Slashdot Mirror
Internet Explorer 7 To Be XP Only
WindozeSux writes "The new Microsoft browser, Internet Explorer 7 will only be available for users of Windows XP. However, due to the fact the that a large amount of Windows users do not own Windows XP, IE7 is expected to boost the amount of Firefox users. From the article: 'Improvements in Firefox, along with IE 7 restrictions, could lead to a dramatic increase in the open-source browser's market share, according to Dotzler.'"
No IE7 For 2k, Now In Extended Service... posted by ZONK! More proof he doesn't read things he approves.
This is getting scary.
] $/])for@F;$_="$s[-1]\n"'
We must fight against the Mozilla organization, for it distributes a "gateway OSS", which leads users down the path towards more powerful OSS, such as perl and emacs, which can be downright dangerous, leading to all sorts of permanent afflictions such as repetitive stress syndrome (featured in the well-known film, "Ctrlfinger"), as well as a gluttonous addiction to loosely typed programming languages. Over time, they tend to turn into "hackers," exploiting and even distributing OSS from their basements. This is just the first stage.
In Stage II, they join nefarious communities, with alien names such as "comp.theory," even wasting weeks and weeks to learn foreign languages just to communicate in locations such as "ruby-dev". They also begin typing in tongues. Just the other day, at our clinic, I walked across one addict with a window open, or I think it was a window -- the screen was all weird with footprints and insignia all over it, and in it he was writing material which looked like text yet did not read like text. It looked like he was trying to express something with a violent combination of chomps and chops and splices!
At Stage III, they begin idol-worship -- of demons and penguins, displaying their idols in public with stickers on their laptops. They begin to find pleasure in strange, alien activities, like changing their keyboard layouts around so that nobody else can use them, and buying calculators that read in input in some backwards order, with no equals key, and then they become fanatics who insist that everybody should learn this backwards method! If you ever see somebody lend out a calculator and then smirk when a borrower innocently walks away, you know they have reached Stage III.
At Stage IV, they wonder how to emulate their freshly bought calculator on their computer, in one of the tongues that they have learned. Those who have spent weeks of using the powerful and addictive OSS called perl begin to write "rpn.pl" in progressively smaller scripts, using that violent abortion of chops and slices. First, they make one that works in twelve lines, which is unhealthily short already. Then they naturally levitate towards three lines, two lines, one and a half lines, exhibiting some obsession towards achieving their goal in less than 80 characters. Some succeed, but only after several nervous breakdowns and complete distachment from spouse and family. Some begin their ramblings with references to primates, as seen in one quotation I've seen,
perl -ape 'eval(("\$s[-2]$_=pop\@s",q[push@s,$_])[!/^[-+*\/
If they succeed, this usually means that Stage V has been reached. It is believed that they begin to realize that they are seriously damaged, because they rather suddenly start mumbling about the "brainfuck" they're enduring. This realization dies away quickly, as they type out long meaningless random strings.
Occasionally, they manage to come out from their mental ruts, but only for short periods of time. These spells give our researchers a rare glimpse at what happens to their minds, as they make repeated references to things that don't exist, except perhaps in their hallucinations. They still have connections to their dreamworld. For example, I mentioned to one patient about how my niece got an A++ on a recent examination in school. And the patient replied, "She got a B? Well, better luck next time." He must have misheard, or so I thought, so I answered, "No, she got an A++," enunciating the A + + slowly. And the patient smiled knowingly, responding: "Exactly. I hope she gets an A next time." I gave up on that conversation.
There are further stages of this terrible affliction, but they would be too graphic to list here. My point is, this "Firefox" isn't just a harmless OSS that causes minor but and temporary impairment; it is the first step of a path towards destruction, and we must fight its spread with all our resources.
I doubt this will cause a 'dramatic' increase. The kind of people not running XP aren't the kind of people who care about upgrading their browser either. They will probably stick with IE5/6 whatever they are currently using and continue to be oblivious to the options available to them. Those people who are even following IE7 or even care, are the kind of people who are already using Firefox/Opera/etc anyway.
"a large amount of Windows users do not own Windows XP"
I'd say that a large amount of the Windows XP users also do not own Windows XP...
...making the browser part of the OS is a Bad Idea. If it was "just an app", it could (probably) easily be made to run on Win2K. Since it's in bed with the OS, upgrading the browser now requires an SP-level update to the OS.
Dumb. Very dumb.
MS realized that the last IE as well as the last OS (prior to XP) had some major security problems. Making all software back compatible is only going to make them more susceptible to similar problems. Going forward, and considering the fact that it has been over 5 years since the release of XP, it is thus wise that they are restricting it to XP only. In the IT industry, if you have not upgraded in 5 years (user programs, OS, Apps etc - not mission critical infrastructure), then there's something lacking and left to be desired. The software industry is constantly evolving and so should you. Who here run pre-2.0 kernel on their Linux boxes? I am sure some of you do, but not many.
I don't remember anyone suing RH for cutting the support for RH 9.x and before, or not releasing a binary of a new product for the RH platform.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
Part of the reasons MS's product releases take so long and are so complex is their obligation to be backwardly compatible with all previous versions. And they've done a great job of it. (I have software that was written in 1994 for Windows 3.1 and it still runs fine on XP.)
Cutting the cord and telling Windows user's they must have XP is tough love, but will likely result in a more stable product and faster maintenance releases.
This approached worked great for Apple when they went to OS X.
Sam
This isn't good news for the web in general. One of the better things to come from XP was IE 6.0, which brought an improved CSS model to both XP and 2000 at the time. If the improvements in IE 7.0 are restricted to Longhorn only, it could be a very long time before reliance on older methods can begin to fade out. I'd like to believe a lot of the users will move to Firefox, but due to its already high levels of publicity, I'm unsure as to just how much of an unaware market remains for a 'better browser'
Business Voyeur
The predicted mass conversion to Firefox is flawed reasoning. IE 6 users aren't going to say, "Oh my gosh, IE 7 for XP is out! My IE 6 on 98 is now worthless! Oh horrors! I'd better download Firefox pronto!"
They'll just ignore the announcement and keep on using IE 6.0, 5.5, and 5.0, just as they have been for years.
"Nobody owns XP, it's licensed, like most software."
Oh, yeah, that made a big fucking dent in his point.
"Derp de derp."
You can say that the Linux browsers are backward compatible but I would like to see you take modern v ersions of Firefox or KDE and the like and build/install it on a distribution from 1999/2000. Can you imagine the library differences or the effort you would have with upgrading all of the RPMs in a version of RedHat from that era. Now, since you are charged for most of the commercial Linux distros when you are told to upgrade the distro for the sake of getting modern libraries you are in essence being told to upgrade to get a modern browser and modern versions of all of the software. This is totally ok but when MS wants to depricate their OSes in the same way you hear "they are charging $100 for just a browser upgrade." You are not paying just for a browser upgrade but an upgrade to all of the latest versions of everyting in the OS and you are paying for the security and bug fix updates for years and years. MS is a company and they put out a good product in modern windows and office that is worth paying for. I love and I use Linux but I get disgusted occasionally by such bias, double-standards and MS-can-do-no-right additude.
Don't you know?
Mods don't read before they submit their moderations. Heavens know I never do... O_o
Sounds perfectly fair to me. Linux applications often have very specific version dependencies, why not software you have to pay for?
I don't expect to be able to run OO.o on Slackware 1.0 out-of-the-box, and I don't expect IE7 to have to run on old software either.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Now if IE fuckes up a computer, and someone gets pissed off enough, they can sue Microsoft, saying the user PAID money for a product and trusted that product.
Actually, you didn't pay for IE. You payed for Windows, and IE came free with it. It was a cunning move Microsoft made back in the day.
In fact, It was a good move on Microsoft's part to make IE free. Since IE is based on NCSA Mosiac technology, MS agreed to pay a small quarterly license fee plus a share of the profits from IE to NCSA. Since IE has been free for the past decade, all NCSA has gotten has been the small quarterly license fees.
NCSA thought they had a good deal, but ended up getting the short end of the stick.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Yes, and? Apple does it. The latest version of Safari RSS isn't available for the previous point release of OS X, let alone a totally new OS. But wait, if it's Apple, no one on slashdot complains, because its not MS.
Wow. Just wow.
There is far more to the law than whether you pay for something. Try asking a lawyer about promissory estoppel, and enjoy.
Microsoft no doubt have all kinds of disclaimers written into their EULAs about not being liable for more than the price paid for the software, etc. So do many other firms. I'm not aware of these ever being tested in court anywhere, which makes me suspect it's clear to lawyers that they are valid (given the obvious scope for massive damages if it weren't, and how long they've been routine for).
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Because moderators are idiots.
Every time I'm trying to be funny, Slashdot mods give me a +5, INTERESTING or INSIGHTFUL. Every time I'm trying to be insightful or interesting, they give me a +5, FUNNY.
Wrong. Windows 2000's mainstream support was retired on June 30th, 2005. See here.Microsoft will continue to support Windows 2000 for corporations that have purchased the extended support license until 2010.
However, according to this site, Microsoft is going to support IE6 until September 2006. I'm not really sure what that means since they haven't updated the browser significantly in 2 years or so.
IE7 will be bundled with Longhorn, and people will likely continue to use whatever is bundled on their PC's... I don't see IE's dominance letting up anytime soon, despite Firefox being a superior browser (in my opinion).
Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths....
I'm utterly stumped as to why ANYONE would think this will move people to firefox. Let's review: NOBODY is "waiting" for IE7 on 2k. If they're using IE6, it's for a reason. Hell, 2k for "home users" in all reality is non-existant. None of the major vendors ever sold 2k en masse to the general public. Any corporations that are using 2k are usine IE for internal pages, and news flash: they don't give a flying fuck about PNG support, or the latest tabbed browsing, when it comes to internal pages that have Active-X type functions.
IE7 isn't going to change anyone over. Nobody will upgrade "just for IE7", and nobody is switching to firefox just because IE7 isn't available for 2k. If you really believe that any major enterprise will be like "oh, we can't get *native* tabbed browsing for IE, let's spend $10million on a new web system so that we can use firefox with it, you're a crackhead.
Basically anything firefox can do, someone has made an add-on for IE. It may not be native, but I doubt the majority of IE users give a flying fcuk.
Microsoft went this route already with DirectX, which is why nobody who likes computer games runs Win95 (or Win98 non-SE) anymore. You need at least Win98SE to use DirectX 9.0b/c, and they plan to require Win2k to use DirectX 9.0d.
However, this leverage actually has some effect, because a lot of games don't include both DirectX and OpenGL support, and hardware manufacturers have no interest in writing new drivers for old OSes when the DirectX component won't even work on the old OS. So, in order to play the next generation of games, users are forced to upgrade.
On the other hand, in the web browsing arena, any competent web browser gives you the same functionality as IE (if not better), and there are several to choose from. What's more, the current crop of web browsers is not under threat of obsolescence, since web standards don't change nearly fast enough to make that happen. IE7 not working in anything earlier than XP might not create a mass exodus to Firefox, but it also won't cause mass upgrades to XP, as long as IE6 still works.
Note that I'm not saying that Microsoft's original intentions related to either DirectX or IE7 were to coerce users into upgrading. However, I'm sure that once their team of marketing wonks got ahold of the idea, any concerns held by the programmers about unsupported users were quickly cut asunder.
The software industry is constantly evolving and so should you.
What does a business benefit, if their current software does the job? Is a new version of Word going to suddenly make all of a secretary's documents better? Are their spreadsheets suddenly going to command more attention?
And as far as IE7 is concerned, what will it bring to a business whose intranet is optimized for IE6?
None of these increase cashflow; in fact, they will probably reduce productivity with all the Help Desk calls it'll generate when the new software doesn't look exactly like the old.
Most businesses will get IE7 when they buy new machines, not before.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Oh yeah... like it is such a big thing that IEX 7 is for the XP only. What is the big deal? Another product out of Redmond will be buggy at first and soon the updates will be following. So folks will change to Firefox..big deal or.. even switch to Apple with Safari.(the best choice ofcourse) And those still using 98SE/ME/2000? Let them..at least they don't have to worry about those frequent patches/updates..
" Always look on the bright side of life "