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Dvorak Says MS Should Buy Opera
patro writes "Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Dvorak thinks buying Opera would be a smarter move. It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore and $400 million for it is pocket money for Microsoft."
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
(filler text to get around message filters)
...Dvorak is a hack...so, there you have it.
Last week everyone thought Opera was being bought by Google. So now its obvious that MS should buy it first to keep it out of the hands of Google.
Microsoft doesn't want their stuff to work on all other platforms... After all, they intentionally discontinued work on IE for mac, and have bought several companies only to immediately axe their Linux offerings.
Microsoft is not a company selling apps, Microsoft is a company selling lock-in. As long as customers are sticking with them, they don't really need to spend "pocket change" to keep up with technology.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
it would obviously be the smarter thing to do, but they don't wanna admit they're wrong.....they're gonna hold IE close like it was their first baby blanket
Wow! That's the best idea I've ever heard. There should be absolutely no problems shoehorning it into Vista by next year. Way to go, Dvorak! You deserve a raise!
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Doesn't MS claim to be so great because of their amazing ability to innovate and change the world with their one of a kind technology... Now they're supposed to buy an existing browser, and do away with the one they've had since "who knows how long.." all for corporate image? Are they then going to re-write the windows OS to use "Operlorer" as well? It seems unlikely this will ever happen... Silicon says Google might buy Opera though - will they get to it first?
Then after the "MS Opera" release, firefox would have even less competition.
A nice secondary benefit from acquiring Opera would be all their mobile browsing tech. Am I wrong in thinking they make more dough from the mobile device stuff than the regular browser?
This guy proves he is once again off his rocker. IE 7, even in beta (with the latest builds of Vista), is a damn fine browser. Better than even Firefox/Mozilla dare I say it. Microsoft's browser team is doing just fine on its own.
Dvorak has apparently forgotten all the work that Microsoft put into stuffing Internet Explorer and its components into every unlikely corner of the Windows operating systems. You can't just easily rip that out and replace it with a new browser..
But more importantly, IE is, I believ, used as the rendering engine for a whole lotta apps. I imagine the cost of replacing it would be a lot higher than the cost of buying Opera for $400m.
Opera can be uninstalled.
But that would be admitting defeat with IE, so I wouldn't look for that to happen. Besides, where would we all be if we couldn't bi73# and moan about MS not being able to make a worthwhile browser? :)
Wouldn't this be in violation of antitrust laws? Microsoft can't just buy out all of their competition out there. I don't think the government would allow it. At least they shouldn't. That's why I like Open Source, Because you can't buy it out. I think this is Microsofts greatest fear. A competitor they can't defeat, simply by buying it out.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This makes me think I overestimated him.
MS chooses to stop supporting the Mac with IE. For whatever reason, they think that's in their best interest. Now Dvorak thinks that's MS should spend $400M to abandon the browser they've been pushing for 10 years, to buy one that supports an OS they just walked away from.
MS hasn't even stopped supoport for IE yet, just annouced it. If they changed their mind and think it's such a big mistake, they can continue IE on MacOS.
But it would be a terrible move from a PR perpective. It would be like admitting they're not able to program a decent browser; they'd look like they're buying the small guy, which many less-than-rational people think is a very bad thing to do; and the user experience would be so much different than what they're used to. Let's not forget Opera has always been years in advance of the competition - heck, they were teh cool way back in version 3.
Global warming is a cube.
They can stuff it with their links, write in their ActiveX/DLL extensions, make a better Windows-like skin... whatever.
Of course, I can't imagine them risking putting open source software in such a high-visibility area, but a web developer can dream.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
1. Would probably be anti-competitive and may cause more legal problems for MS.
2. Will make MS look really bad if they can't keep up or rewrite a web browser. The world's largest software company can't handle their own web browser code? Major PR and industry set back.
3. Would be a waste of almost HALF A BILLION dollars considering the money already put into IE. MS could afford to buy most small countries, but that doesn't mean its a good idea.
4. Won't do activeX and other MS propriety stuff out of box. The labor to fix this could be spent elsewhere - making IE7.
But the idea does mean Dvorak gets another paycheck. Bravo, man. Someday I hope to have a cush job like yours.
Dvorak is an idiot.
Why would MS purchase Opera when they have a relatively stable web browser of their own for free? They'll spend far less than $400M fixing issues and adding features to IE, and the best part for them is that they're already familiar with it and are used to working with it.
If MS were to do anything with a new browser, they'd be smart to branch Firefox and develop an open source version that can do the things they want it to do (ActiveX). Or they could just continue working on IE7, which will probably ship with Longhorn, and have a browser they made, that they can control, that works exactly how they want, at a fraction of the cost of purchasing Opera, and will likely be just as stable and secure with the enhancements they're making in Longhorn.
Yeah Dvorak... you hit this on the head.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
He's just another utterly clueless pundit. To have them buy Opera is to admit that they didn't have what it takes to secure and extend the thing. MS flatly won't be inclined to do that if they can help it- this suggestion is in the same class as saying MS ought to do a Linux version of MS Office.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Unlikely. Opera isn't compatible with Microsoft's business strategy since it implements web standards.
1. Write some code 2. Slip Dvorak some free booze 3. Get bought by Microsoft for "pocket change" 4. Move to Grand Cayman
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
I don't know how much Microsoft needs the browser but Opera has (had?) some great developers. They don't get the credit they deserve for innovation (the market price for web browsers has always been zero, so almost no one has seen Opera) but they introduced a lot of new stuff including, IIRC, both tabbed browsing and popup blocking (later popularized by Galeon and Konqueror, respectively).
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If someone had posted something like this on Slashdot he would've promptly been slapped with a -1 flamebait.
The smart move for the company would be for Microsoft to discard the entire code base of Internet Explorer and buy the Opera browser (from Norway) outright and use it instead.
Not that it has ever stopped Microsoft from doing anything, but wouldn't it be illegal for them to buy their competitors when they have a 90% share of the market? At least that's what they taught me in ECO 101.
I say bullshit. GOOGLE should buy Opera. Google at least is MUCH quicker at real-time updating of user interfacing with the world.
On top of that, if the web-based apps become the new OS environment, then Google and Opera would be a finer marriage than Opera being bought and destroyed by ms' hands.
C'mon. How is ms a good thing for us and for Opera users???!!!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'm pretty sure the point is that if MS buys Opera, it would not be to add a browser to the financial portfolio, but to have a more secure browser. MSOpera would form the basis of the next gen of IE, which would still be given away for free.
The only reason that MS would buy Opera would be to stick it in a deep dark place where it would never ever be found, except to may 1) rip code off from it, and/or 2) try and use it as a basis from which to slap IP lawsuits against erstwhile competitors. There is no way in hell that MS is going to rip out IE, or in any other such fashion shoehorn or munge Opera code or Opera-like code into the picture. Just no freekin' way. Why should they? It is no longer in their interest to make IE available for other non-MS platforms, as it is no longer needed to help them be #1 in browser share. Yeah, it would be cool if they did, and used it to cover all these platforms and with an app, (note "app" not "OS functionality"), that was more secure, but that presupposes that they care about that. I submit that they don't. If MS were to buy Opera, then the fat lady will indeed have sung. (pun intended, sorry)
Opera is already designed to appear to Web sites as Internet Explorer. This feature was added to prevent sites from blocking non-Microsoft browsers from capturing data and downloading.
This sounds like the closest thing to a Borg assimilation that I have ever heard.
Only another daring Enterprise can stop it from becoming part of the collective.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Now that they've innovated IE into the core of Windows I don't see how they can replace it with another browser.
Integrating IE tightly into Windows wasn't just a way to flout the antitrust rulings, it was a Really Good Idea (tm).
Microsoft doesn't want a very nice UI for the web unless they control it. If the standards supported a nice neat replacement for your typical win32 gui then Microsoft is pretty much out of business as they currently stand. It's inevitable that the web GUI encroaches on win32 GUI applitions hence why MS is getting more and more into online services. The writing is on the wall and they'll resist the writing as long as possible - which means a crippled IE with lagging features for all of us.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
I have IE, Firefox, and Opera on my systems, and IE is consistently the fastest and least crash prone. I understand that IE has had security vulnerabilities, but, well, so have all the others just as soon as they gained some popularity. Sure, each have some nice features that IE don't, like built-in popup blockers and a password remembering feature that actually works, but all those things I have better any way free IE add-ons.
I just don't see any real technical / usbility reason to switch. Plus, if i type "C:\" in the address bar of IE, it looks normal and usable, not like firefox, which puts me in the wayback machine to 1994 UI land, so I can actually interoperate between my local PC and web browsing easily.
Opera is the best browser all around, microsoft don't deserve it.
First, why does anyone care what Dvorak is saying. Second, Opera is irrelevant by any serious standards. I don't care about it's minimal market share or how well it works. Third, MS has hired so many security professionals to work on IE and have IE 7 in the works. It'd be a pathetic move to switch over from IE and then have to port everything that has been done over to Opera and audit the code first and get everyone familiar with the base and then integrate opera into the OS the way IE is integrated.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Why does Dvorak even make it on here? I'm not trying to troll, just noticing that every Dvorak post made is a HUGE flamewar against his ignorance in computing. I mean, sure, he can have his opinion. But why does it make slashdot EVERY single time he makes a comment?
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
From MarketWatch: Opera Software trades on the Oslo Stock Exchange for around 21 Norwegian Kroner or about $3 a share. Microsoft could buy the whole company for less than $400 million.
Now if the Norwegians were smart, they'd put Opera up on eBay, to drive up the price. I can see MS and Firefox duking it out, and then Google comes along and snatches it away from both of them at the last second!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I'm not so sure they would, although perhaps as a publicly-traded company they wouldn't have a whole lot of choice. Maybe they could poison-pill their stock, call in Google as their saviour.
--
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Consider this - IE has more than 80% of the browser market share IE is coming out with a brand new version boasting a lot of features with Vista IE does not make ANY MONEY for Microsoft So the question you have to ask is.. What was Dvorak Smoking when he wrote this ? I dont think Bill Gates became the richest Guy in the world writing a lot of checks ;)
..And the people bowed and prayed, To the neon gods they made.
Opera also introduced tabbed browsing and other cool features since adopted by Firefox but not, as yet, implemented by Microsoft.
I'm not sure if it is his poor sentence structure or if he is trying to imply that Opera copied Firefox's tabs. Opera was the first to have tabs in Opera 6.0 (many years ago).
Curiously, Opera is already designed to appear to Web sites as Internet Explorer. This feature was added to prevent sites from blocking non-Microsoft browsers from capturing data and downloading.
Dvorak, do your homework; Opera 9.0 (soon to be released) identifies as Opera.
Furthermore, Google is supposed to buy Opera, not Microsoft, and personally, I would preffer if Google buys it. If Microsoft buys it, they'll have to strip it dry and take only the rendering engine because they have Outlook Express and Outlook. They can't show that Opera and Gmail (Google copied Opera) have a better eMail client.
There's only one smart reason for Microsoft to buy Opera: to stop Google from buying it or forming a Google/Opera partnership that locks MS out.
Firefox is not a threat to MS. Opera is not a threat to MS. But Google has enough verve and popularity to potentially get a Google-branded Opera browser into the hands of the masses.
Observation: MS decides to cede the Mac OS to Firefox and Safari.
Conclusion: MS should totally abandon 10 years of IE development and research and go buy Opera.
Nice job there Dvorak. While we're on the subject, why don't you go trade off your car because it's due for a tune up. Or better yet, sell your house because the furnace needs replaced.
Seriously, is this what it takes to get hits these days? Christ this is Weekly World News quality. Why doesn't he just start writing about Bill and Bigfoots love child?
I can't see that happening, giving up on IE would show people that its not viable for anything anymore and they would lose people who wouldn't come back for the "new" IE browser.
If they did buy Opera, I would stop using it in a second and go with Firefox. I would be very sad to lose such an amazing browser. Thankfully, I don't see this as a problem.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
He could be their mascot, and beat up the Linux penguin and the Mac... whatever the hell that thing is in the Mac logo.
Let me give my opinion on the notion that MS should acquite Opera with an oddly appropriate Scrubs reference:
Mistaaaaaaaaaaake!!!
Ho-ho-ho, this wouldn't be the festive season without a good laugh from the world's wackiest columnist. Probably the best idea would be for Microsoft to buy John C. Dvorak and hastily patent that little portrait picture atop column. Dvorak would cost Microsoft chump change and he can be guaranteed to work across all three major platforms and a host of minor ones with almost no reconfiguration at all. A laugh is a laugh in any language and, heck, you only need a browser to read it.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
Microsoft already covered this when they based IE on Mosaic years ago. Mosaic used to run on more platforms. They could just take the Opera code base and do the same thing they did with Mosaic, knee-cap and labotomize it.
Seriously though, I think it's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. I don't see why MS should want to sink so much money into something that they already have and don't really make money on anyway. It may be pocket change for MS at this point, but that doesn't mean they should throw their pocket change in the gutter. The future not incredibly rosey for this point, they need better planning than to buy someone elses product that does the same thing as something they already have. You may not like IE, but it's good enough for the majority of users. I'm not trying to evangelize MS BTW, I'm writing this message through Firefox.
... that had plans to acquire Opera?!
Take off every 'sig'!
All your 'sig' are belong to us!
Yah I know I am a bit of a geek niche, but this months stats on inventgeek.com ( my site ) look to be at about 23% IE users and 56% Firefox users!
I think IE is dieing in the geek market
You should try the newest Opera build, it blows FF away. The only possible way FF beats it is via extensions.
Opera has (had?) some great developers. They don't get the credit they deserve for innovation
Now THERE you're really hitting the point, but not even completely. It's not just their innovating new features, but the performance they're able to achieve with their application. The speed and memory requirements are fantastic compared to everything else out there. IE and FF can't touch Opera for memory usage OR speed (in most cases).
I just wish it's renderer was better; it produces goofy results too often. I'd like to see them take the Gecko renderer and run it through the Opera-resource-debigulator(tm) and use that in Opera. I'd also like them to make an email client that doesn't require 30Meg of RAM, and actually performs at a reasonable speed. Ugh. Let's hope Thunderbird 1.5 is a big improvement in the performance arena, though I have no hope it'll be anything other than worse in the resource requirements arena.
"...many consider Opera to not only be the best browser available, but the fastest and the one with the best page rendering engine. Opera also introduced tabbed browsing and other cool features since adopted by Firefox but not, as yet, implemented by Microsoft."
First of all, anyone who has done extensive CSS/XHTML based design knows that Opera is not the best "rendering engine". Second, this guy's whole article ignores the upcoming release of IE7, which not only has great tabbed browsing but a whole host of other features that are heads & tails above Opera (IMHO), so his whole article is osbsolete.
I don't think I've yet read an article by this Dvorak fellow that made a good point.
Opera has been completely free (as in Beer http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/20/121723 2&from=rss) with no ads for a while now... I am really surprised how few people actually use it.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
If job security for existing MS programmers is an issue, just given them all a yearly decreasing proportion of their current salaries for the next 5 years: 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, 20% -- and during that time let them find financing to compete.
Seastead this.
Yup. That and there's nothing inherently wrong with IE that MS doesn't basically refuse to fix. There's no patent's they'd be buying. Opera doesn't have (now) anything that other browsers don't or can't figure out how to make. Opera doesn't have the sort of resources that would make them worth acquiring.
In other words, there is no way in hell this happens - MS is completely capable of creating a good browser if they care enough to do so. They've demonstrated this in the past. There's no need for them to spend $400M for the privelege.
This one is even dumb by Dvorak's standards.
Dvorak claims that IE doesn't support tabbed browsing, but he doesn't allude to the very well-known features that are being included in IE 7. IE 7 supports tabbed browsing and is available in a private beta. (I'm using it right now.) Microsoft also is creating a Phishing filter. (I don't know what kind of anti-phishing effort Opera is making.)
Personally, I see a browser as something like a car stereo. IE and Safari are "stock"; Opera and Firefox are "aftermarket". Creating a Mac version of IE is a considerable effort that won't bring any revenue to Microsoft. It will also hinder a browser-neutral web as web developers can just tell Mac users to "Download IE".
In addition, Dvorak's statement about Microsoft waiting for the x86 Mac to port IE shows that he really doesn't understand the difference between computer platforms today. Computer programs, especially GUI intensive ones like web browsers, are easily ported among many CPUs because they are written in high-level languages. They are difficult to port among different operating systems because the GUI APIs are very different.
No, I will not work for your startup
There was a point in time that I thought Dvorak was an "industry insider" who had a unique perspective on technology and its impacts. Over time he's become less and less connected and as a consequence less and less relevant.
Microsoft is a business and ultimately they invest their money when they believe they are going to get a good return on their investment. Purchasing Opera, beyond any anti-trust concerns, does not seem like a marriage of companies that would thrive. The cultural differences between them are likely large. This also assumes that Opera wants to be purchased although in the end everything is for sale if the price is right, I guess.
Paul Barth
They're going to have to compete with FREE browsers anyway. What? They think they can still FOOL people with a 'better' browser? Most web app developers nowadays aren't even using Microsoft technology anyway. Between software engineers who develop software because they need it and those that do it for the money, I would go with the former, anyday.
HELLOOOOOO?????
Also, if the EU imposing major daily fines becomes a reality, why do they even bother. I often wonder if Microsoft's technical and marketing staff are communicating with each other. Why don't they just cut their losses and develop XBoxes - that's about the only thing they're good at.
I think it makes more sense for Google to buy them because of the close ties that Firefox and Opera have with them. Not only that, but it gives Google a credible product for mobile platforms and a way of pushing their search engine on mobile devices the way that Microsoft uses Internet Explorer to push MSN on desktop PC and laptop users that use Windows.
Besides, it would only add a lot of confusion for Microsoft's developers. Now, if Microsoft were to make it so that Opera's rendering engine became a replacement for Internet Explorer's that might be something else, but at this point, they've probably got too much money invested in IE for them to drop any part of it without a court order.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Not after MS buys it.
Btw, does Opera even support ActiveX, FrontPage extensions, and all the other elements of MS E^3?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
is too late for the you-mean-the-keyboard-don't-you thing?
Since when does the company with the dominant market share feel compelled to gobble up competitors with trivial market share for a product from which it doesn't make money?
This just makes no sense at all on so many levels. As long as IE has a dominant market share, Microsoft has no incentive to improve anything about the web experience, and they have many incentives to do the opposite.
By his reasoning of "web browsers leading people to search engines", maybe they should also buy Logitech. After all, it's the keyboard and mouse that really take people where they're going.
I can't fathom why MS would want Opera. Nothing against Opera, but IE is also application development platform for Microsoft, not just a browser. (Yeah, we know how secure that has turned out.) But Opera won't give them anything there.
Dvorak wrote: Curiously, Opera is already designed to appear to Web sites as Internet Explorer.
:-)
The same was true for NCSA Mosaic. And Mosaic became - you guessed it - the Microsoft Internet Explorer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer
Mr. Dvorak is now in his dotage. Although I have to admit, he gave it the old college try with his keyboard, but it will never take off. Oh wait, that was August Dvorak. Nevermind. This guy just writes bad articles.
Well now that you mention it, I occasionally need to run IE at work. Instead of booting into Windows, I run IE using Wine under Fedora Core 4.
I wish I could say it worked great. It doesn't. But it works well enough that I can modify server side rule in exchange by using the Web interface. Yes, the web interface works in non-ie browsers, but doesn't handle enhanced mode -- so you can't do things like make rules. And, evolution doesn't implement exchange server side rules.
I also need to use ie to enter my vacation time. Sigh.
IE works under wine. Most of the functionality works. Occasionally something doesn't. The window flashes a lot. It does crash regularly.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
When I read the headline, I immediately thought, "yeah, right." Love or hate MS, IE 6 usability and look and feel pretty much kicks ass.
What?... What?!?
IE 6 is crap, through and through. It doesn't even have tabbed browsing. It is ugly. It violates plenty of basic UI principles. It does not have a build in, working ad blocker. The pop-up blocking is sub par. The security is abysmal and it can't even properly render Web pages written in WC3 standards set half a decade ago. It is ugly and unusable in my opinion.
IE will be the standard for a long time, and another reason to choose Windows over the 'competition'.
Nobody chooses Windows except OEMs that don't want to be run out of business. It comes pre-installed on every computer you buy (sans a few renegades that don't really affect the market). Some people choose the competition, but only after they have been forced to pay for MS's products first. I certainly hope it is not the standard for years to come, because that would imply that Web technologies will stagnate for another decade as MS refuses to implement any new standards and instead tries to covertly take over the Web using broken standards and proprietary extensions. I certainly don't look forward to another five years of coding pages to the standards, then working around all of IE's bugs and flaws.
I agree MS won't buy Opera to use the browser, but that is because they want a broken browser tied to the OS as tightly as possible, not because it is not superior. The banner ads you complain of are because they actually have to pay for developers with money not acquired via a monopoly. MS just rolls the cost into Windows, which you have to buy anyway, even if you plan to run Linux. Don't worry, if MS does acquire them there would be no banner ads and even if you run Linux you'll be paying for the developers. Gee, great, huh?
Unless they buy the entire company and essentially transplant all of the management and programmers, Microsoft can pry Opera from my cold, dead hands.
It's multiplatform, it's got tons of useful features that are built-in and don't rely on flakey plugins and it's fast as hell. If IE is any indication, any progress on new, useful features would stagnate as soon as it was integrated into the operating system.
I'm the guy with the unpopular opinion
I wouldn't be too shocked if MS acquired Opera, but it wouldn't be for their value on the PC (Mac inclusive) desktop. It would be for their mobile market penetration.
I think that's actually been driving the company (Opera) for a while now...
"...The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." - Erwin Rommel
It's only a matter of time before Apple finishes an office suite. They've got some parts now.
Either that or they use Wine to do the job and laugh at MS all the way to the bank.
OpenOffice anyone? Anyone?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The difference with Dvorak is that he's got a sort of instinctive tendency to side with the bullies on the block. He identifies with MS, you can see it in his choice of topics over the years pretty clearly. Back in the day he was a big IBM guy.
(The recurring front page items with this guy's blunders make me want the ability to mod stories themselves. Why am I a worse judge of what should rate home page priority than Taco? Give us a shared right to mod prospective stories; we can also edit them Wikipedia style. The results would be much better.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
..is that he suffers from a mental illness, but for some reason has more to gain from being fired rather than retire of his own free will.
Because Opera works on all platforms is THE reason MS should not buy it. Too many sites and media files are MS only. They force me to boot into windows just to watch a .wma or to view some web pages. and they like it that way because it stops people from jumping ship to mac or linux.
What's with this constant babbling about Opera being sold to ? Will you stop coming up with bogus news every day about yet another company to get their greasy hands on the Opera browser?
Leopard cub
....if this were to happen. 'Been an Opera user since the 2.x days, love it, use it, and would *hate* to see a company that's been making a great product for so many years be sucked in to, and destroyed by Gates and Co. Ok, so we have Opera v. Mozilla v. whatever wars on here all of the time, but the fact is, do we all really want to see a great example of a closed-source company Doing It Right be eaten the very definition of the company that's Doing It Wrong?
Does anyone know if Opera is a public company? 'Cause if they're not, they could always tell Microsoft the same thing I told Microsoft years ago: Fuck off.
Chris Knight is my hero.
How long would it be before Opera's ability to work on most platforms became a thing of the past?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/15/171125 1&from=rss
Let the biddings wars begin!
Pundits have no idea what they are talking about.
This goes double for Dvorak.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
But why does it make slashdot EVERY single time he makes a comment?
You must be new here.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
I pray it never happens. But I don't see why it hasn't.
The Admin and the Engineer
(yet not unexpected) twist of events.... Opera does not appear to render properly the webpage containing Dvorak's column.
You would see that Dvorak got his valuation of Opera (approx $400 Million), by calculating the total value of all outstanding Opera stock on the Norwegian stock exchange. So, YES, Opera is a public company.
Dvorak has a real knack for getting people discussing non-events.
Opera isn't really anything in the PC browser market, but they are by far the biggest player in the mobile browser market. Why not sell to one of the partners licensing mobile Opera? The phone manufacturers now provide nearly all of Opera's revenue.
MS wouldn't even consider buying Opera... they couldn't effectively use it until Vista2, and they've already implemented a silly, ass-backwards *ahem* XML namespace for display (XAML) which would require major hacking (code wise and philosophically) to get any browser other than IE7 to support it.
Google might be doing some shadowy things lately, but I really doubt they want to become an end-user software company. They do web apps, and they do them well.
I've been a good kid, and I help mum and dad every day. Here is my X-Mas Wishlist!
Please help make it come true, my parents would love you forever too, really, they've been good kids too.
I want candy! I've always wanted my own TV! But most importantly this year I wanna have that Opera Company! I like their browser, I don't know how much room I have but I'll make lots of space and push my bed to the far corner so everyone will fit right in. They can work here and I'll make lots of coffee and treat them very nice, even my hamster would help.
Leopard cub
... another Dvorak post. This will undoubtably be followed by 400 comments about how he should stick to making keyboards by people who have no clue that this isn't the same guy.
Microsoft would buy Opera.
Microsoft would implement Active X into Opera.
The browser would suck due to security holes related to Active X.
Microsoft has succeeded in bringing down a good browser and turning it into a piece of garbage because the bugs in Active X aren't fixed, and they are instead just putting a new pretty face on it. Oh wait.. isn't that what they are doing with IE7?
I am being sarcastic, but what's the point of buying Opera when there's no Active X support? I mean... that's the whole premise of Internet Explorer, being able to download and install patches for your OS and things like that. While they might be able to buy Opera for a song, they would spend millions making it compliant for their use -- and that's idiotic when they already have a codebase they can work off of (IE6) and improve.
Sorry, Dvorak really has to lay off the crack.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
IE was woven into the codebase for Windows itself. I doubt Microsoft has the talent to untangle it, even with Vista.
Or maybe they wouldn't, and just leave the bloat there, with another userland application plonked down on top of it. Would be their style.
several companies depends on opera's browser. Can you think of mobile phones that does NOT use winCE?
...or, get together to fund open source development of a new browser :)
buying opera, M$ will remove the ground bellow them. Then to have a browser back or those companies develop their own, or ditch the OS and follow the flock with winCE.
Hasn't John Dvorak repeatedly been shown to be an utter imbecile, and almost invariably wrong about everything he says, for about a decade running now?
Why is anything he says found newsworthy? Aside from the allure of the ridiculous, I mean.
Last time I heard the number $400 Million, it was the price that Apple paid for NeXT Computer, and at the time people said that was way overvalued. Do people really think Opera's software has the value that NeXTSTEP did?
It would cost MS 400 million dollars just to rewrite the internal code that uses vbscript and such. Unless Opera supports this wouldn't that be an issue. I guess MS could add that support to opera though.
Shut up! Opera is the best available browser on many platforms, and Microsoft will just use its engine and kill the other ports. They'll also bastardize its engine again to break standards, so people will have to use MS Opera for many sites giving Firefox more grief. While its a smart move for Microsoft, it will hurt the consumers more.
Stop giving them ideas that will hurt us.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I guess we disagree about usability.
I have been a web designer for 10 years now and use the web on average of 10 hours per day. I test all browsers occasionally. Firefox is okay, but the rendering engine sucks IMHO in comparison to IE (it's not snappy, and the graphics slide in weird... and that's on Windows where it works best... don't get me started on Mac or Linux) and tabbed browsing is a vastly overrated gimmick IMHO. True, the CSS support is loads better in Moz and derivatives, but all they really tried to do was copy the usability of IE anyway. What do you think is so bad about IE usability? My mom uses it, so it can't be bad. Trust me, I am the LAST person to defend MS in any way (especially on the server side where they suck satans cock at an hourly rate), but I honestly wouldn't surf as much without it IE. Opera may have improved recently but it was pitiable the last time I used it. Now normally I say the masses are asses, but you can pry IE out of my cold dead hands. I say as I hand the devil himself my soul that I look forward to IE7 and hope that one day I can use an open source browser without closing the damn thing and running back to IE with my pitchfork between my legs. Maybe you've never used IE on and XP SP-2 machine? It's like silk pajamas.
As usual, Dvorak's knowledge of the topic at hand is shallow and his conclusions are simplistic and short sighted.
Microsoft is not interesting in gaining browser market share outside of the Windows platform. Sure, they might be able to steer more people toward MSN and thereby make more in advertising revenue, but how much more? If 90% of the market already uses Windows, and gaining that extra 10% is fairly difficult for a wide variety of reasons, it may not be worth it to them.
Even if it was, it has nothing to do with why Microsoft dropped support for the Mac. The direction Microsoft is taking IE is different than the direction everybody else is taking web browsers. Microsoft sees IE as an application that will allow users to access both web pages and smart client applications.
They see the future as a mesh of standard web apps and smart client applications created with things like ClickOnce (at first), and eventually IE-hosted Avalon applications. (WPF.) Their hope is that eventually the line between web apps and client apps will blur, and since it will be (they hope) via IE and Avalon, it will draw even more people to using Windows since the UI/functionality experience is so much better than standard web applications. At least that's the business point of view.
but does he listen? No. Do I care? No. Does MS care? No. Even Opera most likely doesn't care.
To quote Lewis Black: Why the fuck open your mouth?
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
All the posts here are saying this would be a terrible idea but no one has mentioned why.
Yeah it would suck because MS would inevitably discontinue opera on all platforms besides windows, rename it, integrate it into the OS and make it uninstallable, and, then, MS would really have the best browser offering, and we'd all have nothing left to complain about.
But, that is why it would be such a good move. Fixing IE is gonna take alot of developer time and money, probably about as much as they'd pay to purchase Opera. Yeah, to fit into MS's strategy they'd have to completely hobble Opera and basically destroy all the good things about it.. But, they'd get a secure, fast, bloat free, feature rich browser that was coherently developed.
I think you're all opposed to the idea because it would be about the worst thing that could happen to OSS/Mozilla/Firefox. It would be a complete slap in the face, and it would destroy Firefox's momentum overnight. I'm against the idea too, cause I like opera, and it would be sad to see it destroyed by MS, but I don't think its a bad idea for MS. I think it would be about the most intelligent/strategic thing they could do right now.
One post mentioned "why spend money on something that you don't make money on" well they've been spending money every year for developers to build IE it doesn't seem to be a problem, another poster said "why spend money on something you already have" MS doesn't have an Opera-calibur browser, and making IE an opera-calibur browser is going to take alot of time and money.
I think MS is really pretty scared about the competition from google, from the web finally starting to matter in a real way. As MS loses market share in browsers, they lose hits to msn.com. honestly how many of you firefox users have your homepage set to msn.com? But IE comes with msn.com as the default homepage on every computer I've ever used. That loss of hits costs them money. They have no choice but to try to maintain 90%+ browser market share, if they were to drop to 50% market share, they'd really be hurting. I don't think anyone uses msn.com through an active choice... People choose to use Yahoo, Google, whatever, the only people who use msn.com are those who haven't changed their default home page. In short MS's only competitive advantage on the web is that they have a huge userbase that uses their browser... If they lose that, they lose everything else on the web, everyone will be at Google or Yahoo.
Its part of the nastier side that we /.ers don't really like to expose.
But Dvorak is such an ass-hat that we just can't help it.
In a real democracy he would be hauled in front of a tribunal forced to recite a litany of all his failed prognostications and the have his hands and mouth duct taped so he can't find anymore means to spew his bilge.
If I was nasty I'd ask him how his shares of Apple are doing...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Nevvvvver, they'lll ruinnn everything.
Opera seems a little off as far as rendering goes. Mozilla and Safari tend to agree 99% of the time on how things should be rendered. When it comes to certain CSS tags (default borders, default padding, etc), Opera isn't quite there. Granted, if you explicitly set the value, it renders the same across all three. It is a few steps above IE for sure.
What I really wish is that Microsoft would just use Mozilla, even if they funk up the code with proprietary bits so that any submissions back to the community "won't work" (like Apple supposedly did with KHTML). There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. Microsoft could quit worrying about making a top-notch HTML engine and concentrate more on good UI and security while at the same time improving it's Evil Empire image. Web developers would have one less engine to try to test against. The OSS community MIGHT get some useful code back. Most IE users would be none-the-wiser. Everyone wins.
Maybe that is what Dvorak was arguing for Opera, but I didn't RTFA (I'm allergic to Dvorak, sorry). But Opera buying would lose all the OSS goodies that MS would get from using Gecko instead.
Some of his early stuff seemed pretty good. I was less informed then though. However, his latest stuff has been poor. I suspect it may be some form of senility or something. From my perspective, things seem to have started going downhill once he lost the Silicon Spin show on TechTV.
Yeah ... cuz using Wine means you dont have to pay for office ...
..
Wait a minute
But Dvorak doesn't.
He doesn't want anybody's knowledge interfering with his opinions.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
His entire argument is predicated upon the false premises that Microsoft wants to support open standards and that they want to support the Mac.
Microsoft has virtually bottomless resources - if they really wanted to, they could crank out a secure cross-platform web browser that supported relevant standards. What Microsoft has is exactly what they want - vendor lock-in with a mediocre product that through its various 'feature-driven' incompatibilities gives them some sense of control.
If Mircosoft can't own the roads, they want to own the potholes.
Things that make IE unusable for every day use:
Now I've done my share of web development, but I'm primarily a user, but I can't see how anyone could use IE as an everyday browser after trying something else. Almost anything else is better. I've used pretty much every browser on every system, for testing purposes if nothing else. I just can't see how someone could recommend IE. If nothing else the popularity, Active X implementation, and co-mingled code with the file browser makes it such a huge security risk that it is just not worth it. I guess if you don't care about security and don't mind having to remove malware and viruses it might be an option, but I don't really see why.
(off to go download Opera and see if it sucks less today than it did 8 months ago)
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Opera should buy Microsoft
**waits for Slashdot to pick the bait and bring some traffic**
I viewed the article using Opera, and the text ran over the advertisement on right-hand-side.
-- All your bass are below two Hz
I find Opera to be useful in development. While it's rendering is often goofy, it's also more unforgiving of HTML errors, and often shows broken things AS broken. I find more HTML bugs with Opera than I do with IE or FF.
If they could replace the renderer with Gecko or the one in Konqueror/Safari, and still keep the speed and low resource requirements, I'd be all over that thang.
The problem at this point is - I'm hopelessly addicted to many of the Firefox plugins available; absolutely invaluable nowadays, and I can learn to live with Firefox's problems because of them.
Let me just say that I have used Opera as my main browser since version 3.2 and would be wery, _wery_ frustrated if MS got their filthy hands on it.
But Dvoraks article isnt that far fetched if you look at it as loose musing on the subject. He does make some valid points.
Though, if it is meant as an outright prediction of the near future it is naught but the rambelings of a wery sorry excuse for a serious journalist.
When in danger, whewn in doubt! Run in circles, scream and shout!
maybe take two routines out of the code library, put everybody out of work, and cut off the users. they don't want no steenkin' interoperability. they don't want any other platforms.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Remember he did say Apple would move to Intel 3 years ago. After the annoucement by Jobs on the move, Jobs stated that they always had MacOS X for Intel from the beginning and Freescale's CEO said they were ready to move years ago but the G5 stopped the move....
:)
Perhaps MS buys Opera in 2009
Stand on one leg.. Hop like a bunny.. I'm bored so I will write something stupid... jeez
sig goes here!
It's either an Apple, a Platypus, or a dogcow. Depending on the Mac.
Hell, I'd pay money to see Dvorak being beaten up by a platypus.
... since he invented that silly keyboard thing.
None of those above issues you mentioned above has affected me since SP-2 which was last year, but I've said that before.
IE6 is close to the end of its lifecycle and M$ is thankfully taking their time before releasing the next version.
To me the quickness and professional look and feel of IE puts its ahead of Firefox. Most sites look better and perform better on IE. IMHO that's probably why people haven't been adopting Firefox as quickly after SP-2 than before. When Firefox is truly better OVERALL I will be one of the first to change.
But back to the original subject. For M$ to buy Opera is a joke. IE is the clear market leader which works great and they are about to release a new version which should please nearly everyone. M$ wants no part of Macintosh or Linux browser market. There is no money in it for them, and the article makes Dvorak look like someone out of touch with reality.
Does he understand the insistence on ActiveX? How could an alleged technology writer/pundit not understand such fundamental issues? Microsoft freaking went to court over this issue, it's not like it's a secret. What an idiot.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Shall I start with the bit about how Microsoft has no reason to develop Mac programs anymore becuse they can just use the Intel-based versions? He seems to have forgotten that fact that the platform is more than just a processer archtecture, there's the OS API as well. It takes a lot of glue code to get an x86 Windows app to run on x86 Linux (and even then it's rarely perfect), and the same would be true on x86 Mac.
.NET CLR 1.1.4322)"
Then he goes off on the whole "Opera identifies itself as IE so we don't know how many people use it" bull that's been debunked over and over and over again. Opera IDs itself as IE in the same way that IE identifies itself as Netscape -- and for the same reason. If you're paying any attention at all, you can tell the difference.
Some examples:
Netscape 4: "Mozilla/4.7 [en] (WinNT; U)"
IE 6: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
Opera 7: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.50 [en]"
You'll note that IE spoofs Netscape, that Opera spoofs IE (including the Netscape spoof), and that all three are easily distinguishable if you're looking in the right place.
Does this guy have a clue what he's talking about?
What, so it's like IE now?
...or MS could just reverse-engineer Opera's src or steal Firefox's src.
Per Aspera Ad Astra.
IE is the clear market leader which works great and they are about to release a new version which should please nearly everyone.
I'll have to disagree with you. MS is the market Leader, but not by virtue of working great, as you put it. Luckily all the web development I do is for security and networking professionals, and Lynx compatibility is in about the same demand as IE compatibility. The pages I create degrade gracefully for IE, but certainly don't have all the same features, since IE cannot support them yet. They work fine in Firefox, Opera, and Safari (all three of which our customers do use). MS is the market Leader due to their illegal bundling and nothing else. Their browser stinks, and is sub-par, just not so bad that more than a small percentage of knowledgeable people go out of their way to find something else. Most people do not even know that there are other browsers. Certainly there is more money in subverting the standard and trying to lock people into IE and Windows if they want to use the Web, but you're one of the few Web developers that I've ever heard of that supported them in that endeavor. Usually only clueless people using FrontPage, that don't realize how broken the code it outputs is, speak in favor of IE.
>It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore
They say that as if Microsoft might want to support other platforms. IE works on Mac but they're tossing that out, so why would they buy another browser for that reason?
Nah, the only reason MS would buy Opera would be to lock it in a dumpster somewhere, never to be seen again.
That's your last punch, calling me a Front Page user? Them's fighting words.
You are probably a Macintosh user or something.
400 mil is an awful lot of money to fix a browser... For a 1/10 of that price, you could fix the current IE... Plus, MS has to save face here... Buying opera is as much as saying "IE is worthless, buggy, crap... we had to buy opera because it was just too bad to be fixed"... Not exactly positive PR...
Opera becomes the new IE would be clever because it would also be unbundled from the OS and therefore get around some major legal baggage too.
How 'bout this... new Slashdot rule... anything submitted with "Dvorak" in the heading or body, that doesn't also contain the word "keyboard," is rejected.
And yes, I am ABSOLUTELY serious about this.
I don't know why people reward this moron with millions of hits.
If you're curious about future trends or events in the tech industry, read Dvorak's column, and envision the exact opposite. Time and time again, this is what usually happens.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
great employment as writers for the tech-pop-media?
Enderle, Didio, O'Gara, Lyons, Murphy, and Dvorak, among so many others.
These people actually get paid - a lot - for being babbling morons. And here we are on slashdot giving it away for free.
How do I get a job like that? I have much better credentials in I.T. then any of those bozos. I know how to troll. I'll even suck up to msft if there is enough money on the line (why not? nobody believes that drivel, anyway).
The stories are getting repetitive. Case in point: Yet another Dvorak column!!! Is this guy some tech guru. Judging the adjectives from endless repetitive comments- hack, flamebait, troll, has made a career out of spouting sensational bullshit, fool; one would think not. Yet, his columns must posted more than any other columnist. So, with this and the endless duplicate stories, is Slashdot being run auto pilot with a real shitty AI. Is Taco on a beach in Maui, Timothy in Rome, or Zonk on safari? Editors!! Come back to us, RTFA for a change and can you pick articles for us simple folk with IQ of at least 3 digits can enjoy and spout endless comments that no one will read.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
You mean like the builtin Opera mail client (M2)? It's ultra convenient. Plus, Opera has a download manager that can resume, a feed reader, an IRC client and soon bittorrent support (although I don't see anyone ditching their client because of it). Oh, and voice recognition. And fully customizable interface/shortcuts. OK, I can go on for a while, but I won't :P.
P.S. I'm not being sarcastic, it just came out like that.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
buy a bunch of opera stock at 3$
write an acticle statimg microsoft should buy it
wait while a bunch of people buy opera stock hoping microsoft does buy it
sell your stocks for more than the $3 you paid
Isn't Opera supported on mobile/cell phone operating systems other than the MS variants? If so, buying Opera would give MS a way into other mobile OSs, wouldn't it? How would that fare in an anti-trust hearing as regards Windows CE and its version of IE?
:o Serves me right for being sarcastic I guess. If I was trying to make a point it's that technical issues are not the only consideration, some of us prefer FOSS for other reasons as well. Me, I haven't had windows installed for 5 years or so, so I'm probably not qualified to comment on it's weaknesses. As far as Microsoft buying Opera goes: I can't see it happening, they have too much invested in IE to cut and run now.
Can we mod everything that comes off of Dvorak's desk as a troll?
-- force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins ayn rand
With all these rumors about '' buying Opera, could be just the "great marketing machine" really hinting to us that Opera secretly wants to sellout?
there would be a loud popping noise as his head comes out of his ass.
400,000,000 is not pocket change to any company. IT's a lot of money.
MS would save even more money if the stopped developing IE all together.
Chorus "MS would save even more money if the stopped developing IE "
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As for adblocking, Google toolbar gives me the same thing
No it does not. Google Toolbar blocks popup advertisements. That is something that is BUILT INTO Firefox. Adblock is a seperate plugin, and removes IN LINE advertisements on websites.
Annoying flash advertisements all over the page? Gone with Firefox and Adblock. Google Toolbar? It might block the one popup advertisement that it tries to show you, but it wont prevent the dozen flash ads or the one that scrolls and hovers over the text until you click the tiiiny (x close) button.
Also, please dont complain that Firefox isn't useable when you type in C:\, it isn't meant to be a file browser, it isn't meant to be part of the computer interface. It is a browser, not a swiss army knife that breaks on using half the tools it has like IE.
No browser on Linux renders mlb.com correctly. Not even Opera. Firefox on Windows is just fine rendering mlb.com. I think Safari on Mac is okay too. And why is Flash so buggered up on Linux? Pull downs pull down behind Flash animations and images. It has been this way for a long time.. Will it ever work??
When has Microsoft actually come up with something on their own?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
MS would want to change it to have all the same features the IE has, including intgration. That mean they wouod end up exactly where they are, with a schizo browser that can be exploited to attack the rest of the system.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Dvorak Says MS Should Buy Opera"
What did Qwerty say to that?
MS: "Dear Jon, we would like to hand you 400 million dollars, cash, for Opera"
Jon: "OK"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Opera is built with QT library. Do you really think Mocosoft will sport a new browser built with open source technology?
HE GETS NO SPAM!!!!!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
a keyboard can think? Mmmm... that should be a brand new from MS.
1. Different APIs - Lots of rewriting and adjusting to get it to work. 2. Huge time setback for future OS and browser release (like Vista). 3. IE is a good browser - Since XP SP2 much (naturally not all) of its security weaknesses have been dealth with, and its fast. And IE7 stands a good chance of being much more secure than IE6. 4. Antitrust lawsuits - Opera is someone MS can point at and say "See! We have competition! So don't sue us!"
The guy has been running the company for ten years. He's had the chance to become filthy rich many times. But he isn't in this for the money.
Clever signature text goes here.
Not that any other major software/computer company would
not, but Microsoft has been so key in ruining tech and
the Internet with its insecure and dysfunctional software.
What about a major anti-trust breakup of this industry?
Probably never happen due to the need for the government to
snoop on all of us, but I think this is a watershed moment
in human history that can determine whether we have a
big brother type totalitarian nighmare or the possible
dawning of a new technological age.
We all have the curse of living in "interesting times".
Title: "XBox 360 to the Rescue".
Quote blurb: "I have not seen a hardware/software system as well thought out as the Xbox 360 in a decade or more."
Dvorak is pathetic. Very poor knowledge on almost anything he speaks about.
That's incredible to be so bad at so many subjects.
But the biggest dickheads are those that keep selecting his crap and posting it to Slashdot.
IE (as seen in current windows) is just an exe file that loads shdocvw.dll and mshtml.dll to do HTML rendering. (and uses other dlls like wininet.dll and co to talk to the internet).
:)
Now, if you wanted to talk about replacing the microsoft HTML rendering engine (mshtml.dll & friends), thats different. But, you would need to make it 100% API compatible AND it would need to support all the things that apps need in order to work (including every HTML help file out there). Just look at how hard it is for the WINE team to get mshtml.dll and shdocvw.dll to work right
Cool, I never got modded 'flamebait' before. :)
Forgive me for assuming that you're a Firefox groupie.
There are plenty of websites which explain why Opera is better. Speed is the obvious one, both of loading/rendering and usability eg gestures. The less obvious one is that Opera doesn't force you to adapt to it - it adapts to you. It's so configurable that it becomes more-or-less the perfect browser.
Merganthaler was one of those types.
Note to moderator; Find connection between subject and Mergenthaler. Hint; they hung out in newspaper offices and other places.
I use Opera mostly, but at work, I have to use IE6. If you ask me, IE6 is terrible.
*Opera is much, much faster. It renders faster, and most importantly you can go back instantly. Because IE6 re-renders the page when you hit the back button, it works at glacial rates in comparsion. You may also get errors if the previous page was a form or dynamically generated too. (this is also an issue I have with Firefox)
*Mouse gestures. Enough said.
*Integrated search. Enough said.
*Tabs is not a gimmick to me. Sure, if you only have 1-2 sites open at once, it seems pretty pointless. But managing 10+ IE windows is a pain in the ass, but a breeze in Opera's MDI. (Firefox has some work to do here too, it likes to spawn new windows far too much)
*Whenever you make a new window in IE, it reloads whatever is loaded in the current window. Annoying. Only recently did I figure out that you can get a fresh one by launching the IE shortcut in the start menu though. Still annoying though.
*The pop up blocker in IE is awful. It blocks legit, desired pop ups all the time, while also letting through a fair share of the unwanted ones. Opera's isn't perfect either, but works much better.
This is totally stupid. Google is already underwriting Opera. That is why it's free now. That's why I'm using it. Google already *owns* Opera. It'd be a good idea, John, but Microsoft is too late.
www.blueapples.org
Why not take firefox then, it wouldn't even cost them a penny... just rebrand it and hack the code to support activex... That would be so mouwwahahahah
\u262D = \u5350
Pay my company 400 million and we'll deliver a better than Opera cross platform browser. The SDKs for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and maybe even the BSD ones to boot. MS would haev a state of the art object oriented design from the ground up. All pure code written for hire, standards compliant SVG wrangling, CSS current standard support, kitchen sink thrown in (read Active X / .NET) browser that had the smallest possible footprint based on what the user enabled, integrated with Exchange, and supporting just about anything else they care to name. 400 million USD is a lot people!!!
... MILLION ... DOLLARS!
{insert little finger at edge of mouth fingers curled palm facing out}400
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
First of all, $400M is not pocket change for anyone. Total cost of one developer in Redmond (including all kinds of overhead, like real estate, insurance, facilities, etc. etc.) is around $250K per year. This means for $400M you can have FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY FIVE people working for THREE YEARS on the project without skimping on anything. Probably a lot more if you consider that about 20% of work will be outsourced to India and China.
Second, Microsoft can't just say "sorry, your old stuff won't work anymore" to its enterprise customers. That's just not going to fly for a sales guy trying to get a customer to renew a support contract. So Opera, if they buy it, would have to be made compatible with all quirks of MS browsers down to IE 5.5 (lowest version officially supported by MSFT). Which kind of defeats the purpose of buying Opera in the first place.
Uh, er, I mean inovate.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
What Microsoft should do is *outsource* to the Opera crew, i.e. no Microsoft developers would be allowed to touch the code, and Microsoft managers wouldn't be able to manage the project.
http://outcampaign.org/
How about if John Dvorak shuts the hell up?
Technoli
MSFT has yet to be even remotely close to an announced release date for any version or flavor of Windows since the 3.0 days. Vista won't be out next year.. of it is, it'll be a bastardized version of 2003 ala ME.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
But if this article was titled "MS decides to NOT buy opera and fix IE" you'd be complaining that they were wasting their time on a buggy crappy browser instead of using the more secure cross-platform alternative. Everyone already knows that IE is the least feature-filled one of the three (FF,Opera,IE) as well as the buggiest and the least secure. No-one needs to be told... in fact, having MS admit it finally may win them a little bit of respect. (just a little... lol)
You're right that the memory isn't really the worst aspect of Thunderbird performance. It's just damned slow for whatever reason. I don't care what the reason is, I just want it fast. And more features.
I _so_ can't wait to switch to OS X. *sigh* C'mon Apple, make with the x86 Mac mini already! (So I can choose other apps not available on Windows.)
I rather suspect Jon is filthy rich a few times over, regardless. I've met him and he is a very solid sort of guy, well-grounded. I expect he knows fully that his life won't get any better with an gross excess of wealth, and I rather doubt he measures his achievements in dollars. Money is great and all, but it's gotta be kept in perspective to all else that's important in life.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
No I actually (gasp!) use IE. If it's okay for Opera to have problems (popup ads and look weird in early versions) and then to get much much better very quickly, then why can't IE? Do I HAVE to hate it just becausen it comes from M$?
John Dvorak is a troll, and not even an entertaining one, yet his antagonistic, clueless opinions have often been promoted on the front page of Slashdot.
Many from this site have also considered me a troll...I've been modded such numerous times, and also can point to ten individuals in my freaks list who share this opinion...and yet I don't get the kind of promotion which Dvorak enjoys, even though I'd probably like having it even more than he does.
Could somebody please explain the cause of this inconsistency to me?
Wow, you really are in the Dark Ages - you don't even have tabbed browsing.
Haven't MS have pretty much given up on IE?
Not exactly positive PR...
it's not any worse than the attention they're currently getting though. they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. the only difference is that if they do, they'll end up with better software.
Let's not forget that it's Microsoft who brought us this badly controlled Active X infestation that allows most of the trouble to happen - and IE's "integration" with Windows is another nice route of attack.
If it wasn't for (proprietary) Active X there would actually be no reason to have IE on your machine at all. IE6 isn't a patch on Firefox and Opera, both products who have innovated where MS was busy elsewhere - that MS 'innovates' is a marketing illusion.
As IE7 being 'safer' I would respectfully point at a particular problem in proving that assertion: track record. MS is generally getting better under pressure from their customers (thankfully) but they have quite a bit of catching up to do..
Insert
but it's not interesting, truly relevant or funny. +5 coming your way
http://www.cooltechzone.com/index.php?option=conte nt&task=view&id=2108
Please please please tell me this is wrong.
Alt-tab for fast window switching
Gee that would be great, except I already use cmd-tab to switch between the twelve open programs I have running right now. (I'm running on OS where multitasking actually works, not Windows.)
Alt-F4 is my pop-up blocker
Manually closing pop-ups is the best you can do? Pathetic.
Yeah it has tabs, but since SP2 on windows a lot of problems (with popups and spyware) were greatly reduced. Besides, install Spybot Search & Destroy and Your Choice(tm) of viruscan...
Gee running a different browser on a different OS, I've never had any spyware. I did have a pop-up once, a few months back. I told my browser it was an ad and now nothing from that that server is downloaded by my browser. You forgot to mention in page ads. Can IE finally block those as well? So lets look at that again. With IE you can manually close pop-ups and run software to remove the crap that gets installed on your machine, or you can use something else and not have to worry about pop-ups or spyware. And you think IE is up to snuff here? I mean if it was just one browser that was better you could argue, but every other browser does better in both these regards.
I think I'll stick with grouping my web browsing by tabs in one or two windows, and not worrying about spyware or random worms compromising my machine.
That's your last punch, calling me a Front Page user? Them's fighting words.
Now, now. I just compared you to a FrontPage user. I wouldn't make such a dire accusation without having proof.
You are probably a Macintosh user or something.
Well, right at this moment I'm a OS X, OpenBSD, Linux, and Win2K user. But, I'm typing this message in Safari on OS X, just for you.
A lowly 60MHz system can run sixty million instructions per second, so a single extra instruction after everything else has finished does not make any difference but cuts down on power consumption considerably. The next clock cycle after something is due to happen it can execute the next instruction. Doing anything at all thus "kills the system idle process", since the CPU now has an instruction coming in for it to execute.
they should use the gecko engine or khtml as their html rendering engine (i don't care which shell they put around it). that would benefit everybody, but they will never do such a thing (at least apple has half a clue).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Update: Opera recently confirmed that Microsoft has not approached the browser maker and there is no active acquistion deal between the two companies currently.
Personally, I think that Opera and Mozilla merging would be the best thing. Think about it, the speed of Opera with the customisability of Firefox ... *drool*
That is a logic fallacy