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Microsoft Drops Windows 7 E Editions
A week after Microsoft agreed to include a browser ballot screen in Windows 7 systems sold in Europe, then announced that those systems would initially include no browser at all — specifically, no Internet Explorer — Microsoft has changed its mind again and dropped talk of a European Windows 7 E edition. Here is the official Microsoft blog announcement, which includes a screen shot of the proposed ballot screen. The browsers are listed left-to-right in order of market share, with IE therefore having pride of place. PC Pro notes that, since the ballot screen would not appear if IE were not pre-installed, Microsoft's proposal opens the door for Google to work with PC manufacturers to get Chrome on new machines. Note that the browser ballot screen has not yet been accepted by the EU, though the initial reaction to it was welcoming.
The ballot screen would not appear if IE were not installed.
Doesn't that kinda kill the point of the whole project?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
This does look like a good way to go, and its good they also list the main features of every browser. This way more users also get to see how good Opera is too. However to make the list completely unbiased, they could randomize the order on every page load.
Seeing it uses IE to download the browser you want, have they made it so that IE gets removed after that too?
That joke has long past its expiration date; Bill Gates isn't at Microsoft anymore (on a regular basis), the Borg is from a tv show that ended over 15 years ago.
It's like using the Edsel to represent Ford, its just old and stale. time for slashdot to get with the times.
Am I the only one to find the title confusing and hard to read?
Dennis Onstenk
Or Konqueror?
Bah.
I'm no lover of MS, but this business of them being in trouble for bundling the browser made sense back when Netscape cost $50 and there were no real choices for the layman. Nowadays it's really a non-issue. After all, anyone who cares is free to download any number of free browsers. When "free as in beer" is the default price of a web browser, how is MS giving theirs away anti-competitive?
Caveat Utilitor
I'm guessing this is related to the monopoly thing.
What I never understood is, how come apple doesn't get into trouble for installing Safari on their comps? I use both OSX and Windows, so I'm not bashing either, just wondering how Microsoft's is a monopoly while Apple's isn't.
Also, they need to install a browser anyway. If you don't install a browser, then you can't get any browsers so I don't understand what was supposed to happen.
Last, how is it a monopoly when the product (ie) is non profit (afaik)?
I agree - lets change it to a flying chair.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The logistics of separating out the IE browser from the rest of the OS must have been more daunting than anticipated. I do wish the "ballot screen" idea would be used in places outside the EU, as well...
The EU's antitrust agency says that bundling shields IE from competition with other browsers, such as Opera.
(And Opera probably doesn't have a prayer of making money from their desktop product unless they can get more than the 0.7% marketshare they have.)
Are those orders canceled since the product no longer exists, or will they get the Full (non-upgrade) Win7 version instead?
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
time for slashdot to get with the times.
We may not have flying cars, but in this case I vote for a flying chair icon...
Kind of off topic but my Firefox has no issue with that page. Memory jumped from 248MB to about 265MB and went back to 251MB after, and as I type this it's down to 244MB.
Choosing a browser != voting.
That joke has long past its expiration date; Bill Gates isn't at Microsoft anymore
How about a Ballmer Borg? Even more terrifying than Bill Borg... Developers! Developers! Developers! Have a chair!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
From the screenshot it looks like one has to have IE installed in order to choose which browser you want, as the choice is web based?! Does this still mean that while one "gets a choice", IE is still always installed?
Microsoft had announced that they had an RTM version, and now they make such a profound change. This is really odd. Is there any good explanation? Have they a separate, decoupled RTM process for the European versions? Has there never been a "Windows 7 E"?
And how much would it cost to get something adware-infested into the browser selection screen?
How about just a chair as the icon?
Actually, as long as Microsoft keep pushing their one-vendor lock-in agenda, the icon is appropriate and not past its due date. When Microsoft becomes a beacon of openess that respects diversity, then the icon should be changed. The Borgs represent uniformity and control. Exactly what Microsoft stands for.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Will firefox get the prime position?
A computer is a tool, but I am not. I use Linux
[x] Remove Windows7 and install Linux
[ ] Remove Windows7 and install FreeBSD
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Let's see: Originally they were the implacable, unstoppable all-assimilating hyper-baddies, yet every time they threatened disaster the goodies found a way to defeat them. After a while this got routine and they lost their menace; now, despite their still awesome power, they're somehow boring and irrelevant.
Eh, still seems like a good fit to me.
Or a dancing monkey. Throwing a chair.
Resistance is futile...you will be... furnished.
AT&ROFLMAO
Then where's the Steve Jobs borg?
The Borg disappeared from TV 8 years ago on May 23rd, 2001. :)
Well Apple's little update-jacking fiasco seems to have paid off. The screenshot shows that Safari is the third most popular Windows browser, in front of Chrome and Opera. I don't have any problem with Safari (fast, small, standards compliant) but I wonder if this is all an Apple plan... and they seriously need to just use Windows widgets and styles instead of imposing their Cocoa look on the windows environment..
I agree - lets change it to a flying chair.
This was modded Funny when it is in fact an awesome suggestion.
I can't see the MS blog page, it's /.ed, but from the summary I felt that this solution seems to imply that browsers are mutually exclusive?
I'd hope that MS would not even go that far but you can never rule anything out with them.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The Borg represent achievement of perfection, through assimilation. Yes, that is exactly what Microsoft does. And no, I don't have a problem with it. Because they make amazing software... You can keep your shiny iCrap, thank you very much.
How will the ballot screen work? Will it redirect to the chosen browser maker's website, will it download an installer? If so, that'd be way too much work for 'simple' users and they'll just close the ballot screen leaving IE as the default browser.
Also, I can't help thinking that there must be a prettier way to make this ballot screen (outside of IE, preferably!).
I'm so tired of vendor lock-in, especially at the OS level. I mean, I can't get my Linux apps to run on my Vax. When will people learn and make apps that run on all platforms?
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
ftfy?
Same here. Pwn fail.
Which is, in its own right, pwnage of a sort...
7th May 2003 actually, there was one episode of Star Trek Enterprise which had the Borg in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(Enterprise_episode)
Of course I now expect there to be a load of replies claiming that no such show existed. :P
In Soviet Russia, prime position gets YOU!!!
My blog
I similarly have no issues with that page. 92 MB private for both this page and that page open. I think someone is confused or has been bitten by an odd bug.
So if Dell were to decide that Google Chrome should be the default browser, then you will never see that the ballot list. They wouldn't get to see 'how good Opera is' at all.
No need, the apple logo has the same effect for me.
Yeah, same here. Usually, Firefox sits between 200 - 300 MB of memory usage. Out of 6GB on my desktop or 4GB on my laptop, that seems okay.
Ah, I stand corrected. I never was able to watch all Enterprise episodes, whether it's a good show or not I'll make my way there once I'm done with DS9. Going through a Star Trek month (or two) and downloading every Star Trek TV series > And then I guess I'll move on to the movies :P
It doesn't matter which browser is installed from the install disk. Most users don't install from the install disk anyway. What matters is which browsers the OEMs will put on the machine, and which they will make the default. Even if Microsoft made an IE-free version of windows Dell and HP and everyone else would still install IE on the machines before selling it to customers.
Linux is facism
Have you seen some of the kernel devs? They're definitely not facist.
The borg image is a good fit, but rather than have Bill's image, maybe use the Microsoft icon as a borg or even have a borg ship fitted with the Microsoft icon.
Seriously, that would be perfect.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If no browsers are installed by default, how will... users get to the internet? Obviously, this question isn't geared towards the SD crowd that probably has two or three different portable browsers on their usb stick, and copies of all the exes for any browser you can think of laying around in their download folder. But its geared towards those, who don't know that much about computers, and want to be able to open up their computer and go online.... Looking forward to the responses....
How about a Ballmer Borg?
When I see Ballmer I think of the Peter Boyle as the Monster in Young Frankenstein. Of course, that reference is even older than the Borg reference.
So, is there a separate splash screen where you can select your chosen browsers default search engine? In IE8, the choice appears to be hardwired to Bing, and Google is hidden out beyond Ask Jeeves and eBay search if you ask to change it. Sounds like continued bad behaviour - the choice should be in order of search market share...
If the ballot goes by market share, does that mean the top slot goes to IE6?
What's next, the EU Commission forces Microsoft to include other O/S's (European of course) to be chosen at startup?
Why not these as well?
- show EU companies at the top of search results because of the monopoly Google has on search
- pay the EU a fine if your business practices allow you to have lower costs than your EU competitors
- not allow technology that is cost-prohibitive for their EU competitors to develop, unless you share it with them for free
- For every installed application, there must be an alternative EU competitor shown, if not then you must pay a fine for a competing EU company to develop it. these settings cannot be saved and must be chosen each time the program is used.
- any company deemed to offer competing products with EU businesses are charged an anti-competition fee, in order to promote a fair market in the EU
-Companies are not allowed to offer functionality stripped out to bypass EU fair market directives in versions of software sold outside the EU
- You must subject yourself to regular anti-competition audits and allow EU inspectors access to newly developed technologies in order to determine if a possible anti-competition regulation will be broken or require changes to the law.
Then by rights, Firefox takes the top place. From W3 (other sources will show same result): FF 47.3% IE 40.7% IE 6 15%
1. Upon the release of Win7 in the EU, MS will be inundated by support calls with "Why is the Internet broken!" or "How do I get on the Internet!". Guess what browser they are going to tell them to install?
2. Upon Win7 connecting to the internet for the first time guess what, Windows Update will probably list IE8 as an update.
So really what has the EU actually done? Not much other than piss off a shit load of users and make MS look bad (by removing the browser). I hope that MS captures all of the users complaints about this and shoves them up the ass of the EU when all is said and done.
Nice try, Bill.
No, it wouldn't. Even MS haters have to admit that the chair jokes are wearing incredibly thin. It was funny for a while, now it's just... dull.
I write bullshit
They may not run on the native OS, but it seems that you could get quite a number of packages to run on the system using the NetBSD VAX port.
No, it isn't. The flying chair thing is way more fucking tiring, but every fat unsexed loser around here still thinks it's great.
I would really like to use an alternate browser on my iphone. I am wondering if the market share for the iphone is reaching the 90% saturation of smart phones where Apple can be sued for non-competitive practices.
"the ballot screen would not appear if IE were not pre-installed" What a bunch of shit. Someone who's supposed to be an authority on the issue is claiming that it absolutely MUST be IE displaying it. You don't need to have a full featured browser (or a browser of any kind) to display this kind of ballot screen. Just a connection or a collection of installable browsers. The ballot can be a normal windows app.
Maybe a large percentage of Microsoft's money comes from its support for malware. People buy new computers rather than try to disinfect their old ones. See this New York Times article: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster.
Microsoft: Malware is our business plan. Making money through evil.
My opinion, but one shared by hundreds of thousands of people.
The Borg fairly consistently got their asses handed to them by a variety of not-cyborg-enhanced, "imperfect" species (granted, generally the same species each time until Voyager). And at least once by a cyborg-enhanced creature. In fact, said creature was one of their own (Picard/Locutus). A representation of perfection and uniformity my flabby ass. Where's your cyborg god NOW?
I don't see why it matters anymore that Microsoft integrates their own proprietary browser into their OS. Apple does it. WebOS's entire UI is basically WebKit. Google's doing it. If WebOS and GoogleOS and Android can take Linux, give it an entirely browser oriented frontend with Ajaxy applications and your run of the mill real estate agent thinks it's a "real easy to use phone", you can bet more Linux devs will be doing that, too.
If anything, Microsoft should do it BETTER. Their browser integration has always been half-@ssed and forced to rely on a lot of hacks that have led to the majority of their security holes. At this point, the whole lawsuit against IE's browser integration is meaningless. The problem isn't the browser, the problem is the operating system that runs that browser and the business practices of the company behind that operating system. And even those aren't that creepy anymore, considering some of the creepy practices that Apple and Google have employed over the past 6 years.
Provided completely without any copyrights withheld, I present, a better MS icon:
The Microsoft Flying Chair
Download several sizes, including transparent PNG images, in a ZIP
(Admittedly, the icon had a lot more motion blur before I shrunk it. :-( I could enhance it if there is interest from the Slashdot gang.
Really - what is a browser?
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
From the article:
This statement assumes that users actually know what a web browser is or that they care. Of course, users who know and care will install their browser of choice in any case.
The ballot screen would therefore achieve exactly nothing, except perhaps confusing users who aren't as internet-savvy as we would like them to be.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
A company icon is representative of a company's philosophy -- their actions over a long period of time. Under Gates, the borg symbol doesn't stop being germane simply because time has passed.
Parenthetically, it's not the age of the reference, but how well it's stayed in the collective mind. You could say "I'll get you, my pretty!" and most people would get it, even though the reference is over 70 years old.
Ballmer's tantrums are well known, and not confined just to the single chair incident. But the chair is a reference that most people in the geek world would get, so as long as he's in office and exhibits those characteristics, it fits.
Personally, I'd use a 1" #8 wood screw, shown actual size, but I'm willing to compromise on a flying chair.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
.... I prefer to chose that it really matters and that it makes sense to punish them now.
Which neatly brings me to my second point: are you by any chance advocating to pardon anybody that brakes the law if enough time has passed since the offence was committed? Regular people would be defenceless against big corps who would only need to hide their tracks well enough in order to get away with, well, murder....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The lack of quality is not the issue, I just don't get why there is people out there bringing it up.
The issue is a company deciding to exterminate a competitor using their monopolic position in an abusive manner.
If Netscape was crap or not is frankly unimportant to the matter of general principle that is Microsoft abusing their position.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The history is that Netscape costed money nad that Microsoft gave away their browser and, using their dominance in the desktop operating system market, pushed their browser into every computer, most likely by strong arming business partners.
That is the history, all what you are saying is incidental to the real issues at play ....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Being a computer support professional, I do a LOT of Windows installs. One of the things that makes it quicker/easier is that you know what to expect where. So you can quickly click past setup screens. In the case of this screen, I want it in a set order. That way, I can quickly find the browser I want to set as default on that particular system. If it got randomized, it would slow things down and/or cause mistakes.
The order doesn't really matter, so long as there is one. This is actually a fairly intelligent way of doing it: The larger the market share of a browser, the more probable it is that someone will want to use that browser as their default.
Most people will just close it....If I saw that and didn't know it was official, I would likely just close it because I thought it was a scam or a virus trying to get in to my computer.
"Web Browser Ballet -- Select your Browser"
Header does not clue me in any sensical way that you install software through this page. Most people will not read beyond the header.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
They could quite easily remove iexplore.exe and make it so you didn't have access to the "browser". However that really doesn't do anything to remove it. IE is more or less just a front end for the MSHTML engine. Windows has a built in HTML engine, and lots of things make use of it. So removing the IE exe, doesn't really accomplish anything. For that matter you can just type URLs in explorer itself.
Ok, so remove the whole thing you say. Well then you break a LOT of stuff. Many apps use HTML or web services to operate, and they do it by placing calls to IE's engine. It is easy to do, and you know the OS will have it. So if you strip out the HTML engine, they all break. We aren't talking rare stuff either, Impulse and Steam, the two most popular games download services, would both stop functioning. Users would have problems almost right away.
It was the same thing with Windows XP N. They were told to remove media player. So they did remove the exe for it. They were told that's not good enough, remove all of it. Ok, again, the problem is that the media player back end is DirectShow, it is the media playback layer on Windows. Lots of things use it. It isn't just an app. It is like QuickTime on OS-X. So they did that... And all sorts of shit didn't work in XP N. Games wouldn't run because they had videos to play back and used the media layer to do so. None of the 3rd party media players were a help since they don't replace that layer, in fact some of THEM wouldn't work since they use it.
What it gets down to is that these days, desktop OSes are enriched experiences. They aren't defined as their kernel and their shell. They are defined as that and their UI, their services, their APIs, their programs and so on. They provide users and developers with a lot of tools and features. As such, removing those features isn't a simple task and can have far reaching consequences. You remove the HTML engine, and everything that was built on it fails to run properly, if at all.
At the very least replace it with a decent Photoshopping job. Christ, Iran's government makes better images.
Comment of the year
Browsers are only important for displaying HTML content. No one is suggesting we force Microsoft to not install TCP/IP drivers by default... that would just be stupid.
The OS can still communicated over TCP/IP (and thus can download anything, even HTML files). It could FTP behind the scenes to download it, it could use a simple TCP connection directly to a download address... there's lots of ways for an OS to talk to the internet without a browser. All that really needs to happen is for the user to choose something and the OS to make it happen.
FanFictionRecs.net
Nah, Steve Jobs with Hypnotoad eyes would be more appropriate.
According to psychology people tend to choose the middle one because it looks more important.
So according to that theory this line up by Microsoft would be a huge mistake and people would choose google at lot ;)
Yours truely,
Skybuck.
This might be the drink I'm having doing the typing but... You better figure it out soon because testing IE6 is increasingly not worth it. I personally gave up testing my sites in IE6 and only do minimal repair work when something is really busted in IE6.
My sympathy and patience for those still using IE6 has disappeared. You guys aren't worth my time anymore. Giving my users what they want *and* supporting IE6 costs way too much. Thankfully I've got sites like Youtube and Digg who agree and will back the little guy up in giving you IE6 Luddites the finger. Hopefully more will join the party too.
I feel your pain, but ya'll should have been planning your migrations off IE6 years ago. This is what happens when you never update your infrastructure. The longer you use old crap, the more it costs to migrate. You never save money by never upgrading your technology stack. Worse, you risk loosing your competitive advantage--obviously those who can read digg, facebook, and youtube at work are vastly more productive then the geezers you have at your joint running IE6 :-)
Now excuse me, the Margarita I was drinking was awefuly strong. Cheers to you anyway!
Who? IE and Netscape were it. If there was any other players, they must have really sucked because I dont remember any of them.
Netscape did netscape in man. Don't you remember how every version of their browser got worse and worse. Remember how useless IE3 and 4 were? They did such a poor job rendering what was on the web they were only good for typing in "netscape.com" and downloading the real deal. Remember though how much bigger the netscape download got? IRC clients, mail clients, usenet clients, ftp clients, friggen HTML editors? Remember how Netscape got into the whole Portal thing and how hard it became just to find where to download their friggen browser? Then you'd download the 20mb thing and it would crash all the time?
Those guys killed themselves. It was obvious to anybody. Instead of getting better, their browser got worse and worse while IE got better and better. Eventually it just wasn't worth navigating the "Portal" to find their huge binary when IE could render every page just fine. Sadly, IE development stagnated with IE6 and it wasn't until major security bugs coupled with the increasing usability of Firefox that they finally got a clue and pushed out a modern browser.
But seriously, Netscape did themselves in. It doesn't take a "shill" (i.e. somebody who isn't 100% in line with orthadox FSF/RMS brand Freedom(tm)) to see that.
>Microsoft's proposal opens the door for Google to work with PC manufacturers to get Chrome on new machines.
This has always been an option. If Google wants to pay PC manufacturers to install Chrome as a default they can do so both in the US and the EU. It's one of the results of the anti-trust cases of the 90s.
Ok, maybe im dense or something, eveyone slams M$ for having IE install with windows as if it somehow kill any attempts to install firefox or any other browser.... we all know you can install any browser you want and you do need one to install your favorite unless you want to buy a cd copy. also, how is this different than Apple? Don't they force Safari on you? even half the Mac fanboys I know use firefox on thier supposedly "perfect" Macs. I think all this Browser BS is just that... as long as the M$ and Apple dont force you to use thier browsers by blocking others from being installed, I have no problem with them including thiers with the install. accually I think IE8 works fairly well, I use it and firefox about 50-50. apple can shove Safari... it just sucks
That is what happens when you sit around twaddling your thumbs running ancient crusty junk. The web moves too fast for 10 or 5 year deployment cycles. If you want to be competitive, you have to shorten that to a year at most or you'll get left in the digital dust. IE7 has been out for what, 3 years or so? That is about an eternity in web time and if you haven't upgraded your infrastructure to move off IE6 yet, you might want to think about upgrading your entire business model as it is fairly obsolete in the modern world.
Maybe once sites like the WSJ or nytimes stop supporting IE6, execs at these dinosaurs might get the hint. I doubt it though. However, it is entirely their loss and I dont weep a single tear for people who still haven't upgraded. Maybe they should make their business models a *tad* more nimble so they don't get caught with their pants down after being giving a *three-plus year notice*.
M$ is trying to deceive EU commission by making this move NOW, when they already have build the final compilation of windows 7, and the only option is to update windows from the web. This is very deceitful, every installation without, or with slow connection, will be unable to update to another browser. Any bug or shortcoming MS can inject in any installation process will prevent the user from using another browser.
MS should instead be forced to pre install all other browser on the distributed media. They should be forced to rebuild the final compilation of windows 7.
IBM is supposedly a technology company. A stapler manufacturing company or a clothing company, I can see still using IE6, but a technology company!? They of all people should have processes in place to ensure their employees are running only the latest technology. How the *hell* can a technology company create a modern, competitive product when its employees are running ancient web browsers!?
Steve, is that you?
Don't you have a /. account?
*engages chair deflector field*
I've said it before, I'll say it again, why is Microsoft bundling IE any worse then any other bundling? Notepad, Solitaire, Calc. Get rid of them all! Then you have Apple that bans programs that duplicate their programs (iphone, not sure about the mac). Why can't Microsoft ban Firefox and Chrome from their OS saying it duplicates their functionality?
You forget, most people want simple. having to to click on stuff and wait before getting online will most definately piss off my Wife.... oh, and all those other not so computer literate users out there.... almost forgot about them
Why don't you come enjoy the taste of my non-mutilated genitals in your mouth, Amerifag? The only way you'd get that experience in America is with Nigger dick.
Yeah, some of them don't even have faces!
That's flippin' awesome! Good Job. Here's one vote for the new Microsoft icon. Of course, I like the BillGatesBorg icon, too.
> pardon anybody that brakes [sic] the law if enough time has passed since the offence [sic] was committed?
In most countries, we've not found statutes of limitation objectionable enough to do anything meaningful about them.
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Latest vanilla FF3 on OS X here. _Closing_ the tab with the above link increased CPU usage by 4%, which is persistent after 3 minutes. Every time I close and re-open that link in a tab, FF claims and hangs on to another 88 MB without letting go.
What needs to be in a bug report for me to report this without it being binned into WONTFIX or WORKSFORME?
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
When IE had much less market share than NS Navigator, there was less support (percentage-wise) for existing standards, specifically HTML 3.0 and 3.2. Microsoft led the way to get CSS and later, the DOM, adopted as W3C recommendations. Ever since IE earned it's dominant market share, subsequent versions become more and more compilant with more and more standards. The argument that IE is "bad" because it's standards support is slightly less than Opera or Firefox is ludicris. Real-world users don't choose browsers based on such arcane things such as the CSS boxing model and whether or not one browser does padding one way, or another.
Which browser are they using for the ballot?
When Microsoft becomes a beacon of openess that respects diversity, then the icon should be changed.
That will never happen at Microsoft, or at any other corporation. That is not what any business does. They try to find a way to get a bar of gold left at their front door every morning -- to get the most money for the least amount of effort, and keep it that way.
Suggest drawing in "movement" lines a la comics. (pardom my ASCII)
________ |---| .....
_______ |---|
______ |===|
_____
____ | |
___ |---|
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Diversity???? THeir products are their products. Noone should be telling them to offer the competition. Can I realistically uinstall IE in Linux distors. Not the last time I checked (albeit sometime ago). The point is, It is MDFT's choice to use THEIR browser and media player in THEIR OS. The EU and everyone else nees to get over it. Hasseling MSFT has not significantly increased Linux usage nor Apple. Europe , the US, Canada, etc are SUPPOSEDLY free enterprise zonesBusiness and polittics are alot alike-arm twisting, secret meetings, sweetheart deal........ So, can /.ers move on. How about some attacts on Google (I want to know more about you than you do) or Apple ( totally proprietary and you have to purchase the right for your apps to be on Apple products) Jerks here on slash dot and other forums. Hate for MSFT just helps to DECREASE the competition.
Any order works for me, as long as Opera is on page 2.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
So, in every case they choose a different ranking function, one that suits them. But of course, who would expect otherwise...
It's like using the Edsel to represent Ford, its just old and stale. time for slashdot to get with the times.
Seriously. You should use a Pontiac to represent Ford.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
"[Outmoded in design, style, or construction] Which is an appropriate description of Windows XP."
citation needed; Please show instances where Windows XP is "outmoded".
...is that by using Internet Explorer as a means of displaying this ballot, you actually have to opt-out for IE and opt-in for any other browser. This is not giving the people unbiased choice.
What would have been a satisfactory solution would be to display this ballot on a browser-agnostic screen on first run, default to "no browser" and opt-in on any, or any number of browsers the end-user prefers (including IE). That way they avoid being accused of illegal tying and at the same time give the end user fair choice.
I'm no microsoft fan for sure, but I would welcome a microsoft that would be willing to actually compete fairly...
There seems to be a lot of speculation in that article (and the headline) saying they'll drop Windows 7 E and charge people for the full version (instead of getting the full version for upgrade prices like we are currently).
It would be a complete and utter disaster if they did that. Throughout Europe they have hundreds of thousands of Win7 pre-orders. There's never been so many people pre-ordering boxed copies of an OS. For them to either jack up the price or to say to the people the full version they thought they were buying was just an upgrade would be a PR nightmare. It's possible after launch they may change it to upgrade editions but there's no way they're going to piss off or confuse untold numbers of people who are fairly buzzed about the OS.
I think the speculation is pure BS really. It even says in one of the other articles that it's going to be browserless and the ballot screen is shown the first time IE is run. You cannot upgrade a OS with IE to one without which was the reason for windows 7 E in the first place.
to list the browsers in decreasing order of web standards compliance.
So you're saying that it's all due to some sort of conspiracy?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Is it wrong I want to create a VMWare instance just to find out what your sig does.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Perhaps one being thrown by an upset borg. Perfect.
Interesting...
.
- "Select Later" button*; the user wants to see the link they clicked on, and suddenly they get this window; they click past it. *[fine print: you stay with Internet Explorer unless you bookmark the browser-select page]
- Graphics are horizontally spaced with high-pixel-width graphics, so extra browsers get shoved offscreen on low-resolution monitors (which the screenshot wasn't of)
- why does MIE have the word "safer", and Firefox doesn't? I mean sure, Firefox has its fine share of hacks... but come on
.
What should have been done (additions in [brackets]):
MIE: "Internet Explorer 8.0+" making your web even better... Faster, Safer, Easier
Firefox: "Can a browser really make the web better[, safer, and easier]?. Try Firefox and see for yourself."
.
MIE wouldn't be so bad if it's support for CSS wasn't horrible. As a web developer, I know: it's still stuck in 1995 without Array.indexOf. Firefox fortunately has almost finished implementing text-shadow like Safari... though it has been in bugzilla for 10 years.
No point "removing" IE if you can still rely on that renderer being in 100% of the machines with Windows on it.
And WHY is HTML rendering a core function?
A renderfarm doesn't need it.
A fileserver doesn't need it.
A print server doesn't need it.
A headless box doesn't need it.
etc.
Can't you work it out?
Hint
http://bluemaster.iu.hio.no/edu/dark/lin-asm/syscalls.html
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Ever hear of FTP and HTTP - you don't need a *browser* to open up a an internet connection on those ports and talk those protocols...
Even better the OS could come with their installers with their respective update pages set as the default home page / first run page.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
It's like using the Edsel to represent Ford, its just old and stale.
Which is the perfect way to represent Microsoft, since their products are both old and stale.
We'll stop using it when Microsoft stops using a 3.5" floppy disk for the "Save" icon in every program.
...
...
/rant
People forget that Microsoft never set out to shove IE down people's throats. You didn't have 5,000 IE CD coasters sent to you in the mail like AOL and even Netscape did for years and years. (And this was even in the Win95 era when IE didn't ship on the OS.) (If anything you got MSN CDs and they were for a 'folder' based online system, and nothing to do with HTML or browsing.)
Microsoft's concept behind IE was to add HTML rendering to the Windows OS. Period.
This is so wrong I've gotta comment on it.
Microsoft promoted IE as a way to kill Netscape.
Microsoft embraced/extended/extinguished Navigator with IE.
Microsoft locked in from the host side to force people to use IE for many of the highest profile sites. Firefox has to go under an assumed name in order for these sites not to look like crap.
What Microsoft did with IE was so wrong that it was part of that big lawsuit way back when, that Microsoft lost (and then "won" through the typically corrupt appeal process).
Microsoft didn't peddle coasters, but what they did was far worse.
Man, the Microsoft shills just can't wait to rewrite history...
I come here for the love
Plastics.
Can't help but notice in the two or three screenshots of this ballot page I've seen, IE is situated to be the obvious FIRST choice. Pure happenstance, I'm sure.
file...
"Ironically, the users who may be most affected by the return of two-tier pricing are those who use Macs, but want to run Windows in a virtual machine. While PC owners typically upgrade from an older OS to a new -- and so can get by with the cheaper upgrades -- users who run Windows in a virtual environment often create the faux "machines" from scratch, and so require a full-package version."
And, for a brief instant, i was thinking that an ISO file might be handy to run the OS in...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I agree. At small sizes, the motion blur just looks, well, blurry, so I think movement lines would be better.
Seconded on both instances. Keep up the good work.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Uh, why is 300 MB for browser memory usage acceptable? if the entire world had 4-6 gigabytes of memory and the browser did incredibly complex things all the time, sure, maybe. But that's not the case. I have a hard time seeing 200-300 megabytes of RAM usage ever being acceptable for a browser running one HTML5 page.
Move on. 2GB is standard for a cheap office PC. Consumer PCs ship with 2-4GB of memory. 300MB for the browser is perfectly acceptable.
Is 300 MB acceptable for parsing text? No. This kind of attitude is what gives us shit like Vista. If you think playing with turds is fine, and that's all you ever demand of those who make your tools, then that's what you'll get. Grow up.
The choice is in order of most viewed, which is considerably more applicable than 'search market share' as there are quite a number of options which aren't for the standard definition of the 'search market'. If you want Google to be higher I suggest you get everyone you know to go in there and view it?
The last thing we want is a splash screen for every single option. IE8's search box is non-abusive and simple to change to your liking. It's fine.
Please cite where Microsoft specifically labeled it as "obsolete". Being unsupported does not mean the same thing as obsolete.
how very objective and informative.
Anyways, Windows XP is obsolete because you don't need 2GB to run it.