[NTLUG:Discuss] Spoofing IE from Mozilla or Netscape

[Chris Cox]

Wayne Dahl wrote:
> I seem to remember from many moons ago some discussion about making
> website that require IE to think that Mozilla WAS IE so Mozilla could be
> used and not that crappy browser Brother Gates gives us.
> 
> Here's my dilemma.  Some idiot in the higher ranks of Verizon (probably
> from the old Bell Atlantic side as GTE used Netscape products and HPUX)
> decided we needed to pay for a whole bunch of M$ licenses and have moved
> us strictly to M$ products.  We now run NT 4.0 on our workstations at
> work, soon to be Winderz 2000.  We have an online course of instruction
> of many and sundry subjects that we used to could use Netscape for. 
> Now, however, the stupid thing won't run for anything other than IE.  Is
> there a way to make that website think Mozilla or Netscape is IE?  I
> hate using it...I have IE 6.0 on this box as a dual boot and I can use
> it, but I'd rather not.

Use the very latest Mozilla.  It has NTLM.. which should allow you
to be domain friendly.. if that's the issue.

> 
> And we won't even get into the frustration I received last night when,
> after completing a 2 hour course from home, as I'm exiting the class
> when it's supposed to send the course completion to another application
> that's watching for the completion, I get a javascript error and when I
> click on either the yes or no, the damn thing starts the course over. 
> Upshot is, it never sends the course completion to the other application
> and I haven't gotten credit that would show up on my transcripts at work
> that I've taken the course.  That's something I'm going to have to bring
> up with the powers that be that oversee this course of instruction, but
> needless to say, I was severely pissed off at M$ and whatever idiot
> decided we HAD to use software designed around the M$ platform.

It's a pain.  You may HAVE NO CHOICE.  Windows == NO CHOICE.
There are still a few internal sites here that I HAVE to use
MSIE ... and I CAN'T use MSIE under crossover due to dependencies
on other Window-isms.... so again... you simply may have NO
CHOICE.

My rough estimate for a company with 1500 employees is that
M$ costs approximately $400-800+ per employee/yr. in clean up due to
viruses spread by M$ PRODUCTS.  You can do the math.

The best thing you can do to combat this is keep good records
about the amount of time spent in support M$ messups.  Then at
the end of the year put a dollar figure on it.  Your boss might
not mind... but I bet your boss's boss will be very intersted
in your findings.


SBC, in general, farily pro-Linux (though I work for a subsidiary).
Maybe GTE-Verizon isn't just because they don't want to follow SBC (?).
Not saying that SBC will move entirely to Unix/Linux... just saying
within my company (and SBC company), it's moving that way everyday.