Slashdot Mirror
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.
Lets just hope they keep the name Firefox somewhere on the program so they can tell their friends.
Fewer Malware programs target FireFox, less security vulnerabilities, means less bandwidth is used by said malware and more by the actual customers.
Kudos, Speakeasy.
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.
Many ISP customers just do exactly what their ISP tells them to. If this ISP starts shoving Firefox down customers' throats, Firefox market share could drastically increase over IE's.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Weenie: Good morning, Speakeasy Help Desk. How may I help you?
User: Slashdot renders wrong in your ghey browser~()@*!@!(*
Weenie: Ah, just ctrl-minus ctrl-plus.
User: Woot! Thanks, mang!
Trolling is a art,
And by that, I mean the security holes creaping in.
That very well could be.
The difference between IE and Firefox will be in how well they respond to the bugs that are found.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Anyway, we should commend them greatly. Now we can say that ISP's even recommend it.
...Microsoft has asked the BSA to investigate claims that Speakeasy is using software without proper licensing and in violation of several patents.
Stay tuned for more on this story as it develops.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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/
Actually by replacing IE they are pretty much ending the use of ActiveX over their network. Less 0wn3ed machines == less spam/zombies/what have you. It is proactive on their part.
Trolling is a art,
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.
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
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
By recommended, I'd assume sponsered links. But after checking they were actually legit links. I have seen other extensions that set their affliate codes, the last one i saw was the amazon search tool which tags all the search results with their affliate code.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Does that include:
"This custom version of Firefox will have the Speakeasy logo and feature a Speakeasy toolbar filled with links recommended by Speakeasy. No money was exchanged between the Mozilla Foundation and Speakeasy, as Firefox is open source and is freely available for use by anyone."
I know I'm old-fashioned, but I think coders should be paid for their work.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
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.
Thanks for disclosing the fact that OSTG has a relationship with the vendor it's promoting.
If you had RTFA, you would see that all Speakeasy has done is created a plugin. You still have to install the regular version of Firefox.
And the Plugin just adds some bookmarks and change an icon or two (at least that is what they tell us).
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life