They took their silliness seriously! Watch the chef again and think about him being two people running around working his head and hands in unison. A fantastic crew.
An interesting and unexpected corporate skirmish involving the much-beloved Swedish chef Muppet played out nearly two decades ago.
Microsoft Corp. has played dirty tricks on its competition and its customers throughout its existence. In early 2003, the people behind the Opera browser found out that the Microsoft Network (MSN) website had been coded to sabotage their browser - it served up deliberately scrambled pages to anyone using the Opera browser (but not to anyone using Internet Explorer).
Obviously, Microsoft's dirty tricks department hoped that Opera users would see the scrambled pages in Opera, but not in IE, and then conclude that Opera was a defective browser.
(Microsoft had previously used a very similar technique earlier to destroy DR-DOS, a competing operating system that was compatible with Microsoft's own DOS, but which was much better in a number of important ways.)
In response to Microsoft's latest dirty trick, Opera released the Opera 7 "Bork" edition in early 2003, which worked normally on every website except MSN.com. That one website was rendered in the Swedish chef's garbled language, complete with plenty of bork-borks. 🙂
Here's an old news story about the Opera 7 "Bork" edition: Opera unleashes Swedish Chef on MSN | Computerworld
It appears that the Opera 7 "Bork" edition, and the news stories about it, ended up making millions of people around the world aware not only of the existence of Opera, but also of Microsoft's perfidy. At any rate, Opera is still around today, seventeen years later. It's nice to hear about a bullies dirty tricks backfiring.
Not only did Bill Gates fail to kill Opera, but Microsoft's latest browser, Edge, has a 2.6% market share, not much more than Opera's 2.1% ( W3Counter: Global Web Stats ).
It's rare for commercial software to display much of a sense of humour, but I can think of at least one other case. For a brief period of time, I used the wonderful Be operating system (BeOS, itself another victim of Microsoft's dirty tricks). The browser that came with BeOS was called NetPositive, and its most distinguishing feature was that its error message ("page not found", for instance) were rendered as haikus. 🙂
Here are a few NetPositive error messages, preserved for posterity: BeOS (NetPositive) haiku error messages * GitHub
-Gnobuddy
Ah yes - I remember BeOS -- it was an excellent OS.
I used to chat a lot with Benoit Schillings, one of the main developers, as we were both keen astronomers... That was back in the days of Compuserve bulletin boards!
I used to chat a lot with Benoit Schillings, one of the main developers, as we were both keen astronomers... That was back in the days of Compuserve bulletin boards!
I saw Gasse give a BeOS promo at MacWorld (and got a free copy i never used). Quite a showman.
Nice OS as well, but a hard market to get into.
dave
Nice OS as well, but a hard market to get into.
dave
Does anyone have a copy of the Dukes of Hazzard spoof that attempted to explain the SCO mess? It was really funny to read at the time. I think it came out right before M$ was caught funeling money in through Baystar Capital.
Amazing that you guys knew some of the key BeOS people!
The same PC, running Windows 98 instead of BeOS, couldn't play *two* of the same videos without dropping frames and stuttering heavily. The mouse would become slow and erratic, and if you clicked on one video to bring it to the top, it took seconds to react.
But I don't want to divert this thread away from Cal's intended purpose, so I give you a cat who didn't quite think things through, and so made an absolutely lovely exit, stage left: YouTube
-Gnobuddy
That it was! To show BeOS off, I used to play ten Quicktime video clips simultaneously, without any stutters, on a mid-1990s PC with a 100 MHz Pentium CPU. The mouse and desktop stayed smooth and responsive while all ten videos were playing - I could drag video windows around the desktop, click on any of the ten to bring it to the foreground, and so on.
The same PC, running Windows 98 instead of BeOS, couldn't play *two* of the same videos without dropping frames and stuttering heavily. The mouse would become slow and erratic, and if you clicked on one video to bring it to the top, it took seconds to react.
...and even harder when Microsoft threatened to withhold Windows licenses from PC manufacturers and independent computer retailers who also dared to sell BeOS.
But I don't want to divert this thread away from Cal's intended purpose, so I give you a cat who didn't quite think things through, and so made an absolutely lovely exit, stage left: YouTube
-Gnobuddy
I missed that the first time around, and all I could find now were old references to an article on Arie Rubenstein's website - an article that's no longer there. In fact, arie.org itself does not seem to exist any longer.
Speaking of SCO, BeOS got me off Windows 95/98 (which I despised with a passion) just about long enough for Linux to mature to usability. I even tried Caldera Linux for a while. It was Caldera Systems that later got bought out and became SCO Group....
-Gnobuddy
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To quote Craig Ferguson “I don’t like to blow my own horn, but thanks to Kundalini yoga, I could”
too far?
I was enjoying the return of Da Gee Gees today. Which is English for Horse Racing! 😀
This whole virus panic started with the huge crowds at Cheltenham in my mind. No social distancing there or at my local boozer! But enjoyable. I turned up a profit on the Irish horses. 😎
Jumps people know to bet on a horse with a big backside. The Flat I am vaguer about. And never bet on a Handicap. Anyway, a terrific 1 mile 2000 Guineas today. Kameko stunned hot favourite Pinatubo to win by a neck:
Kameko stuns Pinatubo to win 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket - BBC Sport
Apparently the fastest 2000 Guineas ever run. Kameko goes onto the 3-y-o Colts Epsom Derby as hot 4-1 favourite. Gonna be a heck of a race. Not sure if I'll wager on it though. 😕
This whole virus panic started with the huge crowds at Cheltenham in my mind. No social distancing there or at my local boozer! But enjoyable. I turned up a profit on the Irish horses. 😎
Jumps people know to bet on a horse with a big backside. The Flat I am vaguer about. And never bet on a Handicap. Anyway, a terrific 1 mile 2000 Guineas today. Kameko stunned hot favourite Pinatubo to win by a neck:
Kameko stuns Pinatubo to win 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket - BBC Sport
Apparently the fastest 2000 Guineas ever run. Kameko goes onto the 3-y-o Colts Epsom Derby as hot 4-1 favourite. Gonna be a heck of a race. Not sure if I'll wager on it though. 😕