Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

geek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 175 posts

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#101

Post by maaku »

dpark wrote: post #50
mmcconnell1618 wrote: post #11

The article points out that MS will still provide blocking tools for companies. Corporations are the major source of IE6 browsers and I'm not sure this will have any impact on them. The best we can hope for is that high consumer adoption rates will force many more sites to drop IE6 support which might spur companies to finally test and upgrade.

The is a common claim, but has anyone actually researched this? Is there any evidence that this is still true? It's my understanding that most of the IE6 market share is in Asia, where many people are running pirated versions of XP.

I do some limited IT support for a large (140,000 employees), multi-national defense company. Everything is IE6, and IE6-only. If I use IE9 to access our internal apps, it complains I have an unsupported browser.

I know our competition works the same way, as does pretty much the whole government services sector. That's a few million employees in the U.S. alone.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#102

Post by ward »

miles_matthias wrote: post #57

This is slightly making me think about adding a specific version of IE to my Crap Browser Notifier: https://github.com/milesmatthias/Crap-Browser-Notifier Maybe IE10 and up. Maybe.

Seems like a bit of a stretch to require jQuery for a snippet like that.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#103

Post by dextorious »

phillmv wrote: post #89
dextorious wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""Yes. You need to find/create more markets.""" Actually you don't "need" anything. There are tons of examples of profitable companies that do one thing / product, or several things / products and do it for a century or more, with thousands of employees that do not look to expand on other markets. Even more so for companies with less employees. """If I invest 100 dollars in you, I want to receive a percentage back a…

I don't mean to be adversarial, but could you provide examples? >Yeah, that's why the stock market promotes cancerous growth of companies. I have troubles with this sometimes. I lie awake at night and think about the little I know about finance and economics and I wonder - is this all a zero sum interaction? Abstractly, the earth is a closed system, right? Of course, value and money are also abstractions and so aren'…

"""I don't mean to be adversarial, but could you provide examples?"""

Well, clothing and accessory companies, restaurant chains, publishing houses, film studios, etc, even software houses (has EA made anything else than games --anything substantial to their bottom line, that is?).

But don't think brand names. Think of the tons of companies we don't necessarily know by name, but exist and serve their markets: construction companies, package delivery companies, etc.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#104

Post by ootachi »

dmbaggett wrote: post #44
ConstantineXVI wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. An all-Webkit web would be just as bad as an all-IE web. IE and Mozilla serve to keep WebKit honest. Plus, there's no sense in condemning them based on IE6 when IE9 has come so far.

In what way, since IE5.5 and XHR, has IE driven innovation in browsers? Serious question.

They were the first to ship hardware acceleration, and they are still the only browser to ship hardware accelerated SVG.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#105

Post by webjprgm »

phillmv wrote: post #73
ramblerman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partake in my fair share of Microsoft bashing but am I understanding your point here. You're criticizing MS for not pushing updates to pirated versions of their software?

They forced an externality on to the rest of us. The marginal cost of sending updates to pirated machines is probably negligible, and pirates adapted to WGA within a couple weeks. So – they managed to convert a few Western users who didn't know they were running a pirated copy. I would place a good bet that the total volume of pirated licenses remained the same, though. More recent experiments have shown that piracy…

> running outdated software the rest of us have to support.

Why would you support outdated software only used by pirates? Just don't support it to force the pirates to update.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#106

Post by webjprgm »

maaku wrote: post #101
dpark wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The is a common claim, but has anyone actually researched this? Is there any evidence that this is still true? It's my understanding that most of the IE6 market share is in Asia, where many people are running pirated versions of XP.

I do some limited IT support for a large (140,000 employees), multi-national defense company. Everything is IE6, and IE6-only. If I use IE9 to access our internal apps, it complains I have an unsupported browser. I know our competition works the same way, as does pretty much the whole government services sector. That's a few million employees in the U.S. alone.

It's great to have a washing machine that works for 10-20 years, but why couldn't the government and corporations pick a _good_ washing machine. Why IE6 instead of some sane browser?

Anyway, there's enough non-IE6 work to do that I generally refuse to write any IE6 code (and when I do, I don't spend more than a minute or two copy-pasting some conditional comment found via Google.)

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#107

Post by rhizome »

phillmv wrote: post #70
ArbitraryLimits wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, what makes you think the "enterprise" market is less lucrative than it used to be?

No growth. Everyone who could possibly use a Windows license has a Windows license and drags their feet about upgrading. You're either busy growing or you're busy dying. As a potential shareholder, I care more about growth than straight up profitability.

You're either busy growing or you're busy dying.

This is extremely simplistic MBA talk.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#108

Post by redthrowaway »

phillmv wrote: post #73
ramblerman wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partake in my fair share of Microsoft bashing but am I understanding your point here. You're criticizing MS for not pushing updates to pirated versions of their software?

They forced an externality on to the rest of us. The marginal cost of sending updates to pirated machines is probably negligible, and pirates adapted to WGA within a couple weeks. So – they managed to convert a few Western users who didn't know they were running a pirated copy. I would place a good bet that the total volume of pirated licenses remained the same, though. More recent experiments have shown that piracy…

>running outdated software the rest of us have to support.

Do we really, though? If the boxes running IE6 are in Asia and elsewhere in the developing world, how many of us really need to develop for them? I can't think of many websites that need to cater to Chinese pirates.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#109

Post by rhizome »

ricree wrote: post #95
phillmv wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please correct me if I'm wrong! But: >Profitability and cash returns from a business can grow as revenues decline if the company either increases operating efficiency, or reduces in investment in recognition of the declining opportunity. Sure. When I say growth, I mean "make more money this year than you did the year before". This doesn't directly translate into "make more widgets", of course – that's just the (in an…

>Sure. When I say growth, I mean "make more money this year than you did the year before". If I understand tomkarlo's point correctly, he's saying that you don't have to make more money year to year in order to have a viable business. Rather, you simply need to keep expenses low enough to manage a respectable profit for your investors. That profit need not necessarily grow year to year for investors to find it worth…

It's the fallacy of the excluded middle that convinces people that stability has no value.

Re: Microsoft decides to automatically update Internet Explorer for everyone

#110

Post by gammarator »

phillmv wrote: post #89
dextorious wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"""Yes. You need to find/create more markets.""" Actually you don't "need" anything. There are tons of examples of profitable companies that do one thing / product, or several things / products and do it for a century or more, with thousands of employees that do not look to expand on other markets. Even more so for companies with less employees. """If I invest 100 dollars in you, I want to receive a percentage back a…

I don't mean to be adversarial, but could you provide examples? >Yeah, that's why the stock market promotes cancerous growth of companies. I have troubles with this sometimes. I lie awake at night and think about the little I know about finance and economics and I wonder - is this all a zero sum interaction? Abstractly, the earth is a closed system, right? Of course, value and money are also abstractions and so aren'…

"I wonder - is this all a zero sum interaction? Abstractly, the earth is a closed system, right?"

No, the amount of value in the world is not fixed [eg, 1].

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html ("The Pie Fallacy")

Post reply on HN