Ubuntu’s Firefox 3.5 and Facebook Chat

Those of you using the official Firefox 3.5 packages for Ubuntu 9.04 have probably noticed that it’s actually labeled as “Shiretoko,” which was the code name while Firefox 3.1/3.5 was in development. This is done to avoid confusion with the default installation of Firefox 3.0. For several technical reasons, the Firefox 3.5 package does not replace 3.0, but is installed alongside it.

My wife noticed that her Facebook chat popped up in a separate window when using her browser, which is very annoying (especially because she’s an Ubuntu Netbook Remix user, where all windows are maximized). Facebook claimed that she was using “an old browser,” and ironically chided her to upgrade.

Ubuntu’s Firefox 3.5 User Agent string is this:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090701 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Shiretoko/3.5

My guess is that Facebook is using simple user-agent sniffing, and since it sees “Shiretoko” and not “ Firefox,” gets confused.

So to fix this, we’ll enlist the help of the User Agent Switcher extension and use it to tell Facebook you’re using the “real” Firefox 3.5. Here are the steps:

1. Download and install the User Agent Switcher if you haven’t already.
2. After Shiretoko restarts, go to Tools->Add-Ons-. Select “Preferences” for the User Agent Switcher.
3. Click the “New” button to create a new User Agent string.
4. Put “Fake Official Firefox 3.5,” or something else that makes sense to you in the “Description” field. The other fields are automagically populated with the “ default” user agent, which makes our life easier.
5. At the very end of the “User Agent” field, replace “Shiretoko” with “Firefox” and click OK.
6. Go to Tools->Default User Agent and then select “Fake Official Firefox 3.5”.
7. Go to Facebook.

You can use this trick for any other site out there that claims you’re not using an up-to-date or unsupported browser.

Enough About Brett Favre!

Dear Jon Miller and Joe Morgan:

As you are marginally competent baseball announcers, I am only marginally interested in what you have to say about baseball during Sunday Night Baseball. What makes you think I care about what you have to say about Brett Favre and the Packers, especially while there’s baseball action happening right now in front of your eyes? If I wanted to find out about the latest in the Favre Drama, I wouldn’t be watching the baseball game.

That is all.

The Usefulness of Fact-Checking

In the news today, it was revealed that the University of Maryland accidentally printed Social Security Numbers of students on a mailing about on-campus parking, possibly exposing about 20,000 students to identity theft. The affected students were advised to put fraud alerts on their credit files, and generously offered some free credit protection, which is all well and good.

I was about to go all postal on UMCP for using SSNs as student ID numbers, but a quick look at the FAQ revealed that was not the case; a separate University ID number (explained here) is generally used. The SSNs got on the mailing accidentally. Why the application that generated the mailing labels for this particular mailing even had access to a table that contained students’ SSNs is a very good question, and a question that needs to be asked of the IT staff. But that particular error is not as jaw-droppingly stupid as using SSNs as student ID numbers, which was a common practice at universities about 10-15 years ago. Just a little bit of research beyond what I read in an AP wire story kept me from jumping to a completely wrong conclusion.

But if I did not blog about this incident, I likely would not have looked further into what was going on, and I would have continued to assume that Maryland was still using SSNs as student ID’s (they did when my wife did some graduate work there in the late ‘90s, but they apparently stopped the practice around 2005). Sometimes it’s easy to jump to conclusions about what you read, especially when you have a small amount of inside information about the subject at hand. Because of this, taking the time to fact check before going on a rant is a good thing. Even if it’s not a very bloggy thing to do.

Welcome to the Queens Zoo

Bobble on the Bookshelf
Originally uploaded
by Rich Renomeron.

Today is a lousy day to be a Mets fan.

After weeks of playing the “will-they-or-won’t they” game with Willie Randolph, they fired him today, or rather, early this morning, after a win no less. The reasons for doing the deed when it was done include “they didn’t want to fire him on Father’s Day,” and “they didn’t want him to hear about it from the media.” But it seems to me that the Mets’ brain trust could not make up their collective mind on What To Do about their underachieving team.

After last season’s epic collapse, it was pretty clear that Randolph was “on notice” – and despite public pronouncements like “Willie is the manager, and he has a contract,” there’s been a feeling that they might drop him the moment things went south. There were rumors floating around in the media such as, “if they don’t take this series, he’s gone,” or “another week like that, and it’s over.” Constantly. Since April.

Today I read that Omar Minaya may have been pressured by the Wilpons to act, and it very much reminded me of the Steinbrenner Way, particuarly the mid-’80’s edition. They called the Yankees’ organization “The Bronx Zoo” for a reason – and I certainly hope that something similar is not happening over in Queens.

Exposure

One of the fun things about publishing your photos publicly on Flickr is that you never know who might find your shots interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I got an email requesting that three of my photos were on a “shortlist” for inclusion in an online travel guide called “Schmap”. So I went to their web site and granted them rights to use the photos (as I use the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives license, you need explicit permission to use them in a commercial endeavor). The other day, I was informed that all three were selected. The three winners can be seen in the travel guide here, here, and here.