

Microsoft breaks HotMail for Linux users - dhimes
http://linux-watch.com/news/NS6023147333.html

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MikeW
The Hotmail team are sniffing based on firefox version but if sniffing must be
done, it should be done by gecko version instead which will then take the
cross section of browsers. It goes to show the kind of uproar and community
excluded when sniffing is done wrong.

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MikeW
The article is also a little bit of flamebait when it says hotmail is in part
run on Linux. All parts of Hotmail run in Windows Server. They use Akamai for
caching static files such as images - as do many Microsoft services. Akamai
reports they use Linux though.

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blasdel
It was just pointless IceWeasel bullshit.

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olefoo
It indicates that someone at Hotmail was using User-Agent sniffing to
determine when to suggest browser upgrades.

Which is a fundamentally stupid thing to do.

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blasdel
Changing the User-Agent string, pointlessly removing identifying markers,
that's not "fundamentally stupid"?

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olefoo
You do know that most browsers let you change the User-Agent string to
whatever you like?

This won't keep out IceWeasel users who actually understand the machine they
are operating.

And motivations that you don't understand are not necessarily stupid. If you
don't understand why it was important enough to the debian core team to bother
with the effort of maintaining a forked version version of the browser; you
are not able to comment intelligently on the topic.

