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.
Fewer Malware programs target FireFox, less security vulnerabilities, means less bandwidth is used by said malware and more by the actual customers.
Kudos, Speakeasy.
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,
At the very least, let's hope this provides a critical mass which means that site operators have to deal with IE AND Firefox, rather than simply viewing FireFox as a negligable market.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
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