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Mozilla Inks Deal With Chinese Search Giant
nm writes "The Mozilla Corporation's subsidiary in China has signed a deal with Chinese search engine giant Baidu. Baidu is already included as an option in Firefox's Chinese localization, but this deal formalizes the relationship between Mozilla and and the search company. Mozilla has established several other initiatives in China to help increase Firefox adoption, particularly in universities. The article notes that Firefox has seen limited uptake in China; the browser Maxthon is the second most popular after Internet Explorer. Maxthon is thought to have as much as 30 percent of the Chinese browser market."
Don't they have the same kind of deals here with Google (and thus google.cn)?
A few years ago, while browsing around the library downtown, I
had to take a piss. As I entered the john a big beautiful all-American
football hero type, about twenty-five, came out of one of the booths.
I stood at the urinal looking at him out of the corner of my eye as he
washed his hands. He didn't once look at me. He was "straight" and
married - and in any case I was sure I wouldn't have a chance with
him.
As soon as he left I darted into the booth he'd vacated,
hoping there might be a lingering smell of shit and even a seat still
warm from his sturdy young ass. I found not only the smell but the
shit itself. He'd forgotten to flush. And what a treasure he had left
behind. Three or four beautiful specimens floated in the bowl. It
apparently had been a fairly dry, constipated shit, for all were fat,
stiff, and ruggedly textured. The real prize was a great feast of turd
- a nine inch gastrointestinal triumph as thick as a man's wrist.
I knelt before the bowl, inhaling the rich brown fragrance and
wondered if I should obey the impulse building up inside me. I'd
always been a heavy rimmer and had lapped up more than one little
clump of shit, but that had been just an inevitable part of eating ass
and not an end in itself. Of course I'd had jerk-off fantasies of
devouring great loads of it (what rimmer hasn't), but I had never done
it. Now, here I was, confronted with the most beautiful five-pound
turd I'd ever feasted my eyes on, a sausage fit to star in any fantasy
and one I knew to have been hatched from the asshole of the world's
handsomest young stud.
Why not? I plucked it from the bowl, holding it with both
hands to keep it from breaking. I lifted it to my nose. It smelled
like rich, ripe limburger (horrid, but thrilling), yet had the
consistency of cheddar. What is cheese anyway but milk turning to shit
without the benefit of a digestive tract?
I gave it a lick and found that it tasted better then it
smelled. I've found since then that shit nearly almost does.
I hesitated no longer. I shoved the fucking thing as far into
my mouth as I could get it and sucked on it like a big brown cock,
beating my meat like a madman. I wanted to completely engulf it and
bit off a large chunk, flooding my mouth with the intense, bittersweet
flavor. To my delight I found that while the water in the bowl had
chilled the outside of the turd, it was still warm inside. As I chewed
I discovered that it was filled with hard little bits of something I
soon identified as peanuts. He hadn't chewed them carefully and they'd
passed through his body virtually unchanged. I ate it greedily,
sending lump after peanutty lump sliding scratchily down my throat. My
only regret was the donor of this feast wasn't there to wash it down
with his piss.
I soon reached a terrific climax. I caught my cum in the
cupped palm of my hand and drank it down. Believe me, there is no more
delightful combination of flavors than the hot sweetness of cum with
the rich bitterness of shit.
Afterwards I was sorry that I hadn't made it last longer. But
then I realized that I still had a lot of fun in store for me. There
was still a clutch of virile turds left in the bowl. I tenderly fished
them out, rolled them into my handkerchief, and stashed them in my
briefcase. In the week to come I found all kinds of ways to eat the
shit without bolting it right down. Once eaten it's gone forever
unless you want to filch it third hand out of your own asshole. Not an
unreasonable recourse in moments of desperation or simple boredom.
I stored the turds in the refrigerator when I was not using
them but within a week they were all gone. The last one I held in my
mouth without chewing, letting it slowly dissolve. I had liquid shit
trickling down my throat for nearly four hours. I must have had six
orgasms in the process.
I often think of that lovely young guy dropping solid gold out
of his sweet, pink asshole every day, never knowing what joy it could,
and at least once did, bring to a grateful shiteater.
releas it as closed-source software, they'll pirate it to first place! Mod me down, but giving it a price tag will increase it's desirability in the Chinese culture.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Mou - chi Network rimited Chairman and CEO Dr. Gong ri said: "seeking open-network consistentry uphold the idea for Internet users to provide various Internet browsing choice. Firefox browser in the world occupy 20 percent market share, it personarization, customization, and other characteristics by the vast number of Internet users rove. Firefox browser and the search engine Baidu is the combination of our Chinese Web browser users with diverse services, wirr be the next Firefox browser we bring more arternative services. "
According to report, the Chinese version of the Firefox browser has built-in Baidu search, the two sides estabrished a formar partnership so that the existing cooperation more crearry, Firefox users can arso more easiry use Baidu search serviceUsers may Firefox browser Crick on the upper right of the search box drop-down menu, choose Baidu search engine, can be directry used in the search box Baidu search target information, and the great convenience to users browse and search experience.From now, China's domestic users to use the ratest version of the Firefox browser (2.0.0.10 and updated version) can enjoy the service.
I wasn't aware that the Chinese version of Firefox had special branding.
... the Chinese version of Firefox contains a module to filter subversive content?
Fortune cookies you!
P.S. Sora Aoi is hot
Maxthon _IS_ IE but with a few more bells and whistles.
Nonsense like this makes me glad I use Konqueror. At least its developers are more interested in providing a high-quality web browser, rather than focusing more energy on marketing and business deals than they do on development. Not only that, but the Konqueror devs have produced a browser that's faster, lighter, and more standards-compliant than what the Mozilla crew has put together, all with far fewer resources and corporate support.
Maybe if they implemented support for top-down left-right layouts instead of trying to make deals with search engines, they might get somewhere.
As it stands, the Mozilla family of browsers does not support it, so why would anyone in China want to use it? Beyond that, why would you want to introduce your brand to that market before implementing that support? I can see it now:
"Firefox? Hmm, I saw that a year ago... that's that one that shows all the pages sideways, right? No thanks."
Real smart move.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Curious... This is the first time I read something about this browser. The Portuguese version of wikipedia says http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxthon this browser is often used to circumvent the great Chinese firewall, hence its popularity. Does anyone know why it is especially easy to do tuneling with it?
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
The WP article on Maxthon says it uses Trident, the same layout engine as IE. I know nothing about the world of closed-source Windows development, but this seems odd to me. Does MS license the source to Trident, or does it just expose a binary API for it? Since MS wants IE to win the new browser wars, what's their motivation to make Trident available to developers who might create competing browsers such as Maxthon? Does the licensing deal for Trident mean that MS gets a slice of revenue out of Maxthon's donations? Since Maxthon has a 30% market share in China compared to Firefox's 15% in the West, I assume that means that Chinese users have some very strong reason to prefer Maxthon to IE -- even stronger than the obvious reasons to prefer Firefox over IE. What would those reasons be? Does Maxthon have better support for Chinese text?
Find free books.
no way! i want to hear more, tell me about these diagonal languages plz
"Your prosecution for viewing illegal Falun Gong literature was brought to you by 100% free open source software."
I bet that would give a warm fuzzy feeling deep inside.
What's next? A deal between the Apache Foundation and the US Government, whereby Apache webservers automatically send to the US Government the HTTP fields of any request which serves up a page containing strings such as 'Iraq', 'nuclear', 'jihad' etc?
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
Flashget, a popular download managers made by chinese, was marked 100% clean. Now the program tries to call various servers around the world every 3 seconds. You can read it here:
http://bbs.flashget.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8723&p=31396
I do not want firefox to spy on me. Keep mozilla away from china.
This deal still won't have much of an effect on Firefox adoption in China. Why? It's simple, *all* banks in China only support IE (and IE based browsers like Maxthon) for online banking. They all have custom ActiveX controls for entering passwords and a whole bunch of other IE specific stuff. I live in China and know many people who start to use Firefox, and everything's great until they go to use online banking and find it doesn't work. Then they give up on Firefox, because it's not worth the hassle. Until this issue is addressed Firefox adoption will go nowhere.
Hey, males? Next summer, in honor of the Summer Olympics in China, let's all wear a Fu Manchu moustache.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Manchu_moustache
Pass it on - start a trend.
Firefox _IS_ IE but with a few more bells and whistles.
Could this be the start of a new patent paradigm? "On the internet ... in China!"
Ouch. Also, this strikes me as being a hit against Linux too . . . double whammy, congrats M$, what can we do? 'Cause you can bet banks are interested in where the money is, and that ain't F/OSS companies. :-(
"There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order." - Ed Howdershelt
It's worse than that; I use the Merchants' Bank and they need you to install Windows-only binaries on your system that don't work under Wine. It's annoying, but it won't go away until more people do something about it, so call up your bank and complain.
Maybe mozilla can write a plugin that can detect when a user is tibetan or pro-democracy, then inform the chinese government, collect sites visited, log input so their disloyalty trials can go as smoothly as their executions will. Great job Open Source Foundation!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
Is there by any chance anything that says Mozilla got included in the deal that the Chinese end will not use their technology for either censorship or persecution of those who disagree with the party line?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Odd indeed. I've been using Firefox with my online banking accounts in Canada for years...from Japan! :-)
I'd say the Chinese are definitely behind the times, and I guess they don't mind being slaves of an American corporation. China, still beholden to American technology, locked in for eternity, while the rest of the world throws off the bonds of M$. Interesting.
i too live in china and this frustrates me.. you're fucked if you use a mac!
does obscurity really create security?.. lets ask the big wigs at M$
And the reason that it's like this in China (and a few other far eastern countries I believe) is not because they're behind the times as much as they were ahead of the times. Before SSL was standard, these banks saw the need for secure communications. So they built their own controls and rolled them out so that they could have this; at the time there was really no other meaningful option if they wanted to do secure transactions on the web. Now they don't want to give up the control because they can basically make customized desktop banking applications with those ActiveX controls and have it do more and be more meaningful than is possible with a standard web page.
Of course my own knowledge on the subject is second hand, so I advise any readers to take this with a grain of salt!
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
There are limits to Word-Of-Mouth.
In the Soda wars, about 75 years ago Moxie once nuked their marketing budget to pay for manufacturing costs, and eventually lost out to Coca-Cola.
We're having these discussions because only education/marketing can overturn things like a Chinese Banking IE Lock.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Since I've never in my life heard of Maxhon before I decided to do some digging and all Maxhon amounts to is a shell that calls IE.
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I believe the main reason was due to the fact that you couldn't export encryption algorithms to certain countries from the States for a period of time. Thus there was IE and Netscape versions that had no SSL support, then eventually it was supported at a low bit (like 32bit encryption) and later fully.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Yes, pay triple the hardware price for the same quality (or lack thereof) you'd get on a PC. Brilliant!
No, but if they do use the technology for censorship or persecution, they damn well better make their source code changes available!
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
So now the proud Chinese people can more easily redirect your filthy capitalist searches http://slashdot.org/articles/07/11/18/1824230.shtml. Hurry, go buy your new PC http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/12/2235200 from walmart it will come preinstalled with the Communist government's favorite browser! What a deal for the Chinese! Free software for EVERYONE! At least when they pirated Ubuntu and FireFox we tried to give it to them first.
COMON JOE YOU BUY YOU BUY HAPPY FUN WEB COMPUTER! YOU GOOD CUSTOMER JOE! SPECIAL PRICE FOR YOU! AHHHH, COMES WITH SPEICAL CHINESE MAGIC OPERATING SYSTEM AND WEB BROWSER FOR FREE!
Maybe including IEtab in the Chinese version of Firefox will be a way to workaround the problem until Chinese geeks unite ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
> Firefox can either display those IE only stuff correctly
What does "correctly" mean? No-one knows, except Microsoft and they're not telling. See, this is the entire problem with extending a standard. You may have heard of "Embrace, extend, extinguish," this is the extend part. Firefox (or Opera or any other non-IE browser) can never "correctly" display IE only stuff because it doesn't know how to do that. There are no specifications, there is no defined way. What's more, if MS decides to put out IE 7.1, all the IE only stuff will have changed and FF will have to start all over again. This is a battle that cannot be won, and a battle that we shouldn't want to win.
I'm with the above commenter: the change starts with you and your colleagues. If you develop against FF, your sites will display correctly in most major browsers. Then if IE has some CSS problems, use conditional comments. This is the best solution for the time being. As for JavaScript, for most simple stuff it's easy to create code that works in all the browsers, and when you're doing fancy things, use a layer like YUI to make your code work everywhere.
During a recent trip to China, I noticed that IE-only site are extremely popular in China. Lots of official and common sites (since as for banking) often rely on Active-X widgets and other IE-only features. Here in the US, people complain when, every once in a while, we encounter a corporate or government website with IE-only features. In China, it is the norm... This also affects Mac adoption there, though I imagine the lack of cheap clones is the bigger factor there.
It certainly will be interesting to see what happens if and when Linux becomes more popular. That's the only thing I can imagine detroning the huge Microsoft monopoly in China, because the Linux solutions will include a lot of home-grown stuff, and that will be seen as a big plus. I think Linux will still have a long way to go though. (My guess is that they will clone Active-X or something, assuming that hasn't already happened...)
Seriously some of Maxthons features are just awesome. I wish the Firefox team would take a look at some of Maxthons features. The way it handles tabs, bookmarks etc for Firefox 3.
Basicialy maxthon is a firefox with tabmix plug-in with the best initinal configuration for 99% of internet users. And it has some unique features such as grouping that IE doens't support( Firefox copies this idea). Once you get used to Maxthon, you don't want to switch to Firefox for limitted advantages.