From Redmond With Love

theweatherelectric writes "Continuing the tradition, the Internet Explorer team has congratulated Mozilla on shipping Firefox 4. Given the proposed accelerated release reschedule for Firefox, Mozillians may need to watch their diet in future."

Comments

Nobody is completely bad

[Locke2005]

Once again, the IE folk have proven they are the coolest group in Redmond!

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Locke2005]

Of course, that's kinda like being the least slutty girl at the Home for Wayward Girls...

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[WrongSizeGlass]

Once again, the IE folk have proven they are the coolest group in Redmond!

Um, nope ... the cake is a lie.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[ThunderBird89]

Although not Redmond-based, but have you seen the Opera devs, testing whether Opera is faster than a potato? :D
Or Google doing the same thing, and testing Chrome against many others (Tesla coil discharge, soundwaves, etc).

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Locke2005]

Or the Least obese state in America.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[blair1q]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a basket of fries hurtling down the freeway at 70 mph.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Nikker]

Tfhe cake is always a lie.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Anonymous Coward]

The cake is a pie

That was _last_ Monday.....

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[marcello_dl]

the cake is a pi * square of radius * height
height must not include candles.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[danomac]

Nah, they just forgot to mention you can't cut it without a Microsoft knife, or eat it without Microsoft spoons... ;)

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[uvajed_ekil]

...and it will probably not arrive on time, will not be of the flavor you expected, and it might kill you.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[HermMunster]

Knowing Ballmer it's probably the cake left over from their IE9 launch party.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[HermMunster]

I'm sorry, but the number of users of XP is far more than 40%. 70% as a figure comes to mind.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[markdavis]

I was just basing in on a statistic from a few Googled searches for March 2011. It is entirely possible it is was wrong.

Either way, it is a huge number for them to ignore. Meanwhile, thankfully, the three other major, most important browsers *ARE* multiplatform:

Firefox
Opera
Chrome

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Cyberax]

"And no... IE9 is not yet standards compliant - better, yes - but as good as Chrome or FF (in that department)? No. "

IE9 is as good as Chrome or FF for all practical purposes in regards to standards compliance. It passes ACID3 with the same score as FF4, for example.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[zach_the_lizard]

It's nice most of the time, but there are WTF moments sometimes. I'm working on a WP7 app (don't ask...), and the XAML preview is totally busted. Something in my layout is killing that part of VS, but it works on the phone and the emulator just fine. The syntax highlighting for that part of the app is totally destroyed too.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[jelizondo]

Oh Lord!

Forget WP7, I just closed VS 2010 after four and a half hours of fighting with it; simple run-of-the-mill WinForms app, for some reason one table out of dozen in the dataset will not give me a list of parameters of GetData on the auto-complete.

Clearly, something is wrong but I can't figure out what. Finally I decided I would have to re-do some work and unzipped a back-up from last week, same thing.

If I figure what it is I might get a Nobel Prize on Occult Sciences!

Yes, VS 2010 is nicer and much better that its previous incarnations but somehow still one gets erratic behavior and no clue as to what is causing it.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[lennier1]

Nah, they just forgot to mention you can't cut it without a Microsoft knife, or eat it without Microsoft spoons... ;)

Sounds less like a Microsoft cake and more like an Apple pie.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Paul1969]

Yeah, that guy is obviously the dumbest self made billionaire.

You need to learn the definition of "self made."
Hint - it does not contain any references to college roommates, undeserved loyalty or sheer dumb luck.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Anonymous Coward]

They're next door in Bellevue, not Redmond. (In fact, they're right next door to the building where the Bing team works)

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[ByOhTek]

Knowing Ballmer it's probably going to throw some chairs and start shouting "Developers! Developer! Developers!".

ftfy

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[ByOhTek]

My kingdom for some mod points- that's so true.

Given that it's a Microsoft cake, it's probably just loaded with viruses.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Denogh]

I see what you did there.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[DCstewieG]

I'm so glad the IE team made the decision not to worry about the ACID test. It's only PR for geeks who'd rather care about a single number than attempt to judge on real world use.

IE9 is a solid browser which will of course fall behind with the slow IE dev cycle. But if they keep the pace from IE7 through IE9, IE10 will blow the others away.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[operagost]

As if there would be any cake left over with Ballmer in attendance. Just look at the guy!

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[RobertM1968]

For your information , they don't make cakes themselves. And by the way IE9 is not less standard compliant than FF4.

Wow and WHOOOSH!!!

Really... it was a joke, which I thought was obvious. Do you really think I'd wanna sit here all day eating cake, or care if they sent them? Or did you really expect I'd think it possible to send millions of web developers cakes, regardless of who actually makes them? Wow, some of you are so dense these last couple days. Nothing personal.

Oh, and btw, from *independent* testing results, not sponsored by Microsoft, and not performed by companies that MS has a stake in, IE9 is less compliant than FF4 (and Chrome 10 and FF3). This was covered a week ago, with a link to a site that compared all versions of each browser. Believe what you want, but they were pretty cut and dry about it. IE9 is a VAST improvement, but still not as good as FF4 and Chrome. NONE of them ended up being perfect. IE9 simply wasn't as good.

And the css div position thing? It's real. Try it some time. Make a compliant page, set up a bunch of divs with and without borders, with and without padding, with and without margins. Then, screencap it or whatever, and count the pixels where each is laid out. You'll find IE9 is wrong in it's math (at least per the standard).

You see... "just a pixel or 3 off" or "it's close enough" or "no one will notice" doesn't cut it for me - that isnt standards compliant... it's "well, it's really close, and a lot better than previous versions" but not standards compliant.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[RobertM1968]

"And no... IE9 is not yet standards compliant - better, yes - but as good as Chrome or FF (in that department)? No. "

IE9 is as good as Chrome or FF for all practical purposes in regards to standards compliance. It passes ACID3 with the same score as FF4, for example.

"For all practical purposes" is not the same thing as "standards compliant". On more in depth tests, it scored VASTLY better than IE6, a LOT better than IE7, and DECENTLY better than IE8. But still not as good as FF4 and Chrome.

Don't use semantics to win an argument. It's standards compliant or it is not. "For all practical purposes" says "It's not... but it's decent enough". Thus, you really haven't refuted anything I've said - you've just provided your opinion that you think it's good enough.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[Cyberax]

Don't use semantics to win an argument. It's standards compliant or it is not.

FireFox and Chrome are NOT standards-compliant. In fact, nobody implements the 4.2 spec completely and without problems.

Re:Nobody is completely bad

[RobertM1968]

Don't use semantics to win an argument. It's standards compliant or it is not.

FireFox and Chrome are NOT standards-compliant. In fact, nobody implements the 4.2 spec completely and without problems.

Correct. But IE9 is still behind them. Only Safari is as far behind Chrome 10, Opera and Firefox 4 as IE9 is. The point is, when it comes to browsers, IE9 is still at the bottom of the pack, along with Safari and the Android Web Browser.

See the point now? IE9 is still at the bottom and not nearly as standards compliant as the other market share leaders.

Rivalry

[xMrFishx]

That's the sort of rivalry I like. Competition between engineers tends to be good humored banter. Competition between marketeers seems to be cut throat warmongering. Shame really. It should go back to the days of jolly good what what old sport, I say good game with a touch of the old one two.

Re:Rivalry

[PopeRatzo]

Competition between engineers tends to be good humored banter.

Management hates this sort of thing.

Engineering used to be a career where you could make a good living and have a little dignity. More and more it seems, the people at the top would rather it not be that way. They don't like the notion of a sector of the work force that thinks it's almost as good as the guys who provide the capital. That's why most engineers' working conditions are worse today than they were ten years ago, and their purchasing power has declined. Ask someone who's looked for an engineering job recently. A lot of the fun and a surprising amount of the reward have gone out of it.

No matter how well trained, no matter how important you are, how vital your job, you are still just a worker, and as such, you cannot be allowed to get above your station. This is how ownership thinks.

Re:Rivalry

[ShakaUVM]

>>Management hates this sort of thing.

Yeah, because I'm sure the IE dev team sent the cake behind management's back. Err... again.

Those tricksy engineers! Got to keep them in their place.

Believe it or not, Microsoft treating their engineers like shit is a good way to get them to go work for Google. So they don't.

Re:Rivalry

[tsa]

Their engineers may be treated relatively well, but I bet they don't earn nearly as much as the managers do. They most probably have less secondary benefits as well.

Re:Rivalry

[ShakaUVM]

>>Their engineers may be treated relatively well, but I bet they don't earn nearly as much as the managers do. They most probably have less secondary benefits as well.

From what I understand from my friends working for the evil empire, you have a RPG-esque "level" when you work at Microsoft. Collect enough "XP" among each of your rated categories, and you level up. Gain a pay raise, and later on, a promotion. You can either stay as a senior developer (or higher level titled developers) or branch into management at some point. From what I understand, in a general sense, your level controls your salary, but past a certain point it may be easier to level up as a manager instead of a developer.

Re:Rivalry

[tcr]

Let's hope Legal didn't get in on it too, since Firefox supports tabbed browsing and MS are patent trolling.

Did they check inside the cake for a sinister envelope?

Re:Rivalry

[10101001 10101001]

Wow, ya think so? So you're saying that the people above the engineers actually make more money and benefits than the people they're above? Get outta here *gay hand wave, cheesy smile*.

Just like the NBA, the NFL, etc. Oh, wait.. Yea, it'd almost seem like in some industries it's recognized that just because you're above someone else doesn't inherently mean you should be paid more. It's almost like, oh, experience, importance, and replace-ability also factor into it. For white collar workers, there's plenty of superstars which are pretty irreplaceable with plenty of experience and importance to the future of a department or a whole company. In the mean time, a newly hired manager might very well be rather replaceable even if he's above those superstars.

In short, why should it be presumed that a manager who is paid reasonable well and has the chance to be promoted in the future as he/she builds experience, importance, and proves his/her irreplaceableness should be paid more than his subordinates? Maybe it makes sense in blue collar work (although even there, I'd tend to disagree at times because in some industries the product sold has plenty of profit and the managers are as much or even more replaceable than a trained blue collar worker), but I can't see how one can presume it in white collar work, especially when the boss and subordinate are in different job classifications. Now, if it were one engineer and a subordinate engineer or one manager and a subordinate manager, I can see more room to presume. But, it's still always down to a case-by-case basis.

Re:Rivalry

[indiechild]

Agree with what you say. Slashdot must be full of marketers!

Re:Rivalry

[rwade]

Yeah, I'm sure there's a super robust and objective way for every single person to achieve as many XPs as they want to chase after. There's likely no management favoritism involved in the process at all.

Re:Rivalry

[PopeRatzo]

By "management" I am referring to something a little more general than just Microsoft. But I'm pretty sure you know that.

Re:Rivalry

[PopeRatzo]

So you're saying that the people above the engineers actually make more money and benefits than the people they're above?

Depends what you mean by "above". An associate dean for finance is "above" a superstar English prof sitting in a named chair, but certainly won't make more money. The top administrator of a hospital won't make as much as the top neurosurgeon.

Remember, these hierarchies were put in place artificially to reverse the natural order of labor preceding capital that would exist in a "free market". And since these hierarchies are put in place only when ownership is "free" to do so (when there's no organization of labor) it's another example of why "free markets" when it comes to employment do not and can not exist. And not only do these hierarchies exist, but they exist for the sole purpose of limiting the power of individual workers, to create insecurity among them and to keep them working for as little as possible.

When you look at the top of that same hierarchy, the same forces are not at work, again showing how capital when free to do so (when there's no regulation) will act to work against the free market. There is absolutely no good reason why senior management should earn more than 400 times what an average line worker makes. "But that's the "free market"" you will hear people say. But see, it's not at all.

Re:Rivalry

[ShakaUVM]

From what I understand, it's a mix of both managerial reviews and more objective scores, like doing documentation and so forth. So if you want to level up quickly, you need to make sure you hit up all the categories.

Re:Rivalry

[PopeRatzo]

It's hard to compare purchasing power over time.

It's actually not very hard at all. But real purchasing power is one thing and the number the boys at one of the "business" media networks comes up with are two different things.

Yes, computers have come down in price in ten years. You can't eat computers. You can't live in a computer. You cannot drive a computer (especially now that the "telecommuting" fad has waned).

The things that people live on have exploded in price. For some reason though, the inflation number does not include them, but gives massive weight to technology.

If you put together a more representative basket of the things people buy, you will find that your purchasing power has declined significantly and your working conditions have almost certainly gotten worse in the past ten years. If you look at it over thirty years, you'd jump off a bridge.

On to something

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so the primary reason for Firefox moving to shorter releases is to get more cakes out of Redmond.

Nice try, Firefox.

1 Matthew Holloway on March 22nd, 2011 at 3:45 pm

I think Matthew Holloway (not me, BTW) may be on to something there.

Re:On to something

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another good one: "Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."

3 no on March 22nd, 2011 at 4:16 pm

Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[ronocdh]

Not only should we congratulate the IE team on this fantastic and wholly good-natured tradition, but the Firefox guys never fail to exhibit a genuinely grateful yet professional tone. Any developer working on IE must recognize the huge shot to the arm that Firefox gave the browser market, and given IE's great strides lately, the gap in usability and security is finally getting narrower between the two browsers. I'd imagine that working on IE would involve a lot of friendly competition, and I'm happy to see that in an industry that's typically rife with cutthroat politics.

Now, when will the Firefox team start sending cakes to the Chrome developers? ;)

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[blair1q]

I'd bet the existence of Firefox means there are about 100 more IE devs employed than there would otherwise be.

The cake's a meager kickback.

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[BagOBones]

I seem to recall an interview around when IE 7 started up to get IE out of the IE 6 rut that the IE devs where stripped down to a bar bones team for a long stretch because there was no company support for them to DO anything new... Seems like with IE 9 they where given some power to innovate and compete.. I am actually impressed with IE9, it is not going to be my primary browser but I am sure happy that it could be the new default when I sit down at someone else's computer.

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[Nikker]

It doesn't matter, MS has the ability to hire engineers, PHD's and Physicts to put together solitaire, they are up and fighting again but they have to take on FireFox and Chrome to do it. If this settles they will sit on their hands for a bit mess with the security, kill it slowly and something else will come up. Thanks for the cake and it really is a lie, thanks to deep pockets by Google and Mozilla now keep kicking some IE ass!

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[UnknownSoldier]

> IE9 is might be shaping up better than FF.

Um, let me know when IE9 can run on WinXP please ...

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[kevinmenzel]

Get a new OS. Or a new computer. Seriously, I'm running Windows 7 on an 8 year old laptop right now, with 1GB of RAM. It's a 1.3 Celeron, and it runs just as good as XP did on the same machine. The laptop is so old that the screen hinges broke off, so it's hooked up to my CRT on input #2. Yes I have all the visual glitz turned off, but I still get the fancy new audio stack out of the bargain, plus it's running IE9. I pretty much just use that computer for web browsing, CD-burning, and some other basic tasks, but it does the job.

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[Dunbal]

With HTML5, IE9 might be able to run Win Xp?

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[outsider007]

The Chrome developers can afford their own cake.

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[arkane1234]

Hey.. buddy.. you realize that requires spending 150-200 bucks right?
Some people don't see any reason to do that other than to keep up with the Jones'. Can use that money to put a months worth of fuel into my vehicle,or buy a few games.

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[AliasMarlowe]

Seriously, I'm running Windows 7 on an 8 year old laptop right now, with 1GB of RAM. It's a 1.3 Celeron, and it runs just as good as XP did on the same machine

Hey, I've also got an 8-year-old laptop with 1GB of RAM and a 1.6GHz Pentium M. It's also got a 17" 1920x1200 display without a single dead pixel, and its battery is still in pretty good shape. However, when I upgraded it from XP about 6 years ago, I moved to Ubuntu which runs better than XP on this machine. It currently runs 10.04 LTS, and everything works fine. It's our "kitchen computer" and is used for rather more than just email & browsing - it can play HD movies (vlc) loaded from our server, and is used for editing documents (OpenOffice), processing photos (Bibble pro, Gimp), and vector graphics (Inkscape), among other tasks.

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[Xest]

No need to bet, it's true, Microsoft had all but killed off the IE development team.

IE6 came out around 2001 and Firefox first released in 2004, and took some time to become popular.

Because of the lack of competition or need to move much in the browser market, Microsoft saw little reason to invest in IE.

But then Firefox started to become a credible threat, by 1.5 it had gained a noticable amount of ground and was showing no sign of slowing.

Microsoft in 2006 released their first new browser release for 5 years, in the same month as Firefox 2.

I'd agree this is probably why the IE team are so decent towards the Firefox team- because they realise that without the competition they brought, their jobs really would not be there.

Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.)

[kevinmenzel]

However, if you plan on upgrading, and save accordinly long term, then you're talking as a worst case scenario with no interest earned from like, a saving's account, $25 a year, or about $2 a month. At least where I live, minimum wage is $10/hour - so that's about 12 minutes of minimum wage labour a month for 8 years. Which doesn't exactly seem unreasonable from a financial perspective. Of course, as has been noted, other options include running a free modern operating system, and/or running one of the many other browsers. However, I'm still not buying a complaint that an upgrade costs to much, when, yes, that money COULD be spent in other ways... if you care that much about running IE9 to complain that it doesn't run on XP.

Whereas if I valued games or movies or gas more than operating system upgrades, I wouldn't particularly complain that "Feature X" requires an upgrade. It's Windows. Upgrades cost money. They come with new features. It's the model Microsoft uses to make money. They've used the same model to make money for decades. It wasn't a surprise that this would happen....

have you seen the new scripture?

[FudRucker]

http://i.imgur.com/JjuFs.png

Re:have you seen the new scripture?

[compro01]

Sadly, it's not new. It's the same one that shipped with 3.0

Ah, the good ol' days!

[AsmCoder8088]

Nothing like a bit of friendly competition, heh..

Re:Lies

[blair1q]

> The cake is a lie9

FTFY.

Re:Terrible Cake

[blair1q]

Nope. Made it themselves, with MS Cake.

Rubber band?

[Khopesh]

I thought that was a rubber band around the IE logo at first, had to zoom in to see that it's probably just sugar. (These cakes aren't gags ... yet)

Timeo danaos...

[ArAgost]

Meanwhile, on Twitter, they bought ad space to promote IE9 over the release of FF4. Stay classy, Microsoft! http://twitpic.com/4c6nth

Re:From Redmond with love, huh?

[IQgryn]

I'm sure arranging for a cake to be sent could take the entire day for the entire Microsoft dev team.

I bet not, though. Especially the Windows devs, which, by and large, aren't the IE devs.

Re:From Redmond with love, huh?

[AnonGCB]

You do realize those are completely separate teams and that this probably took a secretary an hour or so to do, right?

Must be the reason for the faster release cycle...

[sixteenbitsamurai]

Firefox devs really like cake, apparently.

In return?

[freakingme]

Someone tell me Mozilla did the same when IE9 was released.

Re:In return?

[naoursla]

Nope.

Re:From Redmond with love, huh?

[Plammox]

Yes. Please respect my right to rant.

Re:Diet watching

[lysdexia]

You are welcome. (Yes, this looks like arse on purpose ...)

Re:Terrible Cake

[Anonymous Coward]

Aww. Little boy upset that he didn't get any cake?

Re:Public Service Announcement

[Plammox]

This goes for legit copies of Win7 as well. (As in my case)

Re:From Redmond with love, huh?

[Missing.Matter]

What? You mean they didn't take the single person working on SP1 and made him make a cake?

Cookie!

[hugetoon]

Talk about a big one...
Are they testing for a buffer overflow?

Re:Cookie!

[ashvagan]

Talk about a big one... Are they testing for a buffer overflow?

Nope, it was a wafer cake, so it's called a wafer overflow

Re:Terrible Cake

[amicusNYCL]

Call down Mr. Waddams, hopefully you'll get some next year. Now back to Storage B with you.

Re:In before dumb comments about the cake being a

[Anonymous Coward]

In before dumb comments about "in before"... oh wait.

But in all seriousness, please don't clutter Slashdot with such drivel.

Re:Diet watching

[Dracos]

IE6, 7, or 8 trying to render any acid test.

Re:From Redmond with love, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yours is the rant of a frustrated, stupid dependent. Not smart enough to use the open sores variants, unable to pay someone to keep the commercial products running properly. I'd say I feel for ya, but you're also a dink; perhaps you should stay perched in front of one-way media flow ,and leave the complicated things to people who can handle them?

Re:Only 1 cake?

[geminidomino]

Gabriel Iglesias? Fluffy, izzat you?

Cool, but where are the standards?

[dmomo]

Sure that cake looks great with IE, but slap any other browser on it, and the "C" in "Congratulations" will be smack dab in the middle of the cake with all of the other text oozing of the right onto the table.

Looking at the cake.

[EnsilZah]

If there's one thing the IE people have proven is that there is in fact an I in Ieam.

best comment at the parent article

[Swampash]

"Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."

Re:best comment at the parent article

[grcumb]

"Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."

Well, if you want to be picky about it, a closer analogy would actually be the child of the murdered parent.

And given that Mozilla is looking more and more like Inigo Montoya... yeah, I'd send cake.

The Real Hidden Message

[TheRon6]

I think we're all missing the underlying subtext here. There's a reason the IE team always sends its congratulations in the form of a cake... because it's a lie.

Re:From Redmond with love, huh?

[Plammox]

The love for MS on Slashdot is touching. ;-)

How cute!

[Alex Belits]

Now die in a fire, Microsoft scum!

Re:In before dumb comments about the cake being a

[Schemat1c]

I know. I'm just purposefully calling him out because it's the same person who's been hounding me about it. Hint: I know it's the same person because it's been over a year since I had that sig and he's the only person to complain about it.

Nope, don't flatter yourself. I just hate spammers that join forum discussions just to lure people to their spam links. I had had a few beers and threw some nerd rage your way.

Great detective work Colombo.