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Dvorak Says MS Should Buy Opera
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Dec 22, 2005 02:40 PM
from the why-does-everybody-want-it-suddenly-huh dept.
from the why-does-everybody-want-it-suddenly-huh dept.
patro writes "Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Dvorak thinks buying Opera would be a smarter move. It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore and $400 million for it is pocket money for Microsoft."
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May I be the first to say... (Score:5, Funny)
(filler text to get around message filters)
Re:May I be the first to say... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
You got modded as a troll, but your comment is 100% correct. Dvorak has made a career out of spouting sensational bullshit (which even he must know is nonsense) in order to generate more hits for his site. He's one of the most successful trolls on all of the Internet.
If the editors are going to pay any attention whatsoever to submissions about his articles (and they ought not), then Slashdot needs a "Dvorak" category, so we can filter it out.
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Re:Yeah, well... (Score:4, Funny)
It's easy to criticise, but when was the last time that YOU had the same last name as someone who came up with a keyboard layout? Hmmmm? Didn't think so.
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Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Funny)
[* disclaimer: not my real name]
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Re:Yeah, well... (Score:3, Insightful)
So many errors... (Score:5, Informative)
Then he goes off on the whole "Opera identifies itself as IE so we don't know how many people use it" bull that's been debunked over and over and over again. Opera IDs itself as IE in the same way that IE identifies itself as Netscape -- and for the same reason. If you're paying any attention at all, you can tell the difference.
Some examples:
Netscape 4: "Mozilla/4.7 [en] (WinNT; U)"
IE 6: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
Opera 7: "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Opera 7.50 [en]"
You'll note that IE spoofs Netscape, that Opera spoofs IE (including the Netscape spoof), and that all three are easily distinguishable if you're looking in the right place.
Does this guy have a clue what he's talking about?
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Re:Yeah, well... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Imagine that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Imagine that... (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, I think I've figured out the pattern!Now if we can just get Google to promise not to be evil... oh, wait, my analogy is breaking down.
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Re:Imagine that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, buying up your competetors (especially one of the very few competitors that could actually be bought) doesnt look so good when you've already been a convicted monopoly.
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Re:Imagine that... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Imagine that... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Imagine that... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, Opera might have some value to MS on PocketPC. It has no real value to Google.
Re:Imagine that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Usually it seems that Microsoft buys out a company that is most enticing to it's competitors, then turning that heralded technology into a White Elephant on their own.
If they can't buy it, they re-implement it - badly.
IE, Xbox, J++,
What they can't come up with on their own, they imitate or buy.
more. [vcnet.com]
Google could do good with Opera. The only reason Microsoft would buy it is to suffocate it in a dark closet.
Parent
It works on all the major platforms... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is not a company selling apps, Microsoft is a company selling lock-in. As long as customers are sticking with them, they don't really need to spend "pocket change" to keep up with technology.
Re:It works on all the major platforms... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but you're being rather speculative in assuming that they bought companies specifically to shut down their Linux offerings. It seems more likey to me that they simply wanted the Windows version of the technology then saw no reason to continue Linux d
Mosaic (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, I think it's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. I don't see why MS should want to sink so much money into something that they already have and don't really make money on anyway. It may be pocket change for MS at this point, but that doesn't mean they should th
Re:Mosaic (Score:3, Interesting)
Great idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great idea! (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course if they could do that it'd prove that all the "IEs part of the OS and can't be removed" stuff was bunk. Wheter that's actually provable already is also up for debate.
Sure (Score:5, Funny)
Then after the "MS Opera" release, firefox would have even less competition.
Dvorak has apparently forgotten.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dvorak has apparently forgotten.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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One problem.... (Score:5, Funny)
antitrust? (Score:3)
I always thought Dvorak was an idiot, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
MS chooses to stop supporting the Mac with IE. For whatever reason, they think that's in their best interest. Now Dvorak thinks that's MS should spend $400M to abandon the browser they've been pushing for 10 years, to buy one that supports an OS they just walked away from.
MS hasn't even stopped supoport for IE yet, just annouced it. If they changed their mind and think it's such a big mistake, they can continue IE on MacOS.
Way too much money, way too little upside... (Score:3, Interesting)
They can stuff it with their links, write in their ActiveX/DLL extensions, make a better Windows-like skin... whatever.
Of course, I can't imagine them risking putting open source software in such a high-visibility area, but a web developer can dream.
Dvorak just needs to go away... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not compatible (Score:5, Insightful)
Note to Self... (Score:3, Funny)
There is a deliberate reason why IE sucks... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why so much Dvorak (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why so much Dvorak (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot is a business.
Plus, some people enjoy flaming Dvorak. It makes them feel superior, and every nerd needs an ego-massage once in a while (myself included).
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MS should buy Dvorak (Score:5, Funny)
He could be their mascot, and beat up the Linux penguin and the Mac... whatever the hell that thing is in the Mac logo.
Dvorak is a fool. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe they wouldn't, and just leave the bloat there, with another userland application plonked down on top of it. Would be their style.
Weak Argument... IE's Future is Much Different (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft is not interesting in gaining browser market share outside of the Windows platform. Sure, they might be able to steer more people toward MSN and thereby make more in advertising revenue, but how much more? If 90% of the market already uses Windows, and gaining that extra 10% is fairly difficult for a wide variety of reasons, it may not be worth it to them.
Even if it was, it has nothing to do with why Microsoft dropped support for the Mac. The direction Microsoft is taking IE is different than the direction everybody else is taking web browsers. Microsoft sees IE as an application that will allow users to access both web pages and smart client applications.
They see the future as a mesh of standard web apps and smart client applications created with things like ClickOnce [microsoft.com] (at first), and eventually IE-hosted Avalon [microsoft.com] applications. (WPF.) Their hope is that eventually the line between web apps and client apps will blur, and since it will be (they hope) via IE and Avalon, it will draw even more people to using Windows since the UI/functionality experience is so much better than standard web applications. At least that's the business point of view.
Why such a bad idea? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah it would suck because MS would inevitably discontinue opera on all platforms besides windows, rename it, integrate it into the OS and make it uninstallable, and, then, MS would really have the best browser offering, and we'd all have nothing left to complain about.
But, that is why it would be such a good move. Fixing IE is gonna take alot of developer time and money, probably about as much as they'd pay to purchase Opera. Yeah, to fit into MS's strategy they'd have to completely hobble Opera and basically destroy all the good things about it.. But, they'd get a secure, fast, bloat free, feature rich browser that was coherently developed.
I think you're all opposed to the idea because it would be about the worst thing that could happen to OSS/Mozilla/Firefox. It would be a complete slap in the face, and it would destroy Firefox's momentum overnight. I'm against the idea too, cause I like opera, and it would be sad to see it destroyed by MS, but I don't think its a bad idea for MS. I think it would be about the most intelligent/strategic thing they could do right now.
One post mentioned "why spend money on something that you don't make money on" well they've been spending money every year for developers to build IE it doesn't seem to be a problem, another poster said "why spend money on something you already have" MS doesn't have an Opera-calibur browser, and making IE an opera-calibur browser is going to take alot of time and money.
I think MS is really pretty scared about the competition from google, from the web finally starting to matter in a real way. As MS loses market share in browsers, they lose hits to msn.com. honestly how many of you firefox users have your homepage set to msn.com? But IE comes with msn.com as the default homepage on every computer I've ever used. That loss of hits costs them money. They have no choice but to try to maintain 90%+ browser market share, if they were to drop to 50% market share, they'd really be hurting. I don't think anyone uses msn.com through an active choice... People choose to use Yahoo, Google, whatever, the only people who use msn.com are those who haven't changed their default home page. In short MS's only competitive advantage on the web is that they have a huge userbase that uses their browser... If they lose that, they lose everything else on the web, everyone will be at Google or Yahoo.
flase premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has virtually bottomless resources - if they really wanted to, they could crank out a secure cross-platform web browser that supported relevant standards. What Microsoft has is exactly what they want - vendor lock-in with a mediocre product that through its various 'feature-driven' incompatibilities gives them some sense of control.
If Mircosoft can't own the roads, they want to own the potholes.
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't use either IE7 or Firefox but so what? IE7 is a "damn fine browser" for now... IE overtook Netscape because it was the better browser at the time that MS was using other tactics to force its wide and successful adoption.
Do you really think that IE7 will continue to be a "
Re:What the hell is the thought process here? (Score:5, Funny)
I disassembled it for you:
NOP
...
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
NOP
Fascinating, and, oh, look! Dvorak is little endian!
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Opera developers (Score:4, Interesting)
Now THERE you're really hitting the point, but not even completely. It's not just their innovating new features, but the performance they're able to achieve with their application. The speed and memory requirements are fantastic compared to everything else out there. IE and FF can't touch Opera for memory usage OR speed (in most cases).
I just wish it's renderer was better; it produces goofy results too often. I'd like to see them take the Gecko renderer and run it through the Opera-resource-debigulator(tm) and use that in Opera. I'd also like them to make an email client that doesn't require 30Meg of RAM, and actually performs at a reasonable speed. Ugh. Let's hope Thunderbird 1.5 is a big improvement in the performance arena, though I have no hope it'll be anything other than worse in the resource requirements arena.
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Re:At the risk of being flamed mightily.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have often wondered the same thing. IE is quite usable, and quite nice.
Firefox and Opera are great, and I use them both a lot of the time, but I also use IE often. On a Windows machine, IE seriously has some benefits that FF does not. For instance, doing an ftp://foobar [foobar] gets me a nice interface in IE. In FF, Fireftp crashes so often that I stopped using it. As for adblocking, Google toolbar gives me the same thing. If you are careful about your security settings, IE can also be a safe browser.
No
Re:At the risk of being flamed mightily.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to talk about 1994 UI land?
Number one: why are you typing "C:\" into a web browser's address bar? It's not a valid internet URL.
Number Two: "C:\" itself is 1982 UI, so you're really stretching the complaint.
Re:Does it run on Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
I wish I could say it worked great. It doesn't. But it works well enough that I can modify server side rule in exchange by using the Web interface. Yes, the web interface works in non-ie browsers, but doesn't handle enhanced mode -- so you can't do things like make rules. And, evolution doesn't implement exchange server side rules.
I also need to use ie to enter m
Re:Who wants opera for 400 mil? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Newsflash (Score:3, Insightful)
When I read the headline, I immediately thought, "yeah, right." Love or hate MS, IE 6 usability and look and feel pretty much kicks ass.
What?... What?!?
IE 6 is crap, through and through. It doesn't even have tabbed browsing. It is ugly. It violates plenty of basic UI principles. It does not have a build in, working ad blocker. The pop-up blocking is sub par. The security is abysmal and it can't even properly render Web pages written in WC3 standards set half a decade ago. It is ugly and unusable in my
Re:First, Opera would have to sell. (Score:4, Informative)
Extract of a chat with Jon [opera.com] held earlier this year:
Q: Hi I've been using opera from Opera 4 . And after four years I still have it - in fact I can't live without it! If Bill Gates wanted to buy Opera, do you accept it ?
Jon S. von Tetzchner: Hi Shima, thank you for using the best browser year after year! The answer to your question is simple: No. We would never sell Opera to Microsoft in a million years. Best regards, Jon.
Disclaimer: Yeah, I'm an Opera fanboi! What's it to ya?
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I suspect it would be more like this: (Score:4, Funny)
Jon: "OK"
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