Slashdot Mirror

I have yet to see a DSL provider that does not state in very small print that the connection is "burst" or "variable" or "up to".

Burst is actually kind of silly. It really screws with data rate prediction required to get smooth performance in multi-player games. So, you start playing, the game figures out the rates, everything's smooth, then the burst is over, you lag all to hell, as the game has to renegotiate the data rate. For downloads, no big deal, but for real time stuff like games or voice/video chat this is a problem... It's not that you connection is too slow after the throttle either, after a while you'll get smoother connection -- It's that initial period of "increased" performance that's screwing up the rate guesstimation.

OK, so here's the silly thing: If you have "bursting", start a D/L of a largeish file. Then, watch the data rate drop after a little while. Now, hit the pause button on the download. Wait a sec, then resume it. Tada! You can burst the whole D/L by re-establishing the HTTP connection -- Not that the pipes have changed at all, just that they throttle on a per connection basis. (How else would you do "bursting"?)

So, two things:
0. Use a Download Accelerator. I use the Firefox plugin: DownThemAll. Acceleration works by opening multiple connections to the source at different parts of the file -- per connection throttle? Increase connections until max bandwith is reached, heh. If one part of the file gets done before the onthers, it splits a remaining segment and starts a new connection; That actually boosts DL speed even more. It's too bad DTA doesn't have an option to open N connections each only S size chunks, and roll across the file... Guys? There's a viable plugin idea if you need one.

1. My new game client / server code has a "rolling" connection system to bypass time based throttling (bursting). It's all about the port numbers -- that's how they identify the connection. In my games I use UDP, but it falls back to TCP; Point is: this also works on TCP. What I do is open a new connection every once in a while, and send some data across it while the current connection is open (It's just port number changing in UDP). I track the speeds and latency of each connection (port number), and detect the timer duration at which the throttling happens by tracking data rates, then I set the connection roll over rate to be less than that. So, on non bursting lines, rolling rarely happens. I can also have more than just two ports open -- I can max my neighbor's 10Mbps bursting DSL line with just 6 concurrent rolling connections. Note: The server port doesn't have to change, seems that most per connection throttling is based on client port number.

It's weird, but shorter connections seem to cope with buffer bloat a bit too; Not sure why...You'd think the buffers were connection independent? Tuning the data rates helps combat BB lag even more though.

I'd write a RFC for this maximal bandwidth optimization technique, but let's just keep it between us geeks, OK?

P.S. My game server defaults to port 80, and displays a simple TCP / HTTP / HTML page about the current game in progress and where to D/L the game if you hit it with a browser. If you hit it with the game client, then the client's HTTP header tells the server to go into game protocol mode. Note: it's not a full HTTP 1.1 stack, just canned response with inserted real time stats, to reduce attack surface while giving the server a bit of info for HTML browsers & apps. Yeah, that's kind of weird eh? Except when you consider that to a deep packet inspection my game protocol initially looks like a "high priority" TCP/HTML query... heh.

Sort of like how Javascript lacks an Array.indexOf method to find a certain item in the array.

Array indexOf method

They point out that many Android phones are supported, and that a beta version for tablets will be coming soon.

Screw the wiki, there's tablet support on the actual release page... https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/14.0beta/system-requirements/

And as far as Native UI is concerned... must have been said by someone who never opened the Preferences... about a third of my screen is wasted in a useless whitespace border, and yuck, it looks nothing like the Android UI!

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-android-use-permissions-it-requests not sure if the most recent changes made to it for the Beta are live.

They release new Android betas pretty often - there have been half a dozen last year, for example. What makes this version so special that it warrants a /. front page story?

I hope MS does to them what they did to Netscape.

Copying from a post above: documented proof of Mozilla priorities.. [That] is the problem, nobody really cares about web app store that much.

The story is just exploiting the fact that more testing for the linux implementation is needed for quality assurance.

Mozilla *is* hiring aggressively - http://careers.mozilla.org/ - *and* actively recruiting more community contributors - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Introduction. There's no such thing as "____ is not part of Mozilla's ____" because we can all be part of Mozilla. See washort's link to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

Mozilla *is* hiring aggressively - http://careers.mozilla.org/ - *and* actively recruiting more community contributors - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Introduction. There's no such thing as "____ is not part of Mozilla's ____" because we can all be part of Mozilla. See washort's link to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

Mozilla *is* hiring aggressively - http://careers.mozilla.org/ - *and* actively recruiting more community contributors - https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Introduction. There's no such thing as "____ is not part of Mozilla's ____" because we can all be part of Mozilla. See washort's link to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

You're right, and people are doing just that. A patch for Linux support is under development here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

Hi Everyone, Linux support for web apps is actively being worked on. Our contributor (Marco) is driving the implementation of it here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744190 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745018 If you would like to help out, then feel free to drop a comment in those bugs!

Hi Everyone, Linux support for web apps is actively being worked on. Our contributor (Marco) is driving the implementation of it here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744190 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745018 If you would like to help out, then feel free to drop a comment in those bugs!

Hi Everyone, Linux support for web apps is actively being worked on. Our contributor (Marco) is driving the implementation of it here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744190 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745018 If you would like to help out, then feel free to drop a comment in those bugs!

It's a browser for the proprietary operating systems. E.g. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox3/Firefox_Requirements#Platform_Support

This isn't about Firefox. This is about some Web App store. What is the Web App store? The GP doesn't know; there isn't a link. There is a link to a bug, and there is a link to internetnews.com.
 
This is not a Boot to Gecko discussion, or a Firefox discussion. It could be an html5 discussion: here's a link to the marketplace page. HTML5 varies from browser to browser, some pages demand Chrome for viewing even though other browsers support HTML5. As things are developing, the browser groups are needing to make their own stores to list pages tested with their HTML5 renderers. The Mozilla marketplace, like Google Play, are both browser and OS dependent.

This isn't about Firefox. This is about some Web App store. What is the Web App store? The GP doesn't know; there isn't a link. There is a link to a bug, and there is a link to internetnews.com.
 
This is not a Boot to Gecko discussion, or a Firefox discussion. It could be an html5 discussion: here's a link to the marketplace page. HTML5 varies from browser to browser, some pages demand Chrome for viewing even though other browsers support HTML5. As things are developing, the browser groups are needing to make their own stores to list pages tested with their HTML5 renderers. The Mozilla marketplace, like Google Play, are both browser and OS dependent.

Seriously, RTFM: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744193

I don't think anyone's bothered to read the bugzilla case. Possibly including the idiot @ internetnews.com - seriously, I don't understand how you could possibly come to those conclusions based on that bugzilla case.

But...but...they're non-profit! User-driven! Innovative! Exclamation marks! I mean...that's what they told me just now...so they can't really be influenced by any tech giants with mobile phone and tablet interests or anything.

But...but...they're non-profit! User-driven! Innovative! Exclamation marks! I mean...that's what they told me just now...so they can't really be influenced by any tech giants with mobile phone and tablet interests or anything.

It seems to me that it is not only Saverin who is not mindful of and not caring about the health of the nation and the people around him. Judging from the articles linked below, it seems that the entire of Facebook is not healthy:

Facebook's reputation in the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Fac

It seems to me that it is not only Saverin who is not mindful of and not caring about the health of the nation and the people around him. Judging from the articles linked below, it seems that the entire of Facebook is not healthy:

Facebook's reputation in the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Fac

Luckily, there actually is work in this direction. DNSSEC authenticated HTTPS is supported in Chrome as of Chrome 14 and is being worked on for Firefox (see also: Wikipedia section on DANE). Of course, it requires DNSSEC and a compatible browser. As browsers get updated slowly, most sites will likely be very conservative about switching over, and those with EV certs never will.

Why would it need to push for HTML5 apps on iOS? iOS already has them - they predate the App Store, and are still supported.

While technically true, you are ignoring some very important issues. HTML5 apps are very limited in what APIs they have access to, so the vast majority of phone apps simply can't be written in HTML5 even ignoring performance issues with Javascript engines (not that any invested in native app marketplaces really wants to improve their Javascript engine anyway). Apple appears to have no interest in fixing that, after all, they make 30% off native apps and 0% off HTML5 apps, especially ones that people run on Android phones. Google strangely doesn't seem to be in much of a rush to fix that problem either. Instead Mozilla is finally leading the charge. Really. Something is very wrong when Mozilla is the leader in mobile anything (Firefox is a great browser; I use it as my primary browser, even on my phone... but [almost] every phone's default browser is WebKit-based and not Gecko-based for a reason).

Why doesn't Mozilla stop complaining and write their own operating system?

You mean like the Boot to Gecko project? Here's an article about a demo last February.

Behold Boot to Gecko.

It would be nice if each icon came with an appropriate legal paragraph, concisely written but legally valid

Actually, the Mozilla privacy icons project aims to do just that. Strange, the Privacy Simplified website links to the Mozilla initiative... which makes me wonder what they hope to do better.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Is there a way to do this but then activate the Like button on demand? So I don't get tracked by the Like button, but I can then share an article I read on ars technica or something at a later time if I so desire?

I think a balance can be struck.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Is there a way to do this but then activate the Like button on demand? So I don't get tracked by the Like button, but I can then share an article I read on ars technica or something at a later time if I so desire?

I think a balance can be struck.

Facebook's reputation with the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Facebook photo and a generic description offered to police by the victim's boyfriend."

Defending herself required a "... court appearance and several thousand dollars in legal bills."


Open source will prevail. E

Facebook's reputation with the mainstream media is rapidly getting worse. Facebook is getting a bad reputation partly because of articles like these:

Worst company: Facebook was a semi-finalist in the April 2012 competition to be voted the worst company in the United States .

Facebook follows its business rules? Not always. The April 7, 2012 Wall Street Journal story, Selling You on Facebook, says:

"Facebook requires apps [mobile phone software applications] to ask permission before accessing a user's personal details. However, a user's friends aren't notified if information about them is used by a friend's app. An examination of the apps' activities also suggests that Facebook occasionally isn't enforcing its own rules on data privacy."

There's more like that in the article.

Facebook tracks every web page you visit that has a Facebook button (using Javascript). For example, if you visit the Oregonian Newspaper web site, Facebook tracks every story you visit, even if you don't click on the "Like" button. There are ways to prevent that (using Firefox with the NoScript add-on), but most people don't know about them.

Companies pay people to click on Facebook "Like" buttons. The number of Facebook "Likes" doesn't give any indication of popularity.

On December 9, 2011 it was necessary to click on a Facebook "Like" button to be allowed to see Fry's Electronics ads.

Do 86,688 people (on April 9, 2012) really like Firestone Complete Auto Care, or did the company offer something to be "liked"?

A few problems with Facebook: Richard Stallman wrote a short list of things wrong with Facebook.

How much information does Facebook keep? Read the December 13, 2011 article, Twenty Something Asks Facebook For His File And Gets It - All 1,200 Pages.

What do people in other countries think? The May 14, 2010 article, Facebook is not your friend gives one idea.

The June 15, 2011 article, The End of Facebook, and the June 14, 2011 article, Is this the beginning of the end for Facebook? give others.

Most people don't understand the problems that may occur. For example, consider the March 28, 2012 article, Teacher's aide says 'no access' to her Facebook; now legal battle with school.

This April 4, 2012 article would be funny if it weren't so sad: Woman arrested for assault based on Facebook photo. Quotes:

"Aston ... was charged ... based solely on a Facebook photo and a generic description offered to police by the victim's boyfriend."

Defending herself required a "... court appearance and several thousand dollars in legal bills."


Open source will prevail. E

In Belgium this is nothing new. We already have it. I hope they will adapt the Belgian type as it is open source, everybody can write programs and/or get a reader to see what is on it.
And with Open Source I mean Windows, Mac and Linux can read your software.
http://eid.belgium.be/en/ and direct link to the developer stuff:
http://eid.belgium.be/en/developing_eid_applications/eid_software_development_kit/
Want an add-on for Firefox? https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/belgium-eid/

In Belgium it is already law to have an ID on you.
Besides alcohol control and once running a red light (Got a warning, not a ticket for the red light. Got a key chain for the negative alcohol control) I am one of the few people that I know who has been stopped by police at what looked at random.

I gave my papers, they checked them and then gave them back. A day later I saw them doing the same to a guy who was dressed similar like me the day before with a similar build and haircut, so they were clearly looking for somebody specific.

The only downside at this moment is that the law did not caught up yet. So for many contracts we still need to send in a signed paper. No scanning and no faxing. In other countries the same can be done by a mere phone call.

If they would allow the e-ID as a rightful signature, that would help a lot. The technoligy already exists.

How's the view from the bike shed, guys? Figure out which color to paint it today? Screw the UI overhaul, some of the engine needs overhauling too, but that's no fun. We'd rather bicker endlessly over how curvy to make the soft curves, while the memory leaks and weird crashes go on, unabated.

Memory Leak Fixing and Total Usage Reduction Project, been running since Firefox 5. Firefox now uses drastically less memory.
Snappy UI Speed Project, been running since around Firefox 8/9.
There is major work underway on the JavaScript engine and various other backend issues. Just because you don't check the Bugzilla or occasionally look at what the devs are doing doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Electrolysis (process-per-tab) is on the backburner but the work in the JS engine is actually untangling the problems that prevent that so it will happen eventually.

How's the view from the bike shed, guys? Figure out which color to paint it today? Screw the UI overhaul, some of the engine needs overhauling too, but that's no fun. We'd rather bicker endlessly over how curvy to make the soft curves, while the memory leaks and weird crashes go on, unabated.

Memory Leak Fixing and Total Usage Reduction Project, been running since Firefox 5. Firefox now uses drastically less memory.
Snappy UI Speed Project, been running since around Firefox 8/9.
There is major work underway on the JavaScript engine and various other backend issues. Just because you don't check the Bugzilla or occasionally look at what the devs are doing doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Electrolysis (process-per-tab) is on the backburner but the work in the JS engine is actually untangling the problems that prevent that so it will happen eventually.

How's the view from the bike shed, guys? Figure out which color to paint it today? Screw the UI overhaul, some of the engine needs overhauling too, but that's no fun. We'd rather bicker endlessly over how curvy to make the soft curves, while the memory leaks and weird crashes go on, unabated.

Memory Leak Fixing and Total Usage Reduction Project, been running since Firefox 5. Firefox now uses drastically less memory.
Snappy UI Speed Project, been running since around Firefox 8/9.
There is major work underway on the JavaScript engine and various other backend issues. Just because you don't check the Bugzilla or occasionally look at what the devs are doing doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Electrolysis (process-per-tab) is on the backburner but the work in the JS engine is actually untangling the problems that prevent that so it will happen eventually.

There are tons of personas/themes that make the menubar look flat, or even to make FF4+ look exactly like FF3. Rendering the menu as a bubble makes sense when you are only expecting to show it temporarily when someone hits the Alt button.

Here are the first two reports I found of this bug:

Bug #237623, reported over 8 years ago. 20 duplicate reports merged into it. Still unresolved.
Bug #536916, reported nearly 2.5 years ago. Still unconfirmed.

I'm sure there are more if you care to look, but I think that's enough.

Here are the first two reports I found of this bug:

Bug #237623, reported over 8 years ago. 20 duplicate reports merged into it. Still unresolved.
Bug #536916, reported nearly 2.5 years ago. Still unconfirmed.

I'm sure there are more if you care to look, but I think that's enough.

What about F1/ FF Share? ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-share-alpha/ )
"Firefox Share is made by Mozilla Labs."

This is the kind of project that makes it into regular Firefox after a while and it is exactly that, a twitter button. I don't actually like that one too much and hope it'll stay an addon.

We all know complaining on message boards never does anything, so tell them directly what you think of their ideas:
http://input.mozilla.org/en-US/feedback#idea

anyone could make Firefox look however they want without giving up features.

You're kidding right ? never heard of extensions and themes ?

Granted many themes are just lame, but some are very helpful. I'm still using one of the Firefox 2 themes because I couldn't get used to the constant changes of UI

Same goes for status bar disappearing and the so-called "awesome bar", there are extensions taking care of all that (if you need to).

anyone could make Firefox look however they want without giving up features.

You're kidding right ? never heard of extensions and themes ?

Granted many themes are just lame, but some are very helpful. I'm still using one of the Firefox 2 themes because I couldn't get used to the constant changes of UI

Same goes for status bar disappearing and the so-called "awesome bar", there are extensions taking care of all that (if you need to).

As mentioned earlier in this thread, there's an app ... erhm ... addon for that: Long URL Please Firefox Addon

The H summary is good. Tizen is straight-up GNU/Linux and X11, more or less standard packages but with the EFL libraries that Samsung likes. So it should be nice for hackers porting Linux programs. Tizen's message for developers is write HTML5 apps. Note that the message from webOS, Playbook, BBX, Windows 8 — everyone but iOS and Android — is also "write HTML5 apps". See a pattern here? (Yet Linux desktops continue to promote native development with GTK/Qt.)

Mozilla's Boot 2 Gecko is also "write HTML5 apps", but the phone's own software is also written in HTML5. It shows a commitment to the same code and development tools you're telling developers to use. And only Mozilla seems committed to open Web apps you can install from any web site or from independent app stores; the other platforms seem to be "write your app in HTML5... and then package it for our platform and offer it in our store." B2G's current stack is different from Tizen, it's being developed on Android kernel and runtime. In theory as the Web APIs get standardized the difference won't matter for HTML5 app writers.

Simulator: A new browser-based tool that supports the Tizen APIs and allows you to run and debug your web applications, and simulate running applications with various device profiles.

If that's really the case you would think somewhere there's a web site you can browse to run it, but like Tizen 1.0 screenshots I can't find it. You can run B2G's "Gaia" UI in your browser with lots of caveats (probably requires a Gecko browser like Firefox Aurora, your PC lacks many APIs), see an early demo at http://paulrouget.com/e/b2gdemo/

We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.

Well, that sounded differently just some time ago.

That bug is not titled "make it impossible for people to run old versions of Firefox". I know Asa is unanimously hated here, but you can't just pull a random bug and say he's advocating for something he's not.

But it does feel like it, "you don't need to know what version you're running, because if it is old you just need to push this button to get the newest". It feels like removing control from a users point of view.

On a more serious note: What is really going on over by you? I have the feeling marketing took over Mozilla...

For example, the bug you linked was landed in Firefox over the objections of those of us in engineering. Oh, wait...

Okay, I can't understand that sentence...maybe because I'm tired or because I've been thrown around one time too much this evening...

We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.

Well, that sounded differently just some time ago.

That bug is not titled "make it impossible for people to run old versions of Firefox". I know Asa is unanimously hated here, but you can't just pull a random bug and say he's advocating for something he's not.

On a more serious note: What is really going on over by you? I have the feeling marketing took over Mozilla...

For example, the bug you linked was landed in Firefox over the objections of those of us in engineering. Oh, wait...

We have no interest in forcing users to run the latest version.

Well, that sounded differently just some time ago.

But to get to a more productive road, are you a developer of Firefox? If yes, what can we (the community) do to help you devs get those marketing-guys, which want FF to be all shiny like Chrome *sigh*, out of Mozilla? We have pitchforks and torches, if that would help?!

On a more serious note: What is really going on over by you? I have the feeling marketing took over Mozilla...

Speaking of lazy devs, from the linked release notes:

Known Issues

UNRESOLVED
Windows: The use of Microsoft's System Restore functionality shortly after updating Firefox may prevent future updates (see 730285)

Apparently not only does something already go wrong, it can prevent your from ever being able to update Firefox again! (Without deleting your current profile, reinstalling won't work!)

But who cares, according to the calendar, it's release time NOW!

Except that, if you actually examine the bug, the problem is
a) Actually in Windows, the way System Restore works is not friendly.
b) This bug has existed since at least Firefox 3.0, probably 2.0

For those who are lazy, System Restore saves a copy of every EXE, DLL, SYS and a bunch of other file types when you create a restore point. However, the core of Firefox is actually inside a file called omni.jar , JAR is not on the Magic Microsoft List so the result of this is that System Restore saves a copy of Firefox.exe but completely ignores omni.jar so when you try to restore the previous image, you get Firefox 11.0 Firefox.exe but are stuck with Firefox 12.0 omni.jar which are not fully compatible with each other thereby breaking Firefox.

(The JAR is not a "herp derp Mozilla is dumb, naming their EXE and DLLs weird herp derp", the JAR is a ZIP full of javascript, XUL and CSS not machine code, most of Firefox's UI and stuff like session restore and so forth are written in JS instead of C++)