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Firefox Internet Explorer Microsoft Mozilla News

From Redmond With Love 140

Posted by timothy from the that-shows-class-and-esprit-de-corps dept.
theweatherelectric writes "Continuing the tradition, the Internet Explorer team has congratulated Mozilla on shipping Firefox 4. Given the proposed accelerated release reschedule for Firefox, Mozillians may need to watch their diet in future."
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From Redmond With Love More

From Redmond With Love

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  • Nobody is completely bad (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @06:01PM (#35580436)
    Once again, the IE folk have proven they are the coolest group in Redmond!

    • Re:Nobody is completely bad (Score:4, Funny)

      by WrongSizeGlass ( 838941 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @06:06PM (#35580494)

      Once again, the IE folk have proven they are the coolest group in Redmond!

      Um, nope ... the cake is a lie.

    • Although not Redmond-based, but have you seen the Opera devs, testing whether Opera is faster than a potato? :D
      Or Google doing the same thing, and testing Chrome against many others (Tesla coil discharge, soundwaves, etc).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by blair1q ( 305137 )

        Never underestimate the bandwidth of a basket of fries hurtling down the freeway at 70 mph.

    • Nothing like a bit of friendly competition [snafu.de], heh..

    • >"Once again, the IE folk have proven they are the coolest group in Redmond!"

      I think the cake is more of an insult (as if Mozilla needs congratulations by the all powerful Microsoft). But yes, the IE Folk CAN produce a cross-platform food, just not a cross-platform browser ;) And their current browser doesn't even run on XP- some 40% of the MS-Windows installs! Maybe if they ever do that, Mozilla can send THEM a cake...

      • I'm sorry, but the number of users of XP is far more than 40%. 70% as a figure comes to mind.

        • I was just basing in on a statistic from a few Googled searches for March 2011. It is entirely possible it is was wrong.

          Either way, it is a huge number for them to ignore. Meanwhile, thankfully, the three other major, most important browsers *ARE* multiplatform:

          Firefox
          Opera
          Chrome

    • Once again, the IE folk have proven they are the coolest group in Redmond!

      Then again, perhaps if they stop making cakes for the Mozilla Team, they can concentrate on making standards compliant browsers... you know, the thing they promise and fail to deliver with each release? And no... IE9 is not yet standards compliant - better, yes - but as good as Chrome or FF (in that department)? No. They still can't get simple things correct like div placement - BIG improvement over IE6 which would place things arbitrarily off screen or on the wrong side of the coordinate axis or who the he

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        "And no... IE9 is not yet standards compliant - better, yes - but as good as Chrome or FF (in that department)? No. "

        IE9 is as good as Chrome or FF for all practical purposes in regards to standards compliance. It passes ACID3 with the same score as FF4, for example.

        • I'm so glad the IE team made the decision not to worry about the ACID test. It's only PR for geeks who'd rather care about a single number than attempt to judge on real world use.

          IE9 is a solid browser which will of course fall behind with the slow IE dev cycle. But if they keep the pace from IE7 through IE9, IE10 will blow the others away.

        • "And no... IE9 is not yet standards compliant - better, yes - but as good as Chrome or FF (in that department)? No. "

          IE9 is as good as Chrome or FF for all practical purposes in regards to standards compliance. It passes ACID3 with the same score as FF4, for example.

          "For all practical purposes" is not the same thing as "standards compliant". On more in depth tests, it scored VASTLY better than IE6, a LOT better than IE7, and DECENTLY better than IE8. But still not as good as FF4 and Chrome.

          Don't use semantics to win an argument. It's standards compliant or it is not. "For all practical purposes" says "It's not... but it's decent enough". Thus, you really haven't refuted anything I've said - you've just provided your opinion that you think it's good enough.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Cyberax ( 705495 )

            Don't use semantics to win an argument. It's standards compliant or it is not.

            FireFox and Chrome are NOT standards-compliant. In fact, nobody implements the 4.2 spec completely and without problems.

            • Don't use semantics to win an argument. It's standards compliant or it is not.

              FireFox and Chrome are NOT standards-compliant. In fact, nobody implements the 4.2 spec completely and without problems.

              Correct. But IE9 is still behind them. Only Safari is as far behind Chrome 10, Opera and Firefox 4 as IE9 is. The point is, when it comes to browsers, IE9 is still at the bottom of the pack, along with Safari and the Android Web Browser.

              See the point now? IE9 is still at the bottom and not nearly as standards compliant as the other market share leaders.

    • Cool, but where are the standards? (Score:4, Funny)

      by dmomo ( 256005 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @08:41PM (#35581790)

      Sure that cake looks great with IE, but slap any other browser on it, and the "C" in "Congratulations" will be smack dab in the middle of the cake with all of the other text oozing of the right onto the table.

  • Rivalry (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xMrFishx ( 1956084 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @06:04PM (#35580472)
    That's the sort of rivalry I like. Competition between engineers tends to be good humored banter. Competition between marketeers seems to be cut throat warmongering. Shame really. It should go back to the days of jolly good what what old sport, I say good game with a touch of the old one two.

    • Re:Rivalry (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) * on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @06:28PM (#35580730) Journal

      Competition between engineers tends to be good humored banter.

      Management hates this sort of thing.

      Engineering used to be a career where you could make a good living and have a little dignity. More and more it seems, the people at the top would rather it not be that way. They don't like the notion of a sector of the work force that thinks it's almost as good as the guys who provide the capital. That's why most engineers' working conditions are worse today than they were ten years ago, and their purchasing power has declined. Ask someone who's looked for an engineering job recently. A lot of the fun and a surprising amount of the reward have gone out of it.

      No matter how well trained, no matter how important you are, how vital your job, you are still just a worker, and as such, you cannot be allowed to get above your station. This is how ownership thinks.

      • >>Management hates this sort of thing.

        Yeah, because I'm sure the IE dev team sent the cake behind management's back. Err... again.

        Those tricksy engineers! Got to keep them in their place.

        Believe it or not, Microsoft treating their engineers like shit is a good way to get them to go work for Google. So they don't.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tsa ( 15680 )

          Their engineers may be treated relatively well, but I bet they don't earn nearly as much as the managers do. They most probably have less secondary benefits as well.

          • >>Their engineers may be treated relatively well, but I bet they don't earn nearly as much as the managers do. They most probably have less secondary benefits as well.

            From what I understand from my friends working for the evil empire, you have a RPG-esque "level" when you work at Microsoft. Collect enough "XP" among each of your rated categories, and you level up. Gain a pay raise, and later on, a promotion. You can either stay as a senior developer (or higher level titled developers) or branch into m

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by rwade ( 131726 )

              Yeah, I'm sure there's a super robust and objective way for every single person to achieve as many XPs as they want to chase after. There's likely no management favoritism involved in the process at all.

              • From what I understand, it's a mix of both managerial reviews and more objective scores, like doing documentation and so forth. So if you want to level up quickly, you need to make sure you hit up all the categories.

          • Their engineers may be treated relatively well, but I bet they don't earn nearly as much as the managers do. They most probably have less secondary benefits as well.

            Wow, ya think so? So you're saying that the people above the engineers actually make more money and benefits than the people they're above? Get outta here *gay hand wave, cheesy smile*.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by 10101001 10101001 ( 732688 )

              Wow, ya think so? So you're saying that the people above the engineers actually make more money and benefits than the people they're above? Get outta here *gay hand wave, cheesy smile*.

              Just like the NBA, the NFL, etc. Oh, wait.. Yea, it'd almost seem like in some industries it's recognized that just because you're above someone else doesn't inherently mean you should be paid more. It's almost like, oh, experience, importance, and replace-ability also factor into it. For white collar workers, there's ple

            • So you're saying that the people above the engineers actually make more money and benefits than the people they're above?

              Depends what you mean by "above". An associate dean for finance is "above" a superstar English prof sitting in a named chair, but certainly won't make more money. The top administrator of a hospital won't make as much as the top neurosurgeon.

              Remember, these hierarchies were put in place artificially to reverse the natural order of labor preceding capital that would exist in a "free mark

        • By "management" I am referring to something a little more general than just Microsoft. But I'm pretty sure you know that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tcr ( 39109 )

      Let's hope Legal didn't get in on it too, since Firefox supports tabbed browsing and MS are patent trolling.

      Did they check inside the cake for a sinister envelope?

    • Agree with what you say. Slashdot must be full of marketers!

  • On to something (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @06:06PM (#35580484)

    Ah, so the primary reason for Firefox moving to shorter releases is to get more cakes out of Redmond.

    Nice try, Firefox.

    1 Matthew Holloway on March 22nd, 2011 at 3:45 pm

    I think Matthew Holloway (not me, BTW) may be on to something there.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Here's another good one: "Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."

      3 no on March 22nd, 2011 at 4:16 pm

      • "Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."

        That's what I do and she doesn't seem to mind. I'd say it's common courtesy.

  • Not only should we congratulate the IE team on this fantastic and wholly good-natured tradition, but the Firefox guys never fail to exhibit a genuinely grateful yet professional tone. Any developer working on IE must recognize the huge shot to the arm that Firefox gave the browser market, and given IE's great strides lately, the gap in usability and security is finally getting narrower between the two browsers. I'd imagine that working on IE would involve a lot of friendly competition, and I'm happy to see

    • Re:Browser wars, yay! (For real.) (Score:5, Insightful)

      by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @06:13PM (#35580564) Journal

      I'd bet the existence of Firefox means there are about 100 more IE devs employed than there would otherwise be.

      The cake's a meager kickback.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xest ( 935314 )

        No need to bet, it's true, Microsoft had all but killed off the IE development team.

        IE6 came out around 2001 and Firefox first released in 2004, and took some time to become popular.

        Because of the lack of competition or need to move much in the browser market, Microsoft saw little reason to invest in IE.

        But then Firefox started to become a credible threat, by 1.5 it had gained a noticable amount of ground and was showing no sign of slowing.

        Microsoft in 2006 released their first new browser release for 5 yea

    • The Chrome developers can afford their own cake.

  • SP1 took down my windows 7 64 bit installation at work yesterday. (My mortal sin was to have other language packs installed than En-US) Nice to see that the MS folks are prioritizing important work...!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by IQgryn ( 1081397 )
      I'm sure arranging for a cake to be sent could take the entire day for the entire Microsoft dev team.

      I bet not, though. Especially the Windows devs, which, by and large, aren't the IE devs.

    • You do realize those are completely separate teams and that this probably took a secretary an hour or so to do, right?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Plammox ( 717738 )
        Yes. Please respect my right to rant.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Plammox ( 717738 )
          And might I add: If pimple-faced, basement dwelling geeks can pull off linux kernel updates that never fail (never happened to me at least) would it be wrong to expect the same from MS?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Yours is the rant of a frustrated, stupid dependent. Not smart enough to use the open sores variants, unable to pay someone to keep the commercial products running properly. I'd say I feel for ya, but you're also a dink; perhaps you should stay perched in front of one-way media flow ,and leave the complicated things to people who can handle them?

      • What? You mean they didn't take the single person working on SP1 and made him make a cake?
  • I thought that was a rubber band around the IE logo at first, had to zoom in [flickr.com] to see that it's probably just sugar. (These cakes aren't gags ... yet)
  • Meanwhile, on Twitter, they bought ad space to promote IE9 over the release of FF4. Stay classy, Microsoft! http://twitpic.com/4c6nth [twitpic.com]
  • Firefox devs really like cake, apparently.
  • Someone tell me Mozilla did the same when IE9 was released.

  • Cookie! (Score:4, Funny)

    by hugetoon ( 766694 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2011 @07:24PM (#35581272)

    Talk about a big one...
    Are they testing for a buffer overflow?

    • Talk about a big one... Are they testing for a buffer overflow?

      Nope, it was a wafer cake, so it's called a wafer overflow

  • If there's one thing the IE people have proven is that there is in fact an I in Ieam.

  • "Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grcumb ( 781340 )

      "Considering the way they drove Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox into near oblivion with devious practices, this seems a lot like sending a valentine’s day card to your rape victim, every year."

      Well, if you want to be picky about it, a closer analogy would actually be the child of the murdered parent.

      And given that Mozilla is looking more and more like Inigo Montoya... yeah, I'd send cake.

  • I think we're all missing the underlying subtext here. There's a reason the IE team always sends its congratulations in the form of a cake... because it's a lie.

  • Now die in a fire, Microsoft scum!

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