[NardofDoom]

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.

Branded

[mboverload]

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

Re:Branded

[FrYGuY101]

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.

Re:Branded

[windows]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[Misch]

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.

Re:Branded

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called Mozilla Firefox: Speakeasy Edition.

Re:Branded

[ianezz]

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

[reustp]

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

[Eridanis]

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

[jsebrech]

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

[fiddlesticks]

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

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

Re:Branded

[Neoncow]

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

[kosmosik]

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

[geomon]

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).

Re:Firefox

[gandell]

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...

Re:Firefox

[geomon]

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.

Re:Firefox

[greechneb]

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

[KiltedKnight]

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.

Re:Firefox

[GoofyBoy]

>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.

Re:Firefox

[geomon]

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

I guess that was my point.

Re:Firefox

[peg0cjs]

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.

Re:Firefox

[greechneb]

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

[GoofyBoy]

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.

Re:Firefox

[innerweb]

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

Re:Firefox

[geomon]

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.

Re:Firefox

[innerweb]

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

Makes sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

[greechneb]

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...

[.Spyder78.]

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...

[adamjaskie]

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.

Re:Makes sense...

[mboverload]

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...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

[Masami Eiri]

Yeah, but Firefox has XPI extentions. Granted, you have to whitelist to install, but there are stupid users out there.

Re:Makes sense...

[CDMA_Demo]

don't transgaming have an axtivex mod for mozilla?

Re:Makes sense...

[LetterJ]

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.

Re:Makes sense...

[abxpacketloss]

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...

[zootm]

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...

[modge]

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

Re:Makes sense...

[northcat]

Interesting point. And less badwidth used by malware == lesser costs for Speakeasy.

Re:Makes sense...

[araemo]

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...

[Pierce]

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...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

[stephanruby]

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...

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

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...

[AstroDrabb]

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.

Re:Makes sense...

[jsebrech]

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...

[the_truk_stop]

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...

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

[Spy Hunter]

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.

This isn't exactly new....

[windows]

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....

[mboverload]

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....

[jxyama]

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....

[windows]

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....

[jxyama]

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....

[LuSiDe]

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!

Good way to spread it

[Kethinov]

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.

Re:Good way to spread it

[SStrungis]

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

[MixmastaKooz]

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

[hobbesx]

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.

Re:Good way to spread it

[dirvish]

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.

support calls

[grub]

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!

Re:support calls

[greechneb]

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

[aero2600-5]

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

Maybe I should RTFM..

Aero

Re:support calls

[generic-man]

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.

Re:support calls

[geomon]

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

U R here. R U ghey?

Re:support calls

[adamjaskie]

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

Re:support calls

[Masami Eiri]

If you've got a wheel-mouse, then you can hold control and roll the wheel forward then back.

Re:support calls

[naelurec]

I have been using the SlashFix extension and since installing, I have not had that issue anymore. hurray! :)

Re:support calls

[notthe9]

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

[orasio]

Wrong.
It's spelled "Uruguay"
http://www.seorf.ohiou.edu/~ae295/frames/simpsons/ homer2.html

Re:support calls

[Vengie]

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....)

Re:support calls

[geomon]

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

Re:support calls

[geomon]

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.

Re:support calls

[tonyr60]

Sure can. And it makes the page scroll up and down as well. Does not change the rendering though.

Re:support calls

[Vengie]

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.

Re:support calls

[Spunk]

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

[Rocinante]

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?

Re:support calls

[geomon]

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.

Re:support calls

[takkaria]

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

[generic-man]

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Re:support calls

[notthe9]

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

[generic-man]

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).

Re:support calls

[notthe9]

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?

[wdd1040]

Links that Speakeasy chooses?

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

Re:Ads?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, a bit far fetched to go from harmless links to spyware.

Re:Ads?

[Kentsusai]

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

[dsginter]

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.

Re:Wanted

[lordkuri]

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

[jimktrains]

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.

Re:Wanted

[KiltedKnight]

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.

Re:Wanted

[sloanster]

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

[Rude Turnip]

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.

Re:Wanted

[Secrity]

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

[dsginter]

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.

Re:Wanted

[stanleypane]

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

[pyros]

Maybe IE just cnat wrok around you're spelinlg and gramamr. :)

Re:Wanted

[miffo.swe]

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.

Re:Wanted

[Headcase88]

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

Re:Wanted

[Jahz]

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.

Re:Wanted

[Smallpond]

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

[Kashif Shaikh]

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

[sloanster]

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

[jsebrech]

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

[jimktrains]

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.

Re:Wanted

[iabervon]

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

[Secrity]

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

[natedubbya]

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

[geomon]

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.

Shoving?

[Spy der Mann]

Wouldn't you rather say... spoonfeeding?

Want shoving? Install winxp and start browsing the web.

Re:Shoving?

[kaustik]

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

[mboverload]

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

[aero2600-5]

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

Re:Speakeasy

[Osty]

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

[Halthar]

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

[MixmastaKooz]

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

[aToaster]

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

[jacrawf]

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.

Does Anyone Know?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[loconet]

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.

Re:Does Anyone Know?

[loconet]

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

Re:Does Anyone Know?

[Zardus]

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

Re:Does Anyone Know?

[Zorikin]

That is the toolbar that comes with the Web Developer extension.

Re:Does Anyone Know?

[zootm]

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?

[loconet]

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

Re:Does Anyone Know?

[zootm]

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...

[Anita Coney]

...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.

Re:This just in...

[ravenspear]

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...

[linicks]

... 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" :)

Re:This just in...

[Anita Coney]

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!

Re:This just in...

[Anita Coney]

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?

support costs

[confusion]

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

[niteice]

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

Baloney

[mapmaker]

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

[worst_name_ever]

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!

Re:Baloney

[mapmaker]

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

[arudloff]

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

[sfjoe]

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.

Re:Baloney

[jxyama]

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.

You know

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Speakeasy is pretty good.

[pyros]

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.

[yog]

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.

Re:Wrong place to start

[grub]

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.

Options..

[aero2600-5]

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

"Free" to use..

[wfberg]

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..

Re:"Free" to use..

[Lurker McLurker]

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.

Re:"Free" to use..

[kponto]

I imagine the discussion going something like this...

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

Mozilla: Umm..okay.

k

About Speakeasy in General

[$criptah]

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

[tribentwrks]

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

[$criptah]

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.

Hah hah

[gandell]

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...

Re:Hah hah

[Walterk]

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

Tech Support will Help Promote

[brandonp]

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

It's a plugin

[j2brown]

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

[j2brown]

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

Re:/. Doesn't render correctly?

[Enoch Root]

I got Firefox 1.0, and I don't see the problem you describe. Slashdot looks peachy.

Re:Who cares?

[stanleypane]

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.

Recommended Links

[ad0gg]

"... 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.

Re:/. Doesn't render correctly?

[EulerX07]

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...

If only they embraced lower prices as well

[melted]

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

[Halthar]

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:Who cares?

[outZider]

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.

Re:/. Doesn't render correctly?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Wait, I think I see the problem.

Re:Who cares?

[dcocos]

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/

From a support standpoint

[gandell]

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?"

Should make it easier for corp. customization

[raitchison]

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

[Wonko42]

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:Wanted Dead, not Alive

[miffo.swe]

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.

Its an Extension

[bogie]

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.

Re:Its an Extension

[TragicLad]

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

Not just for Geeks

[GnarlyNome]

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

Purolator

[EvilAlien]

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

Re:Purolator

[bhtooefr]

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

[LPetrazickis]

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.:)

Re:Purolator

[bhtooefr]

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

[bhtooefr]

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

[Myen]

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

[bhtooefr]

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.

Re:"Supporting" Firefox?

[aero2600-5]

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

Re:toolbars ARE spyware

[digidave]

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.

Re:Wrong place to start

[Anonymous Coward]

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:toolbars ARE spyware

[bcattwoo]

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:Who cares?

[FunWithHeadlines]

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:SWEET! (or shinola?)

[turnstyle]

"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.

List of URLs

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>>>>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:Wrong place to start

[dooglio]

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.

ActiveX

[RaZ0r]

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.

Re:ActiveX

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:Wrong place to start

[KiloKitten]

I would like if they would do that. I don't like ActiveX.

My Favorites!

[D3]

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

Re:My Favorites!

[Neoncow]

You mean Bookmarks right? =P

Re:LOL...Speakeasy?

[D3]

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

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?)

[shaitand]

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

[justdisguyyaknow]

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

Re:Good job, Timothy

[strider44]

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

[_newwave_]

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.

It is very pointed

[BillsPetMonkey]

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

It is very pointed, but not relevant.

Re:It is very pointed

[ndavidg]

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

[Adrilla]

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

Re:It is very pointed

[BillsPetMonkey]

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 ..."

Nice bookmarks

[Anonymous Custard]

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.

Official? Really?

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

official customized version of Firefox

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

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?)

[swv3752]

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).

Nope - not ads.

[TragicLad]

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.

Wow!

[HarveyBirdman]

I annoyed the Speakeasy shareholders or something. :-)

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

Re:Wow!

[FunWithHeadlines]

LOL. That's one way to react when you've made a mistake.

Re:Wow!

[HarveyBirdman]

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

[OT] Disclaimers

[zdzichu]

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?

Re:[OT] Disclaimers

[fallen1]

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."

I'm a Verizon DSL customer right now

[melted]

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

[Halthar]

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.

Re:/. Doesn't render correctly?

[SoTuA]

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

NOT a flame, but a serious question

[gothzilla]

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

[gothzilla]

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

[phauxfinnish]

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

[Lehk228]

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

Re:NOT a flame, but a serious question

[gothzilla]

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

[RJabelman]

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

*ahem*

Outlook?

Why current spyware/malware fails on Firefox

[CritterNYC]

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.

Actually you have it the wrong way round!!!

[SuperKendall]

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.

Read other replies

[SuperKendall]

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".

Promotion is support

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Wrong place to start

[aled]

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.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?)

[njcoder]

"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.

Here's what's in the XPI

[InvisiBill]

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

[asylum]

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

[Karma Star]

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...

Re:Thanks for the advert

[SewersOfRivendell]

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?

[Forgery]

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?

[jonwil]

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?

[Lehk228]

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

can you...

[climbing_monkey]

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

LOL!

[propus]

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

Forced to use Internet Explorer

[Brandybuck]

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.

Re:Forced to use Internet Explorer

[Brandybuck]

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.

Re:Forced to use Internet Explorer

[myz24]

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

[Yuke!Yuke!Marina]

Maybe the User Agent Switcher Extension http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/useragen tswitcher/ would help?

Re:Forced to use Internet Explorer

[Brandybuck]

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.

Re:Wrong place to start

[dooglio]

You can find it here:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=2062 13/

Re:Same here

[jsebrech]

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.

What it does: For those too lazy to look.

[Dipster]

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?)

[SilverspurG]

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.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?)

[Neoncow]

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.

1. They are promoting the browser to the people who need it (Ie. customers with spyware issues).
2. 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

[dirvish]

Here is another instance of an ISP pushing OSS.

Now if only...

[razorh]

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

Openess == unintentional stupidity.

[kosmosik]

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.

Re:Wrong place to start

[apa666]

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?

Grrr

[rbarreira]

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?

Re:Grrr

[DeathPenguin]

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:Wrong place to start

[Lehk228]

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.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?)

[aussie_a]

I think coders should be paid for their work.

Fortunately the coders for Firefox disagree with you.

Re:Who cares?

[Whumpsnatz]

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.

Validator plugin

[Duck1123]

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

[Duck1123]

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

REJECTED

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

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.)

Re:REJECTED

[roseblood]

Welcome to /.

Re:SWEET! (or shinola?)

[Vince Mo'aluka]

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.

Re:Wanted Dead, not Alive

[Secrity]

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?)

[iminplaya]

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.