
Microsoft blatantly hung up on us - so this is how to crash IE8 - niyazpk
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aqtvx/microsoft_blatantly_hung_up_on_us_so_this_is_how/
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jbyers
Is a chunk of HTML and javascript that crashes IE rare? Unless my memory is
faulty, I feel like we've come across code that crashes various IE versions a
dozen times in the last few years. Reporting these bugs to Microsoft is
practically unimaginable to me -- I wouldn't know where to start.

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JamieEi
Here's where you'd start: <http://connect.microsoft.com/>

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mmphosis
In the past week, I removed the last active (and crashing) Windows OS from a
production machine and installed Ubuntu. Our Windows development lives on in
sandboxes. We're liking Ubuntu.

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gruseom
I doubt that "Microsoft blatantly hung up" on them. MS have their issues, but
rogue dickishness hasn't been one of them for a long time. (I mean among
ordinary employees; their CEO is perhaps a different story.) They've turned
into a large, professional, bland organization, which causes many problems,
but not the type of thing the OP (whose shoulder appears to me to have a chip
on it) is alleging.

I'm not saying this as any fan of MS. As far as I'm concerned, they've brought
all their problems on themselves with egregious past behavior. (Reminds me of
what Martin Amis said to Salman Rushdie after the fatwa: "It could have
happened to a nicer guy.") But that doesn't change the fact that the anti-MS
crowd behaves far more childishly than MS does.

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jf
Looks like another Microsoft employee on Reddit is looking into this ... but
I'll followup on this too.

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RiderOfGiraffes
I think the real problem in this instance isn't that IE crashes. We've all
seen, used, and in most cases, written buggy code. Large systems are hard to
get right, we all know that.

The problem is how hard it is to report such problems and get taken seriously.
I, for one, have spent hours trying to tell someone that their
code/system/service is severely broken, and yet repeatedly get ignored. I
often don't know if this is because they already know, or whether they don't
care. The problem is trying to report it, and getting ignored.

Here's a crazy idea. Have an on-line bug reporting service that includes a
CAPTCHA, but the CAPTCHA requires that you write a small piece of code, or
solve a problem, or something techie. Very, very few reports of problems will
come in via such a portal, but at least you know they can be taken reasonably
seriously.

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Hoff
The usual CAPTCHA is an id from a vendor support contract.

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pmjordan
Which is of course a terrible idea when you're trying to report a problem that
has or could have security relevance. I'm definitely not going to pay for
support just so I can report security bugs to Microsoft.

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fungi
...because msie hasn't had enough bad press this week.

i would be laughing but half our install base is ie6 and i doubt that this
weeks events will register with anyone in a position to change that :(

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ZeroGravitas
It would seem the next step up from all those upgrade IE6 banners is just to
crash the entire browser. If enough sites did it then using IE6 would become
untenable.

It seems a bit drastic to crash people's software intentionally but you could
argue that you're doing them a favor.

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axod
It's probably more efficient to list out HTML fragments that _don't_ crash IE.

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warfangle
seems they've finally fixed the following bug (at least in my updated version
of IE7):

    
    
      for(var p in document.write) document.write(p);

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sree_nair
I tried it on IE 8 on Windows 7 . Didn't crash.

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Deestan
To his defence, he _did_ specify it was for XP only.

