Ages ago, when I was in Junior High, I was helping a friend of mine upgrade MS-DOS to version 4-something on his parents' IBM XT.
To this day, I'm not totally certain where things went sour, but I ended up corrupting the computer's FAT tables in a nasty way. Upon doing a directory listing, and getting back nothing but a screen full of garbage ASCII, my friend started to sweat profusely.
As it turns out, his dad was doing his company's payroll on that machine. That was a bad night.
Oh, and not two weeks later, I did it AGAIN, fux0ring the family computer of another friend of mine.
So, first digital theater projection, and now HD DVDs? Does this mean that, say, fifteen years from now, a few pennies from the price I pay to see ANY movie ANYWHERE will go to Microsoft?
That's right, Microsoft is not only targeting Lynx, Links, OmniWeb, and IE 3.01 with the "broken" stylesheet, but future versions of IE! Why would they do that?!
Here we go again. It's pretty sad that this story has gotten so much attention, because it would seem that it's more a case of Microsoft not caring than it is malevolence on their part. Hey, great publicity for Opera, though.
MSN does not send out an Opera-specific stylesheet. It doesn't! Actually, it sends Opera the generic site.css sheet, which will also be sent to browsers that return nothing but a load of garbage (NOT the Oprah test) for their user-agent strings. Oh, and don't forget corky browsers like Netscape 4.7, which still have a creepy amount of market share. It should be noted that MSN looks perfectly fine in NS 4.7, which leads me to believe that the negative right margin that flakes out in O7 is actually meant to account for one of NS 4.7's numerous, unsightly bugs. Other posters have said that this is to account for a bug in Opera 6's rendering, but I haven't tested this myself. Oh, and this same style appears in the Netscape 6 specific stylesheet with no ill effects. Figure that one out.
Why does the "Oprah" test allow Opera to receive the IE 6 stylesheet? Because the words "MSIE 6" are in there, and the word "Opera" is not. MSN most likely does test for the word "Opera" first, but sends that browser the generic site.css sheet, because the MSN developers, probably having relegated Opera to that bin of browsers they couldn't care less about, figured the generic sheet would be good enough.
Sloppy, yes. Vindictive? C'mon. What's their motive? I would hardly call Opera--a closed-source browser that people actually have to pay for if they don't want to be annoyed--a threat to Microsoft's market share.
Ooh, what's this? The same stylesheet the opera guys are complaining about is being sent to ME now? Why, Microsoft is targeting my bullshit browser! Scandal!!
The problem with the "Oprah" test the opera guys ran is that their user string pretty clearly contains the string "MSIE 6.0", which is probably tested for before the string "Opera" (if, indeed, the word "Opera" is tested at all)... and thus, they received the IE 6 stylesheet. site.css is most likely a generic stylesheet sent to any browser that fails all other string checks.
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Ages ago, when I was in Junior High, I was helping a friend of mine upgrade MS-DOS to version 4-something on his parents' IBM XT.
To this day, I'm not totally certain where things went sour, but I ended up corrupting the computer's FAT tables in a nasty way. Upon doing a directory listing, and getting back nothing but a screen full of garbage ASCII, my friend started to sweat profusely.
As it turns out, his dad was doing his company's payroll on that machine. That was a bad night.
Oh, and not two weeks later, I did it AGAIN, fux0ring the family computer of another friend of mine.
Frankly, I'm amazed that I have any friends left.
So, first digital theater projection, and now HD DVDs? Does this mean that, say, fifteen years from now, a few pennies from the price I pay to see ANY movie ANYWHERE will go to Microsoft?
Ew.
Here are some other user agent strings that return files referencing site.css (picked randomly from here)...and, oh, these too...That's right, Microsoft is not only targeting Lynx, Links, OmniWeb, and IE 3.01 with the "broken" stylesheet, but future versions of IE! Why would they do that?!
Here we go again. It's pretty sad that this story has gotten so much attention, because it would seem that it's more a case of Microsoft not caring than it is malevolence on their part. Hey, great publicity for Opera, though.
MSN does not send out an Opera-specific stylesheet. It doesn't! Actually, it sends Opera the generic site.css sheet, which will also be sent to browsers that return nothing but a load of garbage (NOT the Oprah test) for their user-agent strings. Oh, and don't forget corky browsers like Netscape 4.7, which still have a creepy amount of market share. It should be noted that MSN looks perfectly fine in NS 4.7, which leads me to believe that the negative right margin that flakes out in O7 is actually meant to account for one of NS 4.7's numerous, unsightly bugs. Other posters have said that this is to account for a bug in Opera 6's rendering, but I haven't tested this myself. Oh, and this same style appears in the Netscape 6 specific stylesheet with no ill effects. Figure that one out.
Why does the "Oprah" test allow Opera to receive the IE 6 stylesheet? Because the words "MSIE 6" are in there, and the word "Opera" is not. MSN most likely does test for the word "Opera" first, but sends that browser the generic site.css sheet, because the MSN developers, probably having relegated Opera to that bin of browsers they couldn't care less about, figured the generic sheet would be good enough.
Sloppy, yes. Vindictive? C'mon. What's their motive? I would hardly call Opera--a closed-source browser that people actually have to pay for if they don't want to be annoyed--a threat to Microsoft's market share.
Lemme see...
wget --user-agent="nice fucking investigation, guys" --output-document bullshit.html http://www.msn.com
Ooh, what's this? The same stylesheet the opera guys are complaining about is being sent to ME now? Why, Microsoft is targeting my bullshit browser! Scandal!!
The problem with the "Oprah" test the opera guys ran is that their user string pretty clearly contains the string "MSIE 6.0", which is probably tested for before the string "Opera" (if, indeed, the word "Opera" is tested at all)... and thus, they received the IE 6 stylesheet. site.css is most likely a generic stylesheet sent to any browser that fails all other string checks.
Good one, guys.
Personally, I won't be happy until I can buy clownpenis.fart, but maybe that's just me.
I don't see why this has to be so difficult. - Laptop computer. - Wireless network. - Some sorta compass. - Central Park. Solved!