Update: I’m back. Thinking this over, I want a clearer delineation between my tech life and my personal life. This blog is all about tech so will remain that way, while Tumblr will be for my personal stuff.
I’m going to take a break from this blog for a while (and twitter to a lesser extent) and move over to Tumblr, which seems like a more ideal fit for me. John Mayer, who I’m not particularly a fan of, saw the light the day after I did and wrote an interesting piece on it. I reblogged it, (that word needs to change), so you can read it in all its glory over there.
I have my opinions on the topic as well and as an extra bonus, you can see a pic of what I really look like (hah).
I’ll continue this site with tutorials and Mozilla builds, but my rants will be over on Tumblr.
So Follow Me On Tumblr!
image/flickr someone or EAVB_IVVHXTHOJJ
Ok, first the robots have something new to say
Robots have shiny metal posteriors which should not be bitten.
Now, color me confused. I’m confused by the new Mozilla naming conventions (not about metal butts). I had always believed Lorentz was a methodology rather than a physical build. Not true. Mike Beltzner said this to CNet a while back:
Next on Mozilla’s agenda is an update to Firefox 3.6 code-named Lorentz, a release that embodies a new attempt to speed up the frequency of Firefox updates.
So Lorentz is actually a release that embodies this new methodology. Oh.
Lorentz is also the first step on the road to Electrolysis. There is also JaegerMonkey, which combines the best from Apple (SquirrelFish), Adobe (nanojit), and Mozilla (TraceMonkey). I guess V8 was left out of the party. Ars, as usual, has a good article on this. I do have a 64-bit build of Electrolysis (let me know if you want it).
So now we have Firefox 3.6.3 Lorentz, Firefox 3.6.3 JaegerMonkey, Firefox 3.7 Electrolysis, etc. It makes sense from a developers perspective to separate the projects like this, especially if you’re trying to add new features into minor updates, but I don’t think it has been explained well enough to the mainstream.
I don’t think my explanation is very good either. Is there a definitive document on this methodology?
You can download the Lorentz beta on the Downloads page.
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Update: This has nothing to do with Apple as this API was signaled for termination long ago.
Just had a hell of a time compiling Firefox 3.6.2 against the 10.6 SDK.
First, I forget to patch the sqlite3 bug (not sure why this is causing me problems as it was closed as fixed). Then after patching, a make clean didn’t get rid of enough cruft to let the build complete.
So starting from scratch and I get a new error I’ve never seen:
In file included from /Users/beetle/src/mozilla/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:58:
/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.6.sdk/usr/include/ucontext.h:42:2: error: #error ucontext routines are deprecated, and require _XOPEN_SOURCE to be defined
And looking in /usr/include/ucontext.h, you see:
#else /* !_XOPEN_SOURCE */
#error ucontext routines are deprecated, and require _XOPEN_SOURCE to be defined
#endif /* _XOPEN_SOURCE */
This file has not been touched since Sep 30 of last year, so WTF. I usually do all my builds against 10.6, but someone asked me to do a 10.5 build so this issue JUST came up as of Firefox 3.6.2 (does not exist in 3.7, yet). Digging and diving a tad, I find that accelerometer controls are baked into 3.6.2 so this is probably what’s causing the problem.
Anyway, to fix this change the ucontext.h include to sys/ucontext.h like this (appears on lines 57-59 of toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp):
#if defined(XP_MACOSX)
#include <ucontext.h>
#endif
to
#if defined(XP_MACOSX)
#include <sys/ucontext.h>
#endif
Things should be then be smashing, in the Austin Powers kind of way.
So who’s to blame? Mozilla takes the fall on this one, though this bug has already been fixed.
I’m on the bleeding edge here using not-publicly-available Apple dev tools (I’m in the Apple dev program, can’t say anything, NDA, sshhh).
I could make this a list of a hundred things, but these three are really getting to me:
1) Get Straight Your Bulk Rules
Sites like Twitter Karma do not allow you to bulk unfollow because it’s against your terms of service, but they are allowed to bulk block! What do you think people are going to do? A) Click on each person, use the pulldown menu, unfollow or B) Bulk block. This does not make sense.
2) State Your Following Rules
The explanation you give for why you “are not allowed to follow more people at this time” is absurd. There is a link to Follow Limits And Best Practices Page, but it’s busted. And anyway, the rules have changed again over the past week and I’m yet to pin it down. The 24hr/1,000/1.1 ratio follow limit is no longer valid. Why do we have to guess at these things?
3) Delete Accounts
If an account is deleted, umm, I probably don’t want to follow it. I also don’t want to see it following other people (check list followers for an example).
Which brings me to another point….
Most people don’t know how to use lists. I get put on these follow-back lists, people follow the list, then message me about why I didn’t follow them back. You’re doing it wrong!
I’ve been a long time fan of The Planet, the “Global IT Hosting Leader”, because they’ve always had outstanding service. They aren’t the cheapest out there, but in my experience they’re the most reliable.
Just one quick story, then I’ll get to the point. A couple years ago, a Sarasota news channel and paper were going to sit down with our startup and do an interview. The interview was scheduled for some time before I’m usually awake, no big deal, but on the day of, I get an escalation call from The Planet saying out main webserver is down. I immediately learn that our server had literally caught on fire and we were supposed to do this big interview where we planned to demo our website, IN HALF AN HOUR. To make this story short, the technicians were able to salvage our drives, swap chassis, and get new hardware back online within 15 minutes. We were able to demo our website just fine during the interview. It was an amazing coordination of effort that come together perfectly at the end.
Well, in setting up my next company, I looked to The Planet. By following their twitter stream, I found out about The Planet Sand Castle. In their words,
The first major hurdle for a software developer is finding the online space for new ideas to grow. The costs of rolling out and testing new software can be prohibitive, especially in uncertain economic times. The Planet is offering the developer community an economic stimulus of sorts to transform dreams into realities: The Planet Sand Castle.
I applied and within a week, I was in. I was initially given the mid level server, then at the last minute they bumped me up to the highest end server under the program (about a $500/mo. deal). Free! No strings attached! For a year!
The Planet also did something else pretty amazing under this program, they gave Rice University 50 servers for entrepreneurial research and development. Since I was one of the first into the program, I was asked for a quote for an article: Hosting Company Offers Free Servers to Developers.
I’m not a paid shill for The Planet, I actually purchased a year’s worth of service on my own dime for a different server days before all this happened (they wouldn’t even go beyond the lousy 6% yearly discount. I asked for a free t-shirt and I got a “lol” over the online support). I just think they offer superior services and I’m willing to pay for that.
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