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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 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...
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.
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.
Unfortunately, even this screen shields IE from competition. It is well established that given a dialog that requires them to pick from multiple choices with equal prominence, an uninformed user tends to simply choose the first one. In short, by listing IE first, they are still significantly emphasizing use of their browser. Only random ordering would not be problematic as far as I'm concerned.
The best part from the article was this:
Yet depending on the site you ask, some sites show Internet Explorer at much lower market share than FireFox. W3Schools, for example. Let's not make this anything other than what it is: Microsoft lists their browser first to make it more likely that people will choose their browser, period. It has nothing to do with IE's market share except insofar as it is an attempt to retain it.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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
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.
Resistance is futile...you will be... furnished.
AT&ROFLMAO
Then where's the Steve Jobs borg?
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!
It is well established that given a dialog that requires them to pick from multiple choices with equal prominence, an uninformed user tends to simply choose the first one.
But then, what if the uninformed user thinks their preferred browser actually is on the presented list? Mozilla probably won't be the winners if this so-called "ballot screen" ships.
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.
Because Apple aren't a monopoly.
You're confusing things - it's not "Microsoft are a monopoly because they did this", it's "Microsoft are a monopoly, and they did this". Being a monopoly is about market share (well that's one definition - I'm not sure off hand what criteria the EU use, but the point is that Microsoft qualify, and Apple aren't even close).
Last, how is it a monopoly when the product (ie) is non profit (afaik)?
That's not really relevant, but anyway: Microsoft have a monopoly on operating systems, which they do sell.
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
[x] Remove Windows 7 and install an OS that forces all my programs to close when the god damn fucking X server crashes or requires a reboot after locking up.
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.
Yeah, the whole "in order of market share" thing is a red herring.
Did anybody seriously think IE wouldn't be first on the list?
No sig today...
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.
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.
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.
If the ballot goes by market share, does that mean the top slot goes to IE6?
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.
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.
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.
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.
But wouldn't Apple LOVE to be a monopoly? And then what?
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.
I don't think opera has a prayer of making any significant money directly from their desktop product when all thier competitors are free (as in beer). They gave up trying to sell thier desktop version a while back and just gave it away.
However it is still in operas interests that IE loses it's dominance because a standards friendly web makes embedded browsers (operas primary market) more usefull.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Then I bet they would be in a very similar position to where MS is now with antitrust suits aimed at them.
But they aren't and they probablly won't be in the forseeable future. They seem content to stay in the luxury market.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
People need to stop modding this shit as insightful. Explorer isn't based on Internet Explorer either.
What you perceive as Safari is two components: Safari, and WebKit. WebKit is something you can't remove from Mac OS, as the shell would die horribly without it. You can happily drag Safari to the trash.
What you perceive as Internet Explorer is two components: Internet Explorer, and Trident. Trident is something you can't remove from Windows, as the shell would die horribly without it. You can happily drag Internet Explorer to the recycle bin (with one caveat: Windows will try replace it without some coaxing).
As you can see, the Safari and Internet Explorer arguments are one and the same, and people need to stop pretending that the Mac OS setup is somehow different.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
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.
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*.
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?
That's flippin' awesome! Good Job. Here's one vote for the new Microsoft icon. Of course, I like the BillGatesBorg icon, too.
Dragging Internet Explorer to the recycle bin does nothing but inform you that removing the icon from the Desktop will not remove the program. At least on XP.
> 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.
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.
Apple doesn't have an overwhelming majority market share on the OS market like Microsoft has. Apple can install browsers of their own manufacture on their own operating system but even if Apple wants to, they still don't have a market share that enables them to leverage their OS to kill off all other browser manufacturers. If Microsoft was just another one of half a dozen OS manufacturers with a 10, 20, 30% market share that shipped it's Microsoft OS with it's own Microsoft browser the same would apply to them. Unfortunately Microsoft has a 90% OS market share and even though Microsoft is doing the same thing when it bundles IE with Windows as Apple does when it bundles Safari with OS X the 90% OS market share of the Microsoft Windows OS changes the rules (according to the EU). Microsoft can and has leveraged their dominant OS market share to also monopolize other software market segments they felt entitled to have all to them selves. If it took Microsoft's fancy they could kill off any competitors in any desktop software market segment they wanted to by simply offering a free (as in $0.00 price tag) competing product and bundling it with their Windows OS. What the EU is trying to do with this ballot screen is not about avenging Netscape it isn't even so much about Microsoft's attempt to dictate web standards by pwning the browser market although that is probably a factor, it is about teaching Microsoft a painful lesson about the consequences of abusing their dominant market position. Which incidentally is something the US Govt. failed miserably to do even though it is in a much stronger position to do so than the EU.
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.
It is trivial to write a non browser based client app that displays a ballot screen and then downloads and installs the browser of your choice. Why exactly people thought that shipping Windows without a browser would be a colossal problem is not quite clear to me.
Last, how is it a monopoly when the product (ie) is non profit (afaik)?
Shipping it's browser for free is how Microsoft established it's browser monopoly in the first place. It's called "dumping" or "predatory pricing" and is a tactic frequently used by greedy mega corporations to drive smaller competitors out of business.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
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?
Suggest drawing in "movement" lines a la comics. (pardom my ASCII)
________ |---| .....
_______ |---|
______ |===|
_____
____ | |
___ |---|
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Try dragging iexplore.exe to the recycle bin. What you describe would be the same as dragging a Safari alias to the trash.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
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"
...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...
Apple's market share could grow to 100% and they still not get into any trouble by installing Safari in every Mac they sell. Why? MS got into troubles not because of the zero price of their products bundled with Windows but because of the anticompetitive deals they made with PC manufacturers: I'll make you pay more for a Windows license if you install anything else but what I accept. If they didn't do that, the bundling of IE would still be fine. MS is being penalized now as an attempt to recreate equal market conditions.
By the way, Apple is the only company that can sell OSX based computers so there are no other manufacturers to bully but I wonder what's going to happen if Apple's market share will reach 25%: how the other manufacturer will react to the shrinking of their market shares? What's sure is that they won't silently die out.
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.
Haha. Just wait until that browser selection web page gets defaced! :-]
But I agree with you, a randomization upon every page load should not be any hard to add. As far as I can tell, Microsoft should not be able to give any reasonable arguments against that.
well... it sort of is. you're electing which browser should be on your PC. You just happen to be the only voter as well. Personally, I think they just liked the alliteration.
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.
As you can see, the Safari and Internet Explorer arguments are one and the same, and people need to stop pretending that the Mac OS setup is somehow different.
Except that Safari doesn't have a decade-long history of being rife with often-exploited security flaws, nor did Apple ignore standards that they helped create (HTML, CSS). THAT is the #1 reason we hate IE. MS's bad behaviors are icing on the cake--real geeks hate IE because it's a crappy, crappy product, from a technology and security perspective, which achieved market dominance. No matter what or why, we hate when the worst product wins.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
...
...
/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.
From http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 (which appears to measure clients hitting a link), Firefox has ~22% of the market, while Opera has ~2%.
So, browser market share can be had in the current situation, but Opera's management is ineffective and/or clueless. So, like many companies who fail in the market, they seeks rents and privilege from the politicians.
A pox on their house.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Opera's profits more than doubled the last quarter. Overall revenue was up 60%, while desktop revenue was up more than 100%. An ineffective and/or clueless management which achieves record growth in the middle of a recession, and whose mobile browser dominates the mobile browser market (25-30% market share)... Yeah...
Also, they didn't seek any privileges. They merely reported Microsoft's crimes to the authorities. And Google, Mozilla and others joined the complaint as well. But hey, I guess facts don't really matter!
Clever signature text goes here.
Actually, Opera is the #3 browser in Europe, bigger than Chrome and Safari combined, and closing in on 10% market share. Even Net Applications now lists Opera at 2% worldwide, while the more accurate StatCounter lists it at about 3%.
Clever signature text goes here.
Ignoring the odd European attitude that success is somehow evil and must be punished -- Opera does fine as a mobile browser, but sucks (and has sucked for the better part of a decade) as a desktop browser, while others (e.g., Firefox) have managed to gain significant market share in the face of Microsoft's alleged misbehavior. That Opera's management couldn't succeed in the desktop marketplace, and instead co-opted some politicians to extort Microsoft into helping distribute their product is rent seeking of the highest order. It's rather like if I create a bad tasting drink in my bathtub, then get the government to force Coke and Pepsi to include one bottle of my drink in every six pack they sell.
Lame, truly lame.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Huh. I'm not going to try it myself (on the off chance it does break something), but I'll take your word for it. The base point still stands though - if you refer to WebKit separately from Safari, you need to treat Trident separately from Internet Explorer.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
That's wonderful, but completely irrelevant. We're arguing the technical state of Internet Explorer as opposed to Safari, not how much more it sucks.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
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.
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.
I have never heard about this attitude in Europe. And Microsoft is certainly not being punished for its success. It's being punished for breaking the law!
Opera's desktop browser is excellent, as a matter of fact.
Actually, Opera is the #3 browser worldwide. It is also #3 in Europe, where it's bigger than Chrome and Safari combined! So clearly, only Firefox has succeeded at gaining significant market share. Even Google with its vast advertising resources has failed to make a dent after nearly a year! And remember, Safari is the default browser on Mac.
The fact is, Firefox is evidence that the market is broken, as Mozilla points out:
"When the only real competition comes from a not for profit open source organization that depends on volunteers for almost half of its work product and nearly all of its marketing and distribution, while more than half a dozen other "traditional" browser vendors with better than I.E. products have had near-zero success encroaching on Microsoft I.E.'s dominance, there's a demonstrable tilt to the playing field. That tilt comes with the distribution channel - default status for the OS bundled Web browser."
Actually, all Opera did was to report Microsoft's criminal activity to the authorities. Mozilla and Google soon joined, fully supporting the complaint and offering their help as interested third parties, exactly like Opera. Also, your racist, xenophobic argument fails for the simple fact that Opera is ahead of both Chrome and Safari in market share. Apparently it's more important for you to lie about Opera than to actually realize that companies like Google and Mozilla are fully backing the complaint as well.
Actually, it's like if you create a tasty drink, but a dominant player in the market uses its market power to illegaly prevent you from entering the market. You undermine the free market, you face the consequences.
Anyway, you have yet to show how a company which is the #3 browser worldwide and in Europe, and which is seeing massive growth in the market segment where you claim they have "failed" has actually failed. Desktop revenue up more than 100% doesn't sound like "failure" to me.
Clever signature text goes here.