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Official "Firefox With Bing" Released
MrSeb writes "Mozilla is now distributing a version of Firefox that uses Bing as the default search provider instead of Google. Rest assured that this is a joint project, though: the creatively-named Firefox with Bing website is run by Microsoft, and both Mozilla and MS are clear that this is a joint venture. Now, don't get too excited — the default version of Firefox available from Mozilla.com is still backed by Google, and there's no mention of an alternative, Bingy download anywhere on the site — but it's worth noting that Mozilla has been testing Bing's capabilities using Test Pilot over the last couple of months, and the release of Firefox with Bing indicates that Mozilla is now confident in Bing's ability to provide a top-notch service to Firefox users. Mozilla might be readying a large-scale switch to Bing when its current contract with Google expires in November."
You just lower the bar.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I thought they merely skinned Google and called it their own?
More astroturfing from TechLA.
Thanks so much. I keep teetering between a full blown switch to Chrome or staying with Firefox. You've finally helped me decide :) Thank you so much, Chrome here I come.
I don't get the whole point of this version.
Is it some mix of Anti-Google, so "we must go to Bing, which somehow is related to former Yahoo Search?"
What about the third party providers, ones who could use the traffic metrics? Ask.com comes to mind. Or StartPage that (supposedly) doesn't record your ip address. Or DuckDuckGo. Or something.
Why are there only like 12 players in all of Tech?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I'd much rather see a version of Firefox that used DuckDuckGo by default (http://ddg.gg)
No one cares, go fuck yourself.
.. or that MicroSoft wrote a decent check to Mozilla to start distributing Firefox with Bing as well.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
I set mine to duckduckgo. I'm pretty happy.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
But when that competitor is Microsoft the metagame changes. MS is famous for doing a little of everything, so they're always Fourth in a market, trying to look like "underdogs" while they still have the fading WinOffice monopoly.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Check out his history, it pretty much confirms Radres' claim.
No, just when he copy pastes in a huge wall of text.
Just as I was reading this summary, Firefox popped up with a "could not sync" message. Methinks other things are more pressing than partnering with Microsoft.
Last time he popped up it was with another huge wall of copy paste garbage for WinPhone.
Folks who love Microsoft products but not IE? People who don't trust Google with their search data but think it's safe with Bing? Who would want this?
Every move that Mozilla has made lately has done nothing but piss off their long-time users.
First it was not fixing the memory usage and performance problems that have plagued Firefox for years now. This is something that users keep begging Mozilla to fix, but it never happens. Firefox is always slower than Chrome, Safari, Opera and now even the more recent versions of IE!
Then there are the Firefox UI changes they've made with recent releases that only make it so much harder to use Firefox. Please bring back the menus! Please bring back the status bar! Please show the protocol in the URL bar again! Please reverse any design decision made by a so-called "UI designer". They don't help usability! Hell, even Thunderbird has been affected by this crap.
Recently they went all silly with the version numbering and the release schedules. Now Firefox is unusable for enterprise users, and home users are getting damn confused with what version they are using or should be using. It doesn't help that extensions break very often now, too.
Now there's this Bing nonsense.
Why does Mozilla go out of their way to ignore their users? Why do they go out of their way to mess with these projects that don't actually fix any of the serious problems that users point out time and time again, for years and years?
My guess is this is a shot across the bow of Google. Letting Google know that it's pretty easy for them to switch the default search traffic to Bing is just good business. I'm sure Microsoft is going to be bidding pretty heavily to get Firefox's search user base.
In the end it's just going to keep Google honest and make sure they pay a fair price for the search traffic Firefox sends them. I think Google pays something like $60 or $70 million a year for all the Firefox user searches. That's chump change to someone like Google. I suspect after this, the next contract renewal might be a higher number.
Phew! I had seriously doubted that Microsoft had a hand in this.
Mozilla and MS are clear that this is a joint venture
RIP Mozilla
Nope, just shills who copy paste in a wall of marketing drivel.
I like how you make excuses too, just like a shill. You could not even stick with your hate of products, you had to make excuses.
I'm more confused about what is said over why it is said.
A good thesis has three parts: Who, What, and Why
Now, I see plenty of who and what, but no why.
"This is also the reason why Google is struggling in non-western world like China and Russia. They didn't get there by the time internet got wider usage, so they cannot get market share now." -- really? A company that doesn't like censoring and tried to find ways to not censor legally does not get common usage in a country that loves to censor? I'm talking about china and their homegrown Baidu as an example.
Saying that Microsoft started from an underdog position is fallacy. There were other search companies before Google existed and Microsoft didn't see any need to compete then. They made Google their enemy after they realized that there is a market for information. Just because they were late doesn't mean it is Google's fault. Maybe it was the lack of foresight with the internet? If memory serves me right, Windows 95 did not have WinSock at release and had to be installed with modem software.
----------------------
Related to the article though, I find the whole thing all-in-all pointless. They are giving food to the enemy here, and that is under the assumption that people choose the browser by choice of the default search engine. I can only assume they really want to get a foothold to edge out some of Google's territory down the road.
To Firefox
To Ubuntu
DuckDuckGo is more in line with Mozilla's Manifesto in that it:
I must admit I haven't really used Bing much until I read this article. Just as a test today I set my default search engine to Bing and it's surprisingly decent! It's a very decent alternative to Google now. Seeing as Microsoft loses money on search I don't mind using it either.
With Google being as big as it is, and having it's finger in EVERYTHING, makes me nervous. Having a viable alternative just serves to keep them honest.
I find your lack of faith ... disturbing!
Yeah, you just made that up. Or did your PR department tell you to write that?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I love google as a company. I love android, I love gmail, and I love google calendar. I use and heavily rely on all three.
However google's search engine as of recent is very disappointing, largely as a result of a few so called "fixes."
Google recently did away with the ability to add + before a word to prevent from using synonyms for that word, so when you want to do a literal search for anything, you MUST surround it in quotes. Very annoying.
I've been finding that as of late, google appears to be omitting some kewords from my search. The page summary doesn't include some of the words, and worse is that when you go to the page, and hit ctrl-f, you can't even find one of the omitted keyword! Frustrating as hell.
The most annoying, is when you type a search term with google instant, and sometimes when you arrow back to inline edit your search while instant is coming up, or if you accidentally move the mouse over one of the search suggestions, it removes your original search and replaces it with one of the search suggestions, causing you to have to re-type the whole thing! And turning off google instant isn't a reliable solution, because when you lose the cookie, or move to a computer that doesn't have one, you have to go and turn it off again.
I've been using bing lately and thankfully it doesn't suffer from these problems. I'd like to go back to google, but until they can solve these problems I'll be using bing for a while.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I have a hard time caring about this. The default is download is Google. An alternate download site offers Bing. Either way, the default is easy to change, who cares? Change is good. Embrace it.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Who cares which 'default' they ship releases with, it really isn't hard to change anyway. Besides theres better alternatives out there which don't track your every move: https://duckduckgo.com/
Well, one thing I like about Bing is the bird's eye view maps. They're far more useful than Google's satellite view when I'm looking at large properties, or doing architecture models to scale. Guess that makes me an MS shill.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Nope, just when you use clearly prewritten content.
Shilling on public websites is big business these days. Political parties do it, the Chinese Government does it, and I am sure whoever is paying you is doing it too.
Steam is pretty nice, I love that it works so well in wine.
Well that explains why my search engine changed. It looks like Firefox did a drive by update over night and switched my settings. I have tried Bing, but wasn't that impressed with it. I still find Google gives me better results. And that, after all, is what counts when using a search engine.
I've been accused of shilling for very many companies just because I commented something positive about them
Since you pretty much only post positive stories about MS - nice, big, semi-articulate stories, as opposed to two sentence rants - yeah, you're a shill, and lying about it. Must be a sucky job, be paid to lie repeatedly.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Yeah, you're just a whiny little faggot.
This story would've bothered me a year ago, but I doubt that we'll be seeing "Chrome powered by Bing" any time soon. #techhipsterism
Oh yeah, Microsoft having a monopoly on desktop computing and office suites is such an underpowered position to start from..
The real reason they're failing is because IE is still fucking lame. I prefer the IE6 UI over the crap that they have in 7 and up. And no, I don't use IE6.
I used to reorganise FFs toolbar to tidy it up. Chrome actually had things set up exactly the same as my FF custom arrangement by default, only without a search bar or menu to waste space. As soon as it had adblock, I was there.
When MS start showing that they have a clue about UIs (and web standards), I might start caring. Win7's task dock thing is nice enough, and they finally caught up to Unix with users being able to run unprivileged by default and boost to root only when necessary - but all the control panels are a mess. Ribbonised apps are an even bigger mess. I get that MS are trying, but they're kind of like a braindamaged person brute forcing a puzzle, trying all of the different shaped pegs in different orientations, only managing to get one through the hole every now and then by sheer bloody mindedness.
which is totally what she said
I think it clearly indicates that they are willing to take Microsoft's money to distribute a product with different defaults, I don't think its all that clear that it means anything more.
Becoming the default search engine on a secondary version of another browser with a declining market share. Is MS trying to implode or are they just clueless?
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Aha. What do we have here? Apple bitchboy that went missing!?
I don't get this. My Google-defaulted Mozilla makes it really easy to switch to Bing. It's right there in the pulldown list, which is way more than I can say for IE, which is supposed to make it easy to switch from the Bing default to another search engine, but which acutally puts you through some pretty tricky hoops to install another search engine from an MS website. When I tried it on a co-worker's machine, it wouldn't install (either because their IE version wasn't compatible or because the machine was locked down in such a way that prevented it. Anyway, the fact that Mozilla already offers a trivially easy way to switch says a lot about how important the built in default is. So there you go. Microsoft knows the built in default is vitally important, uses it in IE to boost Bing - way more so than Mozilla boosts Google, and still is willing to pay for default placement in Firefox. Wasn't there an antitrust suit?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
So switch the default provider to a shittier search engine! Brilliant!
Jason-Palmer.com
Just like Google then. And actually Bing users tend to be from more wealthier demographics than most Google users, so it does make business sense to them.
If true, you should have no trouble backing up that claim with some verifiable data.
Go on... we're waiting.
IE9's rendering engine is pretty good, but the new UI is strange and (imho) not very good. It's kind of a pity, because it's reasonably fast.
Google has allowed a good business model to be corrupted by greed. F Google. Google's search engine sucks nowadays. It searches crap, it produces crap. It doesn't understand even/especially a site like "Nextag" is THE FING PROBLEM. Google has allowed global private equity investment firms to run their business. Google has already been pwned and it doesn't even know it.
Users can set whatever search engine they want, this has nothing to do with "Bing's abilities". The biggest income of browser developers comes from search sites paying to be default. In this case, Microsoft payed more than Google.
i've used mozilla stuff since 2002. i used mozilla then pheonix then firefox. i was around for the good and the bad but this tears it. seriously, it seems like 2011 is the year of bat shit crazy decisions over at mozilla. nay, 2011 is the year of bat shit crazy decisions at mozilla. all mozilla has done lately is follow everything chrome does and now this! what is this, google envy?
the people steering mozilla need a swift kick in the pants because they are acting like a drunken bard out on sunset boulevard. (i would like to apologize to all the drunken bards on sunset boulevard that i may have offended.)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There isn't anything wrong with Bing as far as I can tell. Works for me.
Since they are not updating IE any-more for the 10 year old but still widely used Windows XP they should just release a re branded version of Firefox as "IE 10" so they don't have to worry about updating IE any more. Firefox is not the enemy of Microsoft any more (ever since they have been sending cakes) Google and Chrome is.
MS wants and needs people using Bing, and shipping it with Thunderbird, especially with the blunt name, is a very good way to get people using their service. And it's not like it's a bad service for most users, it's only that they're used to Google and like that so why change? But put Bing in front of them and they'll use that as happily.
I have a lot of disrespect for MS but they're not all stupid. They don't care about being an OS company, they care about being the biggest tech firm. Google has shown them the future - own the biggest dynamic database on individuals. MS has to spread Bing to get in there. This Firefox deal is easy traction in their campaign to spread Bing.
As far as competition for IE, that's trivial. It's about having people Using Microsoft. MS would like best to have people using IE and Bing, but having people use FF and Bing is better than IE and Google.
For FF, well either partner is a fox in the hen-house because they're both browser companies. FF will have to take exactly the same precautions about relying on funds from either. MS may be historically more aggressive and tactless than Google, but even with Google it's still a Rubbers Required position.
IE9's rendering engine is pretty good, but the new UI is strange and (imho) not very good. It's kind of a pity, because it's reasonably fast.
Back in the IE6 days there used to be hundreds of programs claiming to be web browsers that were just a front end GUI wrapped around an IE engine object...
Do programs like that exist anymore for IE9? Might be a big opportunity for someone to ride that wave while IE9 lasts.
"Sorry, this download is not supported by your system."
Both Firefox and Bing work on Linux. However, this partnership between MS and Mozilla seems to leave Firefox with Bing without support for Linux.
(Not that I would download it if it were available...)
Possibly in the US. Around here, Bing Maps doesn't do proper search at all.
Interesting that every time something comes out that vilifies Microsoft you have the same group of cronies out trying to deny it with the same tired, false, disproven arguments that hopes people reading them have horribly short memories or reading comprehension problems.
Bing has continually been proven to leech off of Google's search results, yet the same group of paid Microsoft FUDspreaders continue to deny and attack the truth with their campaign of lies and deceit.
Microsoft has proven itself to be a company that cannot compete technologically, instead stealing, borrowing, or buying existing technology to poorly implement a shiny turd that it can sell to people that don't know any better. It's time to expose Microsoft as the frauds they really are, and force them to compete on equal footing, where if they don't change their ways, they will wither and die. I don't want to see that, really -- I believe if Microsoft focused its energy on actual competition by creating quality products, it would be truly a good thing for all concerned. But as it is, Microsoft is only concerned with sales and marketing, using the usual deceit and false promises that come with that territory to sell their inferior goods. It's really sad.
Posting as AC because sadly this will be seen as a troll by some and modded down with any MS viral marketer that happens to have mod points, and I value my karma.
Duh, a conspiracy and a sin are not the same thing.
lucm, indeed.
Wealthier people tend to be more gullible and clueless when it comes to technology -- believing Microsoft products are intrinsically better because they're payware and not freeware, for example. Their initial instincts are to scorn Firefox and to trust IE6. Idiots, you might call them.
I, like you, have not chosen to provide a citation for my claims. Obvious claims need no reinforcing evidence, amirite?
I used to think that about IE9, then I had to travel using a small laptop (borderline netbook), a Celeron with 2GB RAM. Chrome is fast, IE9 takes forever to start and after a few tabs it make the whole computer unusable.
And now that the single most important missing feature has been added to Chrome (being able to right-click to select context menu items) they will pry this browser from my cold, dead hands!
But yeah, IE9 looks cool.
lucm, indeed.
Ironically, you're doing the same thing you accuse him of doing, except that you substituted the shill label for a troll label.
I barely even read Slashdot anymore, but I definitely remember h4rr4r making more constructive posts than you ever did.
Um, just because something looks pre-written, doesn't mean it is. I've actually heard my 10 year old nephew say things that prompted me to look around for a teleprompter because it sounded like it was written by a PR flunky. But apparently, that's just the way he talks. Sometimes you're right, but the mere fact that someone sounds like an ad doesn't necessarily mean they are.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Firefox is suffering from a decline in market share, over fixable technical issues, massive memory leaks, and you spend your time making firefox with bing? Not to mention that the last few releases have been nothing but cheap knock offs of chrome. I want my browser back!
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
FUCK. OFF.
Nobody wants you here. We all see you copy-paste your prewritten shit into first posts every goddamn time there's a Microsoft article. Every fucking time, it's you masturbating to some msft product like it's the greatest thing ever. Every time, we mod your sales pitch into the ground. And yet you still do it. Because YOU'RE A SCUMBAG SHILL. GO AWAY.
If anyone else had offered a positive, well-considered assessment of Bing, we'd have read it. But you're a shitbag nuisance and we're tired of it. At this point it doesn't even have much to do with microsoft... except that it makes us hate them more.
You're not fooling anyone, h4rr4r.
What kind of massive development effort do you think it takes for Mozilla to set the default search provider to Bing that it will literally take away from fixing "massive" memory leaks and "technical issues"? Should they just say to hell with it and take whatever scraps Google offers them and lay off half their developers because Google doesn't want to pay them much for the next contract?
You must live in some kind of utopian version of reality to think that they shouldn't have to run their organization like a business.
And for the record, every piece of complex software has issues, but all in all, as a user of Firefox since the pre-1.0 days, I can say without a doubt that Ffx 7 is the most stable, capable and highest performing release to date. Maybe you should consider upgrading from 3.5 at some point...
Actually, while I haven't seen any advantage in their search results the times I've used Bing, I have noticed their maps are frequently much better than Google's. How long exactly did it take Google to finally recognize, for example, that Louisville, Kentucky is a city and should have its name shown on the map? Many years IIRC. I constantly see blatant errors in Google Maps information, but sending in fixes never does any good. I've given up trying.
Or maybe is the Debian vs Mozilla trademark issue that makes Firefox with Bing not support my Squeeze box?
If Microsoft did this and made a corporate friendly version, we'd be all over it. Give us something like FrontMotion and a lot of people would be happy. This is just the Bing crew paying Mozilla to produce a Bing enabled version.
As opposed to Google which is the main source of revenue for Mozilla. The point is that diversification is good, it was always somewhat of a risk to be getting that large a portion of total revenue from a competitor.
If true, bye bye Firefox... (for me & my relatives)
Yes, let's. I'm a butt hair away from wiping Firefox from my life. Bing is junk that must be forced on people. We use Google because it works and always has. There is no reason to use Bing. Google may have some black marks on them but nothing compared to the declining Microsoft and their childish practices. There are some good people that work at Microsoft. Unfortunately they are hemmed in by the over riding crap ass government-like culture of isolated departments and divisions that is Microsoft. For all the good things that have come from Microsoft the same things would have emanated from humans anyway. When it is all said and done Microsoft will be noted as a sad lament in the history of technology--nothing more.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
So, this is the FF 'permanent fix' for Google Instant?
If so.. I give it a 7/10 - worth trying to protect users from the utter crap that is Instant.
I can't say I like M$, I can't say I've really used Bing, but I could really get to hating google if this continues.
If google don't stop messing with their front page they are going to lose a lot more people.
I would not be surprised if Bing took over from Google as the default. If google continues on this path.. I might even welcome it.
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
hopefully next release the icon will change to the firefox with a big gold necklace of somesort
...always looking for another dog to tie bricks to the head of...
Mozilla decided Firefox needed some more bing. You know, be getto and all. Gangsta. (Anybody starting to see a pattern of dropped letters here?)
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Bing sucks. (That's a period at the end of the previous statement.)
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It's called a career in advertising, and I understand it can pay pretty well.
The default may be easy to change, but don't underestimate how lazy people can be. Care to remember how many people you know who had 12:00 blinking on the VCR back in the day?
about:config -> browser.urlbar.trimURLs = false
Boom, done. Was that so hard to Google?
All of TechLAs shrill comments come within one min of the article being posted.
Check his history if you dont believe it.
Read TechLA's history he is an obvious shrill.
That's all.
how is babby formed?
OMG the FF people are SO naive. This is probably the beginning of the end for FF, though lately it has started to fall apart anyway. Looks like it will be a Chrome and Opera world after all.
You know why they're doing this, right? For years, the only thing that has really made Mozilla Corp. any money is their Google partnership. In fact, they got a little greedy over the years because of it, and have really whored Firefox out with lots of changes primarily to lure in people, and rushed out versions to look competitive with other browsers (sometimes even dropping features just to meet unnecessarily rushed release dates), to the point that they turned it into the same bloated mess which was the origin of the product to begin with (breaking away from the bloated Mozilla Suite). And their users noticed, and they complained. Mozilla mostly ignored those people at first, giving this and that bogus reason, until it actually started to affect their dollar signs, so they put some effort towards cleaning up their mess of code a bit.
But the point is, Google has Chrome now. They don't really need to keep Mozilla afloat anymore with partnerships if they took a notion to. So Mozilla is scared of losing their allowance from big daddy Google. Instead, they've gotten in bed with the company which they trained people to hate for years to keep the money coming in.
I know that sounds harsh and trolling, but it's also the sad reality of what Mozilla Corp. has become. They've done a good job of turning their own user base against them so far, to the point that most of the people I know have already dumped it for Opera or Chrome. So let's see how this new partnership works out for what's left of their users.
So I guess they bumped the version number up because of this major change.
I'm going to have to agree - he is a whiny little neckbeard bitch.
Finally, a version of Firefox that will give me search results for hiybbprqag...
What are the chances he wrote that up in 1 minute? Look at the submission time for the article and the post. As the other guy said there recently was a similiar post about windows phone 7.
Well, that's it then. I have used Firefox since it was Phoenix. Kind of makes me sad but anything Microsoft touches quickly turns to crap and its no use hanging on and watch the trainwreck. Bye old friend.
HTTP/1.1 400
A separate release with just a different default search engine?
That's like creating an Ubuntu derivative with the only difference being a different wallpaper.
This raises the question: when do we get an "open" open-source* search engine?
*one we have the source-code to, so we know that our search results are genuine; and also one we can rely on for not sharing our thoughts with other parties.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Well I'm always getting accused of being an "M$ Ninja!" and you know what? I fricking HATE Bing but LOVE Yahoo Search. Now that is gonna seem more than a little nutty because yahoo uses Bing's data, but in the end it isn't the data, its the UI.
With Google it seems the SEOs have taken a big shit all over it as ALL I ever seem to get are ads. Try looking up a "review" for any piece of tech lately? you'll get a couple of MILLION hits and out of that maybe THREE actual honest to goodness reviews of the product. it is like trying to pick a single pearl out of an arena full of dog shit. After the third of fourth "non review review site" I want to punch the damned screen, i know am I'm not alone.
With bing while I get actual reviews it just "feels' like i'm fighting the damned thing. I don't know why, i can't put my finger on it, and it isn't just not knowing the layout as I gave it a good solid month to just be fair. it just "feels" lousy and I feel like I'm getting what i want in SPITE of and not BECAUSE of bing.
But with yahoo I don't seem to have that problem, i don't feel like its working against me. i get the good results like bing but it just seems easier to "jump off" of searches and go to relational items and work my way deeper. when i was researching my netbook for example (The EEE 1215B, great fucking netbook if anyone is in the market, i really love it) with google I got ads, with bing i got reviews but never really was able to go any farther, with yahoo i got reviews and ended up checking out everything from different batteries that were compatible with the unit to videos on youtube of people comparing it to both atom as well as the AMD C-Series APU and playing different games like L4D on the unit.
In the end the yahoo search gave me MUCH more data that helped me come to my decision than either google OR bing alone. With google I got nothing, with bing I got info that frankly had me a little confused as one of the reviewers was saying ultimately the C- Series APUs were the better buy, but with the combo of reviews plus seeing both chips side by side I was able to determine that the E-350 was a better fit and that the 1215B would take 8gb of RAM (which it even gave me a nice link where I got the RAM upgrade for cheap) so of the three yahoo really helped.
And at the end of the day frankly doesn't that matter more than which company is behind the product? Which one helps us get to the data we need the quickest and with the most meaningful results for our needs? as for TFA I thought switching from Google to bing in FF was as simple as pulling a drop down? sorry if i'm incorrect as I switched my customers and myself to Dragon after FF 4 came out and took a big dump on performance. I frankly don't care what some benchmarks say, i know what I hear from my customers and see with my peepers and for the sites they and I use FF seems to get slower each turn while Dragon gets faster.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Ha, I've been very pro Microsoft in the past - all my machines run Windows and all my smartphones run Windows Mobile.
However Windows Phone 7 a complete disaster. It can't run old applications. People wanting to port C/C++ applications to it need to rewrite completely in managed C# or apply for a special pass from Microsoft to use native code. Microsoft's market share is dropping like a rock as Windows Mobile users move to Android instead of Windows Phone 7. Actually the application I most depend on on Windows Mobile - Pleco - works on Windows Mobile and iPhone and has a beta that runs on Android. It's never going to support Windows Phone. Even if Microsoft gave them a native code pass Pleco have said that they won't support WP7 unless everyone gets native code rights -
http://www.plecoforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=19990&sid=8d1f4894881d1b4653a82de2614656f8#p19990
gato wrote:
The rumor is that other companies are also getting special privileges. The Spotify music service has been announced for Windows Phone 7, but it is hard to believe that the music will stop whenever the user switches task. One attendee told me that the Windows Phone 7 native code framework is called Iris, is based on what was used for the Zune music player, and is used by Microsoft as well as by Spotify. He added that major games developers will also be allowed to use native code.
Neither Apple nor Google have stooped as low as giving big developers the tools to make their apps significantly better / faster / more feature-rich than small developers'; if this is true, it's basically the mobile app equivalent of (not having) net neutrality, give the big guys everything they want and shut the little guys out. Microsoft might be able to make EA happy this way, but EA's iPhone games suck - if Microsoft wants to get the next Angry Birds or Flight Control or, for that matter, Pleco on WP7, they have to open up their native code APIs to everyone and not treat small companies like second-class citizens. Giving us access 6 months later isn't the same, either - if anybody gets to use a particular framework to develop shipping apps, then everybody should get access to that same framework; if it's not ready for prime time yet, release the beta version to everyone and only make it official once it is.
Windows Phone is a bizarre idea. You can move from Windows Mobile to WP7. None of your old applications work and the ones available on WP7 are far inferior because (for things like Pleco) they can't use third party libraries for things like OCR and handwriting recognition. Or you can move to Android. Most of the applications you liked on Windows Mobile have already been ported to Android. And the phones are cheaper and not at all locked down - all the custom Rom chefs have moved to Android already. You can tether and access the device as mass storage. You can sideload applications. I.e.Android is just like WinMo but not at all like WP7. And people like HTC who made your old WinMo handset have loads of Android devices but very few WP7 ones. It's almost like Microsoft want people to buy Android.
Last but not least they've pissed off their ISVs by telling them they can either rewrite fucking everything - something they don't need to do on Android and iPhone which have much better sales - or presumably pay/beg Microsoft for the right to use their old Windows Mobile code via a native code pass. Adobe are rumoured to have a native code pass for Flash. But given WP7's dire sales it seems like Adobe have decided that even with that it's not worth the bother of supporting WP7. I reckon WP7 will be killed of at some point like Zune and Kin - both of which were based on the same technologies and marketing team. By that point everyone that run custom applications or Roms on WinMo (and face it that was the only reason people bought Windows Mobile devices) will simply have moved over to Android and will be content there. So it's not like they'd be tempted back even if Microsoft release a back compatible successor to Windows Mobile.
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;
With Google now producing its own browser with a fair marketshare, I think Mozilla made a huge blunder here... I think it will be byebye FF soon, when Google cuts it off from its money. Maybe MS can fund them, but why would they? Once IE is firmly integrated into the next Win version, who's going to bother with FF?
When Firefox sets Bing as it's default search engine I will drop Firefox completely without a blink. Microsoft is still too dominant as a player in the (desktop) pc market to become too friendly with it.
I'm glad they found something important to work on so they wouldn't have to waste their time plugging memory leaks...
Windows Phone Mango has background streaming as an API that ANYONE can use. Care to show some references that show MS giving native code rights to 3rd parties instead of just showing idle speculation and rumors from some random forum threads?
WP7 is a complete rewrite of WM because WM sucked in task management and battery life(like Android?). Also, the UI needed resistive pressure sensitive screens whereas the world is moving to capacitative touch. Think of WP7 as a new OS. Those with it seems to universally like it exactly because it doesn't have the same problems that WM had.
This space for rent.
Simply place all search engines on one page.
If anything isn't perfectly to your liking, save the page, and modify it until it does.
>Mozilla might be readying a large-scale switch to Bing when its current contract with Google expires in November.
Why would you replace a best of search engine with a barely adequate search engine that ranks lower, unless you have been paid off by that company to host their product. Mozilla will make more money because they are getting paid instead of paying for this service. Might as well buy up some FF stocks right now, the company will have a boost in their next quarter(s)
"I Binged your sister last night!" "Your girlfriend Bings nearly everything she sees."
Hah - at least he's getting paid. What are you getting out of posting to Slashdot besides a few minutes of your life wasted?
Care to show some references that show MS giving native code rights to 3rd parties instead of just showing idle speculation and rumors from some random forum threads?
http://wmpoweruser.com/microsoft-promises-to-fix-many-windows-phone-7-limitations-in-future-releases/
Regarding the managed code sandbox, he noted that over time this will become less and less strict, and that access to native code will just be in very special cases, like with Adobe Flash.
He being Charlie Kindel, Microsoft spokesman.
WP7 is a complete rewrite of WM because WM sucked in task management and battery life(like Android?). Also, the UI needed resistive pressure sensitive screens whereas the world is moving to capacitative touch.
My HD2 has a capacitative touch screen and runs Windows Mobile just fine. I think it's absurd to make version n+1 of an OS based on the idea that version n "sucked". Well at the very least you shouldn't do so and expect people to upgrade.
Think of WP7 as a new OS.
That runs fewer of my favourite applications than Android and irritates me by being even more crippled and locked down than an iPhone. If I was going for a new OS it would be Android hands down. If I were not going for a new OS - i.e. if Windows Phone 7 had run Windows Mobile applications the odds are I'd have bought a Window Phone.
So they can say goodbye to the sort of people that bought WM phones as customers for WP7
Question is - will more people switch from Android or iPhone to WP7 to replace all the Windows Mobile users who decide to jump ship to Android? And the answer to that is that if you look at the falling market share of Microsoft mobile OSs - i.e. WinMo + WP7 - a rather resounding no.
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;
Fuckin' A man. Fuckin' A.
and they finally caught up to Unix with users being able to run unprivileged by default and boost to root only when necessary
This is untrue. This was possible in NT since the start. The problem is Win95 and below. 90% of Win95 apps would not run on XP because they do stupid shit like writing to system directories. The alternative to default-root was "Don't upgrade to Windows XP because none of your apps will run on it without fiddling around with folder permissions". Microsoft as usual made a good business decision to keep their short-term revenue intact by selling copies of XP but screwed over the users in the long run w.r.t security. I generally dislike Apple but there is no way in hell that Jobs would ever choose making money over screwing users big time like this. Apple will screw over their partners, their developers and maybe even their internal divisions, but generally they make it a priority that users get a product that won't turn their machine into a botnet.
Google is famous for posting on tech forums like this. Who's to say you and everyone modding you up aren't Google employees?
Don't worry, when they release Firefox EleventyBillion sometime next week, they'll be back to Google only.
I've just reailsed that I may have been wrong anyway. I think you may need to explicitly choose "run as admin" instead of the computer simply asking for admin privileges when it needs them in Win7? I've only limited experience with it so far.
which is totally what she said
Modding down is not to be done just because you disagree with the message.
Yes, people mod down because they don't like reading it. Whether it's because it's troll, or offtopic, or poorly written, wrong, or correct and inconvenient. That's why people mod down. When I have mod points and someone posts 2+2=5, I'll mod them down. Even if they come back and explain they were showing that 2.4+2.4=4.8 and they rounded to prove a point, I'll mod their explanation down as well. They posted something with the intent to deceive, even if correct, that's a lie. You don't have to tell and untruth to commit fraud. All you have to do is misrepresent for gain, even if no untruth is ever given, when you give a clear impression of something that isn't true, even if you never gave a direct untruth yourself, you lied. 2+2 is not equal 5, so to post that it is, but that you were rounding is still a lie. So down it goes. And all such dishonest word games get modded down as well. I don't want to read them. Anyone like me doesn't want to read them either.
So I'm doing a service to Slashdot readers by moding down those who play rhetorical games to get responses (that's the technical definition of flamebait anyway, so I'm following the rules). When someone posts something they think will be incite-full, even if true and on topic, they are posting flamebait (even if not the traditional sense as in going to a message board and posting something with the intention of pissing off the regulars, like singing the praises of vacuum tubes on a hi-fi board, knowing that it will cause a flurry of responses and arguments about tube vs discrete, it's still posting for the sole purpose of generating responses (as opposed to trying to convey information or correct a previous misstatement by another or such)). So I'll always mod them down, they deserve it, and I don't deserve to have to run across it.
Learn to love Alaska
It's not just that you post positive things, but that they are obviously pre-written and posted in a manner (so early in an article's life) that indicates you had them ready and spent effort to get them out in the most visible manner. That's not the actions of a disinterested fan, but of a lying paid shill. Whether you also shill for others is irrelevant to whether this one post stinks of shill.
Learn to love Alaska
In XP there was no official right-click 'Run as admin' command provided my MS. You could add it though a third party plugin. There was a 'Run as user' option which allowed you to specify the credentials under which target executable ran.
Vista & 7 added some checks where if you're executable contains the words 'setup' , 'install' , etc or if you use certain APIs or if you explicitly request root-elevation they popup a password (or a yes/no) dialog. One thing that's good about it is that the dialog code executes in its own session so its impossible to fake (unless you change the defaults to make it run in the same user session).
I've always wondered if non-technical Linux users would be able differentiate between the system asking for the root password and a simple program showing a fake dialog and tricking the user into revealing the password. I suppose since most users install white-listed s/w from repositories, its not a pressing concern.
Wouldn't "Firefox with Bing for Workgroups" sounds more like a Redmond product ?
Firefox download becomes a page 50 search term. With everything but links to firefox and failzilla appearing when you search for it.
The first part is quite easy. I guarantee I am not ... yet... a Google Employee.
For the second part, can I put you down as a reference that you think I would be a good fit there? If you're right, they'd like me. I could use a change of scenery. And better Mexican food.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine