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The Clubhouse Atop the Summit

07/12/2010

Last week marked that time of the year again: the week where everyone heads to the Mozilla Summit, and the Mozilla Project all but shuts down.

This was the second year the Summit was held in Whistler, BC.

It has a reputation for being a raucously great time, even if getting home can be a bit… complicated.

Mozilla began holding summits in Whistler after my tenure, so I’ve never attended. I know my name has been submitted to the proposed attendee-list1, but I’ve never gotten an invitation. I always just imagined it had just gotten lost in the mail.

But maybe not?

Recently, the project manager for one of the Mozilla’s core projects, SeaMonkey, unceremoniously announced he would not be attending the Summit this year, despite being one of the Mozilla project’s oldest, most involved and committed members. This was not by his choice; Mozilla’s project leaders “vetoed [his] being invited.”

Disallowing a core member of one of your community’s own projects2 to attend a summit being held for your community certainly seems antithetical to the purpose of such a gathering.

It also raises an interesting, but seldom discussed issue: how, exactly, does one pass the gauntlet to get on the Summit-approved list?

For a company who continually touts3 its openness4, and an open source project, it’s a detail of the Summit’s planning that is surprisingly opaque.

An oft-cited reason for the secrecy around this selection process is that paying for each person’s flight, room, and board for a week is expensive.

That’s certainly understandable.5

But it’s also an easily solvable problem.

If the goal of such a gathering is to build bonds and increase communication within the Mozilla community, the project could provide clear, objective, succinct criteria by which any and all community members who actively contribute6 would be able to attend.

For those contributors Mozilla Corporation doesn’t feel it appropriate to sponsor, a “summit fee” could be calculated, just like any other conference. Those individuals would be responsible for their own transportation costs; the hotel can give them the same discount it provides to Mozilla Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation could even win bonus points by offering a couple “scholarships.”

But with this current closed, black-box process, it doesn’t feel like an open source project hosting a gathering that is interested in and welcoming of everyone’s ideas, discourse7, and participation.

It’s much more like a corporate retreat8.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But if Mozilla has decided it only wants certain individuals involved in its main showcasing, planning, and community-building event, I suggest they follow @rands‘ advice, and stop trying to sell the Summit as anything else.

_______________
1 By multiple people
2 SeaMonkey is listed prominently on the Foundation’s website, right behind the products its corporate arms steward
3 “To achieve these goals, we use a highly transparent, extremely collaborative process that brings together thousands of dedicated volunteers around the world”
4 And, indeed, whose mission is The Open WebTM
5 Figures for the Summit’s cost aren’t public, at least that I’ve ever seen; it wouldn’t surprise me if it were upper-six digits, though. Maybe a 7th digit?
6 in the myriad colorful ways Mozilla community members contribute
7 Even if “lively”
8 With “special guest appearances”

Teaching mar to Use Manifests

05/24/2010

While looking through Planet the other day, I noticed that my name had a red line under it, which was both surprising1, and a gave me a good kick in the pants to write about some Mozilla-stuff we’ve been working on lately2.

One of Mozilla’s most underrated contributions to the body of open source, I think, is its cross platform update system. Back in the day, I had always wanted to work on making it more generic for other projects to make use of3.

Being a Mozilla-derived project, Songbird uses these update mechanisms provided by the platform, and for the most part, they’ve served us well.

Being a XULRunner-based application, with a large number of XPCOM components, one problem we did run into when generating updates4 was the method in which the mar tool determines which lists of files it should pack into the mar.

The mar tool determines this list of files by having them passed in the command line to the mar tool itself. This is problematic for a couple of reasons:

  • On Win32, the maximum length of a command line is laughably short5
  • Because the paths are passed in via the command line, you have a shell involved; and when you have a shell involved with filenames, you always have quoting issues6

We’re apparently not the only in XULRunner App Land to have this problem7.

We fixed this with a series of patches in two areas:

The contextual details of both of those fixes are in the two (Songbird) bugs. We’ve been using the patches for a couple of releases without any problems.

Now, if other XULrunner-based projects run into this problem (or Firefox becomes big enough that it has enough files that Things Stop Working(tm) because some magical, under-documented limit was hit), they’ll be able to, at-best, yank our solution, or at-worst at least know there is a known workaround to base a solution on.

_________________
1 It’s really been that long?! I have been writing, but I guess it’s all been about other random things…
2 Lots of changes in Mozilla-land lately, so there’s plenty to say!
3 But, alas, never found the time; it’s a shame really
4 Of course, at release time, so this was a fun fire drill to fix!
5 Compared to other modern operating systems
6 Preed’s 43rd Law Of Build Engineering
7 Although, we did apparently solve it oh-so-slightly differently
8 Which are (being?) rewritten in python, apparently

The Propellant Behind Facebook’s Flames?

05/17/2010

A lot—and I mean a lot—has been said in recent weeks about Facebook’s continued push to publicly publish absolutely everything it knows about you.1

This isn’t directly about my thoughts on that, but rather on an interesting observation:

I started using the ‘Net in 1994, when pine was your “user-friendly” interface to mail, gopher still mattered and the web was nascent.2. I’ve been through two dot-com booms3, and seen the “social networking” projects of the day—anyone remember ICQ?4—come, adapt, and if they do it wrong, go.

What I find interesting about Facebook is that fifteen years of using the Internet, seeing all sorts of companies make all sorts of egregious changes to their privacy policies (and general operating policies)6, I have never, ever seen the mainstream media—The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, NPR—nor the government take note of such changes so quickly, cover the story so prominently, prompting the government to involve itself with, for them, lightning speed7.

Facebook’s policy changes are drastic, but they’re not the worst policy changes an Internet company has every made8. Most of those go unnoticed, until it’s too late, and then the momentum behind them leads to “Well, that’s just the way it is now.”

So why are we collectively noticing so quickly this time?

Is it because we’re more “socially networked” these days, and thus coverage of it spreads virally, getting us to take note, leading to protestations that are “louder,” again due to (social) network effects?

Is it because my generation, who grew up on much of this stuff, is old enough to have some influence over the topics to get covered?

My own pet theory is that the executive editors of our nation’s newspapers9 and producers in the media and congressmen and senators are noticing more quickly, asking tougher questions, and taking more action for one reason: their kids.

I wonder if it isn’t a “Web 2.0″ version of “Won’t somebody think of the children?” But this time, the twist is lil’ Joey’s list of the girls10 he thinks are cute are now public to the family’s churchgoing friends. And that photo of lil’ Sally’s trampstamp-that-no-one-knew-about is in full view of everyone (parents, too!)

You can bet the split second after Joey and Sally are grounded for life, parents started asking harsh questions about this “Facetwit SpaceBook”-thing, that they had largely ignored up to this point11. And if you just so happen to be working at some place—a major news network, a nationally circulated periodical, or the federal government— that has a soapbox, you can ask those questions in very public ways, that are extremely difficult for Facebook to just ignore12.

I admit that my suggestion is merely that. Maybe it’s much simpler than that.

Maybe it’s just that Facebook was so successful at convincing people13 to sign up for its services, under the assumption Zuckerberg and Company would respect their privacy wishes, that people with power and influence to effectuate the public consciousness on this issue were screwed over too, and thus have a personal connection to the story.

By not moving an inch to date on the changes they’ve made, Facebook is indirectly and unappologetically telling their customers—even (especially!) if they take the belief they are in fact, the product they’re selling—are just too stupid to embrace the new, post-Facebook world.

Taking a “Daddy knows best” tact with someone who already feels their trust has been betrayed is certainly an… unconventional way to address your users and a huge gamble for Facebook’s management to make.

It’ll be interesting to see how that strategy works out for them.

____________________________
1 Prevailing opinion seems to be so they can let search engines index it and then monetize it, but others are better suited to speculate on their reasoning.
2 The <img> tag was still the new hotness!
3 And busts…
4 And what a big deal a 5 digit contact number was5
5 Which I had…
6 Verisign, for instance, comes to mind
7 In the form of both lawsuits, regulators sniffing around, and senators saber rattling
8 Adjusted for “inflation,” as it were
9 What’s left of them…
10 Boys?
11 Or hadn’t thought through any of the possible unintended consequences
12 Unlike, say, the ones from their users on their own support forums
13 Even my mom!

Flogged for Filming the Friendly Skies

04/29/2010

A friend of mine1 recently got a YouTube message from an account called “UACorporateSecurity.”

The message read:

It has been brought to the attention of United Airlines Corporate Security that you have posted multiple videos on YouTube which are in direct violation of both an FAA safety regulation as well as a company policy. These videos depict both take offs and landings as well as recordings of United Airline’s Channel 9 transmissions.

United Airlines has a policy prohibiting any unauthorized audio or video recordings of airline personnel and it is stated on our website as well as in the Hemispheres magazine which is in the seat back pockets of our aircraft.

In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration strictly prohibits the use of electronic equipment including cameras and cell phones during certain phases of flight. These recordings, having been taken during take off and landing, violate FAA safety regulation 121.306.

If these postings are not deleted, United Airlines is prepared to pursue all appropriate remedies in order to have them removed.

My friend’s account did, indeed, have videos2,3 of aircraft landing and taking off. Some of them contained air traffic control transmissions.

Before I continue, a few factual points need to be made:

  • For the purposes of this specific video, United has zero evidence that:

    • The planes in said video(s) were United aircraft
    • The air traffic control from the videos isn’t from a source other than Channel 94
    • That said friend even shot said videos5

    In short, were United Airlines to make these claims in any court of law, they’d be laughed out of the courthouse.

  • Nothing in my analysis below should be taken to construe, imply, or otherwise indicate that any of the above possibilities are true.
  • There is no evidence this “UACorporateSecurity” even represents United Airlines, or any of its related companies6; if United had any actionable evidence, they would be pursuing it via normal, legal channels; they wouldn’t register a YouTube account with a cutesy name and start spamming people.

The Terrorists Did It!

It’s interesting that UAL7 cites a violation of the Federal Aviation Regulations.

FAR 121.306 is the “portable electronic devices” regulation; it’s a legalistic way of saying you can’t use anything but certain devices8,9 during takeoff and landing, and any devices not listed in the regulation must be certified by the operator of the aircraft, i.e. United, to ensure it won’t interfere with the navigation and communication system11 of the aircraft.

The only problem is: that regulation doesn’t apply to passengers. Part 121 governs air carriers and air-carrier operations.

This is a small, but important distinction: United has to prove that they told everyone, on every flight, to turn their devices off. If they don’t, they are at fault. And even if they do, that specific regulation has nothing to do with passengers. But it sure is scary-sounding to someone who doesn’t know what F-A-R stands for…

This email would have significantly more credibility if United had cited the law requiring compliance with “crew-member instructions, lighted signs and placards,” since someone taking a video during takeoff would be breaking that regulation12 assuming they had been informed by a crewmember to not do that.

But claiming a violation of the part 121 FARs is like claiming that an individual can be prosecuted for eating shady food that hadn’t met FDA regulations.

Declaring an Emergency?

So why the fuss about these videos?

Corporate liability.

What these notices really are about is United worrying that some “nosy asshole passenger”13 will be randomly filming as some thrower slams a baggage cart into a fuselage on the ramp, and those dents subsequently take the plane down.

It would be a goldmine for any aviation lawyer for-the-plaintiffs who found that video after the fact.

And that would cost an airline—and airline shareholders—millions in settlements.

So instead of being transparent and open about its operations and the operations of the National Airspace System, United has decided to try to bully its most ardent fans.

Instead of being curious about possible issues safety issues with its operations or the operation of the National Airspace System, United has cried “terrorism” and (laughably) threatened legal action.

This goes beyond shameful.

It’s downright despicable.

It’s not about these videos. It’s about hiding activities, policies, and procedures that could be threatening lives, and which would otherwise go unnoticed.

Losing Radio Contact

Through all of this, I’ve told my friend to ignore United’s threats and repost his videos.

And I hope at some point, he will. They were good.

They portrayed aviation in a light that made the public forget about the baggage fees, the interminable waits, and the chore that flying has become, all so Glenn Tilton can get a bigger bonus.

These videos framed aviation the way aviation should be portrayed.
______________________________
1 Who shall remain anonymous, for soon-to-be obvious reasons
2 Which were quite well shot, I might add
3 And which are now private, unfortunately
4 Say, LiveATC.net
5 Or, heck, has even been on a United aircraft
6 It turns out United has this byzantine corporate structure, due to its financing and desire to protect assets when they get sued
7 Or whoever is posing as United
8 Which are listed in the regulation
9 Did you know electric shavers are allowed10
10 I’ll say it for you: WTF?
11 But interfering with the fly-by-wire system, apparently, is OK
12 Which, it’s unclear, is even part of the FARs; it’s likely a criminal statute?
13 In official corporate parlance

Thoughts on a New Tune

04/09/2010

I was on vacation last week, so I wasn’t around for the “big announcement” at work.

After returning yesterday and having had some time to catch up, I had a couple of personal thoughts I wanted to express about the whole situation.

The normal caveats apply1,2,3,4, but I also must point out: I’ve been doing build/release engineering on Linux my entire career. I started using Linux in 1995. I’m president emeritus of the Silicon Valley Linux Users’ Group. So I’ve uh… “been around for awhile.” I “get it.”

On the Discourse

One of the things that has been most disconcerting to watch is how some—not all, but some—extremely vocal Linux users have muddied the discourse to the point that the discussion is mostly a swamp now.

As a longtime Linux user5, I’m used to it6. But for people that aren’t used to… “lively” open source discussions, such invective is not only counterproductive, it reduces their desire to spend mindshare on Linux and it makes them associate such bad behavior with an entire community.

That’s a real shame.

Linux users need to engage in ways that increase the platform and community’s mindshare for others. This is especially true for those that are unfamiliar with open source. And when our brethren aren’t acting that way, we, as fellow Linux users, need to call them on it.

It doesn’t help. And ultimately, it won’t get the community what it wants.

On the Platform

Let’s face it: Linux is a difficult platform to support. I say this as someone who’s been using and administrating it for fifteen years and whose first job out of college was developing and maintaining Linux packages7.

Software development shops can easily spend an entire engineers’ time developing, building, and maintaining .debs, .rpms, .tar.gz‘s, .ebuilds, and all of the other various Linux packaging formats… and someone would still be unhappy that there wasn’t a package for their particular platform. For smaller shops, this type of investment is a nonstarter.

Testing those packages is equally difficult, because of the myriad configurations that users can put their machine into8. One way for those shops who really do want to support Linux to reduce this matrix: using qualified, known libraries and shipping those with your application. But in the good case, this is frowned upon; in the bad case, distribution in the packaging repositories is outright refused.

Linux additionally provides the burden that its various incarnations are so fragmented; even in cross-distribution packages (like .tar.gz‘s), various features can fail to work as expected because of decisions that distribution maintainers made which fit their requirements, but conflict with someone else’s.

Contrast this with the story on Win32 and Mac: the configuration matrix is smaller, and both Apple and Microsoft9 put vast amounts of engineering effort into backward compatibility efforts, even to the point of emulating bugs.

This isn’t to say Linux is worse or better than those platforms; it’s just different, and largely due to its history and the Unix model. So I’m not making a value judgment, other than to say supporting Linux is often more costly than supporting other platforms, due to the nature of the platform itself and its various permutations.

On the Situational Realities

Because the support issue was always complex, we weren’t doing a good job of producing what Linux users really wanted: packages in their own distribution’s packaging repositories, sanctioned by their distribution10.

So we provided the next best, reasonable thing: a tarball. But it’s still not what Linux users really desired, and understandably so.

Really, the announcement wasn’t a change as much as an admission that the current situation is a reality. Linux, as a platform, generally always gets less developer attention and features, largely because of the user base and mindshare issues. It’s just a reality of the platform.

In our case, we’re still doing nightly Linux builds, right along with Mac and Windows, and releases are very likely to have tarballs posted for users to download.

So materially, the actual steps that I, a Songbird user on Linux, will do to obtain and use Songbird will be the same for the next release11 as it has been for the last eighteen months: I will go to the website; I will download a tarball; I will install it onto my Gentoo box; I’ll start it up.

It’s true that I might run into a bug or other issue that isn’t seen on another platform, but that’s always the case, with any platform. In that case, I’ll file a bug. Like I always did.

So if one looks at the actual, material changes, they aren’t… huge.

On the Fork

One positive outcome of the announcement, I believe, is that people are engaging more than we’ve seen in the past.

When the iPod addon was “community sourced,” many people repeatedly said they wanted iPod support… but no one identified themselves to sign up for doing the work12

This is in contrast with some in the community who’ve announced a fork of the project, and who are organizing to fill a niche they see is currently lacking.

Honestly, I think that’s a good thing.

As they’re organizing, many of us are helping out and offering advice where we can.

This is exactly how it is supposed to work, and it’s very heartening to see people who really care about Songbird step up and try to help in real, measurable ways.

Having said that, it’s too early to know whether the fork will find itself akin to egcs13 or “just another open source fork.”

Having seen open source projects fork in the past, some advice for the new fledgling ornithological variant:

  • Forking is an extremely heavyweight solution. This is not to say it should never be done, but it requires a lot of commitment and effort, and there are often other, lighter-weight solutions that involve communicating, asking questions, listening, and bargaining.15
  • Be careful to not get too bogged down in the details; certain things are very important, but it’s super easy to get stuck on things that, in the end, turn out to not matter that much16
  • Be careful to not get caught up in pet bugs that don’t address the community’s needs17
  • An open source project, like any organization, does not have infinite resources; making hard tradeoffs is often not an entirely well understood aspect of open source projects, but it’s a necessary one.

In the end, I wish the new project lots of luck and look forward to working together for the mutual benefit of all of Songbird’s users, whatever form those users take.

And to my fellow Linux users: yes it’s true that changes are afoot, but we haven’t forgotten about you. Remember the next time you feel the need to voice your opinion on this development: many of us are you…

At the end of the day, we all want what’s best for the ‘Bird.

___________________________
1 I do not speak for my employer
2 I am not a lawyer
3 I am not an accountant; this is not tax advice
4 Blog post not valid in Tennessee
5 And a Gentoo user, at that!
6 Despite the fact that as I get older, I, too, find the ideological posturing tiresome
7 RPMs if you must know
8 To open source’s credit, this works remarkably well in practice, for such a huge testing matrix; but I believe it does so due to the higher efforts put in by most Linux developers/users
9 The latter significantly more than the former
10 There are many reasons for that; for anyone who’s dealt with it, it turns out to be a wicked problem
11 And the release after that, and…
12 There is one person that I know of who did try to get it building
13 Which was forked from gcc and later merged back to become what we all currently think of as “gcc”14
14 Which actually stands for “GNU Compiler Collection”
15 It turns out this is true of most organizations, but it doesn’t generally happen enough in open source projects…
16 Color schemes, logos, version control systems, etc.
17 Of course, finding out what those are is… a different issue altogether

Songbird Spotted in Namoroka!

04/07/2010

Ever since Mozilla released the 1.9.1 version of its platform1, our community has been asking when to expect a version of Songbird built on the newer platform.

Transitioning to a newer version of the Mozilla platform is a complicated process and a huge project in and of itself.

At the time, we were working hard on other projects and didn’t have time to go through the work of destabilizing and then re-stabilizing them to update to a newer version of the underlying platform. Plus, even though the 1.9.0-based platform is a bit long in the tooth these days, it’s been incredibly stable for us and for users.

Of course, keeping up with the New Hotness ™ is important to us too, and so when the conversation about updating Xulrunner recently came up again, we decided that it was best to go for the gold and head right to Mozilla’s latest platform release, 1.9.2 (codename: Namoroka).

To that end, we’ve done a fair amount of engineering work4 to get 1.9.2-based builds going and we’d like your help testing them!

The work is currently being done on the xr192Integration branch; nightlies for that build are available here:

http://developer.songbirdnest.com/builds/xr192Integration/latest/

We also have integration buildbots up and running:

http://buildbot.songbirdnest.com/buildbot?category=xr192

If you have a free moment and would like to see what Songbird looks like in a 1.9.2-based build, grab a nightly and check it out.

If you find a bug, we’d love to hear about it. When filing, please try to reproduce it on a trunk nightly, and see if the bug is present there, as well. That way, we’ll know if it’s a 1.9.2 issue for us to investigate, or possibly another issue that also appears in older Xulrunners.

Our plan is to hopefully get enough feedback and testing regarding the switch to release our Orbital release with a whole lot of 1.9.2ness!

With your help, we’ll make Songbird one of the most beautiful birds in all the Namaroka Strict Nature Reserve!

(This post was originally published on Songbird’s blog; to comment, head on over there!)

______________________________
1 Way back in June of 20082
2 Wow, has it really been that long?!3
3 Yes. Yes it has.
4 And admittedly, a lil’ build work…

Focusing Those Binoculars

03/03/2010

Some of our astute ornithologists have noticed us busily working on the Songbird1.7 (known as the “Nirvana”1) release and have asked where the builds are.

Starting with this release, we’ve made a slight change to how we deliver release-branch builds: we’ll be calling out specific builds off of the release branch to focus attention on, instead of having every nightly build published.

We’re making this change for a couple of reasons:

  • Reduce churn on incoming issues that are known, but which need to then be triaged and percolate through the development process.
  • To point developers and users to builds we know are worth looking at; we want to help focus the precious testing time our development and end-user community donates to looking at bits that are more “known quantities,” so they’re not frustrated with issues that are both known and which we’re actively working on fixing during release cycle.

This change will not affect source code availability via publicsvn; developers will still be able to pull release branches and build from source.

Additionally, builds from trunk and project branches2 will also continue to be provided nightly3.

When we do have release builds that you’ll want to look at, we’ll publish betas via the Nightly Builds page, just as we always have.4

Enjoy the (clearer) birdwatching!

(This post was originally published on Songbird’s blog; to comment, head on over there!)

________________________
1 The release may—or may not—smell like teen spirit.
2 Such as the GStreamer Integration branch
3 At least, as long as there’s a check-in for that day
4 For those who have birdwatched forever, we may even bring back “blessed builds” when it makes sense to do so!

You’re Probably Not Reading This

02/03/2010

In between checking Twitter, Facebook, email, and trying to cook dinner, I noticed a new episode of Frontline premiered tonight.

When I finally finished cooking dinner1, I sat down to watch a re-visit to a 2007 episode called “Growing Up Online.” This followup concerned “Our New Digital Nation.”

As I watched, I was reminded of something I had learned long ago, and I continue to be reminded of as I work on technologies related to the Internet: the way now-teenagers experience technology, media, and the Internet… is actually pretty different than the way I experienced it.

If this is a topic that fascinates you, it’s certainly worth the ninety minutes; I found three elements particularly interesting:

  • Early on in the episode, a study on human multitasking conducted at Stanford is explored.

    What is particularly interesting to me about the study is they interview both students at MIT and Stanford—not slouches by any academic standards—and ask them how they think they perform at multitasking.

    The question seems almost insulting: one student2 quips “I feel like the professors here do have to accept that we can multitask very well and that we do at all times, and so if they try and restrict us from doing it, it’s almost unfair, because we are completely capable.”

    Except… the punchline is Frontline talks to a professor at Stanford, who has an MRI, and who has used the scientific method3 to prove that students—who are presumably at the top of their game, intellectually4—perform absolutely horribly at mundane tasks5 when they’re trying to multitask.

    Earlier in the story, an MIT professor describes this myth that the (current) human brain is good at multitasking as “koolaid,” and based on these students’ perplexed and embarrassed reactions to their test results, I don’t think the analogy is far off. In fact, the Stanford doctor in charge of the study says “Y’know, they understand the research; they’re smart kids. But, they seem utterly convinced… it doesn’t apply to them.”

    Except… it totally does. And the discrepancy between the science and what we think-we-can-do is revisited throughout the episode. There are some interesting developments that are touched upon for today’s students.

    But the fact remains that science is showing that if you were born before (and this is me guessing) approximately 1995, and you think you can multitask… the harsh reality is: you’re completely and utterly fooling yourself.

    Quoth the Stanford doc: “Virtually all multitaskers think they’re brilliant at multitasking. And one of the big discoveries is: you know what? You’re really lousy at it. It turns out: multitaskers are terrible at every aspect of multitasking. … Recent work we’ve done suggests they’re worse at analytic reasoning.”

    The jury is still out on those in the tail end of the “millennial generation,” though.
  • Later in the episode, they cover a so-called “Army Experience Center,”6 which is effectively a gaming center in a low-income mall that has X-box games were you can shoot at brown-people, with Army recruiters walking around doing a, and I quote, “soft sell.”

    This is particularly distasteful, but what I found interesting was what a Major says: “Here in the Army Experience Center, it’s not the whole Army; you know, video games are never going to replicate the real thing. But it is a sampling experience, to pique your interest and maybe encourage you to go and learn more, just as [the] Apple [Store] is trying to do.”

    Just as the Apple Store is trying to do? Really?7
  • The episode also covers a study of 5- and 6-year olds where they hook them up to a virtual-reality simulator, ask them “Do you remember swimming with dolphins when you were three?” and then proceed to simulate swimming with dolphins.


    A full 50% of them later said that they remember swimming with dolphins in earlier years, except none of them ever had.

    This is interesting, academically… but the practical applications have intriguing—and horrifying—applications.9

I think the coverage of this issue is most notable because you’re likely to have one of two reactions to it: you’ll either find the “scary” stuff… well… unidentifiable and scary, or you’ll completely relate and wonder why it’s a story at all. I suspect the differentiation will be in what year in the 90′s you were born.

For my own part, it makes one thing plain: I’m not even 30, and yet: I don’t experience the Internet, digital media, and “cyberspace” in the same way someone entering college—something the episode coins a “digital native”—does.

And that… is notable.
_____________________
1 Homemade spaghetti, if you must know
2 A very arrogant-sounding “Lauren”
3 That “thing” most students were probably surfing Facebook while it was discussed in lecture
4 In terms of their lifetime
5 Identifying vowels and even numbers, in fact
6 Which cost, incidentally, $13 million
7 “There’s just one more thing: life-long, post-traumatic stress disorder”8
8 Although, Frontline does go into treatment of that, so maybe it’s ok…
9 Part of me is sad our brain doesn’t distinguish between reality and faux-reality, but… there you have it.

#nsid-ious

01/05/2010

Three days in; stubble abounds…

I really want to shave.1

I was no longer working at the ‘Co when the first #nsid occurred, but it was hard to ignore it last year. Planet was lit up with pictures of people looking all sorts o’ scruffy and seemingly lovin’ it.

We’ve been so busy at the Nest lately, that I’d forgotten that we’d come to the time of year to shrug off all facial-cutting instruments. It was Johnath’s eloquent post2 on the subject, especially the new3 charity aspect, which convinced me to shave off the… half goatee4 I usually sport and take the plunge.

Being an #nsid n00b, I didn’t take daily photos5; the photos you see here are the only pictorial evidence that exists.

But participating in #nsid did teach me a few things about the world… and myself:


At the dawn of a new decade
  • The complaint you always hear is the itchiness. I was surprised at how not-that-bad it was(n’t?)…
  • Buuut, most people claim it goes away after a couple of weeks. At almost five weeks in, I’m itching as I write this.
  • Slapping yourself sharply is a good substitute for scratching an itchy face; the main pro is it doesn’t further irritate already-itchy skin; the main con is you look like an idiot6, smacking the crap out of your face
  • #nsid is apparently incompatible with my driver’s license, which sports a photo of a 19-year-old me: I got stopped going through airport security on my way home for the holidays. Both ways.7
  • Late-December, I managed to snag whatever rhinovirus people were sharing at holiday parties, and I found out experimentally that #nsid and colds do not mix.8 Just sayin’…
  • The Boyfriend started calling me “Fuzzy [His Usual Pet Name I Won't be Revealing Here].” I was not amused.
  • To his credit, however, he did not invoke his constitutionally-recognized powers to call for a special session of shaving.
  • If sdwilsh says he’s doing #nsid, demand a donation out of him; he’ll wuss out.
  • I was having dinner with some friends, and one of them remarked “Hey! You’ve unintentionally embraced bear9 culture!” I threw my piece of raw salmon at him10
  • Washing the whole… thing… was kinda hard. I never did really figure it out. Are you supposed to shampoo it? Use facial cleanser? Just ignore?
  • After three weeks or so, it’s pretty weird catching this dark line running across the bottom of your peripheral vision; ditto feeling fuzzies when pursing your lips.
  • Upon return from holiday vacation, I asked a friend what he thought; he said “Well, it’s certainly coming along,” which I note is distinctly different from “It looks good,” which prompted the question…
  • Right near the end of the month, things were getting a little… squirely, necessitating this question to the #nsid judges: does #nsid imply #ntid (where t=”trimming”)? Consensus is that it does. Good thing I asked first.
  • Apparently, my mustache hair likes to fraternize with my nostrils; damn the #ntid stipulation!

Now, if y’all will excuse me, I need to go find a razor blade.

A sharp, sharp razor blade… but only until next December…

_______________
1 After you think to yourself “TMI,” you might wonder what the big deal is, since it’s obviously not December anymore. Well, I’ve been somewhat remiss in my blogging lately, so I told myself that I couldn’t shave until I blogged about my #nsid experiences…
2 Which I tried, rather unsuccessfully I might add, to paraphrase on a number of occasions
3 And ingenious!
4 Or whatever it’s called
5 Truth be told, the four or so photos I did take took a lot of haranguing
6 Or mental patient
7 And I didn’t even have any explosives in my underwear!
8 Also? While paper towels sure are sturdier, facial tissue they are not!
9 These bears, not those bears
10 WE WERE AT A SUSHI BAR!

It’s MFBT (for multiple values of “B”)

12/02/2009

When I joined Mozilla Corporation, you either ran your own blog1, had a Mozillazine blog, or didn’t involve yourself in such frivolities at all.3


Release pattern diagram for major software projects

I remember asking the then-VP of Engineering who I should talk to about “getting my blog Mozilla set up.” Since the company was about twenty people back then, the answer wasn’t obvious, so he pointed me to #mozillazine. I went and asked around and I got my Mozilla blog.

And all was good with the world. For a time.

But times change, and at some point in the last four years, it became cool4 to run your own blog.

So now, years later, since all the cool kids are doing it, I finally set up my own blog.

If the name—The Sober Build Engineer—doesn’t immediately make sense, maybe the introduction will help.

In an attempt to not spam Planet Mozilla, I won’t be syndicating everything; but if you find my ramblings amusing5, the raw RSS feed is always available.

I’d like to thank MattyT, Mozillazine, and OSUOSL for hosting “my Mozilla blog” for the last few years.

And I hope to see y’all on the flip side6.

Oh… and of course, the first round is on me…

__________
1 Not as likely, since it wasn’t as “cool” back then2
2 Yes, I’m that old….
3 Until the “blogosphere” became a “big deal”
4 Dare I say chic?
5 Or otherwise…
6 Bug 532342 tracks movin’ me over

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