5 reasons restricting hacking is not like gun control
If you're not aware, in late May the German government passed a law making the possession of "computer programs whose aim is to commit a crime" illegal -- a crime punishable with up to a year of jail time. Thereby treating computer programs in just the same way as guns. One translation of the law is as follows:
Whoever prepares a crime according to §202a or §202b and who creates, obtains or provides access to, sells, yields, distributes or otherwise allows access to * passwords or other access codes, that allow access to data or * computer programs whose aim is to commit a crime will be punished with up to one year jail or a fine.
That's it, create or obtain a hacking tool and you could find yourself behind bars. No exclusion for security professionals, no definition of what exactly the 'aim' of a computer program means.
Let's get it out of the way: Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people. People with hacking tools can steal your personal data, shut down your system and deface your web site -- but is that any reason to ban them? I've got five good reasons why restricting hacking tools is not like gun control.
Reason Number One: It's hard to know exactly if a given program is aimed at committing a crime. Is it enough to simply be a popular tool with criminals? A port scanner can help you find vulnerable ports in a computer which you can then either secure or exploit to gain access. How about password recovery tools -- you can use them to determine an old password, or crack other's passwords? Packet sniffers -- network analysis or eavesdropping? There are a whole range of tools that are commonly used by hackers, both benign and malignant, that can be used to commit a crime -- may in fact be intended to commit a crime -- which have entirely legitimate and innocent uses as well.
Reason Number Two: Guns have a much smaller effective range than hackers. A local gun restriction law -- if it works -- can curb gun violence locally. A law restricting the use of hacking tools in Germany is going to do German businesses no good at all against a hacker from Nigeria, Russia, China or the United States (taking some countries semi-randomly), all it does is restrict their abilities to defend themselves. The Internet is global, national laws for protection are, at best, paper shields.
Reason Number Three: In the majority of countries that restrict possession of weapons, security professionals are licensed to carry them - there's nothing like that in the German law. Only the most radical gun restriction proponents argue to strip police of their handguns, but many of the same people seem to have no problem with the blanket banning of "hacking tools". Computer security professionals need to be able to use whatever tools they can find to protect their businesses, what good is penetration testing if you don't use the same resources that an attacker would use?
Reason Number Four: It will cripple education. If you're studying computer science how can you learn networking without using a port scanner? How can you study encryption without learning how it is broken? How can you learn application programming without understanding buffer overflowing? If the tools to research these kind of things are illegal, then the standard of programming and the level of knowledge of average, law abiding developers goes down. Worse, they might not even realise that there are gaps in their understanding.
Reason Number Five: It's an oft repeated statistic that a gun in the house is more likely to kill a family member than an intruder -- that is, many incidents of gun violence are not caused by criminals. Some are, sure, but it's dead easy to shoot someone. Malicious hacking on the other hand is planned, premeditated and takes a great deal of knowledge and practise. Nobody can break into a safe in the heat of the moment, and you can't set up a botnet by accident. One hundred percent of the people you want to stop using hacking tools are going to ignore this law because they know they're breaking the law anyway. To put it simply, a law such as the German one just won't work to cut down on electronic break ins.
Laws such as this help no one, and will, in the long run, do a lot of harm to the levels of computer security for local businesses and people in general. In short, the side effects of such a law include reducing local knowledge of security and businesses ability to protect themselves, and ultimately failure at stopping the kind of hackers the law is aimed at. To me the whole think stinks of making a law without asking anyone who knows anything about the subject. Keep an eye out, these laws could even now be heading to a politician near you. "Hopefully, this time, we'll be competing on usability, not on how well we can balkanise the web"
Heh - that may be a nice sentiment, but given that we're in a position of trying to convert people from something that they have already, we won't be. Also, the popup blocking advantage will be going out of the window probably before Firefox even gets to 1.0. Posted by michaell at June 19, 2004 11:01 PM
The popup blocking advantage will still hold for all the people on Windows 98, ME, NT and 2000 and those people who have pirated copies of Windows XP. Sure this userbase is declining but it is still huge. I guess we're talking about dozens of million users here. Posted by Simon Paquet at June 20, 2004 10:14 AM
I find extremely amusing the name of the Standards section on the Internet Explorer wiki : "InternetExplorerStandards - requests for and discussion of standards support". Yeah, that's the problem : MSIE should implement Standards but it really implements InternetExplorerStandards :-) Posted by Daniel Glazman at June 20, 2004 11:59 AM
A couple of comments:
Just show people the pop-up blocker
The most modern version of IE (the one included on the SP2 of Windows XP) already has a pop-up blocker... it's a beta, but they already have this feature (Firefox it's still something like a beta...).
", this time, we'll be competing on usability, not on how well we can balkanise the web...
As far as I remember, the first company that tried to balkanise the web in order to show the excellences of their browser was Netscape, not Microsoft. Posted by xavier caballe at June 20, 2004 8:34 PM
As far as I remember, the first company that tried to balkanise the web in order to show the excellences of their browser was Netscape, not Microsoft.
Yes, and Netscape was roundly criticised by developers all over. And look what happened to them. But that was years ago and is irrelevent to today.
How about MSN restricting access to content based on USER AGENT. Or causing content served to Opera users to break and Opera's brilliant response (the Bork edition). Active-X. Posted by Kevin Collins at June 20, 2004 8:46 PM
All I can say is, ABOUT TIME! IE is the most outdated when it comes to supporting the most current web standards. I find it incredible that they would even think of stopping developement, as they did. Thankfully there are people out there(Mozilla) who keep pushing onward.
Microsoft says it's 'monopoly' is a benefit to the end user. But we see, when they think they have no reason to persevere, they sit on their lazy behinds until competition finally forces them to do so.
Well now look what you've done to me.I'm gettin all worked up ;-) Posted by J-Dude at June 21, 2004 12:58 AM
If you are a Mozilla developer, Mozilla is doomed. You sound more like a Slashdot user, rather than a developer. Nobody recognized you, you are masturbating to yourself here. Let me remind you the IE's market share, the worst I heard is 93%. And that's mostly because on Macs, Safari become the default browser. If you guys continue to have this slashdotter attitude, you would become irrelevant for Windows in the near future. Oh, yeah I use Firefox, but I am not an idiot. I use it because its tabbed browsing and rendering makes me more productive. That's why I use it, I didn't switch to mozilla until Firefox. Instead of masturbating like slashdotters, go there and fix the mozilla bugs that has been there for years. Posted by Daniel at June 21, 2004 2:33 AM
Nobody recognized you, you are masturbating to yourself here... Instead of masturbating like slashdotters
Wow- you sure have a thing for wanking, dontcha Posted by Bob at June 21, 2004 2:40 AM
ok, you guys are taking this stuff a bit too serious... I don't know if you have noticed, but no one really cares what browser they are using; *that's* why MS won the battle. IE is not secure because Windows is not secure.. and because IE and windows are so deeply tied. Mozilla is not and OS so you can't exactly compare it to IE.
True innovation wont come until HTML goes out the door. For the time being, there's nothing browser makers could do that would make users switch browsers.
"Tabbed-Browsing"? IE provides the same, only that you switch windows with ALT-TAB instead of Ctrl-Tab. Posted by Ellery Familia at June 21, 2004 4:22 AM
In pure /. fashion (just cause I know it will piss him off) I give Daniel a -5 shithead.
Read his other posts on the other blogs mentioned in the (ahem) slashdot article.
He has said nothing construtive, and has resorted to name calling and attacks on OSS developers in all his posts on this topic. Not one constructive thing about IE at all. (All attack, no defense? -- Hi SCO!)
Now.. Having said all that. Daniel DOES seem to be focusing on IE from a purely "build the IE business" perspective. And he may have a valid point or two. But they are buried in the curse words and generalized attacks he seems to favor.
A few less vitrolic exclamations, and a reasoned arguement or two, and Daniel might get a modicum of repsect for his opinions.
Just a thought.
Posted by Magores at June 21, 2004 4:45 AM
Tabbed browsing can be implemented in 10 minutes using IE as ActiveX control. Is tabbed browsing is really an innovation? IE has GREAT extensibility features, and plugins written to IE4 are working now. Mozilla's plugin need to be recompiled every time new version is released. THIS is an innovation. IE4 was written in 1997 and it beats Mozilla in terms of extensibility and object model.
IE definitely will really hit again in Longhorn timeframe, when all rendering will be aero-powerered and will have GREAT visual quality.
THIS is an innovation. When all pages will be compiled in native code at run-time in IE7 and will be executed with a very high performance, it is an innovation. When HTML with 100000 of active elements will be rendered and animated with 100fps and, this is an innovation. Tabbed browsing and popup-blockers is marketing bullshit. If you are developer, you understand me. Posted by lexp at June 21, 2004 9:03 AM
Said lexp:
"IE has GREAT extensibility features, and plugins written to IE4 are working now."
Well, at least until WinXP SP2's security enhancement break them. :-)
Seriously though, it's extensible to the point that you can get people to install your ActiveX controls. Mozilla does that too (see: ). The trouble is that those controls (or extensions, or plugins, or whatever you want to call them) take a while to download (most users are still on dial-up) and users tend to be gun-shy about installing unknown software--as well they should be, what with all the mal/ad/spyware floating about.
Even putting aside the those issues, you write ActiveX controls with what, VB? C++? Mozilla extensions are JavaScript + CSS + markup, offering a much flatter learning curve especially for people who already know the Web. More, if I write a Moz extension I can deploy it on a wide range of OSes. That's not true of ActiveX; my two Macs would be left out in the cold, and I expect I'd have more than a bit of trouble getting some controls settled down on both the Win2K and Win98 machines.
"IE definitely will really hit again in Longhorn timeframe, when all rendering will be aero-powerered and will have GREAT visual quality."
Meh. I've already got a browser with GREAT visual quality. It's called Safari. It uses Quartz on OS X.
Speaking of, IE on OS X doesn't look too shabby either, and it's been EOLed.
"When all pages will be compiled in native code at run-time in IE7"
Why in [deity]'s name would I want static web pages to be compiled to native code?
"and will be executed with a very high performance"
I'm not having a lot of performance issues with most pages as-is. For serious animations and/or heavy-duty UIs, you may have a point.
Or not, given the advances in computing hardware. Frankly, I'm smelling the old 'XML sucks because it's bloated text--binary is where it's at, dood' argument again.
"When HTML with 100000 of active elements will be rendered and animated with 100fps"
Which I need for what? Games, certainly. Cartoon/film type animation, probably. What else? I'm having trouble here....
What I really need is a good, solid *basic* UI/layout toolkit that works reasonably consistently across multiple platforms. Something I can deploy with relative simplicity across Windows, Mac, Linux, etc., and ideally Palm, Symbian and WinCE/PocketPC/Stinger/whatever with minimal redevelopment. Posted by setmajer at June 21, 2004 10:54 AM
To address the "Why bother, you'll only loose since MS as such a huge market share..." attitude, I would like to point back to Linux. Over and over again, people have said that about Linux and next year it is expected to be on 30% of the new servers shipped! It is only matter of time before it has a noticable share of the desktop. Of course, everyone knows this but... with Mozilla, I can have a uniform brower on both my Linux and Windows desktops.
Personally, I think that whatever is used in the office is what will eventually be used at home. Most [non-geek] people get their computer training at the office. If they learn Mozilla at the office, they'll use Mozilla at home. If I tell them to use Mozillla, they will. Just like I usually do what I am told by my mechanic (eventhough I used to work on cars myself). Yes, this is an over simplification, but overall, it is true. I've been converting people from Outlook to Thunderbird and they LOVE IT!
So IE is back, big deal. Of course, MS will try to fight back but remember what it is trying to protect. MS has proven that the browser that is shipped with the OS will be the one that is used. I doubt that MS will be encouraging IE to be shipped with Linux.
For now, geeks will be early abopters, on our computers, our networks and our friends computers. When Linux moves into that market, we'll be saying "Sure, Mozilla runs on Linux, go ahead and switch." Posted by MrTibs at June 21, 2004 4:06 PM
"When HTML with 100000 of active elements will be rendered and animated with 100fps"
I will appreciate to have my eyes burned by hundreds of animations telling me that I have 10% off on the last marketing product. Posted by Ghent at June 21, 2004 6:25 PM
If new development for IE includes improving support for webstandards, then this is a positive thing.
It doesn't matter if it is harder to convert IE users to Firebird or other browsers. Don't forget about what is really important. It isn't which browser has the biggest market share. It's the open standards. They are the great equalizer. If every web browser supports the standards then everyone can be happy and use whatever browser they want.
The big question is: how committed is MS to improving their standards support? At this point I don't believe that they are seriously committed to it. They are just doing damage control so they don't lose any significant browser market share. I believe their focus will be more on bells and whistles than web standards. They will improve their standards support just enough to calm the angry web developers and prevent a mass exodus to other browsers. Forget about serious additions like XForms. Then, when the clamor over Firefox dies down and people become content with using IE again, Microsoft will suddenly stop caring.
But I could be wrong. In fact I hope that I am wrong. Please, Microsoft, prove me wrong. Posted by wg at June 22, 2004 3:51 AM
THIS is an innovation. When all pages will be compiled in native code at run-time in IE7 and will be executed with a very high performance, it is an innovation.
Can the virus's come and compile too? CAN THEY!? Posted by hcel at June 22, 2004 5:30 AM
+1 to wg's post Posted by Chris Wood at June 22, 2004 5:53 AM
The browser warning at spells out the dangers of using IE...some of this may become irrelevant if MS makes a serious commitment to improving IE. Oh, and one more thing: Opera is quite a long ways ahead of both Mozilla and IE, yet for some reason, it doesn't get a lot of mentions. Posted by Tyler Zesiger at June 23, 2004 5:11 AM
If IE7 supports standards, then well done Microsoft, if it doesn't then they should take notice that I will be disappointed...very disappointed. They could make 'standards' into a marketing gimmick or something, just bring 'em in!
Nobody talks about Opera because nobody likes paying even a small price [to get rid of the ad] if there are very 'similar' alternatives.
Whoever prepares a crime according to §202a or §202b and who creates, obtains or provides access to, sells, yields, distributes or otherwise allows access to * passwords or other access codes, that allow access to data or * computer programs whose aim is to commit a crime will be punished with up to one year jail or a fine.
That's it, create or obtain a hacking tool and you could find yourself behind bars. No exclusion for security professionals, no definition of what exactly the 'aim' of a computer program means.
Let's get it out of the way: Guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people. People with hacking tools can steal your personal data, shut down your system and deface your web site -- but is that any reason to ban them? I've got five good reasons why restricting hacking tools is not like gun control.
Reason Number One: It's hard to know exactly if a given program is aimed at committing a crime. Is it enough to simply be a popular tool with criminals? A port scanner can help you find vulnerable ports in a computer which you can then either secure or exploit to gain access. How about password recovery tools -- you can use them to determine an old password, or crack other's passwords? Packet sniffers -- network analysis or eavesdropping? There are a whole range of tools that are commonly used by hackers, both benign and malignant, that can be used to commit a crime -- may in fact be intended to commit a crime -- which have entirely legitimate and innocent uses as well.
Reason Number Two: Guns have a much smaller effective range than hackers. A local gun restriction law -- if it works -- can curb gun violence locally. A law restricting the use of hacking tools in Germany is going to do German businesses no good at all against a hacker from Nigeria, Russia, China or the United States (taking some countries semi-randomly), all it does is restrict their abilities to defend themselves. The Internet is global, national laws for protection are, at best, paper shields.
Reason Number Three: In the majority of countries that restrict possession of weapons, security professionals are licensed to carry them - there's nothing like that in the German law. Only the most radical gun restriction proponents argue to strip police of their handguns, but many of the same people seem to have no problem with the blanket banning of "hacking tools". Computer security professionals need to be able to use whatever tools they can find to protect their businesses, what good is penetration testing if you don't use the same resources that an attacker would use?
Reason Number Four: It will cripple education. If you're studying computer science how can you learn networking without using a port scanner? How can you study encryption without learning how it is broken? How can you learn application programming without understanding buffer overflowing? If the tools to research these kind of things are illegal, then the standard of programming and the level of knowledge of average, law abiding developers goes down. Worse, they might not even realise that there are gaps in their understanding.
Reason Number Five: It's an oft repeated statistic that a gun in the house is more likely to kill a family member than an intruder -- that is, many incidents of gun violence are not caused by criminals. Some are, sure, but it's dead easy to shoot someone. Malicious hacking on the other hand is planned, premeditated and takes a great deal of knowledge and practise. Nobody can break into a safe in the heat of the moment, and you can't set up a botnet by accident. One hundred percent of the people you want to stop using hacking tools are going to ignore this law because they know they're breaking the law anyway. To put it simply, a law such as the German one just won't work to cut down on electronic break ins.
Laws such as this help no one, and will, in the long run, do a lot of harm to the levels of computer security for local businesses and people in general. In short, the side effects of such a law include reducing local knowledge of security and businesses ability to protect themselves, and ultimately failure at stopping the kind of hackers the law is aimed at. To me the whole think stinks of making a law without asking anyone who knows anything about the subject. Keep an eye out, these laws could even now be heading to a politician near you. "Hopefully, this time, we'll be competing on usability, not on how well we can balkanise the web"
Heh - that may be a nice sentiment, but given that we're in a position of trying to convert people from something that they have already, we won't be. Also, the popup blocking advantage will be going out of the window probably before Firefox even gets to 1.0. Posted by michaell at June 19, 2004 11:01 PM
The popup blocking advantage will still hold for all the people on Windows 98, ME, NT and 2000 and those people who have pirated copies of Windows XP. Sure this userbase is declining but it is still huge. I guess we're talking about dozens of million users here. Posted by Simon Paquet at June 20, 2004 10:14 AM
I find extremely amusing the name of the Standards section on the Internet Explorer wiki : "InternetExplorerStandards - requests for and discussion of standards support". Yeah, that's the problem : MSIE should implement Standards but it really implements InternetExplorerStandards :-) Posted by Daniel Glazman at June 20, 2004 11:59 AM
A couple of comments:
Just show people the pop-up blocker
The most modern version of IE (the one included on the SP2 of Windows XP) already has a pop-up blocker... it's a beta, but they already have this feature (Firefox it's still something like a beta...).
", this time, we'll be competing on usability, not on how well we can balkanise the web...
As far as I remember, the first company that tried to balkanise the web in order to show the excellences of their browser was Netscape, not Microsoft. Posted by xavier caballe at June 20, 2004 8:34 PM
As far as I remember, the first company that tried to balkanise the web in order to show the excellences of their browser was Netscape, not Microsoft.
Yes, and Netscape was roundly criticised by developers all over. And look what happened to them. But that was years ago and is irrelevent to today.
How about MSN restricting access to content based on USER AGENT. Or causing content served to Opera users to break and Opera's brilliant response (the Bork edition). Active-X. Posted by Kevin Collins at June 20, 2004 8:46 PM
All I can say is, ABOUT TIME! IE is the most outdated when it comes to supporting the most current web standards. I find it incredible that they would even think of stopping developement, as they did. Thankfully there are people out there(Mozilla) who keep pushing onward.
Microsoft says it's 'monopoly' is a benefit to the end user. But we see, when they think they have no reason to persevere, they sit on their lazy behinds until competition finally forces them to do so.
Well now look what you've done to me.I'm gettin all worked up ;-) Posted by J-Dude at June 21, 2004 12:58 AM
If you are a Mozilla developer, Mozilla is doomed. You sound more like a Slashdot user, rather than a developer. Nobody recognized you, you are masturbating to yourself here. Let me remind you the IE's market share, the worst I heard is 93%. And that's mostly because on Macs, Safari become the default browser. If you guys continue to have this slashdotter attitude, you would become irrelevant for Windows in the near future. Oh, yeah I use Firefox, but I am not an idiot. I use it because its tabbed browsing and rendering makes me more productive. That's why I use it, I didn't switch to mozilla until Firefox. Instead of masturbating like slashdotters, go there and fix the mozilla bugs that has been there for years. Posted by Daniel at June 21, 2004 2:33 AM
Nobody recognized you, you are masturbating to yourself here... Instead of masturbating like slashdotters
Wow- you sure have a thing for wanking, dontcha Posted by Bob at June 21, 2004 2:40 AM
ok, you guys are taking this stuff a bit too serious... I don't know if you have noticed, but no one really cares what browser they are using; *that's* why MS won the battle. IE is not secure because Windows is not secure.. and because IE and windows are so deeply tied. Mozilla is not and OS so you can't exactly compare it to IE.
True innovation wont come until HTML goes out the door. For the time being, there's nothing browser makers could do that would make users switch browsers.
"Tabbed-Browsing"? IE provides the same, only that you switch windows with ALT-TAB instead of Ctrl-Tab. Posted by Ellery Familia at June 21, 2004 4:22 AM
In pure /. fashion (just cause I know it will piss him off) I give Daniel a -5 shithead.
Read his other posts on the other blogs mentioned in the (ahem) slashdot article.
He has said nothing construtive, and has resorted to name calling and attacks on OSS developers in all his posts on this topic. Not one constructive thing about IE at all. (All attack, no defense? -- Hi SCO!)
Now.. Having said all that. Daniel DOES seem to be focusing on IE from a purely "build the IE business" perspective. And he may have a valid point or two. But they are buried in the curse words and generalized attacks he seems to favor.
A few less vitrolic exclamations, and a reasoned arguement or two, and Daniel might get a modicum of repsect for his opinions.
Just a thought.
Posted by Magores at June 21, 2004 4:45 AM
Tabbed browsing can be implemented in 10 minutes using IE as ActiveX control. Is tabbed browsing is really an innovation? IE has GREAT extensibility features, and plugins written to IE4 are working now. Mozilla's plugin need to be recompiled every time new version is released. THIS is an innovation. IE4 was written in 1997 and it beats Mozilla in terms of extensibility and object model.
IE definitely will really hit again in Longhorn timeframe, when all rendering will be aero-powerered and will have GREAT visual quality.
THIS is an innovation. When all pages will be compiled in native code at run-time in IE7 and will be executed with a very high performance, it is an innovation. When HTML with 100000 of active elements will be rendered and animated with 100fps and, this is an innovation. Tabbed browsing and popup-blockers is marketing bullshit. If you are developer, you understand me. Posted by lexp at June 21, 2004 9:03 AM
Said lexp:
"IE has GREAT extensibility features, and plugins written to IE4 are working now."
Well, at least until WinXP SP2's security enhancement break them. :-)
Seriously though, it's extensible to the point that you can get people to install your ActiveX controls. Mozilla does that too (see: ). The trouble is that those controls (or extensions, or plugins, or whatever you want to call them) take a while to download (most users are still on dial-up) and users tend to be gun-shy about installing unknown software--as well they should be, what with all the mal/ad/spyware floating about.
Even putting aside the those issues, you write ActiveX controls with what, VB? C++? Mozilla extensions are JavaScript + CSS + markup, offering a much flatter learning curve especially for people who already know the Web. More, if I write a Moz extension I can deploy it on a wide range of OSes. That's not true of ActiveX; my two Macs would be left out in the cold, and I expect I'd have more than a bit of trouble getting some controls settled down on both the Win2K and Win98 machines.
"IE definitely will really hit again in Longhorn timeframe, when all rendering will be aero-powerered and will have GREAT visual quality."
Meh. I've already got a browser with GREAT visual quality. It's called Safari. It uses Quartz on OS X.
Speaking of, IE on OS X doesn't look too shabby either, and it's been EOLed.
"When all pages will be compiled in native code at run-time in IE7"
Why in [deity]'s name would I want static web pages to be compiled to native code?
"and will be executed with a very high performance"
I'm not having a lot of performance issues with most pages as-is. For serious animations and/or heavy-duty UIs, you may have a point.
Or not, given the advances in computing hardware. Frankly, I'm smelling the old 'XML sucks because it's bloated text--binary is where it's at, dood' argument again.
"When HTML with 100000 of active elements will be rendered and animated with 100fps"
Which I need for what? Games, certainly. Cartoon/film type animation, probably. What else? I'm having trouble here....
What I really need is a good, solid *basic* UI/layout toolkit that works reasonably consistently across multiple platforms. Something I can deploy with relative simplicity across Windows, Mac, Linux, etc., and ideally Palm, Symbian and WinCE/PocketPC/Stinger/whatever with minimal redevelopment. Posted by setmajer at June 21, 2004 10:54 AM
To address the "Why bother, you'll only loose since MS as such a huge market share..." attitude, I would like to point back to Linux. Over and over again, people have said that about Linux and next year it is expected to be on 30% of the new servers shipped! It is only matter of time before it has a noticable share of the desktop. Of course, everyone knows this but... with Mozilla, I can have a uniform brower on both my Linux and Windows desktops.
Personally, I think that whatever is used in the office is what will eventually be used at home. Most [non-geek] people get their computer training at the office. If they learn Mozilla at the office, they'll use Mozilla at home. If I tell them to use Mozillla, they will. Just like I usually do what I am told by my mechanic (eventhough I used to work on cars myself). Yes, this is an over simplification, but overall, it is true. I've been converting people from Outlook to Thunderbird and they LOVE IT!
So IE is back, big deal. Of course, MS will try to fight back but remember what it is trying to protect. MS has proven that the browser that is shipped with the OS will be the one that is used. I doubt that MS will be encouraging IE to be shipped with Linux.
For now, geeks will be early abopters, on our computers, our networks and our friends computers. When Linux moves into that market, we'll be saying "Sure, Mozilla runs on Linux, go ahead and switch." Posted by MrTibs at June 21, 2004 4:06 PM
"When HTML with 100000 of active elements will be rendered and animated with 100fps"
I will appreciate to have my eyes burned by hundreds of animations telling me that I have 10% off on the last marketing product. Posted by Ghent at June 21, 2004 6:25 PM
If new development for IE includes improving support for webstandards, then this is a positive thing.
It doesn't matter if it is harder to convert IE users to Firebird or other browsers. Don't forget about what is really important. It isn't which browser has the biggest market share. It's the open standards. They are the great equalizer. If every web browser supports the standards then everyone can be happy and use whatever browser they want.
The big question is: how committed is MS to improving their standards support? At this point I don't believe that they are seriously committed to it. They are just doing damage control so they don't lose any significant browser market share. I believe their focus will be more on bells and whistles than web standards. They will improve their standards support just enough to calm the angry web developers and prevent a mass exodus to other browsers. Forget about serious additions like XForms. Then, when the clamor over Firefox dies down and people become content with using IE again, Microsoft will suddenly stop caring.
But I could be wrong. In fact I hope that I am wrong. Please, Microsoft, prove me wrong. Posted by wg at June 22, 2004 3:51 AM
THIS is an innovation. When all pages will be compiled in native code at run-time in IE7 and will be executed with a very high performance, it is an innovation.
Can the virus's come and compile too? CAN THEY!? Posted by hcel at June 22, 2004 5:30 AM
+1 to wg's post Posted by Chris Wood at June 22, 2004 5:53 AM
The browser warning at spells out the dangers of using IE...some of this may become irrelevant if MS makes a serious commitment to improving IE. Oh, and one more thing: Opera is quite a long ways ahead of both Mozilla and IE, yet for some reason, it doesn't get a lot of mentions. Posted by Tyler Zesiger at June 23, 2004 5:11 AM
If IE7 supports standards, then well done Microsoft, if it doesn't then they should take notice that I will be disappointed...very disappointed. They could make 'standards' into a marketing gimmick or something, just bring 'em in!
Nobody talks about Opera because nobody likes paying even a small price [to get rid of the ad] if there are very 'similar' alternatives.