Yep, mozilla builds since 20011102 have had some nasty form bugs - they make posting to slashdot quite interesting - take a look at mozillazine's build bar comments for details. Hmm, it looks like the bugs were supposed to be fixed for today's builds. Strange that you're still seeing them. For now I'm sticking with 20011030.
Well, the obvious answer is to have a separate slashdot user ID for reading off your Palm, and set that user to read in light mode. It shouldn't hurt too much having an extra user since, I would guess you wouldn't want to do that much posting from the Palm anyway. Of course, I don't know enough about Avantgo to know if this answer makes sense.
You don't even need anything that tricky, at least with older version of lynx.
lynx -useragent="Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Linux; Bill Gates is a wanker;Icab)" -cookies -source www.msn.com >/dev/null
This will run, dump the source of the web page to/dev/null, and then quite. And it has the added feature deception - the Microsofties will think that you're a brit running Mozilla.
So are they blocking specific browserid's or are they blocking everything but a couple specific ones?
Both. They only seem to let in browsers that identify themselves as IE or netscape, but many browsers that fake their user-agent string also "hide" their true identity later in the string. They're also blocking any string that contains "Opera" anywhere in it.
Checking user agent strings certainly is programming. It may be dum-dum programming. You may be right that this is a design decision that was made by marketing, but I'm not sure.
Well, try with a proxy then. Maybe there's something funny about the way Opera is setting the user agent string. Could you check (and post here) what the strings are. This site will tell you what you user agent string is.
This sounds like paranoia to me. Its probably just bad programming. Opera certainly isn't being singled out if mozilla, lynx, etc. are also shut out. Though his claim that changing the Opera string by one letter works is intersting. Using random user-agent strings doesn't work for me.
Yeah, the MSN upgrade page is deceptive. They're allowing netscape 4.x and some other browsers. But mozilla, lynx, opera, etc. are being locked out. Of course you can get by it by changing your User Agent string, but the average person isn't going to know how to do that.
As I said here, it seems to work for netscape 4.7x when I turn off junkbuster. It doesn't work at all for mozilla, though. This is on Solaris 7,
though other people on a mailing list that I'm on have gotten similar results on Linux and other OSs.
try it with another broswer if you have available -lynx, opera, konqueror or whatever.
Yeah, I just figured out that it works with Solaris Netscape 4.7x when I turn off junkbuster, but not when I have it on. Doesn't work with mozilla at all though, even when junkbuster is turned off.
In somewhat related news, MSN is blocking non-windows browers. Go to MSN with a *nix browser and you get the error page:
Attention: Web Browser Upgrade Required to View MSN.com
If you are seeing this page, we have detected that the browser that you are using will not render MSN.com correctly. Additionally, you'll see the most advanced functionality of MSN.com only with the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer or MSN Explorer. If you wish to visit MSN.com, please select the appropriate download link below.
* Internet Explorer for Windows
* Internet Explorer for Macintosh
* MSN Explorer for Windows
You can get around this by changing your user-agent. In junkbuster, add a line like:
user-agent Mozilla/4.77 [en] (Win95;U)
It seems like the MSN page renders fine under Netscape/Mozilla, so rejecting non-Windows browsers seems stupid.
This archive still seems to be responding OK. Hopefully it won't get nailed too hard since this link isn't in the story header. The mailing list thread is an interesting read.
There is another nanosatellite program that's going to fly soon called ION-F. This is a group of 3 10 kg nanosats that fly in formation that are supposed to launch in 2002. They'll be used to studdy the ionosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, mozilla builds since 20011102 have had some nasty form bugs - they make posting to slashdot quite interesting - take a look at mozillazine's build bar comments for details. Hmm, it looks like the bugs were supposed to be fixed for today's builds. Strange that you're still seeing them. For now I'm sticking with 20011030.
Well, the obvious answer is to have a separate slashdot user ID for reading off your Palm, and set that user to read in light mode. It shouldn't hurt too much having an extra user since, I would guess you wouldn't want to do that much posting from the Palm anyway. Of course, I don't know enough about Avantgo to know if this answer makes sense.
Ah yes, security by ex-cons making slightly above minimum wage is ever so much more reassuring.
Here's another similar one.
lynx -useragent="Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Linux; Bill Gates is a wanker;Icab)" -cookies -source www.msn.com >/dev/null
This will run, dump the source of the web page to /dev/null, and then quite. And it has the added feature deception - the Microsofties will think that you're a brit running Mozilla.
The following does not work:
lynx -useragent="Mozilla (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Linux; Bill Gates eats worms;Opera)" www.msn.com
while this works:
lynx -useragent="Mozilla (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Linux; Bill Gates eats worms;Oper)" www.msn.com
Checking user agent strings certainly is programming. It may be dum-dum programming. You may be right that this is a design decision that was made by marketing, but I'm not sure.
Well, try with a proxy then. Maybe there's something funny about the way Opera is setting the user agent string. Could you check (and post here) what the strings are. This site will tell you what you user agent string is.
Well, mozilla renders it fine, once you trick MSN into letting you see. Why anyone would want to see it, I don't know.
user-agent Mozilla/4.77 [en] (Win95;U)
Right and the slightly above average person who wants to try out mozilla will stop using it if they run into problems likle this.
lynx -useragent="Mozilla (compatible; MSIE 6.0b; Windows NT 5.0; Bill Gates
eats worms)" www.msn.com
Yep, there is a report of Netscape 6.1 working. Mozilla sends a different string and does not work.
This sounds like paranoia to me. Its probably just bad programming. Opera certainly isn't being singled out if mozilla, lynx, etc. are also shut out. Though his claim that changing the Opera string by one letter works is intersting. Using random user-agent strings doesn't work for me.
Well, now this thread has its own article.
Yeah, the MSN upgrade page is deceptive. They're allowing netscape 4.x and some other browsers. But mozilla, lynx, opera, etc. are being locked out. Of course you can get by it by changing your User Agent string, but the average person isn't going to know how to do that.
Here's the a thread about this from the XP article.
As I said here, it seems to work for netscape 4.7x when I turn off junkbuster. It doesn't work at all for mozilla, though. This is on Solaris 7, though other people on a mailing list that I'm on have gotten similar results on Linux and other OSs.
try it with another broswer if you have available -lynx, opera, konqueror or whatever.
Yeah, I just figured out that it works with Solaris Netscape 4.7x when I turn off junkbuster, but not when I have it on. Doesn't work with mozilla at all though, even when junkbuster is turned off.
Shit, should have hit preview.
This archive still seems to be responding OK. Hopefully it won't get nailed too hard since this link isn't in the story header. The mailing list thread is an interesting read.
There is another nanosatellite program that's going to fly soon called ION-F. This is a group of 3 10 kg nanosats that fly in formation that are supposed to launch in 2002. They'll be used to studdy the ionosphere.