People probably won't care enough about your site to get Firefox, if they're the typical IE user. Your goal should be to make it as easy as possible for the visitor to see your site, no matter what browser. Your "IE Compatible Mode Tag" would be unacceptable for any website that has to target a large amount of IE users (e.g. any commercial website). It might be fine for your personal website, where it doesn't matter too much if you lose some IE users, but when sales depend on traffic, you can't afford to turn anyone away.
I believe that's why I suggested doing so on interesting, but commercially non-critical sites first.
At this point, businesses cannot afford to lose money, even though they can blame no-one but themselves for the ever-growing expenses of web-development.
Normally I see this sort of thing as tilting at windmills, frustrating for me and often ineffective.
It is tilting at windmills, but I don't care. One step at a time, I can walk around the world. One user at a time, I can convert the web.</messiahcomplex>
Firefox (2 at least) is not standards compliant. Maybe more so than IE7, but it's still not standards compliant. Perhaps you can suggest a 100% compliant brower instead?
As I've said before, 90% compliant is better than 60% compliant.
I don't know I read all this stuff and and all I see is arrogance.
Good.
What you're really seeing is frustration, but if it comes out as arrogance, even better.
If I came out as merely frustrated, you'd think I were just btching and moaning and would likely simply dismiss anything I had to say; now that I came off as arrogant, you felt you needed to respond in a less dismissive manner.
Not the most productive strategy, I admit, but in the face of the prevailing opinion that web developers are supposed to make every POS work with their pages, no matter how broken it may be, I feel that arrogance is most likely to be heard.
It's an I'm smart everyone else is stupid kind of attitude which to me seems really short sighted.
I'm trying to think of some reasons for not calling exclusive IE users uneducated at the very least, but so far I'm failing.
Care to enlighten me?
Yes MS makes major screw ups and causes major headaches for many people that have to deal with thier mistakes on a daily basis
Well, I'm offering them a way out. Not taking it? Hey, be a beaten wife for all I care, but don't come crying to me if you refuse to walk out on your abusive husband.
but at the end of the day 99% of the people out there really could care less that there are "better" browsers out there or that MS screwed yet another thing up
Well, you just said that they could care less, which means that they do care.
You probably intended to say ust the opposite, but now you're proving me right.
all they care about that when they go to the web sites of thier choosing they work with the most convenient browser for them which for that large majority of them is IE.
And I'm making it less convenient by doing nothing wrong, and not fixing what ain't broken.
The very point is in making it less convenient.
BTW, here in Europe Firefox has a marketshare between 20% and 50%, depending on the country.
Think about it.
I say get over it its old news for people in the industry and it never was news for people that aren't.
Well, time for it to become news to people, I say.
The way to do it, I think, is to start with the less commercially important pages. Something interesting, but not commercially relevant.
Serve them that page with a warning it doesn't work in IE.
They'll ignore your page.
They'll ignore mine as well.
The third page that tells them that... well, they might reconsider.
That's absolutely asinine. Just because Microsoft screwed up by not making their browser standards compliant, doesn't mean you should punish a majority of the users of it's browser. A lot of people haven't even heard of other browsers that are better, so why should they be punished?
No. They should be educated.
Inform them they are using a non-compliant browser and send them to download Firefox.
And if they insist on using a deficient product, it is not my problem.
Meh, it's your loss. When you have fewer customers because only a certain percentage of them can view your website, you'll realize that your OMGWTFBLAMEEVERYONE attitude was truly the one at fault, not MS.
I am an educator.
Every user I educate is a win for me.
And for everybody else, in the end.
Well, the point is, I wouldn't want the bomb in the program code, but in the document itself.
Anyway, since so many factors limit the usefulness of such code, I gave up on that. But it was an interesting thought nonetheless.
To paraphrase Edison, now I know several ways how not to do it.
First of all, not all of these solutions apply for such a small market as the one I live in.
Second of all, you may have noticed that I did say I was going to consider other ways.
However, having technology solve a problem you have is the very reason for inventing such technology. So if people hadn't been looking for technological solutions for their problems since the dawn of time, we'd never even have this conversation.
In that case your talking about past tense notice "fixed/will be fixed", as in fixed with IE7 so we aren't going to bother finding the code in the 7 year old browser so we can make a second patch for the old system, and as in "we don't want two code bases to maintain".
Even so, the bug is in both codebases.
Fun fact: there are no known Linux zombies in botnets. No, and Linux never has buffer overflow exploits. The pain is in the C/C++ runtime and is a fundamental flaw in the language design, but mah it exists in Linux too. How about the fun situations where you end up with a file that is owned by "nobody" in *NIX and even su can't chown it? How about X (yes that peice of crap, 1970's research project that nobody in the *NIX community seems to be willing to let die)?
You're needlessly changing the issue. Unices have their faults, but mass zombification by malware which gets you the moment you get online (or any other means, FWIF) doesn't appear to be one of them.
And the one time I installed Windows and used IE to get Firefox, it took me some 10 minutes. As opposed to the 10 minutes it takes to open Firefox?
Misquoted, then answered in a senseless manner. Unless something ate half my post while I was posting it.
Yes, because we know software from a reputable source never ever comes with malware. Rarely comes with malware and if it does you know who to sue.
Oh, that helps a lot.
Who do you go after if you stole the software in the first place?
I disagree on the "stealing" bit, for one.
Besides, even if you paid for the OS, the EULA clearly says you assume full responsibility for its usage and MS isn't liable for any damage. Yadda yadda.
As an aside it never ceases to amaze me the number of developers that come on/. and bash proprietary software yet make a living making it. Wow that is amazing your work on the proprietary software is worth a paycheck and not so evil that you feel compelled to quit, but all corporate software is "bad" when you post online. Amazing.
I wouldn't know, really.
P.S. I use Firefox as my browser at home it works well (other than being slow to load and the rare page that insists on only working with windows). I use IE7 at work because of compatiblity issues with some of our software. I find IE7 almost as good as Firefox. My intent isn't to bash FF or Linux, just to point out if you are using closed source software then obey the EULA, just like you should when using FOSS.
EULA with FOSS? Where?
P.P.S. No need to preach to the converted. I'm a IT manager by way of UNIX/Linux admin and like both *NIX and Win (yes it is possible). Given a choice I'd run the servers on *NIX and the GUI/end users on Win. People already know how to use Windows and I wouldn't ask my corp to retrain everyone. Heck we have some software that requires UNIX on the desktop and the users that have used it for 5 years still don't know how to copy files (they have buttons for it in the app, they click button X and the file goes "somewhere" very helpful to troubleshoot:)). Most/. can use *NIX I think but that by far isn't the normal user. For whatever reason end users are willing to push and poke a windows system and figure out how it works, but throw an X system at them (our case Solaris CDE) and they call IT whenever anything needs to get done. That demonstrates "free" knowledge (ie. crap the employee learnt on their own time playing with PC's elsewhere) and usablity (at least for common simple tasks, and that is all I'll trust an end user with:)).
Passwords can be applied in any number of ways. You can base it on pgp keys, if you want to limit the specific people who have access to the documents; or, you can do a one-size-fits-all solution, just applying a password to a file, and giving that password to those who need access.
Recently I was considering a solution to a professional problem that included some sort of DRM[1], albeit of a temporary sort.
As a part-time translator, I have in several occasions worked for people who got their translations, but failed to pay up. Some of my colleagues have had even worse problems of that sort.
The idea was, if they don't pay, have the file self-encrypt or self-destruct. Of course, since they could easily just copy and paste the contents in a new document, all this is really moot. Actually, the more ideas people suggested, the more things I found to be inherently wrong, avoidable or circumventable.
And it had all started with my friend's story about his friend, who set up the lighting in a night club. When the owner failed to pay up, he drove by on a Friday night, pulled out a remote and turned everything off. Then he was suddenly unavailable for the weekend; when the club owner finally reached him, the guy reminded him that since he failed to pay, he was feeling no pressure to "do the necessary repairs". When he was paid in full, he simply removed the whole circuit, re-connected the stuff and went merrily on his way.
Had the club owner not tried to cheat him, he would never have stepped into that trap; since he had, he did. And I'd like something like that in software: unless you mess with me, you'll never see it.
This differs from the traditional DRM in that it does not presume many copies of the file made; you translate for one client at a time, and just want them to pay up when the job is done. Whatever they do afterwards is none of your business.
I'm still thinking about the ways to implement something like that, but so far I've been out of my depth.
Ah, well. We'll just have to learn to fight another way.
There you go. So whom exactly does this benefit? The people that don't get infected do to a IE6 vulnerablity that was fixed/will be fixed for IE7 only.
Well, if it will be fixed in IE7 only, hen it is not just an IE6 vulnerability, is it now?
MS for not having to put up with said people for complaining that they got infected even though they are using an 7 year old browser.
Well, what a shame MS didn't care much for improving their browser until Firefox gained some hold in the market. You know, the IE team was disbanded...
Paying for the OS doesn't make it stable, but having a friend of a friend install "Windows" for you doesn't leave me too confident that that burned disk is "Windows" and not an infected ISO of a torrent site.
You know, aside from some business users and the people who got them with their laptops, I know virtually no-one with a legit copy of Windows. Yet for years we've all used — and most keep using — illegitimate copies of Windows. Incidentally, I now actually have a legit copy (well, semi-legit at least), but do not use it.
There is something to be said for removing the software from the shrink wrap after you purchased it from a reputable source.
Yes, because we know software from a reputable source never ever comes with malware.
WGA was both meant to sell more Windows copies, and to help the windows "ecosystem" stay clean of modified copies.
They could have designed a proper security model, too. That would have kept the ecosystem much, much cleaner.
Fun fact: there are no known Linux zombies in botnets.
You had a problem with your windows, one moment while I verify that you have a real copy of the software.
Oh, wait: didn't they use to verify you had a legit copy of Windows in order to install IE7?
As for including IE into the OS: how exactly did you download your first copy of Firefox? Microsoft realized (as have pretty much every disto of Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc etc) that people want a browser built in. If you don't have a browser you'll have a hard time patching up the system. Sure there are other methods like having a one function patch downloader(linux is great for that) but that wasn't the route that MS went(it is rare that people complain about getting extra features with their OS, but bare in mind you can choose not to install it if you do a custom install of windows).
Ooops.
IE isn't merely included with the system. It is integrated and cannot be uninstalled.
And the one time I installed Windows and used IE to get Firefox, it took me some 10 minutes. During which time my system got infected and had to be reinstalled.
Sure FOSS people are generous and will give you a disk of the program to install etc, etc, but I suspect the vast majority of Firefox downloads etc, begin with someone firing up there Windows system and using IE to download it.
Great. So we've finally found the one thing IE is good for.
The problem is a lot of the stuff didn't exist as a standard when it was implemented into the browsers. If you wanted a nice way to do something (or even worse you wanted to be able to do something which no solution currently existed) you had to break compliance and add the feature.
And many standards did exist, MS was even in on the decision-making, then implemented the standards in a purposefully broken fashion. Netscape 3 or 4 days are ancient history.
Nice. I agree, sort of. The problem only exists for users that have selected automatically approve rollups. Admittedly this is an upgrade, but there is enough vulnerablities in IE6 that it can also be considered a security roll up. How forgiving is Firefox if you have autoupdate enabled? As well I seem to recall auto update is enabled by default in FF where as in Windows you have to turn it on. I can't recall the number of times when launching FF I get told "do you want to install now or later?". Microsoft is in an unenviable position.
They put themselves there.
Nobody forced them to make a web browser an integral part of the UI. And not just the UI, the system itself.
People who want Firefox to update automatically, have Firefox update itself automatically.
People who want Windows to update automatically, but want their browser stay the same... well, they'd better choose a browser that can easily be asked to stay the same.
Besides, I don't recall Firefox 1.5 users being forced to upgrade to 2.0. A jump from 1.5.2 to 1.5.3 isn't the same as the jump from 6.0 to 7.0. It7's the difference between security updates and a distro upgrade.
Someone steals their product then blogs about how it is a vulnerable peice of crap on the internet. Those people I have no pity for, MS should be able to push/pull/jerk around those people as much as they want (you don't own the OS, and the OS wrote the files, so how about revoking the filesystem access;)).
Not even the people who do pay for it own the OS, so I don't care much for the rest of your point.
And since the WGA got MS a whole bunch of false positives (I was thinking about false negatives, but since MS are already treating their customers like thieves, I said what the hell...), I don't think they'd thought it through very well.
Then again, I was getting my hopes quite high up with the reduced functionality mode; it could have meant a significant move to other platforms, but it seems like MS recognize their dependency on piracy. Again, they get no sympathy from me.
And yes: paying for Windows does not make it magically stable. Not paying for Windows makes WGA go away. Pirates get better service.
It is the corporate users that are most likely to get screwed around unfortunately(they just inherently have more workstations, more likely to have them all set to autoupdate, more money for software etc. = more risk).
My point is Microsoft has a version (admittedly internal dev currently) that does pass, Firefox says "it will for FF3".
Minefield does pass the Acid2. Unlike the claims from MS about their possible future browser, Minefield is out in the open, with many a user quite happy with it.
Firefox 3 is compliant.
Being non-complaint
Oh, I think you'll find many complaints about IE. Especially here.
Yeah, I know it was a typo, but I just couldn't resist.
doesn't mean anything if the two most used browsers (with ~ 97% of the market) aren't compliant.
Ah, but you see how much we have progressed. Just a year or two ago, being standards-compliant didn't mean much if the one browser holding more than 80% of the market wasn't.
Besides, there is a difference between the modes of non-compliance: Firefox is way more standards-compliant than IE6 (well, duh), and when it fails, it fails gracefully. I'm sure you'll agree that while 90% compliance and 60% compliance both fall within non-compliance, it's just not the same.
It is just a matter of which features in the standards to you thing are more important. Giving someone a newer version of your app which you think is better (and tab based browsing is a definite win IMHO) for free because of security problems in the earlier version, regardless of if their current version is pirated is hardly "evil".
There is a difference between giving and forcing down one's throat.
Should you ever try to feed a baby or give medicine to a cat, you'll learn the difference all right.
Will problems happen, yeah. Some vendors won't have bothered getting their apps working on IE7 (healthcare is huge for this because of all the FDA crap they have to go through each time they change anything).
So what have we learned today, kids? That's right, avoid non-standard solutions.
This has always frustrated me. A well-implemented web-based solution will run on literally anything. It doesn't matter if you've got Windows, Macintosh, Linux, BSD, or what. You just need a (mostly) standards-compliant browser. You'd think companies would love that.
Instead, you've got all these web-based applications that only work on IE and then break when a new version comes out.
That's because not every coder is a good one.
If you have companies that employ programmers who are cheap — and you do, and if you have programmers who have only learned a few tricks — and you do, then you'll get applications relying on a handful of tricks MS advertised as so very convenient, which the PHBs bought and then ordered the programmers to use.
And then it gets more cost-effective to upgrade the existing system then to re-write it from scratch...
The worst part is they kind of have a point. Every time violence in games comes up, our first counter-argument has always been that games and reality are different and the skills don't translate across. So, what do we say now? It seems like we have a choice between claiming that this guy did not learn first aid from a video game, or that people only learn good skills from games. Both of those ring pretty hollow.
I would disagree with one little bit: skills do translate across. Behaviour needn't.
Any skill you learn in any kind of context will translate across. Behaviour depends on a greater number of factors.
You might want to do what they do in Star Treck and put a word infront of every command. Something like "Computer: Lights off" will reduce the chance that some random sentences from the TV will trigger the command.
Unless you're watching Star Treck ofcourse.
My Mac does that as well, though the one time I tried it, I did not have much success. Maybe because I had a cold, maybe because I'm not a native speaker, so my fancy Mac hates my Slavic accent.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that's why I suggested doing so on interesting, but commercially non-critical sites first.
At this point, businesses cannot afford to lose money, even though they can blame no-one but themselves for the ever-growing expenses of web-development.
It is tilting at windmills, but I don't care. One step at a time, I can walk around the world. One user at a time, I can convert the web.</messiahcomplex>
As I've said before, 90% compliant is better than 60% compliant.
Good.
What you're really seeing is frustration, but if it comes out as arrogance, even better.
If I came out as merely frustrated, you'd think I were just btching and moaning and would likely simply dismiss anything I had to say; now that I came off as arrogant, you felt you needed to respond in a less dismissive manner.
Not the most productive strategy, I admit, but in the face of the prevailing opinion that web developers are supposed to make every POS work with their pages, no matter how broken it may be, I feel that arrogance is most likely to be heard.
It's an I'm smart everyone else is stupid kind of attitude which to me seems really short sighted.I'm trying to think of some reasons for not calling exclusive IE users uneducated at the very least, but so far I'm failing.
Care to enlighten me?
Yes MS makes major screw ups and causes major headaches for many people that have to deal with thier mistakes on a daily basisWell, I'm offering them a way out. Not taking it? Hey, be a beaten wife for all I care, but don't come crying to me if you refuse to walk out on your abusive husband.
but at the end of the day 99% of the people out there really could care less that there are "better" browsers out there or that MS screwed yet another thing upWell, you just said that they could care less, which means that they do care.
You probably intended to say ust the opposite, but now you're proving me right.
all they care about that when they go to the web sites of thier choosing they work with the most convenient browser for them which for that large majority of them is IE.And I'm making it less convenient by doing nothing wrong, and not fixing what ain't broken.
The very point is in making it less convenient.
BTW, here in Europe Firefox has a marketshare between 20% and 50%, depending on the country.
I say get over it its old news for people in the industry and it never was news for people that aren't.Think about it.
Well, time for it to become news to people, I say.
I definitely support the idea.
The way to do it, I think, is to start with the less commercially important pages. Something interesting, but not commercially relevant.
Serve them that page with a warning it doesn't work in IE.
They'll ignore your page.
They'll ignore mine as well.
The third page that tells them that... well, they might reconsider.
No. They should be educated.
Inform them they are using a non-compliant browser and send them to download Firefox.
And if they insist on using a deficient product, it is not my problem.
Meh, it's your loss. When you have fewer customers because only a certain percentage of them can view your website, you'll realize that your OMGWTFBLAMEEVERYONE attitude was truly the one at fault, not MS.I am an educator.
Every user I educate is a win for me.
And for everybody else, in the end.
Force people into upgrading too soon, and they might upgrade to Linux.
Easy does it. Ease them into upgrading. Keep them addicted.
So, it isn't DOCTYPE switch that failed, but it was Microsoft that failed to implement the standards
Boy would I hate to be the one to break that awfully shocking news to them. Don't suppose they will survive that one, you think?
Anyway. Get over it. Detect your browser version and render your custom CSS. Play like everyone else plays.
Or leave it broken for the people without a proper browser.
If it's strict, it's strict. If your browser cannot render strict properly, go and bitch to the manufacturer.
Well, the point is, I wouldn't want the bomb in the program code, but in the document itself.
Anyway, since so many factors limit the usefulness of such code, I gave up on that. But it was an interesting thought nonetheless.
To paraphrase Edison, now I know several ways how not to do it.
If you modify the code and redistribute the product, you are not an end user.
Which is what the EU part of EULA stands for.
So let me ask again: what EULA?
First of all, not all of these solutions apply for such a small market as the one I live in.
Second of all, you may have noticed that I did say I was going to consider other ways.
However, having technology solve a problem you have is the very reason for inventing such technology. So if people hadn't been looking for technological solutions for their problems since the dawn of time, we'd never even have this conversation.
If you want low tech, get off my internet.
Even so, the bug is in both codebases.
Fun fact: there are no known Linux zombies in botnets. No, and Linux never has buffer overflow exploits. The pain is in the C/C++ runtime and is a fundamental flaw in the language design, but mah it exists in Linux too. How about the fun situations where you end up with a file that is owned by "nobody" in *NIX and even su can't chown it? How about X (yes that peice of crap, 1970's research project that nobody in the *NIX community seems to be willing to let die)?You're needlessly changing the issue. Unices have their faults, but mass zombification by malware which gets you the moment you get online (or any other means, FWIF) doesn't appear to be one of them.
And the one time I installed Windows and used IE to get Firefox, it took me some 10 minutes. As opposed to the 10 minutes it takes to open Firefox?Misquoted, then answered in a senseless manner. Unless something ate half my post while I was posting it.
Yes, because we know software from a reputable source never ever comes with malware. Rarely comes with malware and if it does you know who to sue.Oh, that helps a lot.
Who do you go after if you stole the software in the first place?I disagree on the "stealing" bit, for one.
Besides, even if you paid for the OS, the EULA clearly says you assume full responsibility for its usage and MS isn't liable for any damage. Yadda yadda.
As an aside it never ceases to amaze me the number of developers that come onI wouldn't know, really.
P.S. I use Firefox as my browser at home it works well (other than being slow to load and the rare page that insists on only working with windows). I use IE7 at work because of compatiblity issues with some of our software. I find IE7 almost as good as Firefox. My intent isn't to bash FF or Linux, just to point out if you are using closed source software then obey the EULA, just like you should when using FOSS.EULA with FOSS? Where?
P.P.S. No need to preach to the converted. I'm a IT manager by way of UNIX/Linux admin and like both *NIX and Win (yes it is possible). Given a choice I'd run the servers on *NIX and the GUI/end users on Win. People already know how to use Windows and I wouldn't ask my corp to retrain everyone. Heck we have some software that requires UNIX on the desktop and the users that have used it for 5 years still don't know how to copy files (they have buttons for it in the app, they click button X and the file goes "somewhere" very helpful to troubleshootMorons can't be helped.
Recently I was considering a solution to a professional problem that included some sort of DRM[1], albeit of a temporary sort.
As a part-time translator, I have in several occasions worked for people who got their translations, but failed to pay up. Some of my colleagues have had even worse problems of that sort.
The idea was, if they don't pay, have the file self-encrypt or self-destruct. Of course, since they could easily just copy and paste the contents in a new document, all this is really moot. Actually, the more ideas people suggested, the more things I found to be inherently wrong, avoidable or circumventable.
And it had all started with my friend's story about his friend, who set up the lighting in a night club. When the owner failed to pay up, he drove by on a Friday night, pulled out a remote and turned everything off. Then he was suddenly unavailable for the weekend; when the club owner finally reached him, the guy reminded him that since he failed to pay, he was feeling no pressure to "do the necessary repairs". When he was paid in full, he simply removed the whole circuit, re-connected the stuff and went merrily on his way.
Had the club owner not tried to cheat him, he would never have stepped into that trap; since he had, he did. And I'd like something like that in software: unless you mess with me, you'll never see it.
This differs from the traditional DRM in that it does not presume many copies of the file made; you translate for one client at a time, and just want them to pay up when the job is done. Whatever they do afterwards is none of your business.
I'm still thinking about the ways to implement something like that, but so far I've been out of my depth.
Ah, well. We'll just have to learn to fight another way.
[1] as much as I oppose the very idea.
Actually, there is a Firefox extension allowing you to use vi from within Firefox.
My DnD party loves me. I'm almost Lvl 10 and I'm soooo excited about my prestige class!
Well, Anonymous Blackleaf, your character is going to die.
Well, if it will be fixed in IE7 only, hen it is not just an IE6 vulnerability, is it now?
MS for not having to put up with said people for complaining that they got infected even though they are using an 7 year old browser.Well, what a shame MS didn't care much for improving their browser until Firefox gained some hold in the market. You know, the IE team was disbanded...
Paying for the OS doesn't make it stable, but having a friend of a friend install "Windows" for you doesn't leave me too confident that that burned disk is "Windows" and not an infected ISO of a torrent site.You know, aside from some business users and the people who got them with their laptops, I know virtually no-one with a legit copy of Windows. Yet for years we've all used — and most keep using — illegitimate copies of Windows. Incidentally, I now actually have a legit copy (well, semi-legit at least), but do not use it.
There is something to be said for removing the software from the shrink wrap after you purchased it from a reputable source.Yes, because we know software from a reputable source never ever comes with malware.
WGA was both meant to sell more Windows copies, and to help the windows "ecosystem" stay clean of modified copies.They could have designed a proper security model, too. That would have kept the ecosystem much, much cleaner.
Fun fact: there are no known Linux zombies in botnets.
You had a problem with your windows, one moment while I verify that you have a real copy of the software.Oh, wait: didn't they use to verify you had a legit copy of Windows in order to install IE7?
As for including IE into the OS: how exactly did you download your first copy of Firefox? Microsoft realized (as have pretty much every disto of Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc etc) that people want a browser built in. If you don't have a browser you'll have a hard time patching up the system. Sure there are other methods like having a one function patch downloader(linux is great for that) but that wasn't the route that MS went(it is rare that people complain about getting extra features with their OS, but bare in mind you can choose not to install it if you do a custom install of windows).Ooops.
IE isn't merely included with the system. It is integrated and cannot be uninstalled.
And the one time I installed Windows and used IE to get Firefox, it took me some 10 minutes. During which time my system got infected and had to be reinstalled.
Sure FOSS people are generous and will give you a disk of the program to install etc, etc, but I suspect the vast majority of Firefox downloads etc, begin with someone firing up there Windows system and using IE to download it.Great. So we've finally found the one thing IE is good for.
And many standards did exist, MS was even in on the decision-making, then implemented the standards in a purposefully broken fashion. Netscape 3 or 4 days are ancient history.
Nice. I agree, sort of. The problem only exists for users that have selected automatically approve rollups. Admittedly this is an upgrade, but there is enough vulnerablities in IE6 that it can also be considered a security roll up. How forgiving is Firefox if you have autoupdate enabled? As well I seem to recall auto update is enabled by default in FF where as in Windows you have to turn it on. I can't recall the number of times when launching FF I get told "do you want to install now or later?". Microsoft is in an unenviable position.They put themselves there. Nobody forced them to make a web browser an integral part of the UI. And not just the UI, the system itself.
People who want Firefox to update automatically, have Firefox update itself automatically.
People who want Windows to update automatically, but want their browser stay the same... well, they'd better choose a browser that can easily be asked to stay the same.
Besides, I don't recall Firefox 1.5 users being forced to upgrade to 2.0. A jump from 1.5.2 to 1.5.3 isn't the same as the jump from 6.0 to 7.0. It7's the difference between security updates and a distro upgrade.
Someone steals their product then blogs about how it is a vulnerable peice of crap on the internet. Those people I have no pity for, MS should be able to push/pull/jerk around those people as much as they want (you don't own the OS, and the OS wrote the files, so how about revoking the filesystem accessNot even the people who do pay for it own the OS, so I don't care much for the rest of your point.
And since the WGA got MS a whole bunch of false positives (I was thinking about false negatives, but since MS are already treating their customers like thieves, I said what the hell...), I don't think they'd thought it through very well.
Then again, I was getting my hopes quite high up with the reduced functionality mode; it could have meant a significant move to other platforms, but it seems like MS recognize their dependency on piracy. Again, they get no sympathy from me.
And yes: paying for Windows does not make it magically stable. Not paying for Windows makes WGA go away. Pirates get better service.
It is the corporate users that are most likely to get screwed around unfortunately(they just inherently have more workstations, more likely to have them all set to autoupdate, more money for software etc. = more risk).There you go. So whom exactly does this benefit?
Minefield does pass the Acid2. Unlike the claims from MS about their possible future browser, Minefield is out in the open, with many a user quite happy with it.
Firefox 3 is compliant.
Being non-complaintOh, I think you'll find many complaints about IE. Especially here.
Yeah, I know it was a typo, but I just couldn't resist.
doesn't mean anything if the two most used browsers (with ~ 97% of the market) aren't compliant.Ah, but you see how much we have progressed. Just a year or two ago, being standards-compliant didn't mean much if the one browser holding more than 80% of the market wasn't.
Besides, there is a difference between the modes of non-compliance: Firefox is way more standards-compliant than IE6 (well, duh), and when it fails, it fails gracefully. I'm sure you'll agree that while 90% compliance and 60% compliance both fall within non-compliance, it's just not the same.
It is just a matter of which features in the standards to you thing are more important. Giving someone a newer version of your app which you think is better (and tab based browsing is a definite win IMHO) for free because of security problems in the earlier version, regardless of if their current version is pirated is hardly "evil".There is a difference between giving and forcing down one's throat.
Will problems happen, yeah. Some vendors won't have bothered getting their apps working on IE7 (healthcare is huge for this because of all the FDA crap they have to go through each time they change anything).Should you ever try to feed a baby or give medicine to a cat, you'll learn the difference all right.
So what have we learned today, kids? That's right, avoid non-standard solutions.
Well, a good thing that the general public has been able to test and verify that claim.
I can't wait for the forced IE8 upgrade stories some... oh, five-six years from now?
Instead, you've got all these web-based applications that only work on IE and then break when a new version comes out.
That's because not every coder is a good one.
If you have companies that employ programmers who are cheap — and you do, and if you have programmers who have only learned a few tricks — and you do, then you'll get applications relying on a handful of tricks MS advertised as so very convenient, which the PHBs bought and then ordered the programmers to use.
And then it gets more cost-effective to upgrade the existing system then to re-write it from scratch...
The worst part is they kind of have a point. Every time violence in games comes up, our first counter-argument has always been that games and reality are different and the skills don't translate across. So, what do we say now? It seems like we have a choice between claiming that this guy did not learn first aid from a video game, or that people only learn good skills from games. Both of those ring pretty hollow.
I would disagree with one little bit: skills do translate across. Behaviour needn't.
Any skill you learn in any kind of context will translate across. Behaviour depends on a greater number of factors.
My Mac does that as well, though the one time I tried it, I did not have much success. Maybe because I had a cold, maybe because I'm not a native speaker, so my fancy Mac hates my Slavic accent.
But it's quite a nice thing anyway.
Or the Slashdotter who predicted VBA will be "put back", making MS "the good guy", while at the same time screwing over their customers once again.
Especially since I, for one, had seen no mmc links for several days now.
But I guess they started again. And adopted the words of some Slashdotter who started the screwmmc page.
Ah, well.
Homo homini lupus
?Every man is a wolf?
Man is a wolf to man.